For month three of my race, I have been in Swaziland. Swaziland is a tiny country just east of South Africa. It is green and mountainous and absolutely beautiful. And it is also one of the last true kingdoms in the world.
Swaziland was surprising, challenging, and an absolutely wonderful place to end our time in Africa.
Because it is so difficult to summarize everything that I experienced this month into a short blog post, I’ve decided to post summaries of what it was like to live and do ministry in Swaziland. I’ll probably just post these every month.
2. In Manzini, we stayed at the “team house,” which is property of Adventures in Missions Swaziland. Adventures in Missions is the organization that the World Race is through. They have several international bases here in Swaziland. The house had four bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a moderately-sized kitchen. Many missionary teams, including multiple World Race teams, have stayed at the house, so it was pretty cool to be in a place where generations of racers had been before us.
3. I stayed in a room with the other four girls on my team. So basically it was like a slumber party every night.
4. Being in a house all to ourselves meant we had the freedom and space to unpack our backpacks, which was a huge blessing after packing up every morning in Pretoria.
5. We also were blessed with real beds – a relief after a month of sleeping on chairs and sleeping pads.
6. We ran out of power twice during the month. Yes, ran out. Because in Swaziland you buy electricity like you buy air time. It’s pay as you go. The good thing about this was that all we had to do was buy more, and we got our lights back pretty quickly.
7. The water on the other hand was another story. For about a week our water turned off and on unexpectedly, which caught us off-guard because for the first few weeks we had water consistently. Because we hadn’t planned to lose water, this became a very stressful situation. We came home from ministry smelly and completely covered in dirt only to find we had no water to drink, shower with, or cook dinner with. Several of us, including myself, didn’t shower for days. I can honestly say that I appreciate water significantly more after that experience.
8. We did not have any WiFi at our house, which was inconvenient but also a blessing because it allowed us to focus more on what was going on in Swaziland. For the first half of our month, we were able to get some slow, unreliable Internet at a nearby café. But then the café’s system crashed, and we were forced to find other methods. This usually meant taking a khombie, a van used for public transportation, for about 10 minutes into town and then walking to find an Internet café. We also found some WiFi at Wimpy’s, a fast food restaurant here, that we also used sometimes.
9. Like in South Africa, the weather was very inconsistent. Sometimes it was sweltering hot, and other days it was really chilly. Also, there were frequent lightning storms, which were absolutely incredible. I’ve never seen lightening like that in my life! Sometimes we would just sit on our front porch and watch the lightening for an hour. Maybe that’s what happens when you don’t have TV or Internet…
10. Although we were a little far from the town’s center, we were located right near a new, upscale shopping center that had a grocery store called Spar and a swanky café. We basically walked there almost every day to get snacks or groceries.
11. Also located near our house was a church called Living Waters Church of the Nazarene. We attended this church every Sunday we were in Swazi. It was a nice balance of African tradition and English, so we could understand for the most part. We made a few friends there too.
12. This month our teams were responsible for cooking all of our own meals. We usually shopped for a week’s worth of food. We had scheduled cooking and cleaning duty, which was nice because it allowed us an evening to rest completely at least once a week.
13. In Swaziland, they speak SiSwati. It’s an awfully difficult language, mainly because it involves a lot of clicking sounds. Needless to say, I didn’t master very many words. Except YAYBO! That means YES! Swazi's say it to almost everything.
14. The currency of Swaziland is Emalangeni. 8 Emalangeni = 1 Dollar, so every time we needed to figure how much something was we had to multiply or divide by 8. It wasn’t too hard to get used to because it’s basically the same as South African Rand. Actually, the two currencies are often used interchangeably.
15. Remember how I said we made a few friends at church… their name are Dustin and Amanda, and they actually went to college with one of my squad mates. They are missionaries in Swazi for the year, and they blessed us over and over again during the month. They actually even had four of our World Race teams over for a huge Thanksgiving feast. We couldn’t have been more blessed to have that kind of community and a few tastes of home on our first big holiday away from our families.
16. In addition to Dustin and Amanda, we also made a few more friends this month. One of our friends, Kimberly, who is interning with AIM Swaziland, also blessed us over and over again. One day she brought us a bunch of snacks and then another day she lead a huge group of us to Mantenga Falls, one of the touristy things in Swaziland. We hiked and explored a waterfall and then went to a cute craft market one of our days off!
17. We did ministry during the weekdays. We had weekends off and the rest of our time off was typically spent resting, searching for Internet, or hanging out at the café near our house.
