Monday, July 24, 2006

Swaziland

As promised, here are some more photos of Swaziland. For those of you like myself who did not know, the King of Swaziland currently has 13 wives. Every year there is a traditional reed dance held in late August. Only the childless, unmarried girls may participate in this dance. The ultimate aim of course is to catch the eye of the thirty-seven year old King!


I knew very little about this custom before we went, and was surprised when the women I saw carrying the reeds appeared to be, well a little long in the tooth. I took way too many photos of women and reeds, although many of the women seemed to be happy to get their photos taken. I wasn't sure what to say to them - "Good Luck" or "God Help You." Am still not sure. Anyway, we found out later that day that the women who took part in this dance were older women, who were in fact dancing for the Queen Mother and not the King. Nevertheless, it was an impressive sight and the cultural highlight of our trip. Carrying these reeds are not for the faint of heart.




Another highlight for me was visiting the Ngwenya glass factory. My boss Verne Harris has a little glass elephant from this factory on his desk, and I just fell in love with it. So, I had to go and get myself one. Then I fell in love with the glass hippos, glass rhinos, agh! One only has so much room in one's carry-on I am afraid.

Later that day, we visited the Mantega Cultural Village. This village was built to represent and display traditional aspects of Swazi life. There was a small outdoor theatre where the cast below put on a beautiful performance of both singing and traditional dancing. What was unfortunate was that they made us dance with them...


Saturday is out last day at work - hard to believe. On the 29th is the Foundation's annual lecture. This year, South African President Thabo Mbeki will be giving the address. On Monday morning, we are leaving for a week long trek through the eastern provinces of South Africa, as well as Lesotho. If any of you have driven through the Sani Pass in Lesotho, we could use some advice. Are we crazy to attempt it in a rental car? It looks spectacular, albeit a bit of a donkey road.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

En Route to Swaziland!

The drive to Swaziland was beautiful. Shadrack was very patient and stopped about, oh, ten times along the roadside for me to take photos. It was interesting to see the terrain change the closer we got to Swaziland. The hills and valleys resulted in gorgeous scenery and I finally got some shots of the traditional round houses with thatched roofs. Here are just a few of the scenic photos I took last Friday. Thanks again Shadrack for the trip and your patience! More to come from the Swaziland trip next week....








Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Botswana part II


Elephants anyone?




The game drive that we went on in Botswana presented us with our first opportunity to see elephants. Below Jill and I pose at the end of the game drive and we were nearly frozen! The photo was taken at about 6:45pm, and as you can notice it is getting quite dark.


Sunday, July 09, 2006

Botswana

Last weekend, Jill and I tagged along with Shadrack to Gaborone, Botswana. He left us in the capable hands of his friend Mavis Koogotsitse and we had a fantastic weekend with her. Below is a photo of her family, who we had the pleasure of visiting on Saturday afternoon. The great thing about this weekend is that we were actually able to get out of the city and visit the villages in the countryside. Donkeys, cows and goats strolled about freely and the people we met were incredibly warm and generous.


Jill and I with the Koogotsitse Family

We also experienced two flat tires in two days! En route back into Gaborone Saturday afternoon, the car blew a tire. Now, I was a car owner for almost seven years and I never had a flat tire. I went to Botswana and had two flats in two days. LOL!! Four men on a donkey cart came to our rescue on Saturday (below). On Sunday, the bus blew a tire fifteen minutes into the six-hour bus ride back to Johannesburg.


I am psyched that I finally saw some Zebra....The one animal I wanted to see here. As soon as my next film is developed I will post some photos of elephants we also saw on this game drive.


Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Cape Town and Cape Point


What a beautiful city!! Table Mountain and visiting Robben Island were the highlights of this trip. We had beautiful weather and therefore a beautiful view from Table Mountain. The above photo was taken en route back to Cape Town from Robben Island. We went to the Island to visit the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for seventeen years. As the tour books predicted, the 2.5 hour tour of the Island was woefully short. An ex-political prisoner took us on a tour of the interior of the prison and offered a very touching personal account of his life and time on the Island. We stood in Mandela's cell. Below is the window from his cell that looked out onto the courtyard of the prison.



Cape Town is much warmer than Johannesburg. We, well, it was actually my decision to walk to the cable car station on Table Mountain. Between the heat, steep slopes, and my chest cold, I was nearly dead by the time we reached the station. One bonus is that I actually happened upon "Rossiter Street" en route. I had come across "Rossiter Street" when I was searching the National Archives database in Pretoria. What are the chances?


We also toured the peninsula, the highlight being "Cape Point." The drive there provided us with incredible scenery - but was not for the weak of heart. The roads down to the Point crawled around cliffs and more than not, there was no guard rail. Thankfully, I was so full of cold medicine and cough syrup, my nerves were calmed for me. Above is Hout Bay, taken from the roadside.

At Cape Point, we crawled up to the look off at the light house. I say crawled, because the wind was so strong, we were literally hanging on for dear life at times, almost crawling up the seemingly endless stone steps to the lighthouse. Once there, we were rewarded with some spectacular views...