Hello, Africa!

Cow crossing near the National Museum

Hello, my name is Louis. I am 18 years old and I am from Philadelphia in the United States. This is my first real-time travel blog, so I hope you enjoy it. For the next three months I will be volunteering in the Kingdom of Swaziland, located between South Africa and Mozambique. For the past few weeks I have been traveling in Europe, where I visited Iceland, Greenland, England, and Ireland. I may do an occasional throwback post to one of them. I arrived in Swaziland yesterday, after a long flight from Dublin via Frankfurt and Johannesburg.

 Today began with orientation. The woman giving the presentation was very warm and welcoming, and she was very articulate in speech. She gave some basic information about the country as a whole, and the volunteer projects. Close to the end of the presentation she got a phone call. When she put down the phone she said that it was her boss, and one of the other staff members at All Out Africa had just unexpectedly passed away. She started to cry, and another staff member finished the presentation. I felt very sad for her. Throughout the day, other volunteers who had known him were sad too.

Lobamba

Most new volunteers begin their trip by visiting Kruger National Park in South Africa, and work until the end of the month. They then go to Mozambique for a week, and finish their programme. Since I will be here for three months, I will wait to go to Kruger until August or September.

The vast majority of volunteers here are girls. Of the 16 new volunteers, only one besides me was a boy. I am also the only American who arrived in July. My roommates are all girls; they are from Wales, Germany, and Australia.

Gallery in Lobamba. 

At 14:00 today we began a tour of Lobamba. We visited the National Museum of Swaziland, and headed for the town proper. Inside the town we were treated like celebrities. We were surrounded by children who kept shouting “How are you! How are you!” as it was the only phrase in English they knew. When we answered, they could not understand us. By the end of our walk in the town we learned to just wave, and respond to their how are you by asking the same question to them. We went into a one room art gallery, where a man was singing and playing the guitar while his wife played the bass. He said that he started the gallery himself from nothing, and produced his own work to fill it. He lives in the gallery, but his door is always opened. Anybody can come in at any time, as he does not believe in privacy. When other artists saw what he had created, they donated their art to the gallery as well.

Buick belonging to the late king. 

Swazi culture is all about sharing, so during traditional meals only one plate of food is served to each table and people take from it as they please. As our guide said, it makes it more difficult to poison someone if you need to eat from the same plate as them. I shared with the other vegetarian in the group, who is a girl from the Netherlands. Swazis don’t use silverware to eat, so for our traditional meal we didn't either. My hands still feel a bit sticky. When we were full, people from the town came and collected the remainder of our meals to feed their families. If I had known they were coming, I wouldn't have eaten as much.

 Well, that’s about it for today. I will begin my volunteer work tomorrow, and I don’t really know what to expect. Stay posted and I will tell you how it goes.

 Cheers for now!