Hello 2013

I'm not very good at posting about things as they actually happen, but here are some of our goings-on from the last month or so!

New Year's Day

We moved out of the house we had been renting our first 2 months here on Jan 2, so on Jan 1 we figured we should finally get around to doing the hike we had been meaning to do the whole time, up the hill behind our house. I had hiked part of the way up once but not made it all the way to the top. I don't know if you can see in these pictures how steep the incline is, but it's steep. And in the month or so since I had attempted the hike the first time, there had been a lot of rain, and the vegetation had grown like crazy. There was no trail, so we were basically pushing our way through the grass and vegetation (which at times was almost over my head) and scrambling over and around large boulders. As you can see it was a foggy, misty morning (pretty typical weather).

Our whole time in the house I had thought that we were the highest house on the hill, but once we got to the top we were very surprised to find ourselves at a fence for a largely, lovely garden surrounding a huge house. Little did we know there was a road going up the back of the hill and a whole neighborhood of houses on that side. Also on the top of the hill was a magical, totally silent pine forest where I took these pictures.

Coming back down...

The road you see in the picture below is the road down into Pine Valley from town (i.e. the road going to our house). Yes, it really is that steep, and I am glad to not have to drive it on a regular basis anymore! 

Back "home." It was a lovely house.

On trying to learn siSwati

Later in the day we visited the homestead of a Swazi friend for a big New Year's meal. (Traditional homesteads here have a number of buildings on the same compound, where a whole extended family lives together.) I mostly forgot to take pictures but I did get this picture, which I love, of William and our friend Hlobi.

And I just have to interject here that in spite of Hlobi being one of my very favorite people in Swaziland, I still cannot say her name correctly. The sound written "hl", which by the way is in an unfortunate number of words, is somewhere between a "sh" and a "th" but not really either, and requires blowing air across your tongue in a way I just can't get. I practice sometimes in the car. And let's not even talk about Hlobi's last name, which involves a click (written "nx") that I am pretty much unable to even attempt. I'm the girl who studied Spanish all the way into college and still can't roll my Rs. I do not think I am linguistically gifted.

Joel definitely is linguistically gifted, and really impressed me this morning when we were in church singing a song in siSwati, none of which I understood. (It's an English-language church but much of the congregation is Swazi so they throw in songs in siSwati.) The only word I could figure out was "Jesus," so I asked Joel if he understood any of it. He said, "Yes, I think that line must be talking about God's strength, because the word is similar to William's name." (Hlobi gave William the Swazi name Mandla, which means strong.) And then, "And I think this line must be thanking God, because it's similar to the word for thank you." And once he had said it, it was all so obvious. But I am not linguistically gifted... 

Trip to Nelspruit

Nelspruit is the closest South African city of any size, and between having to go there for car repairs (cf all the posts about our car travails on Facebook) and doctor's appointments (at this point we're leaning towards having this baby in South Africa rather than Swaziland), I see many trips to and fro in our future. As the crow flies it's less than 100 miles, but the most direct route is on bad roads that we have so far decided not to attempt. The route we take is about 120 miles, on good roads, and with the border crossing it should take about 3 hours. Unfortunately our car is currently having frequent break-downs, and on our trip a week ago it took us 5 hours to get there and 6 very long hours to get back. 

Here's the trip over (with an emphasis, naturally, on the most photogenic member of the family): 

7 a.m. and eating breakfast cereal on the way to the border.

7:10 a.m. and to our surprise there was already a line 10 minutes after the border opened.

8:10 a.m., the car was still going strong, and William played with his latest and greatest toy while I enjoyed the beautiful views out the window. 

8:50 a.m. The largest town we pass through on the way to Nelspruit is Badplaas (yes, we make silly jokes about the name), where we always end up stopped, waiting to make a turn, next to this car wash. 

And this time saw this traditionally dressed man walking along the road. Most Swazis do not dress traditionally, but not infrequently I'll see, somewhat incongruously, men or women dressed very traditionally in the middle of a modern shopping center or grocery store. I think this man may be a sangoma (traditional healer) but I'm not sure.

10:45 a.m. William and I fell asleep for a couple hours, and woke up just as we were making the last major ascent before Nelspruit, where the car had its second breakdown of the trip. I actually got to get out of the car and take some pictures of the spectacular hills through which we had just driven. (See note below on why most of my pictures from the trip are taken out the window without getting out of the car.)

11:45 a.m. and finally at the guesthouse, where William found a nice bear to play with while we waited for our room to be ready.

There are a lot of things you can get in Nelspruit and not in Swaziland, so we did some shopping. I'm embarrassed to admit I spent over 3 hours at Makro, which is part of the Walmart chain and similarly enormous and big-boxish, literally going up and down every aisle. I had to get a picture of this sign as it made me laugh! Sweets I understand (it's what people call candy here), but chews, boilings, and mallows?? So many versions of English in the world.

The trip back took longer as we left later in the day and it was hotter (which gives our car more trouble), and we had to climb more hills as Mbabane is higher in elevation than Nelspruit. I counted the times our car died: 13! The first breakdown was in a town, Barberton, that is off the main road but I wanted to see as a friend of ours in Mbabane grew up there. Unfortunately we didn't get to see much of the town as we broke down on the way in and once the car had recovered just headed out. We happened to break down right across from a bar, the kind of bar which didn't sell food and where people were drinking before noon, but where they were very nice and let us kill time and drink sodas while the car cooled down. We had an interesting conversation with the originally-from-Germany bartender about her motorcycle trips and longing to travel Route 66. The funny thing was the whole bar looked to me like it could have been on Route 66-- it had that kind of small town, frontier feel. Sadly I didn't get a picture. 

Part of the road reminds me somewhat of driving Highway 20 to the coast in Oregon, with the road winding through hills and between tightly packed pine forests. 

Another spectacular view.

South Africa, where it's possible to get robbed politely

Our last morning in Nelspruit there was another couple eating breakfast at the same time at the guesthouse, who recounted their story of being robbed the day before in broad daylight on the road from Johannesburg to Nelspruit. They are South African and were really kicking themselves for not knowing better, but they had stopped and gotten out of the car to admire a view, and while they were standing a little ways away from their car with no one else around were approached by a thief. He asked them for their cell phones and jewelry, and then politely took the SIM cards (the computer chip which carries all the phone's information) out of the phones and returned them to the couple. As they said, he could have taken their car keys and stolen their car, but he didn't, just their phones and wedding rings. Of course they were still really upset. This made me think that it's probably a good idea that I am settling for mediocre pictures out the car window as we drive, rather than stopping to get out of the car in remote places (which most of the drive to Nelspruit is).