a south african christmas and swazi new year

my christmas vacation started the day after youth camp ended. camp, by the way, was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. ie - i'm glad i lived through it, and i don't feel a strong urge to repeat the experience anytime soon. it consisted of 311 "youth" (by which i mean people aged 2 - 34) spending 7 days together at a boarding school. these figures are to be trusted, by the way, since i happened to have the title "office admin" which meant i spent the better part of the week in our makeshift office, registering the participants as they continued coming throughout the week and selling snacks from the tuck shop to children who seemed to have an insatiable appetite for junk food despite three square meals a day provided by our excellent caterers. i also served as the nurse, which basically meant giving spoonfuls of stomach medicine and tablets of pain killer to kids who complained of feeling sick, but really what i think they wanted was a quiet place to lie down and sleep. which was completely understandable, considering that the usual sleep schedule was about from 12:30 to 5:30. which is why, when i think back on camp, it is somewhat of a blur.

so, somewhat-rested from this experience, the next day i departed for durban, south africa, by kombi. but it's not quite that simple. i had been advised to get to the bus rank early, because once the first kombi fills up and goes, you have no guarantee of when or if another one will be departing that day. so after finishing up my packing, i left home in good time. however, no sooner had i hopped on the kombi and pulled away from home on the way to manzini, then i had that uh-oh! feeling. and sure enough, i had forgotten my passport. so i jumped off at the next stop, literally ran back home to get my id, but when i finally arrived panting at the bus rank 30 min later, i found out that my delay had cost me my spot in the first kombi. which had literally left minutes before i arrived. so then i sat in the kombi for four hours, baking in the sun and observing the bustling activity of the bus rank - which is a fascinating place, by the way. i'm sure most of swaziland has passed through there at one point or another. when we still had two empty spots at 12:30, and my fellow passengers started murmurs of dissention ("this is taking so long, i'm going to leave and come back tomorrow!"), the driver finally decided to start the motor. the rest of the trip was wonderfully uneventful, and i spent most of it catching up on my sleep debt from camp.

phil and christine picked me up in durban and we drove the 45 minutes to their home in pietermaritzburg, south africa. the lindell-detweilers are like family to me, because they were in benin when my family was there, so them and their children nathan, annika and lydia were part of my growing up years and many previous christmases. so it was really wonderful to get to spend a week with them, reminiscing about benin and also getting to discuss and process some of my south african experience thus far.

that evening we headed straight to a presbyterian church near their home for a service of lessons and carols by candlelight, which was lovely, and got me into the christmas mood. the next day all of us, along with christine's parents, carl & faith, who were also visiting, visited tala, advertised as durban's finest game reserve. it really is amazing that this park exists so close to the city. at some points when we driving through the hills, you could see the city suburbs stretched out in the distance.

although the park doesn't have the famous big five, we got really lucky with the animals we got to see. it helped that i was driving with christine, who could have been a big game hunter with her ability to spot animals in the distance, and her parents, who are avid birders who were always willing to stop and take a closer look with the binoculars. this was my first game park in this land famous for them, and i wasn't disappointed. we saw rhino, hippos, zebra, impala, blesbok (another type of antelope), ostrich, giraffes, buffalo, wildebeest, warthogs, and countless types of birds that really excited the birdwatchers but i couldn't really tell apart. except for the bright-orange birds which were so neon in color that they looked artificial. some highlights of the day were seeing a papa ostrich (which i never knew were so tall, he was over 6 ft!) tending a nursery of 10 little baby ostriches, and seeing a mama rhino with her little baby, whose folds of skin and funny nose were so ugly they made him cute.



we also got to see two blesbok down on their knees, locking horns in some kind of mating show-offery, and a pair of zebras in love, touching noses. and i was so proud of myself for spotting the giraffes, which we were hunting for. christine said "just look for their heads above the acacia trees" and i was scanning the distance, thinking, "what on earth does a giraffe head look like anyway" when i saw one!



so after a christmas eve that exciting, christmas day could have been a letdown, but it wasn't at all. we went to a morning service at breakthru international, where the l-ds attend. very charismatic, the people jumping up and down while singing praise songs and the posters on the wall proclaiming their goals of how many new members and new churches to be planted by 2010 were worlds away from the rural zionist church i've been attending. but the sermon, about loving even when we don't understand, really spoke to me and afterwards i had a chance to meet the pastor and his family, who are wonderful people. the rest of christmas day involved a huge feast of delicious food, including, ironically enough, a jenni-o turkey from minnesota purchased at the local pick'n'pay. dan and yvonne, another missionary couple in pmb, and auntie norah, a friend from breakthru, completed the guest list, and we spent a wonderful day together singing carols, acting out the christmas story, decorating cookies, opening presents, and eating, eating, eating...

another highlight from the week was the day before i left, when we headed into durban, a top surf destination, for a day at the beach. the lovely temperature and clear waters of the indian ocean delighted me. i've missed the beach so much, so even though the waves were awful and i only caught about three decent ones on my boogy board, just getting to be there was enough. an interesting thing about the durban beachfront is that you can see a naked beyonce sunning herself on a huge double bed, or a dog being swalled by an enourmous snake, or an intricately-detailed mosque, or a monstrous crocodile. these awesome sights are created with lots of sand, some water and a few utensils such as a broken plastic spoon by aspiring artists who then sit next to their creations all day, to chat with passers-by and ask for small donations.



i was really sad to leave pmb. it was good for my soul to get to talk about my experience with phil and christine, and to swim and play take two and watch movies with kids that felt like my own sibings. and yet, maybe it was the right amount of time, because we felt like family but hadn't started getting on each other's nerves yet...

i got home the day before new year's eve, which i wanted to spend with my swazi family since i missed out on christmas with them. new year's eve was busy: i woke up at 5:30 to run before the heat of the day set in. however, when i got back, i spent 3hours weeding the corn field with my family in blistering heat. thank goodness for that ridiculous straw hat they made me wear, which protected me from major sunburn. after a well-deserved tea break, i washed sheets and towels - which is quite a workout when you're doing it by hand! then we went to bring my other sister home for the holidays. she's been working for the past few months at a butcher's shop in eteni, about 30 min away. on the way home, we stopped to pick up ingredients for the new year's feast.

my part in this extravaganza was to bake three cakes and a tin of cupcakes. ever since my family discovered the delights of the hollinger-janzen wacky cake (see previous blog posting about wandile's birthday), they've been asking for more. so the wood stove got going at about 5:30, and when the firecrackers started going off at midnight, i was still writing "happy new year 2008" with icing squeezed from a plastic bag. the extended time frame was mostly due to the fact that we had one cake pan and three cakes to make, so there was a bit of a relay effect where we had to wait for cakes to cool and be evicted from the pan before the next one could go into the oven. still, it was good i had something to occupy myself with, because otherwise i might not have made it to midnight!

so in the first moments of 2008, the kids and i rushed outside to ooh and ahh over the bursts and sparkles decorating the hillside. then we welcomed in the new year with a midnight prayer service. the big even of new year's day was a huge feast, involving fried chicken, porridge, 5 kinds of salad, and trifle for dessert. i was so happy to see veggies that i filled up my plate with salad, while my astonished family couldn't believe that wasn't having any porridge. according to a swazi, you haven't really eaten if you haven't had liphalishi!



i also had a chance to do some journaling and reflecting on new year's day, which was very appropriate. this feels like a significant marker in my time here, and it's an opportunity for an emotional and mental turning point. it was good to kind of assess the situation and begin to figure out how to make the most of my remaining months here.

so: there you have my holiday season. coming soon... pictures to illustrate the festivities!