Jordan Meyer

I never really thought much about roads when I was back in the States. They enabled me to get from one place to another, but I really didn't think much about their role in society. Living here in Swaziland has certainly given me a different perspective on roads and their significance within the African community.

Swaziland roads are actually very drivable for the most part, with large freeways that are in relatively good shape. Some joke that the King has spent so much on roads because he needs somewhere to drive all of his Mercedes, but whatever the reason, Swaziland has some of the best transportation in the region. That said, while the Mbabane roads and highways are generally in good condition, road quality drops off pretty quickly as you get away from major cities. Long stretches of dirt roads connect most of the rural areas, and this is where you get a glimpse of what life is really like for most Swazis.

I still find it very strange to drive down very long dirt roads. Back home, these stretches of gravel or packed earth are usually temporary, reserved for the last half mile of your trip. On my way to Ponto D'Ouro a few weeks ago, we were on a dirt road for about two hours, and after a while I developed an unsettled feeling that I couldn't quite place. Finally I realized that this was really a feeling of continual expectation.....it felt like we should be arriving at our destination at any moment, even though I knew we had several hours left in the car. My sub-conscience had been trained that dirt roads signify the end of a journey, but to most Africans, this is just part of life.

When you come upon a small village 1.5 hours into a dirt road, you get a real sense of what it is like living on the outskirts of civilization. Here, the road takes on a different function. Almost no one has cars, so the road is generally used for walking. Public transport (kombis) may come by a few times a day, but other than that, it might take hours to sell maize to the next village. In these villages, the roads also function as the local community center. People gather around to talk, catch up on news, or just sit under a tree and watch the passers-by. For younger kids, most of whom have probably never seen a television, the road is a source of entertainment. I'll never get tired of driving through these villages and waving to the groups of children. Most of the kids give a  huge smile and wave back enthusiastically, as if I just made their afternoon. Its great.
   
Roads also serve as a communal rest stop. If there was a national Swazi pastime, it would be peeing on the side of the road. Its almost impossible to drive down the highway without seeing a man on the shoulder of the road relieving himself. People don't seem to be worried that they will get caught by the police... probably because the police are the largest perpetrators. Some people have even developed a roadside urination game, where you get a different amount of points depending on what you see (1 point for seeing the man, 3 points for seeing the stream... you get the point).

As I mentioned before, most of the roads are pretty good around here, but if you get a little bit off the beaten path, you start to get into pothole territory. I saw a sign the other day that said "Potholes Next 60 Kilometers" and it didn't seem that unusual. Depending on the destination, a significant portion of the drive time may be spent zig-zagging around large craters in the asphalt. A friend here told me that that there is a saying here in africa that goes "In the USA, when you see a car swerving all over the road you know that the driver is drunk... in Africa, you assume the driver is drunk if he is driving in a straight line"

Potholes aren't the only road hazards one has to watch out for. Animals on the road are actually one of most common causes of accidents in this region. Cows are by far the most common, and the most dangerous, but I've also had to swerve away from goats, sheep, dogs, chickens, and even the occasional monkey. In some areas, there are much larger things that you need to worry about (See picture below)

I finally got my act together and made something out of all the video clips I took in Venezuela. Enjoy!

Venezuela 2009 - The Gringo Chronicles from Jordan Meyer on Vimeo.

It was a good birthday. For starters, I was in South Africa....never had a birthday there before (to my knowledge at least). I was in Johannesburg as a member of the Mbabane Mbananas, the first ever Swaziland ultimate frisbee team to compete at the Southern African Ultimate Frisbee Championships. What we lacked in experience we certainly made up for in enthusiasm and flair (as you can see from the picture, I played an entire game with my birthday crown). Against all odds, we actually managed to win two out of five games and ended up 5th out of 8 in the tournament.
    After Saturday's games, some of us went to a large, outdoor, music festival where we heard Freshly Ground, one of the more popular South African bands. Post-concert activities included bar hopping and one "flaming lamborghini" (don't ask... i don't know what was in it either, but it was awful).

It has also been a big week for me at work. On Tuesday, my partner and I gave an interim presentation to the Steering Committee where we discussed the potential of the Swaziland dairy and sorghum industries. In short, Dairy seems to have some promise if farmers get some help.... sorghum on the other hand doesn't really look like it has much of a chance. In the next phase of work, we'll be looking at beef, cassava, and vegetable oils, as well as a section where we discuss each crop and how it compares to growing sugar (the dominant crop throughout most of Swaziland). If anyone wants to hear more about either industry, please let me know because I have plenty of info.
   
    In addition to work as usual, I have picked up a few odd-jobs that have been keeping me busy. When living in a third world country, all your skills which may be average to mediocre back in the states are suddenly first-class... kinda like being a small fish in an even smaller pond... Keeping that in mind, this monday I had my first published article in the Swazi Observer, one of two nationally distributed papers here in Swaziland. TNS has a weekly business column in the paper and I wrote a basic "intro to pricing your product". Over the next few weeks I will probably have other opportunities to write about business basics so I have to figure out some additional topics that might be useful to a small business owner or first time entrepreneur.

I have also managed to get a few gigs as a product photographer. My first project was taking pictures for Eswatini, a jam and chutney maker here in town. I have also started taking pictures for 4-5 hand-craft companies that are putting together a corporate catalogue. Product photography is actually much harder than I thought it would be. Picking the right backgrounds, getting the lighting right, and even choosing the angle you are going to shoot from all make a big difference in the final output. I'm certainly getting good experience that will come in handy if I ever want to do this down the road, and I also get to see all the best hand-crafted items from around Swaziland.

    I know I promised before that I would write about some cultural observations. I'm half way through writing another post that I hope to get up this week, so stay tuned. Hope all is well back home, and let me know if you have any questions or would like me to cover specific topics here on the blog. Comments are always welcome.

I threw together a few video clips I took from the Reed Dance to give you a better feel for what it was like. I apologize in advance for the shaky hand-held footage. I would have put up a higher resolution version, but it already took half an hour to upload this one, so that will have to wait.

Swazi Reed Dance from Jordan Meyer on Vimeo.

I've now been in Swaziland for a little over a month. Time is flying by, and I have been trying to make the most out of what this region has to offer. Most week nights here are pretty relaxed. I have the time to go to the gym, play guitar, make dinner, read, write, etc. We have weekly dinners with all the VolCons, and Ultimate Frisbee is on Wednesday night. Weekends, on the other hand, have been very fast paced and exciting. Over the past 3 weeks, I have been able to explore 4 different countries (including swaziland), and I thought I would share a little bit about these experiences: 

Swaziland: Our Swazi weekend started off with an overnight trip to the Mkhaya Rare Game Reserve down in the lowveld. We stayed in a lovely thatched roof, open-air room and went on 3 game drives and a hike. We saw almost everything the park had to offer, including rhino, elephants, giraffes, hippos, zebras, and a bunch of little guinea fowl that had little feather pompadours.

The afternoon hike in the reserve was the most exciting part of the trip. At first we didn't see anything at all... we were just trudging around in the mid-day heat. Our guide was very nice, but didn't say all that much, so it felt like we were aimlessly wandering around the reserve. At the time, I wasn't really convinced that strolling around the game reserve was all that good of an idea... after getting a fir
st-hand look at a rhino during the morning game drive I thought that it would probably be best to avoid face to face encounters. Thats why when our guide stopped, cupped his hand to his ear to listen, then started quickly jogging in the other direction, we were all quick to follow his lead. We scrambled around the side of the lagoon just in time to see 15-20 elephants emerge from the bush for an afternoon romp in the pool. The elephants, especially the younger ones, looked like they were having a great time splashing and climbing all over each other in the water. There were also two rhinos, a mother and her baby, hanging out in the shallows trying to cool off. We watched for quite a while before quietly backing away and heading towards camp.

That monday was a national holiday for the Umhlanga Reed Dance, a celebration where the King has the option of choosing a new wife (I think he's up to ~14 now... a far cry from his father, who had ~80). The dance is held in a small stadium at one of the King's palaces and involves women from all over the country. I knew the gist of what was going to happen, but I didn't quite realize the scale of the whole operation. All week long, truck loads of women (literally) were shipped to the festival grounds. By the time of the ceremony, 80K half naked women were parading in front of the king. Each village had its own uniform and a unique dance set to the official reed dance jingle (sung on loop for most of the 4 hour ceremony).
    While most people watched from the bleachers, security was relaxed enough that I could actually get down on the field to take pictures. I was amazed at how close I was able to get to the King, who jogged around a group of women standing 20 yards from me (that said, I guess if you take into account the actual number of people that Mswati governs it would really be the same as getting within 20 yards of the mayor of Berkeley). One unexpected consequence of the relaxed security was that all of the Swazi princesses were swarmed by Taiwanese bystanders. For various reasons, Taiwan has close diplomatic relations with Swaziland and there is actually a sizable representation here. I believe that every Taiwanese ex-pat in the country was present at the Reed Dance and the majority of their time was spent taking pictures of half naked swazi princesses. It was like some sort of bizarre combinatorics problem... how many different permutations can you have with each of the 40 princesses? I felt embarrassed watching it from the stands... first three of them would take a picture with one princess, then they would do individual shots with her, then switch cameras, then one person on each side, then one would want another solo picture with the princess because he forgot to give her bunny ears in the first solo shot (i kid you not).... it was amazing. The princesses were certainly more patient than I would have been, and didn't even brandish their ceremonial machetes that they were toting around.

Overall, the event was very interesting and included 3-4 hours of parading/dancing, 160,000 breasts, a brief jog by the King, several unintelligible announcements in siswati, and 4,000 repetitions of the official reed dance song. I don't know if I need to see it again, but I am glad to have witnessed such a unique cultural occurrence.

Lesotho and South Africa: The next weekend was also a three day weekend, so the VolCons decided to take advantage of the extra day to do a longer trip to the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa.
    We decided to dedicate our first day in the Drakensbergs to a hostel-led tour of Lesotho, a small independent kingdom which is completely enclosed by South Africa. Lesotho holds the record of the "highest country in the world" because the lowest point in the country is higher than any other country's lowest point. Paved roads stopped as soon as we crossed the mountainous South African border and it was immediately clear that Lesotho is a very poor country. The Village consisted of a loose confederation of thatched-roof huts and the grassy mountain landscape was punctuated by the most beautiful pink cherry blossoms and electric green weeping willows (all in full bloom... remember, its the beginning of spring here).
    I usually have a bit of difficulty with structured village tours. On one hand, it enables you to experience many things that would otherwise be missed (talk with the grade school teacher, drink home-made beer, taste home-cooked food, learn regional history, etc.). On the other hand, I felt a little weird about showing up in one of the poorest countries in the world with two vans full of white people with expensive cameras. However, in the end, I wad glad that we took the tour. The village was certainly "authentic" and the entire experience was very eye-opening. I particularly enjoyed meeting some of the locals when we went to get the traditional maize beer (beer is a very loose term for what could also be called a sour-alcoholic-mashed-up-corn-smoothie). We played with some of the local kids there and witnessed a dance party in the small, dung-floored, thatched-roof hut. While the signs of poverty were all around, these people seemed happy and it was enlightening to see the simplicity of their culture.
The next day, two other VolCons and I embarked on the hike to the top of Cathedral Peak.  The hike is usually about 19km with a vertical ascent of 1500m (close to 1 mile), but our trip was probably closer to 25km after getting lost twice (the picture to the left was taken when we were already 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through the hike). While the hike was one of the most difficult treks I have ever made, the scenery was absolutely stunning... high jagged peaks, rolling grassy hills, and spectacular views of the valley kept me climbing up the near-vertical slopes. Unfortunately, the burning of the fields in spring creates a thick haze which made it very hard to get a clean photograph, so I don't have any pictures that really capture the feel of being on the top of that peak.

Mozambique:  Last weekend a group of us went to Mozambique for a friendly scrimmage with their ultimate frisbee squad. This Blog post is already way too long, and I am going to return to "Moz" in two weeks time, so I will just say that we had a great time in Maputo and I am looking forward to returning for more adventure.