Saturday, September 21st meeting with Sipho and off to Swaziland

Wednesday we had to stay in our flat as a repairman came to do some work at the flat. We got a lot done in our office. There was a lot of paperwork to get caught up on.

Thursday we met Sipho Duma, our Hillcrest Stake PA Director for lunch at Oscars in Hillcrest, right across the street from the chapel. Sipho was concerned about the lack of response from people he tries to contact, especially now as he deals with the Elder Bednar visit. We discussed this and many more public affairs things that are coming up. I think he felt better after the meeting. He is such a great person. We've become quite fond of him and will miss him when we go to Johannesburg.

Friday was washing clothes and getting packed for our Swaziland trip on Saturday. We also stopped by the mission office to pick up mail for Swaziland and Richard's Bay. This is the only way of getting mail to these areas, as the post office is not great here and Swaziland is worse.

Saturday we loaded the car and headed for Swaziland. We had to meet with Jerome, our Swaziland National PA Director, the District President and join Murdocks for a dinner meeting Tuesday with opinion leaders to try and solve issues with joining the Council of Churches and Immigration problems. We had hoped to see some big game on our way this time, but once again, nothing. We didn't even see pigs on this trip like we did last time...only cows. I remembered my Sister's birthday and made a mental note to get the silver earrings I saw in Swaziland the last time I was there. We only trust mailing small items to the U.S. If we put it in an envelope, it might get there.

It rained all the way to Swaziland. Going through the border at Swaziland is always interesting. The South Africa side is very new, a nice building, clean and people are friendly. We cross the border and the building is old, dirty and the people are not as nice or efficient. The rest of Swaziland is not this way, just the border for some reason. We always have to pay R50 road tax to take our car into the country, but the roads in Swaziland don't seem to be reaping those rewards. Compared to South Africa, the roads are pretty bad and in need of repair. On this 7-hour trip to Swazi, we pass lots of sugar cane fields and sometimes an old rusted truck full of sugar cane gets in front of you. I took this photo through the front window of the car during the rain, but it's still a pretty good picture. As you can see, it is a two lane highway into Swaziland and pretty much that way until you get into town, which is not for a few hours yet.

The areas we pass through are pretty poor, which makes sense when you know that 80% of the people live below the poverty level. Once again, you wouldn't know it as they seem happy, but we deal with a lot of members of the Church and they really are happier than most.

These are the sugar cane fields in this photo. There is a huge sugar factory. As you drive through these areas you can see the smoke coming from the smoke stack for miles. Sometimes it smells like burnt sugar, but we didn't smell anything this time.


There is mostly dirt on each side of the road, when there are not sugar cane fields. Homes here consist of concrete houses with some round dwellings with thatched roofs. There seem to be a lot of abandoned buildings. I wonder why no one uses them??? They seem better than some of the homes people are living in, as you can see from the photo below.






Some areas are worse than others, but between the border and the city which is several hundred kilometres away, it is mostly poor areas like these. The schools we can see from the road are mostly rundown and lacking anything but a building...no auditoriums, libraries or sports facilities here...no heating or cooling either, perhaps not even lights because windows suffice. The exception is near the Sugar Mill in Big Bend where the area is quite green and the schools seem to be nicer along with the homes.



I can't explain the fondness we have for Swaziland, but we both do. We always look forward to being there and visiting the senior couple, Lombardis while we are there. I think the fact that the countryside reminds us of Phoenix might have something to do with it. We saw lots of cactus along the way and some mountains in the distance that remind us of Arizona.

Summerfields Botanical Garden Hotel

We got in about 4:00 pm. We checked into Summerfield Hotel again. It seems to be the place everyone from the church stays when visiting Swaziland. We got there, unpacked and immediately found out we could not connect to internet. We called the front desk and they said that the room we were in did not have very good reception, so they changed us to the unit next door where they said it was better. I had just hung everything up, so had to clumsily take things over there, but they were right and it did work better in that unit. We connected with the Lombardis and they asked us to go to a Chinese Restaurant close by their house and we would meet up with the Sutherland couple who were also visiting Swaziland regarding Institute and Seminary.

We met them at the restaurant. It was cold and rainy...Nomvula strikes again. I was given that name because I supposedly brought rain to Swaziland. Now, several months later we go there again and the day we leave it is raining and basically rained through Sunday night. The food was good and had a very large lazy susan in the middle, so we ordered a lot of different entrees and then just kept spinning the wheel to try all the different meals. Yummmm.. They didn't have any sweet and sour sauce to dip my eggroll in. That seemed weird, but all was good.

Elder Kyle was tired from all that driving, so we went back to the hotel and went to sleep, with plans to meet the other couples at the Mbabane ward the next day, where we also had a meeting with Jerome and the District President after the block.

Tomorrow will be a busy day...good night.