Farewell to Swaziland

Swaziland has a fairly transient expat community …. There seems to be a leaving event of some sort about every other week, so instead of doing the normal braai at someone house, Allie (who is also leaving) and I decided we would move the braai to a remote corner of Swaziland.

We had a fantastic weekend, starting off with helping with Teen Club Christmas party (a youth group for HIV Positive teens).  I volunteered for face painting and became quite adept at drawing snowmen and Christmas trees … but struggles a bit more when there was a craze for South African flags … I’m sure it is one of the most complicated … why does any flag need five colours!

We then headed out into the country side to say at a place called the Rock Lodge, the clue is in the name and it is a fairly basic place built around a rock formation and perched on the edge of a cliff.  An amazing location, once you find it, which we were a bit uncertain about when we were given a hand drawn map to help us get there, with useful instructions such as, take the second track on the left after the concrete posts and then follow the road until you reach the last homestead…. What could possibly go wrong?!  Amazingly we made it without getting too lost.  And had a fun braai in the evening and a walk down to the river in the morning.  I hope the photos give a bit of a flavor of what it was like.

A room with a view!

Weather

I have been very quiet on the blog front, so I thought I would add a couple of things before I leave.  The first one being a subject close to most peoples heart’s in the UK… the Weather!

You may think that I have been enjoying non-stop sunshine since I am in Africa…. If only that was the case.  For my first couple of months it was cold, or more precisely sunny and warm during the day and then dropping in temperature significantly in the evenings.  Which you would think would be manageable, apart from the fact none of the house are built to withstand the cold so during a nice warm sunny day the office or your house would be a good few degrees colder.  I lived in the one coat I brought with me!

It has now warmed up, but summer also brings the rainy season so one day you can have glorious sunshine … 

  …. And then the next day it can look like this when Mbabane is basically in the clouds!

Or you can have absolutely crazy lightening storms,  often with torrential rain, golf ball sized hail stones and hugely windy.  It can be quite surreal, if it looks like a major storm is brewing then things start closing early so people can get home before the storm breaks.  This is not as odd as if first seemed as Swaziland has the highest per capita rate of lightning strikes in the world.  So you really don’t want to be caught in the wrong place during a storm!