Taking Stock

I’m writing this curled up on a coach seat somewhere between Sydney and Canberra. I am still sometimes struck by the strangeness of being back in Australia – sometimes people ask me how I find my frequent commute between Canberra and Sydney - travelling by bus?!  Not driving? Not flying?  The indignity! The discomfort!

Could be worse.  At least there’re no chickens (alive or dangerously consumed days after death).

By far the worse bus trip I’ve endured was last July in Tanzania, on a rickety retired Japanese passenger bus from the 80s, pale and sweating from the dodgy chicken twisting my intestines, windows shut, squashed amongst dozens of other passengers, and the front of the dalla dalla filled with squawking flapping chickens.

This is bliss by comparison.  I’ll arrive in Canberra at 5.30pm, and then I’ll walk home in the rapidly deepening dusk to my apartment.  That also is a strange luxury compared to the constraints on my movements after dark the last time I updated this blog.

It has been quite a while.

I have no hope of giving a full account of everything that has happened since.  I won’t try.

I left Swaziland in mid-July 2011 and met my then-boyfriend in Jo’burg.  We travelled East Africa for a month – starting in Zanzibar, then Dar es Salaam up to Arusha, safari across the Serengeti then to Mwanza, an overnight passenger ship to Bukobo, and a long bus ride up to Kampala.  Uganda was glorious, and I hope very much to spend more time there and do that country justice.  Brief side trips to the DRC (Parc National des Volcans) and Juba, a few days paddling a kayak in the white water rapids of the Nile (mostly spent hanging upside down in the river trying to learn to eskimo roll), and then home.

In late August 2011 I moved to Canberra to work for Justice Hayne of the High Court of Australia.  I’ve been living in Canberra since, and travelling to Sydney regularly to see friends and family.  I’m now down to my last month in Canberra before finishing my associateship and moving back to Sydney… and then moving overseas.

Along the way I’ve lost the boyfriend (there’s an amazing story of Hollywood-esque deception, intrigue and betrayal that goes with that statement, but it’s a bit last year’s season), engaged in some serious Personal Growth, begun to question my desire to enter commercial legal practice, and (I hope) have put in place the first stepping stones towards building the legal career I want – using law in the pursuit of justice, using law where it is needed most.

The next step for me is Harvard Law School, where I will be studying for the LLM (Masters in Law).  I will most likely do a doctorate after that, either with Harvard or with an Australian university.  

I leave Australia on 25 July 2012, and once again my plan is to use this blog as my means of mass communication with the folks back home, as well as a place for me to explore my thoughts on and responses to the brave new world of the United States.

I can’t wait.

There’s a glorious sunset out the window and we are almost in Canberra.  I will sign out here. 

Choosing my religion - or Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Religion is a big deal here. With the exception of a handful of Chinese and Indian migrants, pretty much the entire population is devoutly Christian, of some denomination or another. The particulars of your faith don’t seem to matter too much, so long as you have faith. Christianity in Swaziland is a very broad church, and many good churchgoing Swazis will simultaneously believe in the Resurrection and in muthi (pronounce: moo-tee), which is voodoo or black magic. (It reminds me of a passage in North and South, in which a peasant woman in 1850s England spends Sunday morning in church and Sunday afternoon catching a small animal and skinning it alive as part of a protective spell.)

And there are none of our Western taboos about discussing religion openly – in public, in the workplace, with strangers. On my first Sunday morning in Swaziland, by the time I’d walked from my house to the combi station, I’d been approached by a Zionist, a Rastafarian and a Mormon, all of whom wanted to explain their religion to me and how it was the right way. (The Rastafarians are my favourite; along with having a lovely universalist approach to religion, the communion in Swaziland is exceptionally good.)

I’ve been asked numerous times now by colleagues at work, cashiers in shops, random people in the markets and streets… where do I go to church? do I go to church? am I Christian?

Things I miss from home (a moment of self-indulgence)

1. Bourke St Bakery fig sourdough, proper milk, sushi, really good coffee, Ocello cheeses and Thai food.

2. I miss the sea and the harbour. I miss the smell of the ocean all through Sydney.

3. Efficient and functioning office equipment – computers, printers, internal networks, internet connections. Access to LexisNexis and HeinOnline for research. You don’t realise how smoothly everything just works in a place like Mallesons till you go somewhere where it really doesn’t.

4. Walking down the street and being completely anonymous and unspectacular. Being able to be private in public.

5. Walking down the street and not having to scan other people constantly for unusual and potentially threatening behaviour.

6. Walking about at night time altogether.

7. I miss picking up a phone and calling one of my friends or my Mum or my Dad or one of my siblings if I want to, just to hear what’s happening. I miss my sisters, I miss my brothers, I miss big family dinners with the whole family and I missed my little brother’s 18^th birthday party.

Random excellent things about Swaziland # 732

Stopping by the Mbabane Pick'n'Pay for some routine grocery shopping, discover they're selling fresh honey direct from the hive, deliciously oozing out of the honeycomb. Yum.... that's going on top of my porridge tomorrow morning.

The best weekend ever had in Swaziland

Any negative impression of Swaziland created by the description of my first full weekend needs to be (and was) countered quickly. Let me describe to you my second full weekend (May 21/22), which was – till lately! – the best weekend ever had in Swaziland. (This weekend just past seriously rivals it; I really need to get up to date with my blog entries!)

And let me show you a picture or two of a second Eden.

This is Malandela’s, which is where the famous music and theatre venue House on Fire is located. I first visited the week before Bushfire, an annual African music festival. It is impossible to convey the beauty and the peace of this place. It is sacred soil, holy, there is no other way to describe it.

When you come to Swaziland (you must come, really you must), stay at the bed and breakfast here in the Malkerns. If I weren’t working all the way in Mbabane – and if I weren’t on a volunteer’s non-existent income – I’d be living here.

Friday

The best weekend Swaziland has ever produced began inauspiciously.

Would the Real Africa please stand up

The other day, I was in a combi with six young McKinsey employees all currently based in Jo’burg. They were in Swaziland on a weekend trip, and we were all on our way to the Great River Usutu for some white water rafting.

One was South African, another was Zimbabwean, a third was Danish Canadian, a fourth was Kenyan, a fifth was American and the sixth was from Holland. (I was pleased to add one Australian to the multicultural mix.)

Brian was the Kenyan. Among his (no doubt numerous) claims to fame is that he was a childhood advertising star in Kenya, most famous for singing a jingle about sunflower seed oil.

In which Rebecca is taught a few (economic) home truths

This post is about some unpleasant lessons I learned during my first full weekend in Swaziland (almost four weeks ago now) - in summary, that the poverty line is a barrier more brutal than the Berlin Wall, and that I really shouldn't go walking about by myself at dusk...