Rock Art and Sibebe Rock

    For my birthday Katherine followed up on an interest of mine and we traveled to the NW part of the country to see the best display of bushmen (San) rock painting in The Kingdom. It was really remote, but fun to see. The best estimate is that it is 400 to 4,000 years old. My interest in this kind of art is that it is subject to fewer influences than what we've seen in more civilized cultures for the past few thousand years – the creator could know how and what he was supposed to paint only from what was on this rock wall from the last time these people came through. So maybe it gets closer to what people really want to portray.

    The figures at Nsangwini are unusual in seeming to show both San figures, shorter and apparently lighter, who lived only by forage, and the taller, darker (“black people” in the words of our guide) Bantu, herdsmen and farmers, who drove out the San and peopled southern Africa. There is a large and quite distinct elephant, some lions, and the only wildebeest shown in rock art south of the Zambezi River. The human figures all appear to be male, with classic “primitive looking” broad shoulders, long torso, narrow waist, and exaggerated thighs and calves. There is one scene of around 15 figures together, which our guide insisted was a war, but the figures were sufficiently smudgy that I could not identify weapons; it could have been a wedding, harvest celebration, or perhaps an assemblage of Peace Corps volunteers. If you knew what to look for you could see upright human figures a brochure describes as in a “trance dance.” Below them other figures have human bodies but preying mantis heads, and wings, and appear to be floating.

We stayed at a pleasant B&B in the small commercial town in that region that night and had easy travels getting home Sunday. A nice birthday.

The schools closed Thursday, April 17 for the 3 week Easter break (although no classes met all that final week, as far as we could tell.) We had met a high Swazi government official, a Minister of one of the largest government departments, at an NGO's event in our community in January where some of our high school students had presented a discussion of HIV. She had had good experiences with PCVs in her home community and reached out to us through the PC, and we ended up arranging to “house sit” her home over Easter weekend, although changes in her plans because of official functions meant that, instead of having the house to ourselves, she was there with her four charming children. Here is her house, with the black roof on the right, at the end of the road.

The area around the capital Mbabane is really hilly. Her house is still under construction; without a wall and an effective gate they feel quite vulnerable. A guard patrols the grounds all night, but that is true of most of the houses in this community, including the thoroughly walled one just uphill from her house. Notice the Remax sign?!

When we got there Friday afternoon we took a walk down the valley ½ mile with the cousin who is a domestic worker for the Minister. Beyond Sisanah and Katherine is a dam (siSwati for any body of water) which is sacred to one family in the kingdom. For some reason their ancestor, a “traditional healer” (medicine man) refused to treat the previous king, who sent troops to kill the healer; when they came upon him he was suddenly wrapped in a mist, and when the mist disappeared the healer had as well and this dam was there. No one likes to go near the dam. We didn't.

PIC 934

Saturday we took a khumbi to the trail-head for Sibebe Rock, 6 miles out of town. We hiked 3 ½ hours, 1,400' to the top of the world's largest granite dome, and the second largest rock in the world, smaller only than Australia's Uluru (fka Ayers) Rock. Despite yellow arrows painted along some parts of the trail (many of which were overgrown), we had serious route-finding issues, but saw some fine “high-veldt” (higher grassy terrain) birds that were new to us.

Sunday we went by the PC office to use the free and relatively high speed internet in the Volunteer Lounge.

The internet repeatedly crashed and we would lose what hadn't been sent or saved; communication in this country is really primitive. It took hours to do what we would have done in minutes at home.

We had our Easter dinner of PB and marmalade sandwiches and potato chips on the street in Manzini,

and then waited 1 ¼ hours, soaked in sweat, choking on diesel fumes, jostled by large people carrying equally large packages, for a packed bus to leave for our community; at least we had seats as we waited – people were jammed in the aisles standing butt to belly. Travel on holidays is a challenge.

Next week we go to St. Lucia and 2 game parks in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, south of Swaziland. We've rented a car, a driver will pick us up, drive us to the border, and we take the car from there. We can drive in SA, which will make us feel like grown-ups.