in the search of great art

We left Swaziland and drove through Kwazulu-Natal to make it to Drakensberg Mountains on the border of the country of Lesotho (less-OO-toe), a country contained within South Africa.  The distinctions between this part of South Africa and the country from which we had just ripped ourselves away were few.  Men and woman walked in the hillsides and along the road with long, ten metre stacks of reeds and lumber piled on their heads.  Zulus and Swazis will really carry anything or their head: buckets of water, an axe, produce.  We passed flocks of people waiting at unmarked stops along the road, anticipating a minibus that would take them home for the day.  We passed rows of people walking along the road from the farm, from school, from cleaning, from the hills.  We waved and they would wave back with broad smiles, toothy and toothless.

We made it into Drakensberg after the sun set, and stayed in a cozy B&B where a lovely woman named Baby made us fried eggs, sausages, and thick slices of toast with butter and jam the next morning for breakfast.  She was a master knitter and sewer, and showed me the wool cardigans and cotton jumpers and button-down shirts she created to give to local workers who needed them.  Her designs were flawless and precise, practical and durable.  I was awed by her generosity and grassroots contribution to enable the struggling working class in South Africa (the unemployment rate here is 50%), a race and class she had probably been taught to fear and hate as a white girl in this country.

It was Wednesday.  We made it to a nature reserve called "Giant's Castle" after a two hour drive on thin strips of road through isolated township communities set in dry, grassy hills.  Once we got near the reserve, we spotted springbok and baboons from the road.  Megan and I 

hiked for over an hour by a clear gurgling stream and we finally arrived at the end of our long drives, our long walks, our aching anticipation.  We found ourselves in cool, dark caves with

 alizarin and ochre and white and umbre cows, people, and mythical characters painted on the walls by healers from over 5000 years ago.  The artists were San, or Bushmen, hunter-gather communities who blackened the roofs of these caves with fires for cooking and warmth, who surrounded their transitory space with images from their lives, dreams, and trances.  There were black people lined in a patterned row, a person handing another person a baby, three golden cows predominating one slab of rock.  There was a snake, people dancing, people running, people fighting.  My favourite was a half-man, half antelope with three antelope heads, and a tail with a line of white dots.  An image from a dream or an ancestor.  I had not expected to see work so precise, with each mark so carefully planned and permanent, and to see images so fully developed in imagination and spiritual maturity.  I have seen great art painted on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, but in its own way, this art painted on the walls of caves is just as irreversible and important for its testament to the human capacity to stretch itself in all ways to create something, to leave a mark of its existence in relation to something or someone supreme.

smoke and markets

The heat and the wind set the fields aflame. After crashing at a nearby hostel, Meg and I drove to a restaurant for dinner and we passed a patchquilt of hot white and yellow fires in the distance and right beside the tarmac. The electricity across the region was out because of the wind, and we took showers that night by candlelight. Lying in my bunk bed, nestled in a sleeping bag, I looked outside the window and watched tongues of flame engulf a banana tree then become quiet again, watched dots of light smolder in the adjacent hill. Showers of sparks would drift across the field like fireflies. Even when a tree on the hostel property exploded like a bomb in jets of gas and heat, I was not frightened. Everyone was calm, treated the fires as a common occurrence. Which it was.

I woke up smelling like smoke, and looked outside to see a heavy fog laying across the dull lit world. Except it wasn't fog. It was all smoke. Snow white ashes slid off the glass of our car door when we opened it. Gray ash settled in the corners of our eyes. Some fires still sputtered.

It was Monday. We drove through smoke and rows of pineapple and sugarcane. We set out to explore markets, and found beautiful communities with jacaranda trees and markets set in a tree house. The smoke eventually dissipated and we ventured farther and found another market made from planks of wood lined beside the highway. Each vendor had her own small square of space to sell her goods in this long row of grass baskets, patterned cloth, and beaded bracelets.  The markets were mostly run by women, and it seems that women across 

the world are masters at guilt trips.  Male vendors in Cape Town and Durban will entice you into their shop by showing you a nice carved elephant, a lovely necklace for the pretty lady, promising "a special price for a special customer!"  Women vendors, in contrast, entice 

you into their shops by calling from the entryway, "Please, sissy, just a look.  Just come in and look.  My children are hungry and no one is buying."  One woman even went as far as to say, "We depend on the white people.  The white people haven't been coming."  I felt awful to contribute to this cycle of dependency these woman have on white tourists, because I want them to be able to support their families through sustainable farming, responsible family planning, and selling their handicrafts at fair prices.  Instead, I bought a hand-stitched quilt for the equivalent of USD 25.  I bought a string of beads for 80 cents.  A grass basket with dark and light geometric patterns for USD 5.  And I negotiated down to these prices, insisted that anything higher was exploiting me, the rich white girl.

And then I met Lungile, a wise, beautiful, spirited woman running her own market stall.  We talked for over an hour sharing stories about life, being a woman, laughing with each other and eventually exchanging numbers and addresses.  When I returned to the market the next day 

to say goodbye before we left Swaziland, we talked again for three hours.  After developing these rich friendships with Dumisani, who named me "Fikile," meaning "just arrived" in SiSwati, and with Lungile, who calls me her "American sissy," it was difficult to pull ourselves away from Swaziland.  It is a country with many, many problems of poverty, political corruption, the proliferation of AIDs, and social and gender inequality.  News stories would suggest that the country is utterly helpless in the face of such dire crises, and even Steve Colbert would suggest in a recent skit that Swaziland (and Africa in general) lacks any moral code and Africans are unable to constrain their primitive carnal nature, as evidenced by the thousands of "bare-breasted virgins" parading before the king.  (Note: Reuters, as cited by Colbert, is incorrect in claiming that the Reed Dance was started in 1999 by King Mswati.  I conversed with women in their sixties who remembered their own experiences as maidens in the Reed Dance, and have discussed it and researched it further in my course on African Religion; it is indisputable that the Reed Dance is a very old tradition.  Furthermore, the breast as a sexual object is a Western perspective that is relatively new in African and especially Swazi culture.  In precolonial culture, the breast was not considered something sexy and shameful to be hidden away from the public eye.  It was a part of female reproduction and a symbol of fertility to own and be proud of, still visible in young Swazi women's comfort with their bodies in the Reed Dance.  Other cultures place equal sexual connotations on other body parts, like the ankles or the nape of the neck, and so we must remember that the breast, by nature, is not a sexual object; it is our culture that has defined it as such.  It is a mammary gland.  For my male readers: Really?  You find a mammary gland sexy?)  We cannot and should not pass judgments so quickly on people we have never met or seen, as based upon secondary reporting from biased sources.  In my experience, I have never felt so embraced by a people in my life.

Umhlanga, or the Swazi dance party

We woke early the next morning and consciously decided to not allow our fear to rule over us. We would not be scared to stop the car, step away from our protective aluminum bubble, and take a photo. We would not be scared to talk to people we may meet, to engage. Meg felt ambivalent about this. She wanted to keep distance as a form of protection and defense, and I wanted to let my defense down but was unsure how. We stopped for petrol about an hour after we left Big Bend, and I stepped outside for the first time, remaining behind the door like a shield, taking a photo of the makeshift market on the edge of the petrol station while Meg repeated sharply, "Jess get in the car, get in the car." I was collecting photographs and images like I was collecting lives, the world. I was struck by the colonising process of it all, collecting and documenting and remaining completely external to everything. We tried to rub our sore egos by insisting that we had made it this far, that being in Swaziland was a first step, but I remained eager to slice away these barriers between Us and Them.

Malkerns Valley holds a lot of craft markets and small cities like Manzini and Matsapha (really just small towns, but large compared to the villages we had been passing), so we drove in that direction in the hope of finding something beautiful. A map of the country may be found here to provide a strong visual for where we visited. We stopped at an ATM in Manzini and although we could use South African rands with Swazi currency interchangeably here, we were both nearly out of the former. Out of the ATM popped bills with pictures of the king on one side, pictures of Swazi industry on the other, such as pineapples, lumber, and sugarcane. We would later use this currency and receive small silver coins with wavey edges (all with pictures of the king) in return.

The city of Manzini was filled with people everywhere outside, interacting, buying, walking. As we drove along during the day, children and adults alike would wave at us with both hands outstretched, large smiles, crying out, "Sawubona!," the siSwati (and Zulu) word to greet a single person. It literally translates as "I see you," a recognition of a person's presence in a physical and spiritual sense. We felt achingly visible as we were the only white people anywhere around, but after a curious look Swazis would continue with their business and not gape or hassle us. We felt welcomed. As I drove I'd take both hands off the wheel to wave back and the people along the side of the road and shout out "Sawubona!" right back.

We drove northwest towards Ezulwini, and the hills cradled us on either side and the wind kicked up red dust. The sun was warm and we were wearing capris and tank tops for the first time since we'd arrived in southern Africa. We had not yet found any craft markets, but to our left hand side we saw a huge crowd of people and triangle flags draped over our heads on the road. We pulled in to see what was going on.

Thousands of girls were being brought into the complex in the beds of large white trucks, grasping long reeds and wearing fiery red, black and white fabrics, brown prints, candy coloured beads and crowns. Completely unbeknownst to us, we stepped out of our car onto the grounds of the Ludzidzini palace of King Mswati III, the last king in Africa. And we were just about to witness the Umhlanga, or Reed Dance, a tradition that draws thousands of theoretically virgin girls

(this year, over 70,000 attended) from across Swaziland to this valley outside the capital of Mbabane to sing and dance for the king and queen mother in an ongoing ritual that lasts about two weeks. We showed up as the dancing and singing portion was beginning to kick off.

Meg and I looked at each other with giddy smiles on our face, and asked each other, "Is this seriously our life right now?"

I wrapped my Nikon around my neck and was immediately approached by hoards of girls interested for why we had come and wanting their pictures taken. We were the only white tourists I had seen yet. I eagerly took photos of people who actually wanted their photos taken, and after the silver button pronounced its affirmative "click," I was encircled by girls looking at the digital screen to see their own faces materialise. The girls were all clutching strong reeds they had individually chosen days previous which would later be presented to the queen mother to encircle her palace. Girls had to choose strong reeds that would not snap, because if they were to break, it is believed that those girls had lost their virginity and would face both public censorship and personal shame. Of course, the rule that all girls participating in the dance are virgins is true in theory only, and this ceremony presents a time for suitors to approach girls and their families and ask for permission to marry. To marry one girl, a suitor must present seventeen cows to her family. In the past, such an exchange was seen as a way to bond to families together through the giving of something or someone so significant to the family unit. Today however, cows are given a defined economic value (around R2000, or about $250 each), and the exchange for a wife is now seen as an economic transaction only. If a man cannot give seventeen cows, he may pay for his wife in currency instead, or negotiate with her family for a fair price. She becomes a commodity to be bought, her value fluid and impermanent.

The girls' costumes were a revolving kaleidoscope of pattern and colour. Specific skirts and wraps signified from which region, village, or family groups of girls originate, and while some wore clipped beaded skirts that sat low on their waists and bounced excitedly across their upper thighs and buttocks, others wore stiff wraps that reached their ankles but left a long slit of their leg exposed, cotton in earth tones with gold, maroon and black triangles, stars, and dots. Some wore bright bunches of yarn and others had a wrap with the picture of the king folded and tied across their torso like a banner. Some ankles were adorned with circles of shells that clapped when they walked, and while some wore sandals, others allowed the soles of their feet to meld with the dusty ground. The wind was strong and the red dusted settled in our eyes, our hair, and billowed skirts and reeds across the flatness.

It is important for me to discuss the symbolic significance of the costumes as well, for no greater purpose than to dispel the myth that "Africans go running around half naked all the time dancing for a polygamous king." It is true that the girls are half naked (or half dressed). It is true that the girls were dancing and singing for the king and the queen. And it is true that the king has 13 wives. (Many Swazis debate on the last point, especially considering the example he sets for his subjects when the AIDs rate in Swaziland is the highest percentage in all of Africa, a whopping 39%, nevermind the ethical and monetary implications of satisfying the sexual and material desires of 13 queens.) However, to look at the festival from a bland vantage point would dismiss the complexity that underlies the costumes and the rituals.

The following information is taken from an article (available on JSTOR for you academics) by Hilda Kuper, "Costume and Cosmology: The Animal Symbolism of the Ncwala,"

which details the specific symbolism of costume worn in four main parts of the body: enhloko (on the head), emtimbeni (on the upper body), elukhalweni (on the hips) and etandleni (in the hands).

enhloko:

• unmarried princesses and girls betrothed to the king wear red feathers in their hair
• married daughters of the king wear their hair in a high bun with a string across the forehead
• wives of the king (queens) wear their hair in a bun with the headgear of a a warrior, inyoni, 'the bird'. includes black feathers on either side of the face

elukhalweni:

• younger girls wear strings of big colourful beads and short skirts of dark cloth; the clothing is called indlamu
• unmarried older girls wear two pieces of print, knotted tightly on both sides to form a skirt

etandleni:

• "Every woman carries an umcusho, a long, flexible, light-coloured branch from which the outer bark has been removed. The trees from which the umcusho is cut vary with the rank of the performer; and those for the queens and for the Ndlovukati have special power. Ordinary women mary carry reeds. The umcusho is held in the right or left hand according to the dance" (Kuper 1973, 617-618).

While we took our fill of photographs, Meg and I were

approached by a slight man with a hawk-shaped nose and small, bright eyes. His name was Dumisani and he became our unofficial guide for the entire ceremony. His voice was even and firm, and he told us the significance of the dance, of the costumes, and led us around the complex to show us the queen mother, the meaning of different flags being flown, and the answer to any other question we may have had. He was also a sangoma, a traditional healer and diviner. I was ecstatic with curiousity. He was patient with my stream of questions and informed me of how he was chosen by his ancestors to be a healer, how he was trained, and how he continues to communicate with his ancestors daily. "All diseases can be cured using traditional herbs and medicines," he told me. "All disease except AIDs." This was the one illness for which there was no remedy, no cure.

Dumisani led us both to an area where the girls would parade through for over an hour, dancing, waving paper shields and swords, and singing rich songs with only the instruments of their voices. We watched, transfixed. My mind floated somewhere between their bare feet patting on the ground, the humming of cries of their songs, the crystal sounds of their beads.

Afterwards, we would head to an enormous outdoor stadium with seats only on one side for spectators, and the same girls would dance before the king and the royal family before creating enormous arcs of colour before them in the stadium. "This is the rainbow nation," Meg whispered.

A video from YouTube may help with an audio and a visual. Skip ahead to 3:05 to see the men dancing, to 3:55 to see and hear the women. And another of the women singing. Enjoy the images.

arriving in swaziland

Before I begin to share my stories with you from this past week, I would first like to thank all of my readers for their interest and open minds and hearts. I do not wish, however, to be a priest sharing parables with you from a foreign continent, elevated to a place where you cannot dialogue with these stories and with myself. I hope instead that you may feel welcome and eager to respond, ask questions, make comments, and feel as eager to teach me as I am eager to share with you. For all who feel compelled, I ask you then to please write comments in response to my posts, and share your own perspectives and responses.

This week was so compacted with new people, smells, landscapes, and colours that it would be impossible for me to detail everything, and it would be an insult to those experiences to summarize them without deeper explanation. I am trapped in a catch-22. I am choosing, therefore, to break up the week into segments, sharing a little at a time, and hope that through their compilation you may be able to see what I saw and hear what I heard from a more holistic lens.

Arriving. Arriving was difficult. No, it was more than that. Arriving was exciting, thrilling, and scary as hell. Meg and I arrived in Durban, picked up our VW Jetta rental car and I sat behind the wheel, stuck in a mixed cd with Aretha Franklin, and began to drive. South Africa, and indeed most of southern Africa, was colonised by the British, and drivers thus drive on the left side of the road. The air was warm and heavy, a drastic contrast to the cold, damp air of Cape Town. Banana trees with shredded leaves and burnt red soil lined the highways. Zulu women and men walked along the roadsides carrying everything on their heads: suitcases, baskets, grocery bags, cardboard boxes filled with onions, carrots, oranges, guava. My stomach was clenched tight and my temper was short, and we drove down the highway looking for the Temple of Understanding, the largest Hare Krishna temple in the southern hemisphere, which was supposedly close by. I asked Megan to look in her guide book for Zulu phrases like, "Hello" and "Where is the..." as we realised very few people in this area of the city would speak English.

We were close to turning around after 10 minutes of no luck when we saw massive white steeples poking out of the trees to our left, and I turned into the temple complex. We removed our shoes before walking inside, and found a group of Indian children being lead in a chanting ceremony of "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Ram Hare Ram Ram Ram Hare Hare" with huge smiles on their faces, arms shot up in the sky, fearless and safe. A woman named Sirvana walked in, dressed in a floral cotton sari with white markings along her brow and nose, a bead bag draped around her neck, who generously offered to show us around the temple and share her beliefs with us. The ceiling was lined with mirrors and murals depicting the life story of Krisha, a sky blue human incarnation of God. Marigolds and leaf garlands created arcs around the octagon-shaped temple, and roses and lilies were gathered in bouquets on the floor. Large windows lined the walls, and some were open to allow in a breeze and to reflect the flickering of the moat below the temple. The floor was marble and felt cool and inviting on our bare feet.

Sirvana stayed with us for over an hour, guiding us through her spiritual life and practice and then taking down marigolds and leafs to tie into garlands around our necks. She then showed us the Indian vegetarian restaurant downstairs where we feasted on roti and ruby red curry with paneer and cauliflower before heading on our way. We draped the garlands on the back seats of the car, where they remained all week, scattering their petals on the car seats. We joked that their sacred blessings guided and protected our car during the entire week, although these jokes transformed into truths and their presence became essential to us.

After we escaped the buzzing of Durban, we entered a solitary space along the coast of Kwazulu-Natal where mountains grew from the ground and then lay down again, where acacia trees started sprouting everywhere and the sky turned a filmy gray, the sun blood red. Houses became scarce and mud huts with thatched roofs replaced them. Then those too dwindled in number. As we drove along, we passed a warthog crossing sign and I shouted "Pumba crossing!," and five seconds later a small gray monkey darted across the road. We both screamed from shock and began to study the road more carefully, finding monkeys camped in the trees and squatting by the road. We made it to the border in the late afternoon, paid R50 (about $7 USD) for a visa into Swaziland, and continued our drive north. Before crossing, the border patrol asked us, "Where are your partners?" How do you explain to this man that you are an independent American woman, traveling without a husband as a protector or guide?

Cows greeted us as we arrived. Cows to our left, cows in the hills, cows crossing the road in hoards, brown and black and unchecked by fences or people. We passed small villages with mud and dung huts, circular in shape, with reeds carefully laid as a roof, and children playing barefoot soccer outside, collecting water at a pump in large dirty plastic jars. No one had indoor plumbing. No one had electricity. Everyone spoke siSwati, not English. I felt like I was a witness of an indestructible, resilient life, one that had surged forward for hundreds of years nearly unchanged. At first judgmental about the poverty and this meager lifestyle, my perspective shifted to one of awe as Megan keenly pointed out the wealth of knowledge these Swazis must possess about raising cattle, about building these homes, about how to live and prosper under these dry environmental conditions. We would also learn later that cows equal currency to Swazis, and this was indeed the rule for most pre-colonial African societies. These people were not mere cowherders; in their communities, those who owned the cows were rich and powerful.

We spent the first night in a hotel off the side of the road. There were no lights for kilometers except those of the stars and the milky way. Crickets chirped in the muggy night air. We felt lucky to sleep in a room with electricity and plumbing, although small ants crawled along the dusty tile floor and the manager spoke little English. It was a bed. And we had made it across the border.