Melanie and Musa's wedding reception

          Saturday night we gathered at Swaziland's main live music venue, House on Fire, where the Bushfire music festival occurs each May, and had drinks and then dinner at the really nice restaurant there to celebrate the marriage of a volunteer from the group ahead of ours (she had extended her service for a 3rd year) to a Swazi man who is building manager for construction of a youth facility for an NGO.

 They exchanged vows:

 The PC volunteers had a picture

We had drinks as the long summer evening waned:

They had planned to have the civil wedding part done on Wednesday, but we ran into the bride in town that day;  the necessary government functionaries had not come to work that day.  They got it done on Friday.  When Melanie's service ends this year they will go to the US.  Musa is very fluent in English, which is helpful in his work here.

      After dinner

we got a taxi to the homestead of a volunteer in our group, where she and 4 others of us crashed.  She insisted on sleeping on the floor, giving Katherine and me her bed!  She has a really nice house, with indoor plumbing and a separate kitchen, windows that seal, an insulation layer below the metal roof, and a spacious living room; when our group first gathered after we had been to our sites it was quickly reported that Patty's is the place to crash if you can't get back to your site.   We had bought food on our way to the reception Saturday and we fixed up a fine breakfast in her lovely home.

     School should finally start Tuesday, January 27, after a week delay.  The official reason for the delay was that the "regiments" (men who participate in the "first fruits" ceremony to celebrate the summer, who are organized into military-style units, which are more like fraternal order than a militia) had not finished the last stage of that event - weeding the King's fields, but now we are hearing that the delay may have been because the government lacks funds to open the schools.  Upon return to site Sunday I visited the nearby Refugee Camp and learned that the camp manager lacks funds to pay school fees, and the High School Principal is saying students from the Refugee Camp cannot attend school until the fees are paid.   But I think that face-off between the Principal and the Camp management has occurred at the beginning of every term, so maybe that will be quickly resolved.  It would be nice if the students and all others in education here could start soon to focus solely on education.

Our Summer Vacation Part III: Cape Town and Jozi

       Knowing we would need some fun to look forward to after our return from our oh-so-brief visit with our grandson Matthew and family over Christmas, the Minister of Fun[i] booked 9 days in Cape Town, Stellenbosch (the wine region 2 hours drive north of Cape Town) and Johannesburg, South Africa.

      Cape Town is a city of stunning natural beauty, interesting history and culture,  and European standards of cuisine and infra-structure: comfortable, dependable and safe public transport; clean hotel with running water, clean floors and clean soft towels and cotton sheets; and wi-fi all around!

         We had dinner at sunset on Table Mountain,

toured the Cape of Good Hope Peninsula south of Cape Town  and saw new sea birds, including the African Penguin

and made the obligatory visit to Robben Island, marveling at the hardships Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners stood up under for 18 years and at the nobility and generosity with which he managed to emerge.  We ran into his name, image and legacy throughout South Africa; this country was most fortunate to have him at that critical time, and wise to follow his way.  His successors have been much less inspiring. 

     On our way to Stellenbosch we walked through the magnificent Kirstenbosch Gardens

Its high summer in Cape Town, the hot dry season, so not the best time to see flowers or birds! We were hopeful to see the Cape Sugarbird, but he needs flowering proteas. But magnificent and varied trees, and a majestic location.

      Our private room in a backpackers hostel in Stellenbosch had a lovely balcony

from which we spotted another new bird, a spotted pigeon, featuring a gaudy patch of bright red bare skin all around its eye.  Also lots of mosquitoes,  but that's not a malaria area, and we are both on our meds, because our area of Swaziland does have a little malaria.

       Stellenbosch is the heart of the wine-making area of South Africa, and noted also for its University, previously predominantly Afrikaans, but now more reflecting the diversity of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls The Rainbow Nation.  No visit to Stellenbosch would be complete without a wine pilgrimage; ours was with a newly-wed German couple who didn't care for red wines - we did not make that mistake, although the whites were delicious!.

      On returning to Jozi we took the train up to Pretoria, which was kind of forgettable, took a bus tour of Soweto - a vast sprawling varied city of 4 or 5 million people, where the tourists were the only whites, I'm told - and spent an afternoon at the compelling and haunting Apartheid Museum.

      While we were in Cape Town we got a message on the WhatsApp string by which our group of volunteers communicate[ii] that Swazi school openings would be delayed a week, so not till next Tuesday, January 27, to allow those participating in the Swazi traditional Incwala festival celebrating the "first fruits" of summer to complete the final stage: weeding the King's fields.    Seriously.  In a country with 40 to 60% unemployment.  We haven't had regular class time since early November, when classes stopped for administration and then grading of exams, and then many schools closed a week early.  Very different priorities than mine.

     Coming back through Mbabane we stopped by PC HQ for Katherine to catch a Books For Africa planning meeting.  There must have been 8 volunteers in the Volunteer "Lounge" using the free, relatively high speed 'net - no schools, so what else are you going to do?  At one point I asked one from the group that arrived last June, whom I did not know well, if she had seen Katherine after the BFA meeting broke up and started to describe her, forgetting that Katherine had addressed all of the new group at the end of their "Pre-Service Training" about the initial stages of a BFA library application.  The volunteer broke in "Oh I know her, the happy one."  Yup.

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[i]   Our positions have reversed in many, many ways in Africa.  For instance, in Denver, Katherine planned all our vacations and I tried to make money.  Katherine has a keen instinct for what might be fun, how things work, and how to get to the beating heart of a new place.  When we got here Katherine threw herself so  completely into the work that she could hardly be troubled with plans for us.  Knowing we both needed to "get out of Dodge" sometimes, I started making our plans for fun things.  With our limited internet availability, that can be arduous. 

     Bet you didn't expect footnotes in a PC Blog.  But, consider the source.

[ii]    WhatsApp doesn't use 'net; and is cheaper, and generally more available for many of us than email, but takes a lot of maintenance and blows up a lot, at least in this environment.

Our Summer Vacation Part 2: Hlane with our protogée John

     We went on Friday, January 2 to Hlane, a nearby game park that we like a lot, with John Koffi, the head boy last year at our local high school, who will now start his “A Level” or “Matric” year (which is pretty standard in the South African system, and I think in the British schools; kind of like a post-graduate year after high school in the US, but much more standard, and required for South African and maybe British and other international colleges and universtities) at a good school in the capital of Swaziland, St. Marks. John's family has just moved out of the nearby Refugee Camp after 2 night-time tent fires resulted in the deaths of 2 children, bringing back the trauma after John's father's store was burned and his 2 brothers murdered precipitating their flight from the Congo 5 years ago. It is now clear the tent fires were set intentionally, apparently hostilities between national groups. It is just as awful as it sounds.

     The upshot is that, after a year when we saw and worked with John nearly every day, we won't see him now very much, and we wanted to go over decisions and issues we could anticipate for the coming months, partly because we are probably going to have to pay for his St. Mark's turition and board. That kind of payment is made here by depositing cash, which will take us some traipsing around, so we wanted those events on our schedule, to the extent we can. And John has some other school possiblitilies cooking, and deadlines to meet.. Also he's fascinated with Africa's natural treasures and had never seen lions. And because, having been with no one who needed my advice for nearly 2 decades, John got the expected list of suggestions, questions and cautions. Handled it well. Seemed attentive. Application essays. Interview techniques. What lies beyond A levels. What the future may hold, and what could derail it.

Enough chatter:

One of the things we like about Hlane is there is a very nice restaurant, with fine impala and wildebeest grill:

John had been on a school trip to a game park in Malawi, where his family stayed 2 years after leaving Congo, but had never seen a lion. Now he has. He took most of the pictures we have of our trip:

     On Thursday we leave for Cape Town (said by all who have lived or visited to be one of the world's great cities) for a week, plus 2 days to further explore JoBurg. Then school.

      I think our last blog on returning from seeing Baby Matthew sounded a little sad. We were. But as we walked up our road, on our way to Hlane, a bright-eyed lively little girl called out “Teachers!” We try to stop when we hear that, or our names, from a child. Turns out she had done really well in 4^th grade tests, and she wanted us to know that we will teach her in the new school year. That's why we're still here.