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Published: July 16th 2006
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Group Hug!
Whilst the mams were still carrying on we were reciting the alphabet and counting to ten. Very rewarding. On our final journey with Bazza we said goodbye to South Africa and crossed over the border into the small landlocked country of Swaziland. Everyone had told us that although Swazi' was small, it was big in character and colour, and that we stood a good chance of adding to our newly acquired "animal collection" with the numerous game reserves in the area. There were several backpackers to choose from and we decided that we should be able to see and do all that we wanted in Swazi from the one place. At the last minute we chose Swazi BP which seemed the most central and was very accessible transport-wise as it was on the main road between Mbabne (Ma-ba-nee) the capital and Manzini, where we planned to take transport to Mozambique. Swazi BP was like a big old house that had been converted into a BP and was set on an amazing property, but as soon as we arrived we noticed a strange feel to the place, like it was a hastle for us to be there, even though we were camping and self catering. Maybe that was it. Maybe we weren't spending enough money. We ran into "Sam the
Farewell Bazza...
...and also South Africa. Our last Baz Bus journey. Vodka Man" from St. Lucia, and just to prove that his generosity wasn't a one off, this time gave us a two month supply of anti malarials each when he found out we didn't yet have any. One of the chores we'd marked down for Swazi in big, bold, block letters was getting ourselves some anti malarials as we were hearing from so many people that Mozi is stricken with malaria, and even though it was the end of the rainy season, better to be safe than sorry. Sam was returning home to Scotland and hadn't bothered to take his pills anyway. Och aye mate! Another of our chores was to get ourselves a visa, again for Mozi. We'd originally thought we'd have to do this from S.A. or at the border, so when we found out we could get a same day visa at half the price from the consulate in Mbabne we decided we'd be crazy not to. Although Mbabne is the capital of Swazi, the bustling market town of Manzini is it's biggest and this is where we spent our first day free from travel and setting up camp. When in a new place we generally head
Chief pricing officer
Nothing like some atrs and crafts to make a girl smile! to town or at least a market in order to get a feel for the place and also to guage the expense of things. For me this is done quite easily by buying ciggies and local beer from the street, however seeing as though I'd recently given up the cigs and we'd decided to have a break from beer after giving it a good nudge in St. Lucia neither of these seemed appropriate. Dani was very quick to nominate herself as Chief Pricing Officer and before we knew it we were in the crafts and fabric section of the market, loaded with batiks and sarongs and Dani with a big, content smile on her face. "Cheap!" was the verdict. Back at the BP the strange vibe continued. If it wasn't the Chef berating us in the kitchen because she couldn't find her knife, it was Shabani from Mbabne demonstrating just how helpful and enthused by his job that he was. Dani had left her hat somewhere and thankfully one of the staff members had found it and left it in the office, which was no bigger than a linen closet. We asked Shabani if he could grab it for us
Swazi sunset
Looking through the campsite and from across the room he looked in the general direction and said "I can't find it." We grabbed it ourselves. There was one staff member however who did go out of his way to ensure we enjoyed our stay, Tokoloshi the guard dog. Tokoloshi, who stood 6'4" in the old scale and was black as the ace of spades had the easiest guard dog job in the world. Many Africans are superstitious and give black dogs a wide berth, so when the black dog is a massive Great Dane and is named after an ancient African, mythical folklore warrior hero - Tokoloshi - the berth is quite wide indeed! This gave him plenty of time to hang out and do a hell of a lot of nothing, which is exactly what the rest of his two legged colleagues were doing anyway. Whilst waiting for our Mozi visas the next day we took the oppurtunity to explore Mbabne. This didn't take long at all and we were astounded by the size of the expat community. As well as more supplies we bought balloons, crayons and colouring as we were visiting an orphanage with a couple of the BP staff who
Tokoloshi
Doing what he and the rest of the Swazi BP staff did best. had started a charity initiative. Today they were donating blankets to the Labombo orphanage. We arrived separately from the others and immediately set about playing with the kids. They were very shy at first and took a while to warm up which wasn't helped by a Canadian dude sticking his big obtrusive camera in everyones faces, but we got there in the end and they opened up to us. We were disappointed to learn that while this was going on the mamas and workers from the orphanage were remonstrating with the charity ladies because they'd only brought blankets for the fast approaching winter. "Where is the food?" they were complaining, "we want money, not blankets." Very, very disappointing. Never the less we were humbled by our time with the kids and hope that the hour or so we spent with them was enough to bring a small glimmer of happiness to their short and so far unfortunate lives. After returning to to the consulate we picked up our visas no problem and on the bus ride back to the BP decided that tomorrow we were going to change to another BP for our remaning few days in Swazi. We told
Knitting for charity
All of the blankets donated were knitted by backpackers. Dani is doing her bit too. them we were going to another BP, one that was only a few km down the road in the hope that they might ask why. We, well I anyway, wanted to tell them that their attitude stunk, but they didn't ask why and wouldn't have cared anyway, except for Tokoloshi. He knew what was going on, he would have cared!
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