Week 10

Monday we had off work because of the reed dance. A tradition in the Swazi culture where the virgin girls between the ages of 12-20 I believe come and dance in their traditional dress (which consists of a skirt type thing and no tops but they did have scarfs and other material that were around their necks) before the King and then the King picks a wife. Myself and a few others went to watch this tradition. It was a neat and interesting experience for sure. Something you really only need to go to once though. The girl's started out by parading in and dancing. Then, after a long while, the King came in with the princes and danced around and looked at the girls. Then, normally the King will pick a wife but due to international influences he has not picked a new wife in a few years. It was cool to see some of Swaziland's traditions and culture. Tuesday and Wednesday I worked with Alban and on Wednesday we had a meeting with the houseparents of the boy's homes to go over new policies that are being put into place at the boy's homes because of government regulations. It went well and they seemed to understand what needed to be done. Also, on Wednesday two new volunteer guys from Germany arrived. They are staying a year. We had a nice dinner with them. It will be nice to have a few more bodies living in the Palace (what we call our volunteer house. It's not really anything close to a palace though! Haha). Now there are four of us with occasional visitors making us sometimes 5 or 6. It is nice having a few more bodies in the home because then it's not as quiet and I have already met so many cool people from so many different places and am learning so much about different cultures, not just the Swazi culture. Thursday, was Swaziland's Independence day so we had the day off of work as well. It has been rainy here all week so Thursday we relaxed and didn't do a whole lot. Then on Friday, I took the new volunteers around to the different boys homes and showed them around Manzini. It was a nice day! Over the weekend our power went out and so we spent a good amount of time in the dark and learned a lot about how much we rely on electricity for so many things...but more on that in my next blog!