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After spending one day in Pretoria and going on a guided tour of Soweto, we headed for Swaziland. We stayed two days at the orphanage in Nhlangano before travelling by kombi to Mbabane. From there we arranged a hiking tour in the Komati Valley. It was a really beautiful place, although our crazy guide turned out to be slightly disorganised.

Southern Africa 2000 - Part 5: Soweto and Swaziland

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-09 00:02:39

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Swaziland and so forth. Truly a fascinating topic!!

After about three hours of walking, we finally reached the destination of our hike, the kraal where Mthunzi's family lived. We were introduced to his mother and some of his brothers and sisters. The place had a wonderful view, but I didn't envy them the long walk down to "civilisation", not to mention the way home when you would have to carry groceries uphill.

The two other guys didn't seem to show much interest in the scenery, though, as they immediately went inside to dig into Mthunzi's family's stash of marihuana, of which they apparently were free to smoke as much as they wanted. The free marihuana might possibly also have had an impact on their sudden decision to stay around for several days, instead of going back to Mbabane tonight. Personally, I didn't care what they did just as long as Jan Arild and me got back today - preferably as soon as possible. At that time I would gladly have paid money not to sleep there because it was a dump (in my eyes). Mthunzi promised to take us back as soon as he had eaten, which made me happy!

We followed a shorter route on the way down. It still took almost two hours, but that was okay and I actually enjoyed the walk. I asked Mthunzi a lot of questions about his business, how he had started and what he was going to do in the future etc. This must have been his favourite subject because it started a monologue about himself and how smart he was, that lasted almost all the way down. We didn't understand everything because his English wasn't that good, but we got some of it. Amongst other things he told us he had had some problems in the beginning coordinating everything, but today everything had run smoothly. "Yeah, right!" I thought, without saying anything.

Jan Arild commented that he might end up rich if his business really took off. This prompted a strange response, something along the ...