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...
Lessons learned on Saturday
Saturday 14 May marked the end of my first week in Swaziland. The weekend began very auspiciously.
I had then passed seven nights in Mbabane, and no longer was jumping at shadows or noises in the night.
When daylight came, I would confidently stride down the street, wave back to the waving small children, nod a politely distant kusile to the men* and smile a warmer ‘Yebo. Unjani make?’ to the women.
* By now I had learned that the reason I’d been having such trouble with the men was that I had thought that it was a serious faux pas to ignore someone who greeted you. Men were approaching me all the time, and I thought I had to greet them back. So, I was accepting interactions that most Swazi women would not accept, and then finding myself struggling to shake the men afterwards. It doesn’t help that the unemployment rate for men aged 18-25 is about 50%, so quite a lot of them really don’t have anything more interesting to do than follow a white woman around all day.
On my way into town, I would walk past the corner market store, where bogogo (grandmas) sell sweets and fruits, and where men roast ears of maize over open fires in the afternoon. A man who sits with one gogo would call out “Hi Rose!” as I walked past – I’d give a friendly wave but keep walking.
I knew now that when an old man examined me on the street and slowly muttered “um-lu-ngu” as he passed, that he was making an observational comment about my race, matter of fact like gweilo rather than disparaging like gringo. Perhaps he was short-sighted and couldn’t tell if I was umlungu or albino till he got close. There are probably as many albinos as white people in Swaziland.
That Saturday, I was on my way to the opening of Yebo! Contemporary Art Gallery’s latest exhibition. Yebo! is a gallery dedicated to local Swazi artists working in painting and sculpture. It’s in Ezulwini Valley, which is about a 20 minute combi trip from Mbabane.
The Plaza entrance to the Mbabane bus station on a quiet Sunday morning. You can just see the edge of the market.
Now that I had been working in Mbabane for a week, I could confidently find my way through the market to the combi rack near the Plaza, greeting the market women sitting amongst cabbages carrots bananas beetroot apples spinach and bantering easily with the men – “Rose! Rosie!* Marry me!” – “Ncesi, bhuti, you are very handsome but my heart belongs to another!”
* Why did the men call me “Rose” all the time? I’d had some vague idea that it was a special term for a white girl – perhaps derived from “English rose”. (In retrospect that was quite an obscure reference and always unlikely.) A few days ago everything was illuminated. A girl asked me for my Swazi name. Before I answered she said that she would name me “Mbali”. - “What does ‘Mbali’ mean?” – “‘Rose’”, she said, “for a beautiful girl.” So it seems that “Mbali” or “Rose” when used by men fishing into the street is roughly the same as “Bella” in Italy. It explains a lot about my day in Manzini with Lwazi – I’d been wondering why so many men kept addressing her as “Mbali”!
I found the right combi without a hitch and took a seat at the back, squished in next to a nice old babe (“Ba-be”, means “father”). He rode in silence chewing on something or other for several minutes and then suddenly opened a laconic conversation. After the greetings he taught me a few more Swazi words. “’Uyaphi?’”
I look at him blankly.
In perfect English, “That means ‘where are you going?’”
“Oh! U-ya-phi. So… ngiyaphi kaEzulwini, kaYebo! Art Gallery.”
“Hmh. Ubayaphi? That means, ‘where are you coming from’?”
“Oh, just from home. In Mbabane.”
“No – where are you coming from. From before.”
“Oh, I see!... Ngibayaphi – is that right? – eAustralia.”
“Hmh. Siteshi! This is my stop. Hamba kahle.”
“Hamba kahle, babe. Ngiyabongakukubonga.”
*
I first heard of Yebo! Art Gallery and the fact of its gallery opening the day previous. There aren’t that many events on around Mbabane, so I figured, why not?
It was a good place – set in a beautiful location in Ezulwini Valley, which is a lush green area surrounded by rocky hills. Many of the Swazi artists lived on site, and a few were at work weaving at a loom or shaping clay. The rest were inside the gallery drinking wine and Swaziland’s national beer (Sibebe, for the curious, and it attracts far more patriotism than the flag).
I made friends with a nice lady from Zimbabwe and two ex-Peace Corp Americans and talked to local artists about the challenges of using paint in a cultural environment where pottery and craft have a hegemonic monopoly on the definition of 'art'. It was a topic that aroused great passion on their part.
I also met my first overtly gay Swazi, and suddenly became hyperaware of the conspicuous absence of gay Swazis from the social scene, as if for all this time a colour (or a rainbow!) had been missing from the picture. (Most gay-unfriendly countries have anti-sodomy laws on the books and ruthlessly enforce them, or have anti-sodomy laws on the books but don’t enforce them. Swaziland may be the only country in the world where sodomy is legal but the police sometimes decide to enforce heteronormativity anyway.)
A video camera was roaming about the room, and I’m embarrassed to admit that when it paused on me, I waved and shouted “Sawubona Swaziland!” It turned out to be a TV crew from Swaziland’s national news channel. I’ve been told that footage of me was broadcast to the nation the next evening (see above, there aren’t that many events on around Mbabane! And a lot of the actual news (eg, protests) doesn't get televised...).
*
I said goodbye to Yebo and my new friends around 4pm. It was still bright but I knew I had to head back to Mbabane well before dusk, so that I would have time to walk home from the bus rank.
The day started to deteriorate from that point.
Since I was close by, I thought I might quickly stop by the tourist trap of the Ezulwini Arts and Craft Market, just to see what was there.
A group of about 10 men were sprawled beneath a tree opposite the entrance, drinking. Drunk. They shouted out hello, I replied, they shouted out lewd comments, I ignored. I was a bit surprised though, there was a gogo sitting with some younger women just by the entrance to the market, and usually men have been more respectful in the presence of elders.
It was late in the day, and I was the only foreigner at the market. There was an eeriness about all these people assembled waiting for foreigners to come and throw money around, like a venus fly trap. I bought a couple of necklaces as presents for assorted sisters in one stall, and was about to head back to the road when a girl took my arm and insisted that I come into her stall and look. I didn't want anything, I barely had enough cash left to pay for the combi home and some milk for breakfast the next day. I said her work was beautiful, but I had already bought necklaces and I had to go, she begged me to take just one necklace, "Just 10 rand, sisi, just 10 rand, please", her fingers digging into my arm. I felt frightened by her eyes and her desperation, and the desire to get out of there was so strong that I bolted. Afterwards I felt ashamed and wished I'd just given her the money.
I passed the gauntlet of drunken men and returned to the highway. The sun was sinking fast by the time I hailed down a combi back to Mbabane, and it was dusk by the time I had bought my milk and was walking out of town back to my apartment.
There is a bridge over a river on the way out of town, and it is about 30 metres away from the Save The Children office. At about 5pm I was crossing over that bridge when a group of young men approached from the other direction.
One of them noticed me. “Hello lady.”
People on the street always greeted me, and men usually did it then tried to pick me up. “Yebo, bhuti. Unjani?”
He ignored the greeting. “Where are you coming from? Shopping?”
He had stopped in front of me, standing very close. The others had stopped walking too, and were gathered in a half circle around us. The wall of the bridge was on the other side.
This was odd but young men had been hassling me all week with no intention beyond trying to get my number. They were sometimes funny and charming, sometimes annoying and occasionally insulting, but they’d invariably been harmless. I started trying to move past him, he kept talking.
“Where are you going? Who are you staying with?”
“Home – ncesi. Angite, nginesignani.”
Him, rudely: “What are you talking about? Do you understand English?”
(Was my siSwati accent that bad?) “Yes. What do you want?”
“Something to eat, lady. I’m starving. I want some support.”
He was standing almost toe-to-toe with me. I tried to step back, but there was someone behind me. When I tried to move past him he shifted with me, still in my face, now using the words of beggary but spoken in tones of demand "Please make, mama, I need support."
I noticed that his white singlet had a brown stain across the front. Almost all the other Swazis I’ve seen, no matter how poor, wear clean clothes. The clothes might be astronomically too big or small, but they will be clean and well-presented. I had not met this kind of Swazi before.
I still don’t think I quite understood what was going on. There were still people walking past and the whole situation just seemed improbable.
A Rastafarian (I swear, they are God’s people) was passing by. Seeing what was happening, he tried to break it up by calling out a greeting to me, and reaching his hand out to me. The leader shoved him away violently. The group closed in again, he disappeared from view. That was when I got scared.
“What have you got? I need food, I need money.”
I tried to make eye contact with the people passing by on the street. One woman was walking by with her husband. She met my eyes then looked away and kept walking. I suppose there were five of them.
I think if I had been a bit less unintelligent about what was going on I would have just handed over my money and my milk (not sure if they’d have wanted the necklaces) and we’d all have been on our way. As it was I just stood there stupidly. I don’t think they had decided yet whether they were going to use violence – their actions were purely opportunistic and I doubt they’d planned ahead what would happen if I was passively uncooperative.
The stalemate suddenly broke when a skinny teenage girl appeared out of nowhere. She elbowed her way into the circle, took my hand in a firm grip, and elbowed past the leader and took me out. Perhaps she knew them and that was why they let her through.
She walked with me for 30 metres or so, me thanking her profusely, her embarrassed, and then we parted again. I almost ran the rest of the way home. The street had gone from friendly to menacing in a split second. The colour of my skin marked me out, and not for the last time, I walked down the street hating the constant weight of eyes on me and my constant insecurity of others’ motives.
I had never felt such relief as I clanged closed and locked the first of my many barriers to the Mbabane street.
On the bright side, I learned from that experience – and at zero physical or financial cost! – that I cannot walk home by myself on Saturday nights at 5pm, and that Saturdays are much worse than other days of the week for mugging.
Lessons learned on Sunday
On Sunday 15 May, I learned that I must be cautious of the smiles and apparent friendliness of people I befriend on the street or in shops. Determined not to be spooked by the events of the previous day, on the Sunday afternoon I went for a long walk. As I passed Mbabane Club, the parking attendant called out to me:
“Sisi! Do you want to dance? They are dancing in there. Come with me, I know the perfect partner for you.”
I had left the house with nothing but my house keys and my $20 Swazi mobile phone. Imbued with the freedom of the currently propertyless, I figured, why not? I followed him into a hall.
There were a group of maybe two dozen Swazi couples dancing the cha cha when I arrived. A young man called Justice was presented to me as a good partner.
He was tall, well-built and handsome, and for a moment I wondered if I had stumbled into a Swaziland remake of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.
The moment swiftly passed, as once the instruction began I remembered that when it comes to partnered dance, I am less gazelle and more galumph. I’m constitutionally incapable of being led, and I hate footwork. I spend all the time thinking about my feet and can’t feel the music.
Justice was admirably patient with my lack of natural grace and submissiveness, and taught me the basic steps for the cha cha, viennese waltz and then the samba.
Dusk began to approach and I said I had to go. He walked out with me and invited me to come again the following Sunday. He also said that he was a driver and out of work, and asked me if I could get him a job at my organisation. I explained that Save The Children doesn’t have the funds to employ drivers, we share a small number of cars and drive ourselves, but said that I would ask my colleagues and find out if they knew of any jobs available with other organisations. (I felt more comfortable after this request, as it seemed a sufficient explanation for why he'd been so patient with my poor dancing.) We swapped numbers on a friends basis so he could keep me posted on the dancing group’s sessions, and I walked home feeling very happy about the fantastic group I had stumbled upon that day and looking forward to returning the following Sunday. I decided I would do my best to find someone who employed drivers and badger them into employing him.
Later on that evening, Justice sent me a message saying it was great to meet me, and asking to meet up again the next day. I thought that was odd. I sent an arm’s length response, saying that I was busy at work all week but looked forward to seeing him the next Sunday.
He wrote back: Actually I just felt in LOVE with you. So if we could meet tomorrow after work to talk further.
My stomach sank. It was so patently false. (Particularly given my clumsiness on the dance floor; no dedicated dancer could tolerate that.) Why lie? It was demeaning. All my goodwill toward him evaporated instantly (although a sense of responsibility prompted me to ask around about drivers all the same – no luck). I messaged back a polite but very definite rebuff and removed Sunday dancing from my mental calendar.
I realised that from the point his friend led me over to him, he had been seeing me as a mark - a rich white girl that he hoped to get something out of, and in whom he had therefore invested time. The dancing group was so talented and with each other they were no doubt tight knit and loyal, but to them I was purely $US.
I can’t really hold it against him, though. He is a young man out of work in a country with no jobs and no social welfare. Where does he stay? How does he manage to eat? Poverty here is so real and so pervasive. For me to complain that it affects me too feels petulant and grossly lacking in perspective, a bit too reminiscent of the heiress from Common People.
And yet it is nevertheless distressing to be a permanent outsider, to be too tantalising as an image of money and a way out of poverty to be seen as a human being to the majority of the people around me. It means it is almost impossible to trust swathes of local people enough to form relationships. Like all women I’m conditioned to be cautious about men’s motives, but now I second guess the friendliness and warmth of girls too. There are some Swazi girls I've chatted to in shops and on the street, who have made offers of friendship and invited me to visit their family homesteads – unaccompanied, and in remote areas. It should be fine… it’s probably fine… but then it might not be. It's really sad to be unable to tell who to trust, and it's even sadder that poverty encourages its victims to behave like this.
I am beginning to understand how degrading poverty is of everyone around it - the rich as well as the poor.
I will sign off with a characteristically insightful comment (and quote) provided by an early listener to this story.
Engels would be proud of you - "Capitalism, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all ... idyllic relations ... and has left remaining no other connection between man and man than naked self-interest, than the callous cash nexus." … Except I think he was wrong and you are right – it’s not capitalism per se that makes sincere relations impossible; it’s wide disparities in capital distribution. I think the insolubleness of the problem you refer to is the single best argument in favour of aiming for some kind of restraint on economic inequality: people can't really be people together when they are separated by those kinds of barriers.
I think that’s true. For so long as some people in a society enjoy plenty and others are struggling to meet their most rudimentary needs, everyone’s humanity is denied.
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