Sunday in Swaziland

Today I got up and attended church with Pons’. It was about a 30 minute drive to Simunye Christian Fellowship.  On the way to church, the road cuts through Hlane Game Reserve. It just so happened that we saw an elephant and a monkey on the way to church. I am definitely NOT in Iowa anymore! It was a really nice service. There were a lot of expatriates that attended, in addition to myself and Angela. I met a really nice girl from the Peace Corps who has been here for two years already. And the pastor was a female pastor from Indiana, and I must say, it was nice/comforting to hear the American accent!

 

Simunye Christian Fellowship/The Grapevine Church

 Later in the day Angela and I walked the 1 km into Siteki to return a hair dryer. I had purchased one here as it is “winter” and I don’t want to leave for work with a  wet head. The only reason I mention this story is that it was quite an event to get it exchanged for a new one. Just after my first use, it no longer blew out hot air. It turned on, but it was cold, cold, cold. Fortunately, when I had purchased it, they wrote a “3 month guarantee” on the inside lip of the box.

I thought it would be easy to return. However… first I asked a cashier, who asked another cashier, who called over her supervisor, who summoned a lady in the back to help. The lady took the hairdryer, grabbed a plug adaptor from the shelf (there are even two types of plug-ins here in Swaziland itself), and then proceeded to the end of the rice aisle, where she knew that way down along the floorboards, there was an electrical outlet. She plugged in the defunct hairdryer, and in the middle of the store we tried it out. She agreed, that indeed, it didn’t work properly. But then she had to call over her manager, who had to again verify for himself that the hairdryer didn’t work correctly. Next we grabbed a new one off the shelf for comparison, and he was finally convinced that it was broken. So, twenty minutes later, I had a new hairdryer in hand.

I certainly don’t want to sound critical, because I am a guest in Swaziland, and I certainly respect their rules and culture. It was just so foreign to me to go through all of this, especially using the hairdryer in the middle of the grocery store aisles, to get my purchase exchanged!

Photo for the day:

Cows grazing in the morning fog on Mabuda Farm