Well that didn't work out quite as planned

My lovely night under the stars wasn't quite as profound as I'd hoped. I went with Mthunzi, the guy who runs this place, to pick up some beer from the local store. The local store turned out to be a 2 room shack with no signs of any kind. We knocked on the back door and a woman with 3 kids let us in, and I paid her for 12 large bottles of beer for the whole group.

Seeing the way people live here, without running water and using oil lamps for light (no flashlights) feels quaint and cozy. There's novelty value as a tourist. But I'm not sure I'd feel the same way if it wasn't a choice I was making.

So last night we sat around the camp fire and ate mealie pap and boiled vegetables (nothing very good unfortunately, Africa hasn't been too impressive food wise so far), and I got progressively drunker through the evening. When it came time for bed, I went to the car and got some extra sweaters to keep me warm out in the field (it's cold up in them there mountains), and took all the stuff out of my pockets so it wouldn't bug me while I slept. Including the car keys, which I left in the car after I closed the trunk.

DOH!

I tried for half an hour or so to find ways to break into the car, and eventually gave up and decided to tackle it in the morning. The stars were beautiful, it should have been one of the coolest places I've ever slept, but I missed it because I was so mad at myself for locking the keys in the car.

In the morning, I told everyone what I'd done, and upon daylight examination we discovered that one of the back windows was open a crack. The rental car is pretty cheap, and it doesn't have electric windows, so we found some metal wire and slid it through the crack and hooked the handle for the window. We managed to wind the window down, unlock the door and retrieve the keys. Phew!

That put me back in a good mood. Mthunzi took Laura and I on a hike through the mountains, which took maybe 4 or 5 hours. This country is so beautiful, I'm considering coming back to Mthunzi's in September and spending a few weeks here.

We hiked through the marajuana plantation and through several little subsistence farms. after a few hours we reached a waterfall that goes all the way down the mountain. In Swaz' there's a water parasite that can make Westerners quite sick but Mthunzi and I stripped down to our shorts and went under the waterfall anyway.

We hiked back to the village and I gave one of Mthunzi's brother's a guitar lesson. I wanted to show him slide guitar but I don't have a slide, and there were no bottles or anything nearby, so I took out my umbrella (I keep it in the guitar case as it's too big for the suitcase) and taught Mngisi slide guitar using an open umbrella on a mountain top.

Mthunzi's family joined us for dinner around the campfire. They live traditional Swazi lives in cramped little huts near to where we were staying, and they don't speak much English. One of the young girls started humming something and Laura recognized it and asked what it was. It was the latest Gwen Stafani song!

There are lots of weird things like that. You can be on top of a mountain in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in one of the poorest countries on earth, hanging out with traditional rural African people, and suddenly Mthunzi's cellphone will ring. It's pretty bizarre.

Impoverished Africa skipped the whole land line thing. You either have a cell phone, or no phone, as it's cheaper to setup cellular networks around here than it is to install land lines. And a lot of people here have battery powered radios.

One more night at this wonderful little place then it's back to Pretoria to see De Wet and Karinda before I fly to Uganda. G'night!