In the Land of His Majesty

My first week in Joburg was marked by morning rituals: throwing off two or three blankets at 6:30 and shivering into work clothes, slurping instant oatmeal in the half-light of the grey dawn, catching the 67 bus at 7:40 on the dot, or at 7:43, or at 7:48, or whenever it finally decides to show.

The Ezulwini Valley is not so well-regulated. C., my roommate, and R., a legal intern at LRC, caught a backpacker bus down to the Kingdom of Swaziland on Saturday morning for a weekend of hostel living and "African" culture. Instead of walls and barbed-wire along the road, there are simple fences and acres of dry empty fields. Here and there, tourist traps like "Cultural Markets" and "Cultural Villages" dot the main road, where you can buy beautiful stone sculptures of elephants and giraffes for only ten dollars, or tacky earrings for two. Large, dilapidated signs point to expensive restaurants nestled among one-room schoolhouses and open marketplaces.

At Calabash, lunch with drinks can run $20-$30, more than twice a day's salary for those lucky enough to find jobs.

One strip mall provides the necessary modern conveniences: A Pick N' Pay supermarket, an internet cafe (dial-up, with Windows 2000), a pharmacy, a liquor store. One five-emalangeni (5E=80 cents) minibus trip down the road is a market with ripe avocados the size of a baby's face (3 emalangeni) and papaya quite a bit larger (5 E, or 10 E for the largest).

Not much farther down the two-lane road is one of Southern Africa's many game reserves -- this one well-trafficked enough that you can walk right up to a gazelle or warthog or ostrich and they will not walk away. The people and animals coexist in the way rocks and trees do -- without fences, without feeding or caretaking or exchange. The animals earn their rent by standing idly by, as we tourists pay $25 each for a sunset drive and a few pristine views at the top of the mountain.