Acclimating to Life in Mbabane

November 17, 2007. I have not yet visited IRD’s newly rented office, 2-3 kilometers outside of Mbabane, and I find out from Elliot that there is no power or Internet, rendering the place dysfunctional and unused for the moment. City Inn’s dial-up Internet is also not working, so I’m frustrated by the inability to access email and the world outside of Mbabane. I have no watch or functional mobile phone as yet, so I never know what time it is and am constantly calling the hotel reception or asking bystanders for the time.

I visited the “mall” today to familiarize myself with the nearest available amenities to the hotel. The mall is an open strip of shops, including a supermarket, post office, banks, and a pharmacy, making most essentials very accessible. In fact, the layout of things here is most similar to the mini malls in the London suburbs and very unlike the artificial strip malls of America. Think of Harrow-on-the-Hill or Croydon. When entering the supermarket, shoppers are required to check in all of their other ‘parcels’ in exchange for a shopping basket with a number on it. Upon completing grocery shopping, parcels will be returned in exchange for the basket. Within 45 minutes, I was able to purchase 2 adaptors, bottled water, snacks, toiletries, and last, and certainly not least, a hairdryer!

Nearly all Swazis speak English, but many will mix their English with Siswati, which is very similar to Zulu. People are impressed when I tell them that I took a semester of Zulu as a sophomore in college, but when it comes down to demonstrating a working knowledge of the language, beyond the word for welcome, Sawubona, I can’t remember anything else for the life of me and rapidly lose their initial interest. The dress, particularly for the women, varies greatly from traditional to modern and conservative to flashy as was demonstrated in Beirut, but obviously on a different scale. On one hand, you have the younger generation wearing more revealing clothing, and on the other, slightly older generations of women donning modern or extremely traditional clothing of the original tribes. There are women even wearing similar dress to the traditional Sri Lankan batik housedresses. Many women wrap their hair in cloth, and infants are tied to their mothers’ backs in cloth sacks or towels.

Later this afternoon, I visited the Mlalwini Natural Reserve with Elliot. The landscape of the countryside is absolutely breathtaking, with lush, green, mountainous terrain covered by various flora and wildlife. There are larger reserves further south of the city that are inhabited by larger animals such as lions and rhinos, which we’ll hopefully visit at some point. On the way home, we drove through Ezulwini, which is the tourism capital of Swaziland. Now, here’s where all of the nice accommodations and resorts are! Note to self…The streets are lined with handicraft stalls and centers. Though Swaziland as a country is by no means resistant to modernization, I’ve been told that it embraces its culture more so than its Christian religion.