Lost

November 13, 2008

We headed off for Swaziland early on Thursday morning. We left at about 5, sending Lacey a message that we would get to KaPhunga by 9am.

The road down via the R40 is straightforward enough…

We knew we had to go to the South Africa – Swaziland border post at ‘Oshoek’. The road we were on suddenly turned to this after about 120km of driving….

Seeing two cows pulling a ‘half-cut’ along the way…

50 kms later… it was still dirt road… and we figured we must be going the wrong way…

Although… we knew if we continued to follow the road it would take us to the border by some crazy back route…

We were lost.

We hadn’t even reached Swaziland yet!

We doubled back and after a 100km detour, we were back on track and we crossed the border into Swaziland.

We got to the KaPhunga area and it was a struggle to find Nomsa’s place. Everyone spoke SiSwati so it was a struggle to get directions to get to the right place.

Checking a dirt road in KaPhunga before driving into it…

We asked everyone for directions and we would edge closer and closer until finally, we get to a house who pointed at the house next door when we asked where we could find Nomsa. We had found our way by some crazy miracle of asking directions knowing only the first name of the person we were looking for and being directed by pointing. KaPhunga is by no means a small area – some of the kids walk more than an hour to get to school.

We were so happy to see Lacey! The time was 1pm… 4 hours more than what we had estimated!

Where we stayed on Nomsa’s property. You can just see the amazing Yaris we drove down in. It handled itself incredibly!

More on the project soon…

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