Regardless of my tardiness, here is a new post. My mom and sister visited at the beginning of January and this is a chronicle of that adventure. It’s a bit long, so you might want to get comfortable.
Note: Everything that is in quotes is from my journal. I’ve gone ahead and clarified and filled in the blank spots, or added color commentary where appropriate.
Dec 29, 2009
8:00 am
“The trip seems to have started well. I’m in a taxi that is nearly full and I got the front seat! It’s all women in the taxi, which seems strange, but whatev. They even kept me from buying a starter pack that wouldn’t work. Men wouldn’t do that. The driver is warming up the taxi now, and we’re gonna go!”
4:50 pm
“So… I got mugged. WTF!? We pulled into the taxi company’s private rank and everybody got out. I asked the diver how to get to the airport and he indicated that it was 1 block away. Just go down the street and hang a right and there you are. “Is it safe?” I stupidly asked. “Nobody can touch you,” he said. 30m later a guy had pulled a knife and knocked me down. I scooted backward a bit as he approached. I kicked him in the chest (not hard) and began screaming as loudly as I could. “Help! Help! Help!” He looked at me a little quizzically and said in a matter-of-factly way, “Give me your wallet.” He was holding his rusty knife (a cheap folding one, which didn’t look particularly dangerous to be honest) more like he was going to get in a West Side Story knife fight than stab somebody. Of course, that is in retrospect. At this point I was screaming like a little girl, a cowardly, prepubescent, shrill, little girl. Peace Corps had briefed me that I was supposed to quietly and amiably give up my wallet if I was ever mugged. So, naturally, I screamed and went into a judo-like defensive ground position. After maybe 10 seconds of him trying to get me to quiet down but not wanting to risk me kicking him in the face, he walked off. He looked back at me scornfully as 2 guys came to help me. While I was screeching ‘Help!’, the mugger had looked up and seen these guys coming. He gave them a look I couldn’t read. It was either “Ah crap, time to go” or “I don’t know what’s wrong with this pansy. Help me out.” Regardless, I escaped with all my stuff and no puncture wounds.”
“I will obviously be asked if I could have done something to avoid it. The answer is yes, but also no. It was a mugging on a crowded street and in broad daylight. It was not in the main rank and the driver and I had a good report. To avoid it I would have had to have not gone to Joburg at all. And I won’t go there again.”
“Let’s hope that’s the worst story I have to tell from Africa.”
Dec 30, 2009
7:41 am
“Amanda and Ma are set to land in 50 min. They’re gonna be exhausted and then they’re going to climb into a tiny car and get on the freeway. Yikes. I’m excited to see them. I’m not sure what we’re going to talk about for the next 10 days.”
Jan 3, 2010
“So , it’s time for a recap. I picked up Amanda and Ma at the airport after renting the car. They got their baggage and through customs in 45 minutes. Not too shabby, especially considering the amount of luggage they have.” It was a really, really huge amount of luggage. Lots. Which was not a big deal, until we got to the car. Our Kia Picanto was not big. It was an ultra-subcompact. Check out the pictures.
“We got on the road and out of Joburg quickly as I wanted to put a few miles in. The drive was nice. We got to Swaziland in about 4 ½ hours and through the crazy customs offices in about 45 minutes more. They were searching oen acare at the gate, but passed us through without a problem we because we were from ‘Obamaland.’ Nice.”
“The first stop was Ngwenya Glass. They were doing glass blowing, which was awesome, and we got some food at the café. Then we bumped around the chocolate makers and craft stores for a while.”
Ngwenya Glass is a rad place. Some Swedish glass blowing artisans came down to Swaziland and mentored some Swazis in the art of glass blowing. The glass is sourced from locals who collect discarded glass and sell it to Ngwenya to be recycled into glass art and glassware. Plus, they’ve done a great job of adding other small shops for other local crafts (high quality jewelry, weaving, etc) and goods.
“After Ngwenya we headed to the hostel (Lidwala). It was newly refurbished and was great. Clean and peaceful. We decided to head over to a nearby restaurant and decided on a small Fusion restaurant (I think it was a fusion of TGI Friday’s and Red Lobster) got some appetizers and a round of different wines. The first day was a success, minus losing Ma’s camera.” Now, we’re not really sure how we lost the camera. We had it in the car after Ngwenya Glass and the hostel, at which point we moved all our stuff into our room. Every time we opened a bag after that we would search all of the pockets. ‘It had to be there somewhere’ we thought.
“The next day we got up and headed to town. We got some groceries and wine then decided to try to find the camera. No luck, so we went to the craft market, then to Swazi candles, then to one of the reserves to see the cultural village and dances. The tramazinis (See picture) at Swazi candles were delicious. The dancing at the cultural village was good. The guy who complained afterword was hilarious. And the answer of, “They’l l help you back to the top“ to the question of, “what if you don’t die from the fall?” was excellent.”
Swazi Candles is another neat place. They hand shape the candles right in front of you and they make everything from funky square candles to large elephants. There are cool other shops around there too, and a great café. And at the cultural village we saw some traditional dancing then went on a tour of a traditional family compound. Nearby the park was Execution Rock. Apparently, if you were caught in the act of infidelity they would take you to the top and you would have to jump off. So, I asked the logical question. Why not just fall down a little and call it a day? “They’ll help you back to the top.” Delivered with a straight face, not seeing any humor in the question.
“That night we just played cards and drank wine and went to bed at 10pm.” Which is not an atypical New Years Eve for me in the states. I even got some Pyramid Celebration Ale that some girl had left a gulp of in her bottle. I know. But it was delicious.
“The 1st of Jan was a travel day to St. Lucia. Central Swaziland is gorgeous. Good sized green mountains and pleasant highways. Southeast Swaziland and into SA is a miserably hot desert. It was painful w/o air conditioning, but we made it in by mid afternoon. St. Lucia was nuts. It was absolutely packed with people celebrating the New Year. I invited Becky Chown and her friend Jessie to braai with us.”
It turns out that it was so crazy because during apartheid New Years Day was dedicated to the black South Africans. The tradition has continued, and beaches all across South Africa are just crazy on New Years Day.
“By the time they got to the hostel the braai stand had been monopolized by a drunk Afrikaner roasting 10 whole chickens. He said he’d throw our stuff, and that he was a professional chef, but never got around to it. Then they ran out of beer. We had fun though and it got stretched into a long evening that was made pretty fun by Becky’s ridiculous and hyper story telling. So, we ran out of beer, the chicken was fatty and terrible, the potatoes were dehydrated and crunchy, but we had a good time.”
“On the 2nd we got up and had a flat tire. We got it patched and drove to the beach. The beach was covered in garbage from the previous day’s festivities, but was still gorgeous Then we tried to shop for picnic and beach day, then head to Cape Vidal.”
Cape Vidal is a beach about 30km north of St. Lucia. It falls within a national park and they only let in 180 people at any given time. So there are never traffic jams and you can drive slowly through looking for animals and such. Cape Vidal itself is a small camp ground and a few kilometers of sandy beach with thick, jungly foliage encroaching on the dunes.
“We waited for 45 minutes in line to go to Cape Vidal then proceed to spend most of our time driving around looking for animals and generally amusing ourselves.”
“We finally made it to Cape Vidal, but I noticed we had a tire going flat again, so I was fairly preoccupied with that. It was beautiful though and we played in the ocean. We got back to town, filled up the gas tank and had them check the tire. He thought it was fine, and they opened at 5 am, so I figured we’d be fine for going on safari the next day.”
“We got back to the hostel and showered then walked to the hippo and croc boat tour in the rain. The tour guide was an old Afrikaner who appeared to be liberally soused. His jokes were terribly but thankfully unintelligible most of the time. We saw a lot of hippos and crocs.”
“After that we met up w/Becky and Jessie for some seafood. We were again regaled with exuberant storytelling and drank wine and ate overcooked seafood. Then I took Ma and Amanda back to the hostel and went to have a couple more drinks with Becky and Jessies. I got home at 12:20am and was getting up at 5 am to go on the game drive.”
“5 am hurt. We had another flat tire, but we got it fixed and were on the road by 6:15. The park was great. We saw a lot of impala, warthogs, wildebeest, and buffalo, but had very memorable experiences with two huge rhinos walking 4 m behind our car, a massive elephant ambling through the picnic area and seeing 3 enormous giraffes 1 km from the park gat after looking for them all day. We had a really great time even though it’s not well documented with pictures.”
Yeah, I had my camera with me, so losing Ma’s wasn’t a terrible problem. However, 10 minutes into the park the battery died in my camera. We got no footage of the rhinos, which were both much, much larger than the car, and I squeeked off one more picture of the giant elephant that walked straight through the picnic area we were in while the park goers stayed in a flock that kept trees between it and the elephant. One man decided the elephant was not the least bit threatening (I could have walked under it without hitting my head on it’s tummy) so he stayed and ate chips while the elephant walked 5 meters away from him and pulled all of the foliage off of a small tree. As many pictures were probably taken of him as were taken of the elephant. So, the loss of Ma’s camera was a bit of a sore point throughout the game drive. “Wow, that would have been a great picture,” was something Amanda enjoyed saying frequently from the backseat.
Jan 4, 2010
Whilst the girls finished packing their bags, as we were heading to Durban on the 4th, I was surveying how to better stuff the luggage into our tiny vehicle. The process seemed somewhat akin to repacking aan infant into its mother’s womb.
‘AAAAHHHHHH’ I heard echoing off the surrounding buildings. It was Amanda. I thought she’d seen a scorpion or viper or something similarly venomous and frightful, so I ran inside ready to stomp a member of Creation. When I got inside, Amanda was holding Ma’s camera, still shrieking (Amanda, not the camera). It had been put into a part of her backpack that was hidden by a smaller zip-on pack. It was both relieving and enraging for Ma. She had her camera back, but had missed out on 4 days of pictures. In the end we had a healthy group hug and debirthed the baggage back into the car.
And we were off to Durban. It was a dreary day, which was a blessing because it cooled everything down for our 4 hour trip in an unairconditioned car with a broken fan. The trip was eventless and we rolled into Durban in the early afternoon and took a driving tour past the new soccer stadium and the currently under construction beach front. When we decided to head towards the hostel it took me 4 laps of downtown before finding a landmark I recognized to get my bearings. Up the hill we went towards the Hippo Hide, past the racetrack, past the Durban Botanical Gardens and up to a 70’s era mall. We parked and headed in to introduce Ma and ‘Manda to the wonder of Durban Bunny Chow.
Bunny Chow is delicious curry placed inside a hollowed out ¼ loaf of bread. It is a delightful combination. Lunch cost us something like $8.50 for the three of us. Outstanding.
Then we headed off to get settled in at the hostel. That evening consisted of seeing Sherlock Holmes, me getting us lost on the way to Florida St, having boring appetizers at one restaurant then getting some delicious pizza takeout and heading back to a lazy evening at the hostel. It was nice.
Jan 5, 2010
I wanted to get the rental car back and make sure we got back into Lesotho before the border gate we were using closed at 4pm. The girls however wanted to see the Botanical Gardens, which I had previously talked up. So, we went to the Botanical Gardens. It’s my favorite place in Durban and is a very impressive place. I’ll just let the pictures explain.
We made it to Harrismith around 12:30, miraculously found the rental car return place, which was hidden off of an industrial exit and got a ride to the taxi rank. It was the girl’s first real exposure to day to day transport life in South Africa. It was a little busy and loud and dirty, but a man helped us find the taxi and get all our stuff put in. It filled up in 3o minutes and we were off to Qwa Qwa where we would switch taxis to go up to the border gate, where we would catch a 3rd taxi to go to Ha Sefako. The ride to Qwa Qwa was just 40 minutes and when we were struggling to get all our luggage dislodged, the driver asked us where we were off to. When we replied, “The border gate” he told us to shove our crap back in and that he’d take us up. He was an utterly charming man and told us about his aspirations to get out of the dangerous taxi industry and go back to school. I took us right up to the gate and bid us adieu.
We got stamped in no problem (which meant that he didn’t stamp Amanda and Ma’s passports and they were delayed and yelled at when they tried to leave through the Maseru border gate), and soon squeezed into a rickety Kombi for the ride down to Ha Sefako. Heading down from the border gate is like entering another world geographically. You go from relative desert and mesas on the South African side to a land of mountains and valleys on the Lesotho side. It was vibrantly and surreally green due to the huge amount of rain the previous week, and the girls just stared out the windows on the way to Ha Sefako. Amanda later said to me, “You never said that you lived in MOUNTAINS.” I told her I’d taken pictures and said that I had. “You need more practice at taking pictures of mountains then,” she told me.
We finally made to Ha Sefako, got the luggage out and rolled it down to Mike’s rondeval, which is just off the road. Mike was in town dealing with some business before an upcoming conference, so we had his cozy house to ourselves. It was just mid-afternoon, so we laid our stuff down and went for a quick tour of the village. I showed Ma and ‘Manda Sefako High School, and we walked down towards the river then back up to figure out what was going to happen for dinner. If memory serves correctly, we had pasta and warm beer. Ma didn’t much care for that. We were all exhausted so we went to bed fairly early.
Jan 6, 2010
The first visit for the morning was the chief’s house. We went up and, as usual, there were people everywhere. The chief has quite a few children and grand children and community members who just hang out, so it’s consistently busy. The chief’s wife greeted us and pulled us inside after everybody, quite vocally, expressed their happiness in meeting my mother and sister. We were given tea and bread and the chief’s wife proceeded to speak in Sesotho faster than anybody I’ve ever met, while crumbs flew from her mouth and her daughter laughed and translated for us. We had a wonderful time. The chief came in a little later and sat down to talk to his, his English being fairly good, and bragged and showed off his granddaughters who are generously precocious and made them tell us about themselves in English. Pictures were taken, and we were told to return later that night to see the boys come back from Circumcision School.
The next stop was at Sello’s house (Sello is my hunter friend), but he wasn’t home. So, we went off to Sabala to visit a teacher from Sefako High School, but he wasn’t home and we almost got bit by his dogs. The next stop was at the Saballa shop to see Ausi Lerato. We had a Coke and hung out for a while. She told us that Eric had already gone to town to take care of some business and that Teboho, Eric’s host dad, had also gone to town to handle some business. It was a little sad that everybody was gone, but it was a beautiful day, and the hike wasn’t too strenuous.
On the way back we stopped at Sello’s again and he and his wife were home. I asked him to go fetch his 2 year old son as well. We sat around and chatted, and when Tabo came back with Sello, he entertained us by running around and giggling and being generally frightened of the white folk. I might have forever ruined his perception of white people though, as I picked him up and didn’t realize that there was a short overhang just above him. I slammed his head right into it and the waterworks ensued. My bad.
We took more pictures and said our goodbyes and got home just before the rain came down hard. We played a few hands of Uno, I’m pretty sure I won them all… then the rain relented and we headed up to the chief’s place. We got there just in time, as the boys were heading up the hill in their little cluster, singing loudly, while other boys were play stickfighting around them and drunk men at the top of the hill sang loudly and danced. It was quite a spectacle and Ma and Amanda were clearly a little uncomfortable as it felt like we were intruding. But we had just begun to intrude.
The boys danced and entered a small building in the Chief’s compound. One of the boys was the chief’s grandson and one of my students from last year. I asked if we could get some pictures, so they brought all the boys outside. The teachers from the school are outrageous, and posed like crazy in front of the stoic group of boys who had just become men. We asked one more question, which was maybe the meanest thing I could have done. I asked if we could get a picture of the grandson with his grandma. So here we are, the whole village is crowded around, these boys are trying to look as tough and cool as they can, and we ask Mashoba to come pose with his Grandma in front of everybody. He won’t forgive me for that, but I took lots of pictures regardless.
We cut out just after that to go make some dinner and hang out.
Jan 7, 2010
This was the day that the girls got a better taste of what public transport is like in the mountains. The taxi that came had one spot left. So they pulled everybody out, shoved our enormous amount of luggage in, and stuffed everybody in. 2 hours later our lower extremities were asleep and we pried ourselves out at the taxi rank in Butha Buthe. The rest of the day was a travel day down to Maseru and to the relative comfort of my house.
The next couple days I had a Peace Corps conference, but the girls took a tour and volunteered at an orphanage. You’ll have to ask them about those adventures.
Jan 10th, 2010
We got up and played college. Ma took me shopping at the new grocery story and I got good olive oil, and olives and canned food and pesto and 2 ply toilet paper. It was awesome. After that we went back to my house to get luggage in order before heading out to Ha Mofoka where I did training. I had informed my hose family that we were coming, but when we arrived, neither of my host sisters were there. And they’re the ones who speak English. I exhausted my Sesotho in 3 minutes and my host mother exhausted her English in 4, which left us a lot of time to sit and stare at each other. Eventually she went and got some presents that they had had made for my mom and sister. They were mugs with their names on them. It was touching and very cool. Eventually my host sisters arrived and they demanded copious amounts of photos be taken. It was entertaining, but we had to be on our way.
We got good transport back, packed up and went to Lancer’s to meet some PCVs for a goodbye dinner. It was nice, but then it started pouring rain. We paid a taxi to take Amanda and ma all the way to their bus to Capetown on the other side of the border. Apparently they got browbeaten, but eventually made it across and down to Capetown.
Phew. That was a bit long. There were a lot more funny stories and such, but I’m tired. Perhaps another blog. Check out all the pictures below. I’ll add captions in the days to come.
