Arriving in Manzini, we extracted ourselves to make the transfer. As many times as we’ve done this, we still need to ask how to find our next ride in the hundreds of khumbies and buses all jammed together. Khumbies and buses are as compacted as the passengers within them. Finding our next ride requires us to walk through shouting and whistling conductors, and drivers banging out non-rhythmic tattoos on their loud horns. If I’m on my way to Mbabane, never once have I been persuaded to go to Piggs Peak by a conductor shouting, “S’Piggee, S’Piggee, S’Piggee” in my ear, nor does a loud horn entice me to ride a particular bus. Once we get in our next vehicle we wait for it to fill up, counting our blessings if the driver is away so the loud ‘music’ doesn’t rip our ear drums. If the driver is present, we will occasionally find ourselves inching forward bit by bit up to a meter when we’ll reverse to our origin, then repeat this move several times. When finally packed, the driver will slowly insert us into the stream toward the exit, pedestrians and vendors filling the voids around us like a Schleeren photo. Even in motion, vendors and passengers will be hopping on or off.
Manzini to Nhlangano is about a 90 minute ride with beautiful mountain scenery. We sat right behind the driver so could see the speedometer registering 130 in a 60 kph zone. I also noted the fuel gage never left the Full mark from start to finish. I sat next to and took control of a window. One of our earliest khumbie experiences, Debbie opened a window by pushing it back. It was immediately and forcefully closed from behind! Swazis don’t like open windows, even when stifling.
We had lunch at KFC in Nhlangano and found a khumbie to Mahamba Valley and Fred and Florence. No back and forth motion here; the driver inches his way to the exit covering about 20 meters in 40 minutes. There is no conductor in this rural area and our top speed maybe was 40 kph.
F & F live in a palace also, but without running water—but with an indoor fireplace which was very welcome in the winter evenings. Picture a blazing fire, honey wine from our trip to Cape Town and great conversation with friends. We spent three nights with them. One day we had a braai at the The Gorge with other PCVs and Canadian NGOs and the other day we visited Piet Retief, in South Africa. Crossing the border, you present your passport to a clerk who looks you up on a computer and eventually stamps your passport; then you go to another window where a clerk reads your passport and gives you a slip of paper with some scratches on it; then you take your slip across the street to hand to a clerk who points the way to cross into South Africa. Once on S.Af. soil, you repeat this whole process. For our ride to Piet Retief, we filled a khumbie, then the conductor had two more passengers sit on stools in the door-well before we left (without the conductor). Ten minutes down the road, we were pulled over, the police did a head count, the driver was taken back into the police car for twenty minutes, and then we were on our way—the driver grasping a sheaf of papers as he drove. After a day in Piet Retief, we met a local umlungu, a total stranger, who offered us a ride to the border in her spacious suburban—a ride of nearly 30 minutes. She was most pleasant and wouldn’t take any payment for petrol. We were amazed with her hospitable kindness. This strikes a contrast to a couple of taxi drivers we encountered on our earlier trips to S.A. Both of them reacted similarly when we introduced ourselves as being with the Peace Corps; “You mean the United States supports something to do with peace?” And closer to home, we’ve been identified as Americans, the ‘war mongers’. Peace.
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