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.
LIVING IN SWAZI
1. This month my team was based in Manzini, one of the biggest cities in Swaziland. So while I was originally expecting to be in the bush of Swaziland, we were actually in a pretty modernized area. But no matter where we were hints of the strong Swazi culture always remained pertinent.
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 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 three girls on my team.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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 . We basically walked there almost every day to get groceries.
8. 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.
Two Sundays out of the month Jamal and I went to real Swazi churches the first time to see a real engagement service for one of the D-Team members and the second time went with our contact Xoloni’s church.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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. The difference is that Swazi money has the Kings face on it.
12. 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. A couple of us were sick a couple of days and they even brought use medicine, how nice is that.
13. 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!
