Ncobile and Phiwe – When walking up the mountain through the homesteads we came across a large homestead, where we met the Dlamini family. They had welcomed us in right away. There were about 30 people staying in this homestead. Me and a couple other girls were walking down the path when we saw some kids in an old run down pickup truck. One of the other kids that was running around opened up the truck for us, and there were two girls sitting in the truck. One was Ncobile who was 10 years old, and the other was Phiwe who was 5 or 6. The truck smelt like garbage and manure. The clothes they had on were so dirty and had many holes in them. We found out that their mom had died after Phiwe was born, and their dad had left them. Their aunt ended up taking them in, but she couldn’t provide much for them because she had her own children to take care of. These two girls will often go 3 days without eating a meal. Neither of them trusted us when we first found them. All you could see was sadness and fear in their eyes. The first day we saw them neither would come out of the truck. I reached out my hand and they put their hand on top, looked at me, then took their hand away. Phiwe eventually came out and let us hold her. Ncobile eventually came out of the truck but wouldn’t come by us, she would just watch us. The next time we went there I saw Phiwe standing on the back of the truck, and when she saw us she had the biggest smile on her face, and she started to jump up and down. When I got to her she spread her arms out for me to pick her up. I can’t tell you how much joy that child brought to me in that moment. We noticed this time both the girls had better clothing on, which was strange because we were told by one of the women that they only had one pair of clothes. It wasn’t until later that we found out that Swazi people will often hide their sick or better take care of their people when white people are around. This was a very troubling concept for us, because we all had the fear that when we stopped coming, the girls would go back to the condition we found them in. If I could have, I would have taken Phiwe and Ncobile home with me in a heartbeat.
Firewood – In Swazi culture most women do all the work while the men sit around. We offered to help the Swazi women at this homestead get firewood for their family. This meant hiking up the mountain for 3 hours and carrying firewood down for another hour. The women told us they do this once a week. Oh and we had to do this in skirts. They had taken us a little bit past the firewood to the top of the mountain near the game reserve. Towards the end of the mission trip, our group went back up the mountain early in the morning and surprised the Dlamini family by bringing down more firewood for them. This allowed us to get into conversations about God, in which we found out at least one of the women there seemed, from what we could tell, to be a strong believer. This woman teaches the local children who can’t afford to go to school to read and write. We gave her a Bible and a couple Christian books.
Traditional Swazi Meal – After we got back from going up the mountain with the Swazi women, they invited us to stay for lunch. In Swaziland if you’re offered a meal you must accept it, because it is considered an insult to deny food. They laid out a mat for the girls to sit on and chairs for the boys. In Swazi culture a girl can only sit with her legs to the side or with them straight out. While we sat with the children, the boys went to help cook. The meal consisted of beef (extremely well done), pap (traditional porridge made from ground maize, which literally expands in your stomach), beans, and a traditional Swazi drink that was basically blended pap that was fermented, or at least that’s what it looked like. Whatever they give you to eat, you need to eat all of it.
Women for Sale – As we grew closer to this family we came to a very awkward conversation. Ncabile, one of the women, was telling us that her 2 brothers wanted two of our girls to be their wives. In order for a man to take a woman as their wife they need to offer the father/brother something. Usually a woman is married for about 17 cows. 2 of our guys had left us at the homestead as they went to go look inside one of the huts towards the back of the homestead, which left us with a 15 year old boy. We tried almost everything possible to tell them no without insulting them, even naming a ridiculous price (which our 15 year old boy was having fun with). But to everything, Ncabile was saying “no problem!” We couldn’t tell if Ncabile was serious or not. We ended up at the price of 200 cows, 30 chickens, and 4 dogs. When our other two guys came back they joined in on the “fun”. So much for having “men” to protect the women. We were eventually able to somewhat convince them that we weren’t for sale
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