SWAZILAND

After Etosha National Park we left Namibia and took off for Johannesburg. And soon after that Phil and Jonah left to fly back home. Originally I had planned on heading straight to Cape Town when I got back to South Africa, but instead decided to join some friends on a weekend road trip to Swaziland. Sheela, Fungai, and Dan are all here from Harvard Business School working on summer internships, and the four of us left Joburg on a Friday evening and hit the road to Mbabane. We met our friend Jed when we got there, and his friend Paul put us up for the weekend. Friends of friends of friends! On Saturday Paul took us out to visit one of his friends, a chief, who is also the ambassador to Kuwait. Paul had just given a cow to the chief as a gift, and we were all invited out to partake in an afternoon celebration. The trip out to the chiefdom was beautiful; the two-hour drive on dirt roads took us up and over mountains, through valleys, and past small villages. It was a great tour of rural Swaziland. As soon as we arrived, the chief was quick to invite us into his home for some drinks. The picture on the bottom left is of Jed drinking homemade fermented sorghum liquor out of a big black gourd. It was tasty! And outside there was a group of young guys who were in charge of slaughtering a goat for the feast – they were excited to pose for a photo. We actually didn’t stay too long since Paul was having a barbeque back at his place, but it was a fun afternoon, and an overall great weekend in Swaziland.