Swazi snapshots

Tomorrow marks 1 month since we arrived in Swaziland, and I wish I had lots of pictures to share of our great adventures so far. Unfortunately we've spent most of the last 2 weeks being quite ill (Joel and I, taking turns, thankfully William escaped this round), which is not the type of adventure that makes for good pictures or stories. We're still dying to get outside and explore this beautiful country, but besides being ill, the weather has conspired against us. It's been quite chilly, rainy, and foggy much of the past month, which is weather better suited for sitting inside in front of a fire (what I'm doing now) than hiking or roadtrips. But we're coming into summer, so hopefully we'll get to some warm weather and outdoor adventures soon.

In the meantime, here are some random snapshots of life here.

How green is our valley

We are staying in a house perched high in the hills, with spectacular views of a lush green valley known as Pine Valley. These pictures don't begin to do it justice. But they perhaps suggest a little of the stunning beauty of this place. (By the way, I have never been known for leaping out of bed at the crack of dawn, but here in Swaziland I'm actually enjoying getting up when the sun gets up. It helps when it's a glorious day.)

Our first Swazi braai

A couple weeks ago we were invited to a braai at the home of some new Afrikaans friends who live quite nearby. "Braai" is the Afrikaans word for barbecue, so I was expecting meat on a grill. Wrong. Lunch was cooked over a fire in the two round, three-legged cast iron pots that you can see in the picture below. One pot had kernels of maize (hard corn) and beans cooked together, a staple that is eaten in various parts of Africa. The other pot had an Afrikaans stew called potjiekos, which was cooked in layers, with the meat and slower-cooking ingredients added first, and the quicker-cooking ingredients added later to the top of the pot. It was delicious, and our leisurely outdoor lunch was truly memorable. Even better, the three darling munchkins below were such wonderful William keepers that we almost forgot we had a baby to look after. At one point they all disappeared for half an hour, during which time the girls were apparently locking the older boy in a shed or something like that, and they were showing William the property and trying to teach him to walk. William thought having three big kids to play with was pretty fantastic.

 

Christmas in Africa

For anyone who complains that Christmas starts too early in the US (and I'm with you on that), guess what, it starts even earlier here! I started to notice Christmas stuff right after we got here in late October, and now a month later, the "festive season" is in full swing. Of course Christmas is in the summer here, so we get displays like this (right outside the grocery store I shop at in the local mall):

More cross-cultural experiences at the grocery store

Shopping at the grocery store here isn't really that different than shopping in the US, except that there are some things we can't get (I miss Mexican food!!), other things that are more expensive (I am not sure I will ever be able to bring myself to buy ice cream in this country), and some things that are much less expensive than I am used to (loving all the cheap avocados). And there are things that you would never see in the US (impala steaks!), and other things that just go by odd names. The one that makes me giggle every time I pass the meat case is the "lazy aged rump," which I am pretty sure is just aged rump steak, but still sounds to me more like a body part that middle-aged women would complain about over coffee.

It also took me a long time to find bacon. I brought home some pork several weeks ago that looked like bacon and was labeled "rashers", but turned out to have bones in it, and not be cured. Hmmm. Finally yesterday I stumbled across this product hiding way in the corner of the pork case. I'm pretty sure it's bacon, although what is a gammon??

Trip to Nelspruit

Nelspruit, South Africa, is the closest largish city, so a lot of people go there to shop and take care of other business that they can't take care of in Swaziland. We had to leave the country in order to extend the time we're allowed to be in Swaziland (we're working on getting residency but until then we're limited to 30 days in country at a time), and had to get a vaccine for William, and also figured we would check out the Nelspruit mall while we were at it. What we learned is that it's really too long a trip for one day, and we really don't want to drive back after dark in the future. It's less than a hundred miles as the crow flies, but in order to be on better roads you have to take a more round-about route, and crossing the border requires getting out of your car and standing in line in both Swaziland and South Africa, and they were doing road construction in South Africa which further slowed the trip. But besides the fact that we spent 6 1/2 hours on the road, had a very long day, and Joel had to deal with dark roads and crazy drivers on the way back, I really enjoyed the drive. It's beautiful, dramatic land (lots of hills and valleys), and I'll have to try to get better pictures next time. 

This picture was taken at a town called Badplaas, which we assumed was Afrikaans for "bad place", and which we also assumed was a name like Iceland, a deliberately mis-leading name bestowed by the people who lived there in order to discourage other people from coming and discovering what a nice place it was. 

(Well, there goes my theory, I just looked Badplaas up and it actually means "bath farm" in Afrikaans, named because there are thermal springs there. Nice! Although I still think our theory is more fun.)

I am not an idiot

And I now have this form to prove it: 

I mentioned that we have to apply for residency here. This involves a great many forms, including the medical form above. We were told to go to a certain venerable white Swazi doctor, who would take one look at us and sign the forms. He looked to be well into his 80s, and he did sign the forms without hardly glancing at us. I'm not even sure he even asked me to speak, to make sure I wasn't "dump". It's good to know there's such a water-tight system for keeping the wrong kind of people out of the country.

Making friends at church

So far we have visited three great churches and it is going to be hard to make a decision when the time comes. This morning we visited an Anglican church whose building and hymn books both looked to be well over a hundred years old, where the singing was a mixture of surprisingly good (four-part harmony) and surprisingly bad (hymns on which the congregation couldn't manage to find a melody, much less harmony), where we saw only two other white faces (and one was a visitor from Scotland) but where everyone was very warm and welcoming. We liked the church a lot. At some point William got handed off to a man sitting behind us, who kept him for the rest of the service, a good half hour. I would turn around now and then to make sure William wasn't making a nuisance of himself, but he always seemed to be getting on famously with his new friend. During the Eucharist Joel and I momentarily lost track of them, and turned to each other in one of those "Where is our child??" moments, but then quickly spotted William kneeling at the communion rail with his new friend (okay, William was standing, the friend was kneeling). After the service we were finally able to meet this talented baby entertainer, who turned out to be super nice and invited us to his wedding next month. Here's William with Thokozani: 

And finally, more gross bug pictures

This is Africa, and there are bugs. Occasionally we have to kill a good 15 or 20 in our bedroom before going to sleep, gross flying ant-like creatures that can't fly very well but are strangely drawn to our pillows. Then there are the big ants that seem to die horrible deaths in the middle of the tile floors (at least, I can't figure out what makes them die there). I'm getting used to dealing with both of those. Some insects I kind of like, like this guy. I think he may have been dead already when I took the picture, but I thought he was kind of elegant with all that fur. 

 

Now let's talk about really gross bugs. This morning when we went out the front door there were thousands of bug wings, lying in drifts against the side of the building like sand in a sandstorm (or snow in a snowstorm, if you've never seen a sandstorm). The mystery was that there were no bodies, only wings. But when we got down to the driveway there was something stranger still-- two huge seething vortexes of those same winged insects, surrounded by a sea of body-less wings. Here they are: 

Were they mating? Having a convention? Eating each other? I still have no idea. They were stuck all over the car, too, staring in at me on the way to church. Ewww... 

Luckily it rained this afternoon, and washed all signs of those mystery insects away. Til the next overnight invasion.

And with that, I'll say good night. 

Don't read this before dinner ... or bedtime!!

Three weeks in Africa, and already we’ve had some adventures with creepy-crawlies.  I suppose no stint in Africa, regardless of its length, would be complete without them.  Monster centipedes are now old news, and this past week we inadvertently left the bedroom windows open too long past dark and had to kill about 50 big vicious-looking insects flying around the room before we could even think about going to sleep.  But the other night I had a front-row seat to a fascinating and disturbing experience, like the nature channel only less than a foot from my face rather than on a screen. [No, not the amorous kind of nature channel experience … the other kind.]

It gets dark around 7pm here this time of year, so I was doing dishes well after dark.  The wall above the kitchen has a window that faces east, and this window runs the entire width of the room.  An assortment of moths and other bugs congregate on this window after dark, being drawn to it by the light, of course.  It’s all rather ho-hum.  But this particular night I saw a large mantis, about 2” long, sitting on the window at about head height.  It was cool because I’ve never really seen the underbelly of a mantis before.  It was really cool, and I was particularly excited at the possibility of witnessing first hand a little bit of insect cannibalism [it’s twistedly morbid, I know – perhaps there is therapist here who can help].  Actually, I was so excited by this possibility that I was having a hard time getting the dishes done.  But alas, nothing was happening.  The mantis looked more like it was sleeping than hunting.

I was about ready to give up in disappointment, and was, in fact, dutifully turning back to the dishes when a small moth (about ½” long) swooped down into the “danger zone.”  The mantis grabbed the moth in its front legs, and the motion was slow enough that I could actually see it happening.  [This surprised me, I expected that it would be so lightning fast that I wouldn’t be able to really watch it.]  However, the next bit was fairly horrible.

With the moth clamped in its forelegs, the mantis ripped the moth in half, roughly lengthwise – mercifully, because I think the moth died instantly.  So the mantis has a half-moth in each foreleg, and then starts half-eating, half-sucking the flesh out.  Now I don’t know exactly what a mantis mouth looks like, but from my vantage point it appeared like the mantis had four mandibles – top, bottom, right, and left – which made its devouring of this moth appear especially gruesome, almost gluttonous.  The mantis started with the half-moth in its left leg then moved on to the right.  Within three minutes, there was nothing left except two paperish wings, one of which was still stuck to the mantis’ thorax like crumbs clinging to a napkin or something.

It was both awful and awesome at the same time.  Ah, Africa!

the $6 car accident

It's a wonder to me that I don't get into a car accident every week. It's not that I don't try to be a good driver. I obey the laws of the road and check my blind spot and give pedestrians the right of away even when the wander across the road in totally inappropriate places (ahem, I'm talking to you, Swaziland). But all my trying doesn't really compensate for the fact that the part of my brain that is supposed to coordinate all those complex functions that allow one to pilot a hurtling hunk of metal down a road is... well, that part of my brain is a bit challenged. 

So I have a string of stupid accidents to my name. They've all been minor, no one has ever gotten hurt, and they've all been 100% my fault. The last one was in January, the week my grandma died, and I was studying for this massive 2-day exam and 8+ months pregnant and let's just say that my mind was not fully on my driving one day after a study session when I pulled out of my parking spot and plowed into a perfectly nice taxi driver.

I avoid driving whenever I can. That 5,000+ mile road trip we took this summer? I didn't drive a single mile. And I wouldn't choose to drive a single mile here in Swaziland except that sadly, as small as the country is, it is not all within walking distance. But hands down, driving has been the most stressful part of being here. It's not just that they drive on the wrong side of the road. (And the turn signals and windshield wiper controls are on the wrong sides too!! It's rough. I'm forever turning on my windshield wipers when I mean to signal, and vice-versa.) Although the roads here are quite good, they are insane. They climb up and down mountains at crazy grades, and the main road from Mbabane (where we live) to Manzini (the other major city in the country) is, I am told, actually in the Guinness World Record book as the most dangerous road in the world. It's so steep that they put a policeman at the top of the steepest crest to make the big trucks come to a complete stop before they start the descent, so hopefully they'll make it to the bottom without careening out of control.

So I was driving to Manzini this afternoon, on a perfectly flat part of MR3, which is a 4-lane road. There was a fair amount of traffic, as everyone gets off work early on Friday and takes to the road. Ahead of me a car stopped or seriously slowed down (I can't remember as amnesia always strikes me in these situations), and I made a quick decision to change lanes, which was unfortunate as the other lane was already occupied. I am still sure I checked my blind spot, and I would love to know how fast that other car was going to suddenly appear where I had just looked, but anyway. Crash and scrape of metal, and the next thing I know we're on the narrow shoulder inspecting the damage. 

I always hit men, which I think works to my advantage, because all the men I have ever hit have been extraordinarily nice and gentlemanly about it. This Swazi man was no exception. He spoke perfect English and called my insurance agent on his phone (no small thing, as we pay by the minute here and it's not cheap) and the insurance agent told me he would leave paperwork for me to fill out with his friend at the pharmacy next to the grocery store. I tell you, the degree to which everyone knows everyone in this country really makes it feel like nothing more than a largish village. 

But then the guy I'd hit inspected he side of his car a little more, and really all that had happened was his paint had gotten kind of scraped. So he said, why don't we just try to settle this without insurance. If insurance gets involved we have to report it to the police and then I'm afraid they'll find reasons to charge you. So he recommended that we drive down the road a little further, and he would get a quote on fixing his paint. Sounded great to me. So we drove off, and found ourselves in the kind of peri-urban neighborhood that feels so African to me, dirt roads and little shops and children coming home from school and all the normal every-day life in Africa stuff. He told me I'd better wait a block away so they wouldn't see my white face and charge more, and warned me to roll up my windows and lock my doors, a suggestion which made me want to laugh, but I didn't want to show a lack of respect for his concern, so I complied. 

I gave him 300 Emalangeni (about $35) and he disappeared around the corner and 20 minutes later he was back. Miraculously, his car now looked totally unscathed, except for a scraped place along the very edge of the door that he promised his employer would never notice (it was a company car). Total bill? Less than $6. He returned the remaining money to me, insisted on leading me back to the main road to take me home, and that was that. 

We still have our car to fix (not really "ours", we are renting from the same people we are renting the house from), and it has a big dent as well as some missing paint. So I'm sure the bill will be a bit more than $6. Still, all things considered, I think I got off pretty easy. And I am grateful for super cheap car-fixers, and even more grateful that there are such kind and honest people everywhere in the world.

the trip over- in pictures

I am going to try a little experiment in posting pictures to our blog. This wouldn't earn the title of "experiment" except for the fact that the internet here has been a bit of an adventure. I know I have nothing to complain about, considering the fact that I can access the world wide web at all from the top of a mountain in Swaziland. They have these things called "dongles" here (don't ask me why, but this word consistently cracks us up) which plug into your computer and by various complicated processes you install SIM cards on them and swap out the SIM card with your phone's SIM card and then transfer it back in order to load the dongle with airtime. (I know this is all Greek to those of you who have never had a cell phone outside the US.) It's taken us some days and trips to town to figure it all out, but the end result is voila!-- we have internet. It's just excruciatingly expensive. I took some little videos of our house the other day on the spiffy new camera I bought for the express purpose of showing our parents all the little mundane things of life, like where we do our laundry and how awesomely William can crawl down a hallway. Then I realized that those 5 minutes of videos would cost about 20 bucks to upload. Not going to happen. But pictures are a little less problematic.

So here we go, Allison's photo digest of the trip over.

Standing next to our teetering towering mountain of luggage at Dulles, looking incredibly tired... and we haven't even started the monster flight. (EIGHTEEN hours. Yes, you heard me.)

William definitely had the best deal this trip. Really didn't lift a finger.

All buckled in. And wearing, appropriately, one of his safari animal themed onesies.

Admiring the sunset over the Atlantic while chewing on mommy's camera case. My policy this trip was anything he felt like playing with, he could have. As long as he stayed entertained.

The non-stop from DC to Johannesburg stops in Dakar, Senegal for an hour to refuel. Unfortunately the stop comes just as you've really fallen asleep for the night, and then they turn on the lights and everyone moves around and it wakes you up, even though you don't have to leave the plane. So here's William, ready for the second take-off. Note the wardrobe change. Actually this might have been the third outfit. I do remember being a bit worried in the first half of the flight whether we had enough clothes to get us to our destination, as he was going through clothes at an alarming rate (which thankfully slowed in the second half of the flight). He had managed a massive spit-up before we even took off (his only one of the flight, actually), and then there was the diaper change incident in which he managed to pee not only on me and himself, but all over the walls and floor of the airplane bathroom. Let me say it's really hard to clean the floor of an airplane bathroom. Try bending over some time in an airplane bathroom and you'll see what I mean (as your head hits the wall).

After another wardrobe change, finally asleep for good. A lot of people got off in Dakar so we had room to spread out, for which we were very grateful. Joel was a rock star and watched William the whole night, and let me sleep. I even got to watch most of a movie.

Finally in Johannesburg airport. This was after they had put us into the immigration line for diplomats, acting all shocked and distressed that we would be waiting in the regular line when we had a "little celebrity" with us. (Thus William's fan club expands internationally.) And before we waited for the hotel shuttle for an hour and a half, while the evening turned dark and cold. (A story that Joel told much more graciously than I would have.) But isn't any country a mixture of the nice and the not-so-nice?

Call me crazy, but isn't this the cutest toilet paper you've ever seen? (At our Joburg airport hotel.)

The next morning, waiting for the shuttle to go back to the airport to catch our flight to Swaziland. I killed time by posing William on various cute furniture.

Our bleary-eyed boy appears to be wondering what kind of a crazy place this is, where the sun is shining even though he should clearly still be sleeping.

Descent into Swaziland.

Finally arrived!

And as a special little bonus picture: our first visitor to our new Swazi house.

Hooray! That post did not take all night nor cost a small fortune, boding well for our future blogging from Swaziland. For now, good night.