Upgrade

‘We’ve upgraded you’, announced the agent at the car hire portacabin when I showed up this morning. ‘We’re putting you in an automatic’.

For someone who has only driven an automatic once, in 2018, it didn’t feel like something to celebrate. I knew my left foot would be confused for the duration. The agent was surprised to hear that in the UK we can’t really be doing with automatics. She gave me a quick tutorial in the car park and then I drove the wrong way towards the exit, into oncoming traffic. However even though automatics are a bit laboured on hills, I was later glad for the automation because in Eswatini, my destination, there are a gajillion speed bumps. You could develop repetitive strain injury in a matter of hours if constantly fiddling with the gearstick. Gajillion isn’t registering as an unknown word by autocorrect, which seems strange.

The journey to Mlilwane Nature Reserve in western Eswatini was on the painfully slow side due to heavy traffic leaving Maputo and long stretches of roadworks and detours in Eswatini. With too much time to mull I decided that how drivers behave in busy traffic is a good window into their personalities more generally. I concluded there are a lot of reckless selfish dickheads in the world.

From what I can see, Eswatini’s main west to east road is in a hell of a mess because it’s being ‘upgraded’ to facilitate access to King Mswati III International Airport, being built in the middle of nowhere. This is the textbook definition of a vanity project. On this journey it was interestingly the Swazi checkpoint officials who demanded food and drink. Normally it’s the Mozambican police, so between them they’re keeping motorists on their toes. ‘It’s hot, what drinks do you have?’ ‘What food do you have in your car?’

‘Hate to disappoint you, sister, but I’ve been on a dull as ditchwater clean eating kick and your sorghum sounds infinitely more appealing right now as I’m fresh out of McDonald’s chicken nuggets piping hot from the fryer.’

I too was hungry so I stopped in Manzini, Eswatini’s industrial hub, to buy snacks for today and for upcoming hiking. The last time I wandered the streets of Manzini it was probably 2008 and it felt like a dusty, bustling and not very salubrious place. Now the number of cars threatens to outstrip pedestrians, and malls have sprung up. I bought some dried fruit and nuts. And chocolate covered pretzels. And chocolate covered rice cakes. And chilli flavoured crisps. And iced tea. And Sudocrem because this recent gym attendance has caused nipple chafing and because being in Eswatini or South Africa can cause spurts of consumerism with their lower prices and more expansive ranges of goods compared with Mozambique.

I arrived in Mlilwane and serenity soon prevailed. On the drive to the rest camp I passed zebras being affectionate/protective, wildebeest, blesbok, impala, warthogs kneeling to graze and a shaggy nyala grappling with a branch. The nyala is so accustomed to humans in the rest camp that it literally walked through a group of Swazi dancers who were starting to do a performance for a group of 60-something Brits on a coach tour.

The Mlilwane camp is familiar to me from a dozen years back. I’ve never slept in it until tonight but brought groups of volunteers to it to enjoy the serene walks such as to the dam pictured in the extra. The crocodiles (‘flat dogs’) were as prominent as ever when I hung around there as the light was fading.

I’m staying in Blesbok 12, which is a kooky hut of natural materials in a ‘beehive village’, mirroring traditional Swazi living in this region. It’s got more character than a standard hotel room but wouldn’t be for folks who can’t deal with the scurrying of critters in the matting.