Sixth & Who Am I?

Sylvia, my very talented travel buddy, has created many videos of our adventures through Africa.  Check out her You Tube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/syliaiko, which includes some videos of the following: Highlights of our overland safari Skydiving! Us learning how to cook pap, a staple food throughout Africa  Swaziland Video and Commentary including many great shots of children playing   Soweto Township Slideshow

“TIA:  This is Africa”.  Every time Ben, our Kenyan truck driver, tells me that, I want to stick his face underneath my armpit and asphyxiate him slowly with my sweaty stench.  

So I realize I haven’t been so good about keeping you all informed of my journeys.  I apologize—it’s partly due to the total lack of opportunities to get online long enough to write a blog post and only slightly due to the fact that I’m on “holiday” mentality.  Well, for the past two to three weeks, I have been stuck in a cage (aka truck) and reduced to being a total tourist with other like minded individuals from Australia, the UK and Germany.  This overland safari has been amazing—I’ve climbed sand dunes at sunrise, camped out in the bush, taken mekoro (dug out canoes) rides in the reeds of the Okavango Delta and even went skydiving on Yom Kippur (while fasting) over the desert in Namibia.  I’ve never seen so many sunrises and sunsets in my life and I’ve never been so brown in my life (still can’t tell if it’s a tan or just dirt).  Of course I’ve also seen lots of animals far away and up close, alive and dead, in the wild and in “parks” and I’ve learned a few things along the way. 

1. Africa is hot.  Like, I knew Africa would be hot, but it’s REALLY hot.  And it’s only going to get worse as I travel north.
2. Africa has really big ass, scary looking bugs that could kill you with just an evil stare.
3. I can fall asleep on any type of moving vehicle and any range of road conditions.
4. Safaris are not my strength.  I confuse elephants for hippos, hippos for rhinos and tree stumps for baboons.

I’ll be on this overland safari until just after the elections in the US and end up in Nairobi.  I’m looking forward to actually settling down in Kenya and meeting real live Africans!  In the interim, I’m trying to teach myself Swahili (with Ben’s occasional assistance) and just enjoying the experience of being a totally obvious, camera carrying, binocular toting, obnoxious loud drunk tourist. 

Of course, it’s not all fun and games.  This is a participatory camping experience, which means we cook, clean, lug our tents everywhere and generally can’t stay clean for more than one minute.   Riding on the truck is always fun.  Due to the AC (windows), bugs seem to constantly get sucked in to the truck and come to their quick demise when the smack into my chest along with tons of other debris from the road.

 I was actually going to post this blog sooner but when I finally arrived in town, the electricity was all down.  But hey, TIA.

A few days ago I began my overland safari, which will take me from Capetown all the way up to Nairobi.  Before I talk about the safari, I have to tell you about the extreme generosity Sylvia and I received from the Burman family.  We stayed with the Burmans in Capetown (Jackie’s in-laws

Sylvia and I volunteered at an orphanage in Swaziland two days ago and it was a really interesting experience.  I guess I was expecting it to be really depressing and destitude, but it wasn’t that way at all.  It was a well funded orphanage, the kids seemed very well educated and very happy and there was a lot of dedicated staff that worked there.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about the orphanage was that it was a Christian orphanage with strong roots in Judaism.  There were mezuzahs on all the doors, the kids were named Ruth, Esther and other biblical names, and instead of the typical siSwati greeting of “Sawubona”, the staff and kids greeted us with a great big “Shalom”!  But I do think if I said I was Jewish, I would have gotten the you-killed-our-messiah guilt trip.

 Anyway, the kids at the orphanage were so great and would just walk up to you and hold your hand or plop down in your lap.  Sylvia brought her ukulele which is always a big hit, and we had an informal sing along with such hits as “Amazing Grace” and “This Land is Your Land”.  The best part of the orphanage and the image I will keep with me forever is when we were leaving, one little boy (arguably the cutest one there) stood on the steps with his hands outstretched and let out a litte cry, “Hug!”.  It was the most adorable thing I have ever seen and Sylvia gave me the honor of running back and hugging him goodbye. 

One week has passed since I first departed for Africa, but it feels like two months and I smell like it’s been three months.  In just one week’s time, I already have a new name, a new family and a renewed appreciation for my life.

It began with our arrival in Johannesburg via a two day long journey from DC, which took us on a detour through the streets of London.  Victoria, Sylvia’s sister’s friend, met us at Heathrow Airport at 7 am on her day off and took us around to some of her favorite spots in town.  We went to the happening, emo Liverpool area where I was told that my friend Adele hangs out (despite multiple stops in the local pubs, I unfortunately was not able to find her).  We then walked along the Thames River to the Tate Modern art gallery and stopped off at none other than an Asian restaurant for lunch.  Overall impressions of London:  really freaking cold and REALLY freaking expensive.  Good people, though.

We stayed in a really cool hostel just outside of the city centre of Jo’burg where we toured with 3 Danes (Danes:  not polite, but not rude), ate game meat with a young, Irish couple on their honeymoon (Sylvia likes ostrich, I like crocodile) and drank with a man from Zimbabwe who was getting a pilot’s license in South Africa and supports Mugabe because he has to support his leader who has enabled so much economic freedom (he makes his money selling contraband goods).

After settling in, we went on a tour of Jo’bug and Soweto.  In Jo’burg, we went to the Top of Africa, the tallest building in all of South Africa, a whopping 50 stories tall.  Not much else to report on the city center itself—the government is trying to take steps to make the city center more appealing and encourage businesses and individuals to move back.  The effects of Apartheid are still greatly felt there.

Then came the highlight of our trip, a township tour through one of Johannesburg’s biggest townships, Soweto.  Roughly 4.5 million people live in Soweto (9.2 million in Johannesburg) and it is one of the strangest places I’ve been to.  It has sweeping poverty with many “informal settlements” (shanty towns), yet it has also grown economically with the tourism industry and there are nice suburbs within the township.  Soweto is also historically important as in 1976 there was a student protest against the teaching of Afrikaans in schools that ended in violence and this, many claim, was the beginning of the opposition to Apartheid.

In Kliptown, one of the biggest informal settlements in Soweto, we learned about SKY, the Soweto Kliptown Youth Foundation, started by Bob (ironically enough  a Bob Marley look alike), who is an incredible man with no formal education and was orphaned by the age of just four years old.  When Bob opened his mouth, out came pure poetry.    Because of his work with SKY, Bob has met the Clintons, Jacques Chirac, Don King, Jesse Jackson and many other famous notables.  He was also invited to go to Israel, where he learned about Shabbat.  That was the greatest lesson he wanted to bring back to Swaziland—everyone should just stop for a day and be thankful.  Did I mention that Bob was a bit prophetic and slightly crazy?  I guess you have to be to survive living on the streets at such a young age and going through what he did.  He told us that he stills shares all of his secrets with his best friend, the moon.

Anyway, SKY is an incredible organization that gives youth the ability to explore their artistic sides and houses the only building with electricity and public books in the community for the children to have no excuse not to study.  It also works to educate youth about health issues, including of course, practicing safe sex to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

We ended our day with a tour of the Apartheid Museum, a must for anyone going to South Africa.

Then, we were off to Swaziland to meet up with my friend Eli who was stationed in a rural community with no electricity and no running water with the Peace Corps.  Eli was the first volunteer with the Peace Corps who has been stationed in Vusweni.  I have never done anything that compares to this experience.

First of all, there is no way to describe the beauty of rural Swaziland; we drove in through a deep fog, were held up at the border as a policeman chased a cow off of the road, and took a 3 hour long, crammed bus ride up a steep dirt road to get to our final destination.  As soon as we arrived we were on a high with nothing but the night stars, sleeping cows, and overactive roosters surrounding us.  Eli introduced us to his Babe and Make (dad and mom – they are the grandparents of the children living in the house) who immediately gave us siSwati names.  Sylvia was dubbed Jabulile (we are happy) and I was given the name Sibongile (we are thankful).

Swaziland is an absolute monarchy and it’s really interesting to see the ‘signs’ of this wherever we go.  Any structure has a reference to the date that the king built it.  There are billboards in the main city praising the King, who just celebrated his 40^th birthday, and the progress Swaziland has made it it’s 40 years of independence.  There are also a lot of signs about HIV/AIDS.  Unlike in Jo’burg where safe sex is publicized, in Swaziland it appears that abstinence only is taught.  In fact, the king even placed a 5-year ban on sex with virgins in 2002, which he subsequently broke within a year and fined himself a cow.  Up to one quarter of Swaziland’s population is HIV positive – a staggering number especially considering its tiny size.

Actually, Eli is stationed in Vusweni to teach HIV/AIDS education and help debunk the stigma associated with it.  He gave us each a sticker from the Red Cross that says “You cannot get AIDS by being a friend.”

Back to our names, it was a great honor to have these names bestowed on us and this fact was not lost on Sylvia and me.  The next morning we woke up at the crack of dawn and accompanied the kids to school, where we got to watch the morning assembly and meet all the teachers.  The kids each bring a stick with them to school – it’s their contribution to make the fire which cooks their lunch, which for many kids is the only meal they eat all day.

The assembly was really interesting and started with the kids singing a hymn followed by a large memorized response to the greeting, “Good morning, scholars.”  Memorization is the main method for teaching.  The kids who go to school are the lucky ones – families have to pay for each child to attend and if they cannot afford to pay, then no school for that child.

Then we went on a long walk up rolling hills to the clinic where Eli has been volunteering.  Patients have to walk to the clinic every time they need more anti-retroviral drugs, which depending on how sick they are, they can get a 1-2 month supply.

On the way back we befriended many Swazis, one of whom proposed to us.  Sylvia quickly pointed to me and said, “Take her!”  Way  to stick together, travel buddy.  Eli taught me that there are two forms of marriage in Swazi culture, traditional church marriage and polygamous marriage. In a traditional marriage the wife sleeps at her husband’s house, is awoken early in the morning, brought to the cattle field, and stripped, tented and beaten until she starts to cry.  Meanwhile the husband goes to the wife’s house and finds out how many cattle he must pay.  Luckily, Eli didn’t give me away.

Later that day the kids came home (see video of me pathetically learning their names) and we sang, danced and played with them.  Jabulile brought a cow to the pen, Thembinkos (Eli) chopped wood, and I taught the kids Hava Nagilah.  When we ate dinner that night (consisting of pap – the staple carb which is reconstituted maize, beans and the beef we brought) we presented them with some gifts, including a book on DC, chocolate mints and an original song in siSwati thanking them.  Then we all broke out into song and dance – see Sylvia’s blog at http://journals.worldnomads.com/sylvia_aiko/ for specifics.

So that’s it for now – my new name is Sibongile Shogwe (family’s surname), I have a new Swazi family and I’ve learned about happiness from the most destitute.  Today we will volunteer in an orphanage before heading to Durban in South Africa tomorrow.  More to come…

Okay, I worked on a very long post which totally got erased.  I had text, photos, movies and even music.  Alas, Swaziland ain’t got good internet, so I’ll update you all on my life once I arrive in Durban.  To be continued…

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