Day 1

It’s taken me a few days to get over jet-lag & to get used to being back in Africa, but the first day made me jump right into the deep end instead of wading in over a few days! Here’s just an abbreviated time line:

2:30am - wake up from jet lag & have a great early prayer time
4:30am - get up
6:30am - leave Johannesburg
8:30am - stop for breakfast at a wild west/Indian themed restaurant in a gas station with rhinos out back
11:34am - see billboard that advertises fencing that is made by 97% Swazi men
11:45am - get a little too close to a bus as we head into Manzini
11:46am - realize the driver in the other bus was coming close to try to warn us of the protests downtown (it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad)
11:47am - hold on as our large van & FULL trailer make a u-turn on a 4 lane highway over a raised median
11:55am - praise God for the bus driver who warned us about the protests as we see another bus with its windshield smashed in
12:20pm - stop at an Italian restaurant for lunch & to find out what’s going on
1:45pm - run into a guy from California who tries to sell us the fencing that’s made by 97% Swazis - I guess he’s the other 3%?
2:15pm - go around town & enter on the back roads to avoid downtown
2:45pm - drop of team of no-longer strangers that I traveled with from Atlanta
3:15pm - go with Elliott to drop off the van & pick up the car I will be driving (and say a prayer that I remember how to drive in Swaziland...& find myself quoting Home Alone “This is it, don’t get scared now!”)
3:30pm - take car downtown (it was safe for those who aren’t in vans) to get fixed tire back on & put spare in trunk
3:45pm - watch several grown Swazi men stand in a pick up truck to see the protests going on over a wall in the next block
4:10pm - Elliott says “you’re in Africa now, you must check the car often” and shows me the quirks of the car I will be driving
4:34pm - fill car with petrol & drive the back way out of town & down to Nsoko (dodging people, cows, goats & sugar cane trucks along the way)
5:19pm - saw hand pedaled tricycle on side of the road
5:45pm - drove through police checkpoint, thankful that I didn’t have to stop
6:02pm - arrive at the team house to meet the 6 strangers I will be living with for the next week
6:45pm - joined them to eat breakfast for dinner
7:45pm - went to room to journal & read before bed
8:05pm - new roommate comes to talk
8:30pm - back to journaling
9:15pm - fall asleep convincing myself that I really am in Africa & everything did just happen in less than 24 hours