New visa, feed a tiger

My 30 day visa is up on the 23^rd, and I still don’t have my temporary residency permit (despite not being an idiot!).  Which is why I fed a tiger yesterday.

When you cross the border into Swaziland, you automatically get a 30 day visitor visa.  To renew that visa, you need to cross the border again and get yourself another 30 day stamp.  There is a Swazi/South African border crossing about 20 minutes from Mbabane, but not much nearby on the South African side.  I suppose we probably could have just driven from Swaziland to South Africa, turned right around, and headed back into Swaziland with a new stamp, but I wasn’t totally sure how the customs officials would feel about that. 

An hour from the border is a place called Cradle of Life.  If you look at Cradle of Life’s webpage, it tells you that at 1pm on Saturdays you can bottle feed what is CLEARLY a tiny, adorable, tiger cub.  No, tigers are not native to Africa.  But if you have to cross the border anyway, why not feed a baby tiger?

Border crossings are a great time to break out the broken siSwati.  The standards are shockingly low.  If you can say hello, tell the person where you’re going, and explain that you used to live in Mpumalanga, you are considered hilarious and are waved on with a smile.  Sometimes, the guard will use a sentence that doesn’t fit this pattern, and then I am forced to switch into English: 

“I am asking, can I be your friend?”

 “Yes of course Bhuti!  We can be friends.”

 “Oh, I forgot to mention, I want to be your…B-friend.”

“Oh…shame Bhuti!  I already have a fiancé!” (Flash ring.  Drive away.  Brian…take note).

On the way to lunch, we got stuck behind a very large steer crammed into the back of a very small bakkie.  The steer did not look comfortable.  The bakkie was riding awfully low.  My friend and I spent some time discussing the physics behind what exactly would happen if the steer felt the need to relieve some tension at 100 km an hour.  We decided it would be perhaps unsafe, and opted to pass the steer-bakkie.  (Later, over lunch, we both mustered enough memories of high school physics to realize that probably not all that much would have happened.  But the image of a 100 km/hour cow-pukkie projectile will never not make me laugh).

After getting lost only once, and making the drive much more slowly than usual because the clouds hung over the road so heavy and so low that for much of the drive we had trouble seeing more than five feet in front of the car , we made it to our lunch spot.  The drive way is a strand of DNA.  The building itself is cavernous, and strange, and there was a schedule posted in the front shop/lobby that did not include baby tiger feeding.  The woman at the front desk waved down one of the tiger trainers.  The tiger trainer gave us the eye, and asked if we really wanted to feed a baby tiger.  Oh yes.  “Do you know what you’re in for?”  Adorable baby tiger cub feeding?  “You know they’re this big.”  And he gestured about six inches higher than my hips.  My hips are not very high off the ground, but still.  He told us to go wait out by the restaurant.  Baby tiger feeding is at one, and he would wave us over when it was time.  Okey-doke.

Half an hour later we look across the lawn and see two tigers on leashes ambling towards us.  They were NOT adorable, tiny baby tiger cubs.  They were small-ish tigers on leashes.   Like large dogs.  But tigers.  Tigers!! Sure, the leashes were chain, but I have serious doubts about how effective they would have been if 400 pounds of 10 month old tiger had decided to go wherever it pleased. 

Right about this point I start thinking about how much time and evolution has gone into me not wanting to be in a small space with a tiger.  One tiger climbs a tree.  Another decides she is not interested in going where the trainer is tugging her, and they spend some time pulling one another back and forth in a pond while the tiger starts looking more and more pissy.  The woman from the front desk asks the small crowd that is watching this process who has signed up to feed the tiger.  We tell her we have.  She tells us to walk over to the tigers.

“Um…Sesi…the tiger isn’t going to eat us, right?”

“Hmmm….I’m sure I can’t tell you that.”

“Wait…no.  No is the only correct answer to that question.  The only thing you were supposed to say there was ‘No!”

Shrug.  I am not feeling any less skeptical about this.  There have been no liability wavers.  I am getting the sense that this is one of those things that 99 times out of 100 makes for an awesome facebook photo, and that 100^th time ends with “Fulbright scholar mauled by rogue tiger in South African conservation park”

But we head towards the tigers, and my friend hops down, hands me her camera, and walks over.  I remain deeply skeptical (aka chicken), but eventually suck it up, grab the camera and follow the tiger on the leash.

My friend is very brave.  “What this entails” is getting a giant tiger hug.  The tiger rears up on its back legs, puts its front paws on the trainer’s shoulders, and starts sucking out of the bottle.  After a few minutes the trainer turns to us and offers to let us try.  And I utterly chicken out and say no thanks.  And my friend is much braver than me and goes for it.  I take pictures.  The milk goes all over my friend and the tiger, and the trainer, and the tiger nuzzles her from time to time.  She is told not to let the tiger do that.  When my friend is done being brave, the second trainer turns to me and asks if I want to hold the bottle.  I decide to stop being chicken and go hold the bottle while my friend takes a picture.  There was something very cub like about the tiger.  She just wanted a snack, she just wanted to play.  But yikes.  Tiger.

We got lunch afterwards, and laughed at how strongly my friend reeked of tiger.  It was wonderful.  On the drive home the clouds had cleared up and we could see them hanging across the veldt below us, and the sun came out and lit up the mountains behind us.  It was beautiful.