And so the Swaziland tour is under way. It’s an interesting country ruled by a monarchy but with an alleged representative government chosen by the people. Whatever. It is a country with a population of just over 1 million of which 60% are HIV positive. It’s a Xenophobic country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – One of the queens just spend £100,000 on curtains and £200,000 on carpets for one room in her royal house. A country where the king is so worried about his people that he owns all the land setting aside as much as possible to feed the nation however one of his wife’s owns a huge farm that she doesn’t run, and won’t let anyone else run and won’t allow crops for biodiesel because it will take up food growing land. But who am I to complain, beer is cheap here… £0.70 per pint. Oh, and on September 1 the annual reed dance where all the local totty get their boobies out and dance around a lot.
And so to the pictorial.
The laundromat is very well air conditioned over here, but still gets hot in the summer.
The price of community service is still a chain gang, but only for the lesser offences of rape and murder. we didn’t know at the time, but they don’t like you taking photos. I wonder what you get for tax evasion?
Here is a blast from the past… I haven’t seen the BP green shield for a good few years. Ironically they don’t do nectar points and haven’t heard of Marks and Spencer… They don’t really do maintenance either.
At the time of writing petrol is at about R10 per litre, that’s about 65p. the cost of living is about 5:1 so that’s the equivalent of a £3.25 litre… and that’s the cheap stuff at 93 octane. This comes in 2 flavours, unleaded – which is “metal free”, and premium - “metal containing” – nice 
On the theme of motoring, the highway code and most traffic signs are pretty much for information only. There are a couple of things that you should watch out for though. Speed limits are designed for the idiot locals, but if you do get caught speeding its a £200 fine on the spot… and possibly a night in jail, and believe me, you DO NOT want that. Stop signs – they really do mean stop regardless of how stupid they seem – they are the fifth world equivilent of traffic lights and you will get fined if you don’t appear to stop. And finally cows, these are walking stop signs.
I’m not sure what this truck is trying to tell me, but I thought it was funny anyhow.
It may appear that I don’t have much good to say about this xenophobic, technically backward country and it’s true, I don’t, but they will have to really out-do themselves to spoil the reed dance, thousands of pairs of boobies jiggling around all over the place… That’s not a challenge Swaziland!!!
Oh, one final word. The queen mothers official title is “Queen mother – the mighty elephant”
