So much ridikulusness: Swaziland Edition - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

Here’s to one awesome month in Swaziland full of endless laughter, amazing ministry opportunities, great friendships, and beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Swaziland, thanks for a great welcome into Africa!!

When you’re at the airport and a search dog comes up to your bookbag and sniffs it. Security, thinking it’s something suspicious, asks you to open it for them. After opening it, the only thing he wants to take are the 3 apples that I had specifically kept for that travel day. Not happy dude! My apples made it through 4 security checkpoints and 2 flights and I’m literally on my way out of the airport and THATS when you wanna take them?
When you’re waiting for the bus to pick you up after PVT and take you to your homestead for the month. Not thinking it’s going to be too terribly long, you decide to take your luggage up to the parking lot and leave it there until it comes. You head down to the porch and start seeing all the cute little monkeys jumping around and being all sneaky. You’ve totally lost track of time when it hits you… Your food is sitting in the parking lot with your luggage and the monkeys are probably eating EVERYTHING! You run up there and they may have not eaten everything, BUT they did eat my entire bag of APPLES!! What the heck Swaziland!? What do you have against me and apples???
One time my mom and I were playing with some precious babies at the care point. I had a very cute but very naked baby girl sitting on my lap and apparently she suddenly got hungry because she started grabbing me and trying to look down my shirt for food. Sorry, cute baby girl, I ain’t your momma.
When you’re leading worship for PVT and each night you notice all the parents very obviously falling asleep in the middle of it. Hey, no judgement y’all, I understand the feeling. Sure was humorous to watch them do the head nod though haha 😉
When you’re trying to log into your gmail account on someone else’s computer in Swaziland and it tells you that something is suspicious about your account. Google, therefore, proceeds in asking you the city you normally log in at. Ummm Google do you realize I’ve lived in about 30 cities and checked my email in probably ever single one of them in the last 9 months? So I try the cities where I’m from in the states like Winston Salem or Mansfield… No, neither work. After randomly trying about 5 cities, it finally recognizes Phnom Penh, Cambodia as my home city. Hmmmm, no Google, my home city is not and never will be Phnom Penh! Please… For the love, what a terrifying thought!!!
You know you’re on the World Race when you find your daily conversations including proper technique on “how to flush the toilet” at your house. Talk about typical #worldraceprobs
Morning conversations around the table sometimes include things like this.
Ronny: Why does everyone celebrate “Ascension Day” if not everyone’s a Christian here?
Connors: Well, why do we all celebrate “Martin Luther King Day” if we’re not all black?
Hmmm valid point Megan Connors. Valid point.
Sometimes for an off day you decide to hike to “hot springs” (that was actually just a big pool of cold clear water in the wilderness) with a group from your squad. When you’re asking the park ranger where they are he kindly points you in the direction where the trail starts. You’re walking off, excited to start your hike, when suddenly he realizes he forgot to mention a minor detail and shouts to the group from far off… “O yeah, make sure you check the water for alligators before you get in. Sometimes they’re hiding.” Ummm ok, thanks Mr. I feel like that’s something you shouldn’t just “almost forget” to tell people?
When you’re sitting right on the bank of Hippo Lake intently searching for a hippo and you realize you’re sitting in the very place the hippos get in and out of the water. You reached that conclusion once you noticed the flattened grass and the large amount of poop chunks all over the ground. Let’s just say I was on high alert ready to run if anything started emerging from the water. I only had to run faster than the last person in the group.
That moment when Kaitlin woke up the morning of her birthday and found Tommy sitting on a chair in the living room in a speedo playing his guitar and singing “Happy Birthday.” Not sure if that’s exactly how you pictured your day beginning, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAITLIN! (I’m also sorry to put that horrific image in all of your minds)
When you’re doing insanity in the morning at the Anchor Center and all the kids heading to school decide to come over and watch you workout. At this point in the race, gaining an audience for our workouts is pretty typical, but this time they all decided they wanted to join in as well. So now we have about 20 kids standing in front of our laptop doing insanity stretches with us. What a sight for sore eyes.
Kaitlin and I like to find all of the freshly laid concrete at our ministry site and carve our initials into it so the Anchor Center will forever remember Kaitlin McElroy and Jasmine Evans 😉
When you’re driving to your ministry site with your hosts and as you’re driving by this fenced in area with lots of trees he casually lets you know that sometimes you’ll find giraffes eating from the trees over there. Well from that point on everyone in both cars had their eyes glued to the trees like 4 year olds in hopes of finding a giraffe grazing in the field. We looked like fools, and sadly, still no luck… But there’s always next time!
When you hear all this ruckus outside the front doors and a shovel banging against the ground… You go take a look at what it’s all about when you see a baby cobra flattened on the ground. They got him good, but hopefully the momma doesn’t come out from under the deck angry that you just smashed her baby.
When one of your hosts mistakenly thinks Ronny and Connors are a couple when they definitely are not. They are casually laughing and joking about the accusations when Connors slaps Ronny and says “Quit lustin, Ronny”. Sometimes you just never expect Connors to say the things she says, but that’s why it’s so hysterical!
When momma Khumalo walks into church and immediately starts singing and preaching like a boss. I think my favorite song she always brought to the table was “Read your bible, pray every day || and you’ll grow grow grow”.
Sometimes for ministry you’re asked to play in a volleyball tournament. In order to participate you have to attend a couple “short” practices. Not thinking it’s going to be too serious, you show up ready to play a short pick up game and be done. Instead, the practice begins with the question “So who has played at the collegiate level?” O so you mean this isn’t just a quick little pick up game? And then the rest of practice looked like “bump, set, spike” drills, serving drills, and finally the infamous Xolani “pancake” drills. Do I even have to add that by the end of practice we were no closer to being an intercollegiate level volleyball team than when we started? Sorry to disappoint.
We just finished our first day at the new ministry site our team was placed at. It’s the morning of the second day and we’re just starting to paint another room when Macy and Molly (our hosts 2 daughters) come up to me and simply say “Um Jasmine, when are you going to change your clothes? Because you wore those ones yesterday” Hahaha nothing new… Each month I find maybe 3 outfits and wear them every day, and if I’m doing manual labor I wear the exact same outfit for the entire month. There’s no shame in the #worldracewear
When a wasp comes into the house and starts attacking everyone (really he’s just flying around) and Kaitlin decides to grab the torch and torch him. Probably the best decision ever.
Sometimes you’re petting your zebra friend Fredrick at the restaurant you’re about to eat at when all the sudden in the distance you see 6 wild giraffes eating from the umbrella trees. You stealthily walk over to them and when they finally spot you, they awkwardly start running off. Let’s just say watching giraffes run is one of the most entertaining things ever. It’s like an awkward slow motion movie scene. I’m tellin ya… priceless.
Some of my favorite moments on the race include nights like this. You’re at your (American) hosts house for a cookout with the rest of the Swazi staff. For dinner you eat a massive burger with real beef, actual ketchup, beans,and mashed potatoes. To pass the time you watch a movie on a big screen tv (instead of a microscopic computer screen). And to end the evening you bust out in a worship session where you learn a few Zulu songs, the Swazis casually bust out in a 5 part harmony (per usual), and 2 of the men begin African dances around the coffee table. Now that’s my kind of a night!
Sometimes when your cool hosts invite you over to their house for the night they let you wash your forever dingy clothes in their washer so they can actually be clean for once. And while you wait for your clothes to finish they allow you to take an amazingly warm shower with impeccable water pressure, and they give you a fresh, clean, gigantic, fluffy towel to dry off with. Talk about a good day. O, did I mention that they also dried our clothes in an actual dryer? I know, amazing.
When you’re invited over to your awesome American hosts house for the evening. You walk in and are welcomed by a beautifully clean American style farm house with a big comfy couch that smells and feels like the states, a wrap around screened in porch with chairs overlooking the fields, a huge dinning room table with huge windows overlooking their neatly groomed gardens, and a fresh scented candle burning in the corner that is filling the room with a warm cozy vanilla and brown sugar incense. O my goodness my eyes literally filled with tears at the sights and smells of such a beautiful thing.
Sometimes for an off day you decide to spend the entire day inside watching movies with your team and it makes for an absolutely wonderful day.
It’s a good month when every night before you go to bed you have to chase out all the donkeys that accumulated inside the ministry gates throughout the day. I mean who wouldn’t like herding donkeys, cows, goats, chickens, or pigs on a nightly basis?
Let’s add this to the list of “Things you’d never do or say at home.” When you’re sitting at the table eating dinner and Sydney is cutting and sewing her broken flip flop back together so it’s usable for the remainder of her race… At the dinner table… Whiles she’s eating chili and a grilled cheese sandwich. Not normal. Sad thing is… A couple days later the other flip flop broke in the same way. The sewing process for the other shoe was pretty exhausting (even though it worked) so we found another flip flop the size of basically my entire forearm laying in our room soooo obviously we decided to cut and shape it to fit her foot. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
One time we were on our way to Josh and Crystal’s house for ministry. Before we left for the house we needed to make a pit stop at the gas station real quick. It wasn’t going to take long so Josh left the keys in the ignition while the rest of us stayed in the car. While Josh was in the gas station, this Swazi middle aged man walks up to the car, opens the drivers door, jumps in the car and revs the engine as though he’s going to drive off with Tommy, Kaitlin, Sydney and I still in the car. With hearts racing, ridiculous “what if” scenarios flying through our minds, and pure confusion written on our faces he looks at us and says in a smirking tone “Is Josh inside?” Haha come to find out this guy is actually one of the missionaries and owns the homestead in Manzini where we have a team living for the month. He recognized Josh’s green SUV and knew we were a World Race team so he wanted to pull a prank on us. Sheesh… It worked. Quoted from Tommy who was in the front seat “I couldn’t decide if I wanted to punch him in the face or bale.”
We’re sanding and staining wood one day when Sydney walks by and notices a crisp chip sitting on the ground. She picks it up and takes a closer look to see if it’s “salt and vinegar”. “What if I ate this chip right now?” she asks. Seconds later… it’s gone. Yes, she ate it.
You’re in Manzini ready to cross a busy downtown road. You think you’re still in Asia so instead of waiting for the walk signal you just start walking across the road expecting the cars to veer around you or stop because that’s just the way you do things in Asia. As soon as you make the first step, however, you quickly remember you’re actually in Africa where you don’t dare do such a thing because vehicles literally go 100 mph every where they go and they don’t stop for anything… Especially people. People where probably thinking “that stupid white person thinking she owns the road,” but really I’m just a confused individual who can’t remember what culture she’s in. Let’s just say, I definitely didn’t make that mistake again.
Sitting in an extremely packed bus to Johannesburg and slightly frustrated at the fact that you told the bus company how many people were in your group and they show up with buses that can’t fit everyone in. And then seconds after you finally perform the jigsaw puzzle to fit everyone in they proceed to stop at the gas station for 30 minutes because they didn’t get gas before they showed up an hour late. That’s when you see this big spacious bus drive by in front of you and without thinking you blurt out “why didn’t we take that bus!?!” Thats when you realize the driver and some other random man are in the bus and can clearly understand English and therefore clearly understand what you just said. Sorry, folks… Sometimes bent up frustration bursts out unexpectedly!
When you’re driving down the road on your way to your hostel and you see a sign on your right that simply says “Penis Enlargement” Ummmm… Ok. Add that to the list of “The things you see in foreign countries”.