Time Warp

Sunday (11/12) was one of my favorite days in the Bu thus far. I got to go on a 4-wheeler around to some other parts of Bulembu and the surrounding area, that I had never been to before. There are so many little communities around that I have heard about, but not visited. Most of them are actually just other parts of Bulembu, like neighborhoods I guess. I think it’s sort of the equivalent to our neighborhoods in America that have groups of homes and a name for the area, but it’s still part of the bigger town. Anyway, we went to one place where there are 350 empty houses and this massive high school. The houses all used to be occupied and the high school was booming, but years ago when the asbestos mine closed down, so did most of the town. When we went inside the different rooms of the school there was still writing on the chalkboards, kids work strewn about, scales and chemicals in the science lab, etc. It really was like stepping back in time. Kind of surreal. This is such an awesome place, rich with history. I really enjoyed exploring the area. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was being chased by some wild horses when we were on the quad. Scary! There were 4 wild horses in a field next to the path and when we came by they took off after us. One of them was bucking and one or two just ran after us and it was seriously scary. In the matter of a few seconds I was just imaging the quad not moving fast enough and the horses catching up and kicking us to death. Luckily we made it safely.
Another place we visited was the old lab where they did all the asbestos testing, separating, etc. The lab still has all of the big machinery and huge scales and everything. There was even asbestos in the machines. There was a calendar from 2001 hanging on the wall because that was the last time the mine was open. It had been closed before that and only reopened for a short time then. I saw mail lying around and tons of paper work and things…even some bottles of sprite. It was so bizarre. Really really cool though. I love this place. I am pretty sure there’s nowhere else like Bulembu.
I also got to see some of the area back behind the main part of Bulembu, where there are just thousands of trees and gorgeous hills and scenery. It was awesome.
Saturday was a fun day too. My housemates and I went to Mbabane and Ezulwini to do some Christmas shopping and go to lunch and buy groceries. There’s this place called the Golden Mile where you can by all sorts of African craft things, mostly wooden and stone. They sell all sorts of beautiful wooden bowls, salad tongs, jewelry, animal carvings, jewelry boxes, statues, etc. Beautiful stuff. I did all of my Christmas shopping there! It’s called the Golden Mile because it is seriously long-just stall after stall that seem to go on forever. They all pretty much have the same stuff though. And we went to a Chinese restaurant which was really yummy! We don’t go out to eat at restaurants much, since there are none in Bulembu, so it’s always a big treat.
And other than that we’ve been busy practicing for the Christmas play. We are doing a creation themed play and I think it will be really great. Each class is performing to one or two songs and then at the end we’ll all come together to do a song. My class is doing the crucifixion scene, so I chose to use Love Song by Third Day, which works perfectly for my boys. Then my girls are doing Above All by Michael W. Smith. I’m so excited about the play! We are performing Decmber 1st. We also have a prize-giving that evening which is really just like an awards ceremony in America, but the prizes are things like toys and pencils and such. It’s going to be great! We are doing the whole thing in the old cinema. The cinema actually used to be a proper cinema where movies were shown and everything, so it has 250 fold down seats. I have no idea how many years it’s been closed though. The doors are broken and there’s a massive hole in the middle of the stage and it’s pretty dirty, but it should work fine. It’s a neat place. We haven’t made our props yet, so we’re having a big prop party on Saturday and trying to get everything finished.
Other breaking news: Tuesday night volleyball has really been booming and is becoming increasingly popular. Now instead of only having enough people for two teams or 4-5, we have 3 teams of 6-7 usually. It’s super fun and I think some of us end up laughing more than playing! These days we’ve been following our volleyball with cards back at my house. We’ve only played Hearts so far and this week we had 10 people so we had to play with 2 decks!! Fun stuff. That’s about it for now.