The New Ambassador

Recently a new US Ambassador arrived in Swaziland. The State Department held a reception for him at the Royal Villas, an extravagant housing complex officially owned by the King which as previously hosted the recently ousted President of Madagascar as well as Robert Mugabe. The dress code was “business casual” so I threw a dress I’d bought five years ago at a thrift store in LA on over my jeans and put on some earrings. I arrived late and underdressed.

Once at the site of the reception, I had to present my invitation, a gold embossed and calligraphied piece of card stock that granted my entrance. They offered us pens with “US Embassy Mbabane” written on the side. I took two. Then my bag was searched and I passed through the metal detector without it going off. After the metal detector welcome arches, a line had formed to shake the new Ambassador’s hand. I was waiting in line with my fellow Fulbrighter, Sarah, when our pseudo-supervisor at the Embassy found us and declared that she would introduce us to the Ambassador.

I’m not sure if this happened to everyone, but it certainly made me feel important. We approached the Ambassador, Sarah looking poised and professional, and me terribly underdressed. Our supervisor introduced us and our research projects and then, as a way to make a lasting first impression, I interrupted the Ambassador, mid sentence, to exclaim, “I heard you’re also a Cal grad; right on!”

The Ambassador laughed awkwardly. I stood there awkwardly. A terrible silence descended. Our supervisor finally took pity on my social inappropriateness and shuffled us along. I was oblivious to my misstep and headed to the open bar in the reception room.

Once inside, I bumped into a group of Embassy staff members I had just met the previous weekend. I had spent the weekend in Ponta do Oro in southern Mozambique surfing, building sand castles and barbecuing prawns. A few Embassy staff members were part of our colossal twenty-five person caravan and I had enjoyed drinking beers around the fire and jumping into the blown out Indian Ocean waves with them. But here they were, not in their red and white striped beach trunks but in crisp white shirts and suit jackets and stripped ties.

Its weird how when you meet someone for the first time you associate so much about where you met them, or how you met them, with who they are. I met my friend Michelle at a costume party seven months ago and to this day she calls me Wonder Woman.

Umhlanga

Its impossible to be in Swaziland during this time of year and fail to mention the Umhlanga. The Umhlanga, or Reed Dance, is one of the most important events on the Swazi calendar. Traditionally, the Reed Dance is a time when Swazi's virginal maidens pay homage to the Queen. In this week long event, the maidens gather at the traditional capital of Swaziland in Lobamba at the Ludzidzini royal residence. Historically they gather on foot, but these days huge flat-bed lorries assist in the process. The maidens make their way down to the rive to gather reeds for the Queen Mother. Then they walk, singing in their traditional garb, to the Queen Mother's residence in order to reinforce her kraal walls with the freshly plucked reeds. What follows is two days of singing and dancing before the King and the Queen Mother.

Despite some jaded ex-pats telling me I would get bored as soon as I arrived, I decided to attend both days of dancing. Although both days were essentially the same, they were an incredible spectacle. This is what I saw:

Tens of thousands of maidens, bare breasted except for thick yarn sashes with pom-poms draped over one shoulder, standing in a neat semi-circle around the stadium's field. The King arrived, preceded and flanked by a troop of warriors in traditional dress. Some of his protective escort carried guns on the belts and spears in the hands. The maidens were organized in groups, some more polished than others, and each group made its way around the field singing. They danced in unison, the hallow seed pods tied to their feet beating to the music.

The procession went on forever, there were so many girls. The voices and the beat and the colors and the sea of maidens all blended into one. When each group had paraded in front of the King, he and his warriors took to the field. They jumped and pranced across the field in order to lower their sticks in front of particularly admirable females to show their appreciation. Often the King chooses a new wife from the assembled girls so anticipation was high.

I sat on the field, inadvertently among a group of warriors whose bleary eyes and enthusiasm indicated they'd been enjoying themselves. The girls paraded past, from barely walking to questionably virginal. It was an incredible experience to see so many people come together to celebrate their culture and put on a magnificent aesthetics experience.

Fading Suntan

Tofo (pronounced like the meat substitute) is a beautiful stretch of crescent sand along the Indian Ocean. Its only a few hundred kilometers north of the Mozambican capital Maputo, but the treacherous potholed road between the two ensures that those who are willing to put in the effort will be rewarded. So, after a 12 hour cashew filled journey we bumped along the sand road into town. In Tofo, the sand extends from the beach throughout the entire town, the roads, the market, the bathtubs of Tofo, are full of sand.

Tofo is hemmed in by dunes on the north and south (which offer wonderful vantage points to watch the breaching humpback whales or to build a sand tree house of sorts, away from it all). To the west is a marsh and, to the east is, of course, the clear and warm blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Most people go to Tofo to see what's in those warm blue waters and Tofo doesn't disappoint: Humpback whales, coral reefs, manta rays, other types of rays whose name escapes me, but they are the biggest in the world, and of course, the whale sharks.

Tofo was simply too incredible to tell you all about it, so rather I'll tell you about the whale sharks:
We took a tiny boat, which, to me, was barely a step up from the inflatable rafts we use to float down the rivers of Northern California in July. After fumbling over the waves, we broke into stride over the sea, with one man perched above the boat in a lifeguard type chair which ironically came equipped with a seat belt, to keep him from plummeting into the ocean as the wind-swept waves rocked our little boat.

A few times during this adventure, the calm of drifting over the swells was mixed into a frenzy. A whale shark would be spotted; we would don our masks and snorkels and our over sized flippers and hurl ourselves awkwardly into the water, much like beached whales ourselves. Then there would be a frantic swim toward the shark and flippers would flip and expensive underwater cameras would snap and bubbles would blow. But the shark would swim on.

His extreme length (16 meters-ish, I hear, although I don't use that crazy metric system) and subtle movements dwarfed the frantic limps which clambered above and beside him. He was truly a majestic sight, with the power to destroy you with one slap of his tail, but not the desire for destruction. His peace and serenity was matched only by the deep blue depths of the water he would dive to, when the flipping and the snapping and the blowing were enough. Then we tourists would sit awestruck in the churning sea. A little bob on the horizon of Tofo, meaningless to those depths below that hide so much more life.

And somewhere between the life-size humpback whale sand castle and watching the sunrise and dinners of heaps of rice and fish and birthdays and new friends and white sand and waves and surfing and mosquito zappers and houses in the dunes and walks on the beach I fell in love with Mozambique.

Superstitious

Today, soccer practice was canceled. So instead of running around for an hour, I sat in my Fiat station wagon and talked with Simphiwe. Simphiwe is the "first born" (read, "oldest") in her family. And, as the saying goes, its her job to chase away the thunder storms. Some Swazis believe that:

When it is raining, the First Born can chase away the storm. To do this, he or she must strip naked and go outside into the rain. Then, he or she must bend over, sticking his or her bum into the air. As the rain falls, the First Born waits for a drop to fall either "into her butt hole", as my friend explained, or "onto the anus" as an informative pamphlet explained. Then the storm will go away.

And Swazis have lots of great superstitions, at least according to what I've learned. Like if you jump over a fire, you'll pee blood. Or, if you eat directly from the cooking pot, it will rain on your wedding day.

A few months ago, I went out to rural Swaziland for a community school fundraiser. A group of us, part Swazi, part American, sat around a fire that evening at the school sharing different superstitions. The Swazi men had lots of great examples, like the ones above. When asked to share ours, we Americans just sort of looked at each other. Of course we have the old seven years bad sex -- or whatever it is -- for breaking a mirror, or walking under a ladder, but compared to pissing blood, they all seemed so meek. The only example I could come up with was the tooth fairy, which seemed to do more to confuse my new Swazi friends, than bridge cultural divides.

Article Published on Glimpse.org

In case anyone is interested, I've had an article published on National Geographic's Glimpse.org. The article is accompanied by a wonderfully cheesey picture of me and my friend Jose. The article is called: "I Finally Met a Swazi Guy Who Didn't Hit on Me." Feel free to comment on the article on the site, it makes me look popular!

Thanks faithful reader,
Mallory

Here Comes the Bride

In light of my upcoming article for Glimpse.com on the theme of constantly being proposed marriage, I have decided to delve into what actually would be entailed in a Swazi wedding. Everyone I’ve spoken to concerning the matter has given me a slightly different version of the process, but in keeping with my high research protocol standards, I have just averaged it all out and made up things when I don’t have facts. So here, for all you love birds thinking of a destination wedding, is how to get married in Swaziland:

Step `1: Boy meets girl. They fall in love, they want to get married.

Step 2: Girl visits boy’s home.

Step 3: Boy visits girl’s home.

Step 4: Boy’s family and girl’s family make an agreement that marriage can take place.

Step 5: Boy takes girl home and introduces her to his parents. This happens a few times and on the 3rd or 4th visit, the in-laws will tell the girl she must marry their son.

Step 6: Girl goes to visit the boy’s family one last time. Early in the morning, perhaps at 3am, the boy’s family will knock on the door to wake up the girl. The women of the family will accost the girl about her impending marriage until she cries. At some point during all of this, a goat is killed.

Step 7: Sitfaba—this refers to the process of putting the traditional goat skin on the girl.

Step 8: The boy’s family then takes the girl to the family kraal (place for keeping animals and traditional place for problem solving and important events). Here the family sings songs in siSwati and eats the freshly killed goat. The girl, however, is not permitted to eat.

Step 9: Around 10am the family leaves the kraal to go to endlini kagogo (Grandma’s house).

Step 10: The bride-to-be is painted in red okra, called libovu (not sure on the spelling).

Step 11: Then the girl is sent home and the family sees that she is painted in the red okra. This is a sign that it is time for lobola (dowry, usually pain in cows).
Step 12: Things get a little unclear at this point, but I’m pretty sure something called msimba occurs, which involves a lot of dancing, and if you’re my family, a lot of drunk relatives, although I’m pretty sure traditional Swazi weddings don’t involve booze at all.

Just a word of caution, however: Swazi’s are permitted to marry in the above “traditional” style as well as the “Western” style. The “Western” weddings are the only type of marriage which allow divorce. If you choose to get married with the red okra, you’re stuck forever!

Morocco

Dear Faithful Reader,

Due to some extenuating circumstances (aka I was on vacation) I have not been blogging. For this, I apologize. However, as I am now back in the Kingdom please look forward to more frequent posts, including this ditty about Big Mommas in Morocco:

My trip in Morocco was wonderful. With a ten year old Lonely Planet and a clueless San Franciscan to guide me I spent three weeks avoiding being ripped off, sweating, buying things I can’t afford, hiking, haggling, sinking sail boats, riding camels and drinking mint tea looking for the authentic Moroccan experience, like every other tourist.

We ended out journey in Fez, whose media, a wobbling labyrinth of narrow alleys and aggressive shop keepers, had just been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We spent two nights here among the smell of tanning camel and goat hides and the sizzle of tagines (conical clay cooking dishes placed over a fire and filled with meat and vegetables). Nearing the end of our trip, there was still one truly Moroccan activity I had hoped to experience: the Hammam.

Hammam’s are communal steam baths that date back to Roman times and have evolved in Moroccan society and an integral part of female society. In this Muslim country where men often sit in cafes chatting and drinking coffee until three in the morning, I hardly remember encountering women at all. I was eager to go to Hammam to catch a glimpse of the hidden society of Moroccan women, but also wash three weeks of sweat out of my hair.

The Hammam is open to both men and women at different times. I waited until the afternoon, the time designated to women, and then wandered through the medina gate, past the mosaiced public drinking fountain and up to the unmarked doorway which led to a white and black checkered hallway.

I walked in tentatively, paid the $0.12 to enter and through hand gestures and two languages I don’t understand, French and Arabic, understood to rent a cockroach invested locker for $0.07 and strip down to my underwear. To avoid being as bewildered during my experience, I paid $5.50 for a “massage.”

The Hammam is set up in different chambers. The disrobing chamber in which I entered was lined with benches for relaxing on after a wash and had a high white domed ceiling for letting steam escape. The room felt warm and wisps of steam and women in different states of dressing and undressing lounged about. The next room was significantly hotter and most of the women were congregated here, in front of rows of buckets of hot and cold water, scrubbing each other and combing their hair. The next room was similar, but hotter and less crowded. The last room was unbearably hot and literally steaming. A hot water tap filled up a tiled trough and women dunked buckets into it and hauled them out of the room.

After sitting in the steam room for as long as I possible could, I was led into the first washing room and pushed by a Big Momma, with ample sagging breasts fact first onto the tiled floor. She slipped here soft hand into a Brillo pad pot scrapping mitten and went to work on my body. The harsh mitten scrapped against my skin painfully and the powerful Momma spared no inch, even giving me a “wedgie” to better access my butt checks. I was then rolled over and the process continued.

When the scrapping was over (praise God), the soaping began. Another, even bigger Momma came to help with the process. My face was stuck somewhere near her thick hairy ankle and my joints were pressed into the tile floor and the big Mommas yelled out things to various women and manhandled me on the floor. Finally I was released from the death grip and doused with water. Then, my hair was untangled and washed and I was doused again. I was practically dragged into the steam room where I sat, delirious for a few minutes before seeking refuse in the now cool disrobing room.

It surprised me how free and confident the women at the Hammam were when on the streets they only appeared as silent citizens. It surprised me how much water was available And flowing through the Hammam when at my hotel 100 yards away the shower could barely muster a cold trickle. It surprised me that I was able to be around twenty women whom I could not communicate with, yet did not feel out of place. And it surprised me how quickly, in the hot Moroccan sun, I was sweaty and dirty again.