It's Official

Not an idiot.  Nor dump.  Whatever dump is.

Pitstop

I'm back from Sabie now, and sitting in "my" office at the Ministry of Health.  (The door is still labeled with nothing but STI[!] in big red letters, and I am still 12 and that still makes me laugh).

Yesterday I came back from Sabie via Steenbok, which is in absolutely no way the shortest possible route, but I wanted to stop in and say hello.  When I got there, the family was away at the clinic, so I spent some time hanging out with a group of kids/youth/young adults who were on their way to a soccer match in Naas.  About 35 of men and women were milling around the bus stop by the house, chatting one another up, and implying that they were all about to fit themselves into two pick-up trucks and then race down the pot hole littered road to town.  I said there was no way they'd ever fit everybody.  I was totally wrong.  If you have never seen 35 more or less grown adults hop into the back of a couple of pick-up trucks and drive off to the next town, swerving around pot holes, blowing vuvuzelas, and cheering at every other car the see.  Well.  I recommend the site to you.

It was late-ish when I got into Steenbok, because I'd been coming down from Sabie that afternoon.  Going to Steenbok added an extra 2.5 hours to my drive home, but I think it was worthwhile.  One of the really nice things about working out here in Swaziland is the chance to see my host family again.  When I left in 2008 I promised I'd try and come back, sure, but I don't think any of us believed that it would ever happen.  I think we all assumed that our intersection would be more of a brief and singular one than something we'd have the chance to take up again.  I feel genuinely lucky that I have a home I can go and visit in SA.  No matter how awkward those home visits still are, or how out of the way that home is.  Lucky, lucky, lucky me to have a place that had such a profound impact on my life only a two podcast drive away.

Final Score

You all: $640.  The fifth highest amount raised for the whole event!

Me (/my butt): Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Half Marathon Update

Wow. Thank you thank you to those of you who have raises over $500 for KLM so far!  It is an amazing amount of money that really is going to make a huge difference to a kid in Mpumalanga.  For those of you who are still considering donating, and may have a few dollars to spare (an unexpected tax return or other recent lucky break perhaps?), the race isn't until the 26th so there is still plenty of time to share! Five dollars is an awesome contribution -- $10 is amazing. Or might I suggest...$13.10?

Photographic update with me looking sweaty as hell to follow on Monday morning.

Photo Essay

Last month we went to one of the royal kraals for the beginning of marula season.  Translation:  we hung out in one of the king's palaces/cattle pens while all the gogos rolled up with the first of the season's marula beer.  Marula is the stuff amarula is made out of.  Marula beer does not taste like amarula.  People come from all over the country in their traditional get up and hang out in a cattle pen drinking home brew beer out of old oil canisters until the king shows up, commands them to sing and dance, and then tells them to get drunk.  

It is strangely reminiscent of a renaissance faire.

Casey was the star of the show.  Everybody wanted to hand him drinks out of old oil drums.  We were commanded to take this photo.

Eventually, the gogos all paraded from the palace to the show ground.  We were also commanded to take pictures of that.  So we did.

Beer and grilled meat in a crowded dirt lot -- somehow this felt like a lot of my college experience.

After that weekend, we decided that we needed to spend more of our weekends having fun.  So we went to Kosi Bay, which is a world heritage site on the Indian Ocean, just a teensy bit south of the Mozambique border.  It was about 6 hours from Mbabane, and at a certain point the road stops being paved and starts being...kind of just a lot of potholes.  Punctuated by cows.  But then its fine, because it turns into sand.

But the sand turns into a view that looks like this.  Kosi Bay is a series of lakes leading up to an ocean. Those little fences in the water are fish traps.  The tide comes in, the fish get trapped, and then people can just go and scoop them up.  Its genius.  And it looks really awesome.

     So beautiful.  This is one of the lakes with beautiful green mountain and neat fishing traps.

It takes a 45 minute drive in a 4x4 to get to the beach proper.  My little car was not going to do that, but we had the chance to bump on down there in an old school land rover and hung out for hours.  We had to wade through a series of tide pools holding our picnic supplies above the water line.  It was kind of like Oregon trail...but in a beautiful series of Indian Ocean inlets.  And nobody's oxen drowned. 

Then we braai'ed (barbecued) and toasted s'mores.  I'd like to point out that I built that fire.  Go me.

Bye Kosi Bay!  Go little Rav4 Go!

[Eish!]