SarahAndBethInSwaziland.com

So, the flights through to Jo’burg were uneventful…lots of time spent sitting around doing nothing, and reading…I managed to finish an entire book before we landed in South Africa!

The plane to Manzini was…interesting! We drove on a bus away from the terminal, past all the huge jets, and then stopped outside this TINY little plane, with propellers and everything. It was veeeery noisy, and rattled and shook and creaked and there was turbulance, which was an experience to say the least! Eventually though, we arrived in one piece. Manzini was absolutely baking hot, which was nice. After a lovely chat with the immigration guy (much nicer than English ones!) I headed through into the “Baggage Collection” area, which was a little hall, with our bags in a pile on the floor!! Beth and Wawa, who had been sent to collect me, were hiding behind the door. However, this little foot in a grubby flipflop suddenly appeared and I thought “I know that foot!!!!” We then loaded up into the All Out Africa minibus to head to the lodge…

Yesterday was the first day which Bethany NCP was open, so Beth and I will be based there, since we are going to be here for such a long time. The children are lovely, there are a few terrors, as with any class, but most of them are darlings, eager to learn and do whatever you want. Communicating is challenging, because our grasp of Siswati is limited, as is their English, but we manage! At the minute we are trying to teach them colours, as most of them are under five, so teaching them to read and write is probably too hard.

The lodge is quite quiet, most of the other volunteers have headed over to Mozambique for a little holiday, but they will be back at the weekend, and then next week we will get a fresh load of arrivals. The weather has been mostly good, today it has rained pretty much all day, but hopefully tomorrow will be hot and sunny again!