Malolotja: hills, hikes, blue swallows, and ticks

        First, we are delighted to announce that we were awarded a grant from Books for Africa for our local High School.  Our great thanks to all of you who have donated.   We may get a list eventually, but now we do not know who donated unless you have told us.  But for all, we are extremely grateful, and we can assure you that some African children will be too, when they find these books available.  That will take some more time, until April or even May.  And then the books need to be listed and labeled and a library organized; we hope the Swazis do this themselves.  We will keep prodding, as necessary.   This is important.

     We were away for Christmas, but when we got back we gave little presents to our homestead family, some prints of pictures we had taken of them, and some TP roll “binoculars” Katherine had made so they could imitate our wandering off at the end of the afternoon with our binoculars.

They were torn apart within minutes.

     Monday we went into PC headquarters to continue the seemingly endless struggle to get the details of our travel back to the US to match up. The PC is staffed with caring people who love Nomphumelelo, but the details of travel is not something the PC does well. On our way out we stocked up, as we usually do when we have some additional carrying capacity, on more free condoms (only the male kind, having trouble finding female; there's some demand, we believe. Maybe just curiosity.) Got sort of separated on a crowded khumbi coming home, to find Nomphumelelo had given out 3 dozen in the back of the van. I dozed through it. (We visited the Refugee Camp clinic Friday and found they must have 10 dozen or more female condoms, all expiring this month, so we stocked up and will distribute as many as we can – better get busy, ladies!)

    Thursday night a week ago at 7:45 there was a massive hatch of tiny black bugs. They got through our screening made of mosquito nets turned in by departing PCVs, which have some inevitable gaps, crawled into our clothes and around our bodies. Fortunately, they did not bite, because they could have chewed on anything they wanted. But when crushed, they smelled like really fresh poop from a dog that had been feeding on over-ripe roadkill. The hatch was all over the homestead, and as we walked to the latrine through the mud – it was really wet last week – we ground them into the mud. The homestead developed a strong odor of . . . you know. Now it's dried out and the little black bugs seem to have diminished, and the odor has dissipated.

     Tuesday we took several khumbis to Malolotja, a nature preserve in the NW of Swaziland, the “high veldt”, rolling hills with cliffs and jutting rocks, far cooler than our “low veldt” steamy heat. We rented there a self-catering cabin for New Years Eve and the night of the 1^st.

     As we came in we saw blesbok, (pictured here down from our cabin New Years morning)

The first afternoon we saw one of their rare birds, a blue swallow with long forked tail and shiny iridescent blue back and head; on our first hike a black-backed jackal stared at us from 30 yards, then skulked away, and vervet monkey hid in the rocks.

      As we moved in the maids warned us that in the master bedroom ants dropped from the ceiling onto the beds and we should instead sleep in the bunk room. We didn't see any ants. Turns out the maids were right. We moved.

     We bought some of the delicious local beer, Sibebe, at the restaurant near the cabins and climbed up on a rock with some Brie (to get here we'd come through Mbabane, the capital which is far more sophisticated than the rest of the country, and we did our shopping there, and got a little crazy – real cheese with flavor!) and crackers, catching the evening light.

    They had no shower, but the first tub in ½ year felt good. The water was a light brown, but plenty of hot water, and you could see the bottom of the tub, even when it was full. Before I got in.

     We went for a long hike New Years day. It was long in part because we had to walk 4 km to the trailhead, and also because we got a little turned around in the gorges, cliffs, streams. Some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen; just great walking terrain. The only people we met were a white man heading the opposite way and his son. We visited for a while and he took this picture.

He could probably tell we were a little uncertain of our route. Exchanged phone numbers. When he got back to his car, he called us. We couldn't get the call in the deep gorge we were in, but we called him when we got on a ridge. He'd also alerted another family still parked at the view point to watch for us. He'd already left the trailhead but he drove back to meet us at the road. People put themselves out for PCVs. Interesting man: 3^rd generation in SZ, but got an engineering degree from AZ State and holds a US, Zimbabwe and SZ passport. Raising his son by his now-divorced Swazi former wife and her older son of another father. They were with him, and were a little unsure of the hiking.

     New Years night we had over for dinner with us the young Brit -actually 2^nd generation in Swaziland, but carefully preserves her British passport – in the next cabin. She will work with some PCVs here. She's traveled all over Africa and around the world. We are meeting a lot of really interesting people, of whom we hope to see more, PC is a very good “brand.” People meeting us think they have a feel for what we are about. Probably mostly right, I think.

      PC takes good care of us. (When I write that, I think of Katherine's Dad, as we do many times a day. He was worried about our safety, so I sprinkled this blog with that kind of remark, knowing he would read it and be reassured – if it's in this blog, it must be both Official, and Incontrovertibly True, I'm sure you'll agree.)

     Anyway, Tuesday I'd had sort of a fever, which I thought was a resurgence of a slight cold I had last week. New Years morning I woke up chilled and found on my calf a round black scab smaller than a dime in a reddish circular lump maybe 1 1/2” across, and my groin where the lymph gland on that leg is was swollen and tender. [The following image is kind of icky – you've been warned!]

Within 2 hours on New Years morning I was in touch with the new PC Medical Officer in SZ, a clever pleasant young women who has admirably overcome the handicap of being a double Harvard (college and MD), who confirmed over the phone my suspicion of infected tick bite. Hitched a ride first thing the next morning

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to the PC Office and now I'm back at site, full of doxycycline and paracelanol (a little stronger than aspirin, I understand), and feeling much better, at least at the beginnings of the cycle when the meds kick in; still a little rocky as they wear off.

     Next week we travel to the US for Katherine's Dad's services, and we get to see our children! Back Jan. 20, and school starts the 22^nd. We've really enjoyed the travel and free time during this very long break (really since the beginning of November, officially since Dec. 5) but we'll be very glad to get on with what we came here to do. We've got lots of plans for lessons, and maybe some projects – a workshop on diabetes, which is hammering this country? And a new library to guide setting up at the High School, and continuing to nudge the Swazis to get the Railway Primary School library functioning so the kids can finally get to the books.

      The door of our latrine doesn't latch from the inside, which is OK because it's quite a pleasant seat, looking out across some fencerows and pastures. While we were gone some southern masked weavers started building a nest in the tree r beside our latrine – the males are brilliant yellow, with black faces. The male builds the hanging globular nest with a curved entrance out the bottom; the female comes and inspects and, if she disapproves, the male tears it apart and starts again. Reminds me a little of some of my friends, but these male weavers are not displaying what those of us in the Life Skills biz call good modeling behavior.

     We're sending this from a country club 40 clicks East of site where we go for free internet, pizza, and to escape the heat. On our way here I saw 2 giraffes on my side of the car, and Nomphumelelo saw a huge unidentified eagle on hers; we passed through Hlane game preserve to get here.