The Road to Swaziland Epic, Part One

Sunday: rain came about an hour before I left behind Winterton, the Drakensberg Mountains, and Sofi's farm that sat between them. I was sitting in the local Zulu church. A visiting pastor was giving a sermon; the main point seemed to be that if you supported the church his God-granted power would cure you of AIDS. The storm showed up as he was speaking and as his voice rose, so did the rain. Soon you would have thought it was hail, though it was just drops — the biggest drops I've ever seen.

I had washing on the line that I'd done by hand at six in the morning, hoping that the early sun would dry it some before I left. It was soaking when I packed it. It still is now; I just managed to hang it on a covered clothesline when I got into my family-run hostel. Now I'm attempting to dry out.

There's really not much else to tell. A couple days before I left we blessed a couple of creches; it felt very odd to be standing in a preschool building that would be condemned back home, while
the others sung and shook their hands and prayed. They just don't use faith for this kind of thing where I come from.

I said goodbye to everybody I'd met in the Berg. I wanted to get a gift or two for Sofi and Betsy, my hosts (and very gracious ones), but all the shops were closed on Sunday. I'll have to send pictures instead. I wonder how easy I could send prints back to SA?

By the way, so you can track my progress more easily, here is the outline of how my last two weeks in Africa will go. My internship is over; I'm on my own. I doubt everything will work out as scheduled, because it's Africa, but it will be a great trip anyway.

The Gameplan:

4/20: Hitch Baz Bus on the first leg of my Swaziland Trip! Arrive in Durban around 6:00 PM. Party or something. Get to bed - bus leaves early next morning.

4/21-22: Get up early and grab the bus out again. Spend two days in Isinkwe Backpackers near the Hluhluwe Game Reserve. Try to see the Big 5 of African animals.

23-25 Apr: Another Baz Bus ride. Heading for SWAZILAND! Just like South Africa, except that everyone tells you it's what Africa is really like. Travelling out of KwaZulu-Natal, whose biggest music festival is American country-genred, I'm hoping it will prove true.

26: Grab Baz Bus once again and ride it into the sunrise, etc. Destination: Johannesburg. Spend the day working on my research paper and the night socializing.

27: Grab a flight to Cape Town. The place where things happen:

Final week: Finish work. Write something for Evergreen's campus newspaper, maybe. Other plans include a hike to the summit of Table Mountain and the Cape of Good Hope, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. Many big-city adventures in between.

4 May: Plane back to Seattle and the luxuries of home. Must get tattoo before this date so everyone knows that I've undergone X Y and Z life-changing overseas experiences.

Durban's Palms

The Players

HEATHER Africa team member, Paul's partner in crime

PAUL Africa team member, Heather's partner in crime

EZEQUIEL MABOTÉ Local Durban artist, internationally acclaimed

LYNN MCMULLEN Supervisor for the Africa team

SAM SCHRAGER Head professor for the Africa team's class

The Play

Heather and Sam got time to bond while I drove. It was a little awkward having Sam in our cars and sitting with us at restaurants at first, but we'd quickly gotten used to it over the last four days of his stay in the Berg. I had the wheel. Driving on the left side of the road is disconcerting at first, but I got used to shifting gears with my left hand after half an hour of practice.

Lynn was making a noble attempt to hold the maps in the passenger's seat, but she admits she's not good with directions. And she's a lot worse than she'll admit. I was fine driving down the highway, but she got flustered the minute we pulled onto our exit.

We followed Lynn's friend, who was putting her up for the night, into Westville. Lynn has some well-picked friends: this one lived in one of the richest parts of Durban. We sucked up to her a little (because she had donated the truck I was driving) and left to drive Lynn to a meeting in the city.

She threw the maps around, tried to remember landmarks she didn't know. She introduced us to Ezequiel, who makes woodcuts and pastels and is a very chill guy. We turned around at least ten times. I stalled the car twice in busy intersections. We finally dropped her off at her friend's place; we could feel the extra room when we got back in the car.

So cut, instead, to this:

Sam had booked us what he'd described the day before as a "little cottage." We were happy because the college was paying for it. We weren't expecting something so posh. I'm pointing to the front door there.

So yeah, things improved a lot once it was just Sam, Heather and I. We crashed at the cottage and ordered in pizza. The proprietors, Pat and Keith, were extremely hospitable. "They sort of make us part of their family," Sam said late that night. Exhaustd as we were, nothing interesting went down. I shot a photo of my bitchin' shades. (They actually belong to James.) Not a bad way to spend a Saturday night after a day of driving. At least, not bad if your teacher is present.

The next morning!

Oh, and the day before, Ezequiel took us to a cool little café on the waterfront near his workshop. Heather was impressed by all the cranes. We were both impressed by the murals.

So! Sunday morning. Sam swum around, Heather slept in, I read some, started this post and talked to a few other guests. I met a guy from Israel who told me he'd divorced his wife a couple of years ago and lost his job. This led him to start dealing in African diamonds. I was curious what he thought of his own profession, so we chatted for a while about diamonds, men with guns and his kids. He urged me to go back to school and to visit Israel for the beautiful women and the "bubbly" culture.

Since we only had about six hours before we needed to go, we decided to park our car at the big white hangout, the local casino. We got directions and I drove across the city; when we got there, we found out that not only was it a very popular place for the tourist upper-crust, it was hosting the A1 Grand Prix. So there were even more TV cameras and over-wealthy Silicon Valley blondes than usual.

The casino had that celebrity mix of vulgar and classy that I've never experienced before. (Well, I wasn't experiencing it then either — due to a problem with all my clothes being washed as I left, I had only one change of clothes for the trip, and in the humidity and heat they were already smelly.) It's hard to describe exactly what it was like, and I never thought to take pictures. But this is pretty much the whole place encapsulated.

We met a couple of kids trying to get in to see the races, but we didn't have tickets; we mostly stood around and hear engines whine past. So we got through there as quickly as possible and walked from the beach out to the streets of the real city.

We caught a bus to the Indian market. The driver was big on all the zoos and tourist areas and stopped the bus in the road twice to pitch them to us in a loud, jovial Afrikaans accent ("You ever seen a New Zealand duck? A Russian duck? They have all kinds of ducks at Mitchell Park!" "Don't waste your time at the casino. You must go to the Land of a Thousand Mules!")

The Indian market, as it turned out, was closing. The shopkeepers were still willing to sell us stuff; in fact, we were there only targets, so we got hounded half to death by a bunch of lean mustached dudes trying to show us postcards and figurines. We left within ten minutes, found the mall that all the locals went to. I bought a fresh set of clothes like the good capitalist I am, made sure it was nice a light and billowy, and we headed for the Apartheid museum. Got lost. Wound up in an art museum.

To be continued... because this post is way too long. More photos soon!

On Vacation

Yesterday I drove to Durban, a famous port city on the Eastern coast of South Africa. It's a crazy place! I was expecting lots of interesting sights, but the number of mosques around here surprise me. The city is very Muslim. Yesterday, driving everyone into downtown, I saw a sign that said "Read Al-Quran: The Last Testament."

This place is cool. I can't post any photos yet, but I will tonight. Right now it's 10.00 AM.