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.