I quickly came to another conclusion. The Swazi business community had a tremendous lack of entrepreneurial sophistication. On one hand, the majority of people had no idea how to start a business beyond subsistence agriculture or simple retailing, and there were few resources to help them. On the other hand, there were educated people who believed that because they had an idea and were willing to make a small investment that they could hire a consultant to write a business plan that would make them worthy of major outside investment. Clearly we were literally and figuratively at the other end of the world from Silicon Valley with its large venture capital community and cadre of experienced entrepreneurs.

In spite of these challenges, I’d learned a lot and had concluded that I could contribute a lot. Although the businesses I as working with in Swaziland were much smaller and simpler than those I had consulted to in Silicon Valley, the basic principles were the same, and the fundamental requirement for understanding what to do was still basic business analysis. Although TechnoServe’s objective in Swaziland was to encourage people to be entrepreneurial and start businesses, I knew we also needed to help people understand what it really takes. Most people had no concept of how hard successful entrepreneurs have to work or the upfront analysis and thinking that are required for a successful business. Coming from Silicon Valley, I had seen some wildly successful ventures and many that were not. I knew that although there was always an element of chance, most of the successful ventures were rigorously thought out in advance and had to go through a tough review process before receiving venture capital. And once the company began operating, the work hours were extreme and the pressure intense.

The hopeful entrepreneurs in Swaziland had never had the benefit of learning the requirements for starting a new business from observing a highly developed entrepreneurial culture and the role models it generates. More problematical was that they didn’t have a good grasp of some of the basic disciplines. They especially lacked understanding of marketing (other than advertising) and finance. Production was much more familiar and more tangible so that when most people thought about starting a business, they thought about production first. Then after they’d done exhaustive analysis on hiring, training, constructing a factory, costing the product, etc., they would give only a brief explanation of how they would sell it. They didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing who would buy the product, why customers would buy, what the competing products were, how much the customers would be willing to pay, etc. All of these are basic marketing questions that a new company must answer well if it is to succeed. But these were unfamiliar concepts to most of the people I worked with.

So I worked with my clients to answer these questions. We couldn’t just do comparative research using databases available on the web or reports from research firms. In most cases, we did our marketing research by directly interviewing potential customers. In the case of MPE and the potential bottled water company, it was pretty easy because there were so few large customers. In the case of Tasty Meals, we sent saleswomen throughout the country to interview hundreds of small shop owners. I also encouraged the other consultants in our office to think about sales and marketing first with their clients. My point was that if you don’t know how you will sell your product and why people will buy it, then it is a waste of time to do detailed analysis on how it will be produced. This was hard for most people because marketing and sales were so much less tangible and familiar than production, but we made good progress.

The other concept that potential entrepreneurs really struggled with was how to finance a business. Although some people didn’t know that financing could be available, the larger problem was that others thought that just because they had a business idea that capital would magically be given to them. Also, there was a very limited understanding of the different characteristics of equity and debt. It seemed that equity capital generally wasn’t available, and no one wanted it anyway because they would have to give up a large percentage of their ownership. Many people seemed to think that just because they had a good business plan, a bank should love to loan them 80–90 percent of the necessary capital and expect only prime plus a few percentage points in return. I wasn’t dejected or discouraged; I was just learning what needed to be done and trying to figure out my approach. As I had always told my junior colleagues in management consulting when they complained how difficult some of our assignments were, “If it was easy, they wouldn’t need us.”

Even with a good understanding of finance, finding investment capital was still a problem. Although some entrepreneurs could qualify for loans under special programs with relaxed credit terms or guarantees, few lenders would provide 100 percent of the capital required to start a business. Existing companies who wanted to expand were often highly leveraged already so experienced the same problem. For both of these, some equity capital was required before additional loans could be obtained. However, since most of TechnoServe’s potential clients were not wealthy, they did not have the necessary investment capital to start a business. Further, very little equity capital was available for investment in the Swazi market. This was particularly true for the types of businesses that were TechnoServe’s clients. Most were in agribusiness and would be characterized as high risk, moderate return ventures, which made them unattractive to strictly commercial investors looking for the highest returns and the lowest risk.

For our clients in Swaziland, TechnoServe wanted to bridge this gap and fortunately had some available funding that could be used for direct investment in small and medium enterprises. For deserving ventures, funds could be used as the required equity portion of the necessary financing. Presumably, with this equity, businesses could qualify for additional loan financing so that the impact of the equity funds would be leveraged. However, if funds were to be used in this way, TechnoServe had to address a lot of issues and make several critical decisions. Since I was the only person in the office with experience in financial analysis, Leslie asked me to develop a discussion document on the potential for TechnoServe Swaziland to provide a small amount of funding directly to some of our clients who could not access financing in any other way. She asked me to identify and describe the issues, develop an initial proposal, and then circulate the document for comments and discussion.

The first issue was the one I always addressed first during my management consulting career, “What is our objective?” Specifically, TechnoServe’s overall objective was to overcome the obstacle of the inadequate supply of equity capital for businesses that could provide jobs or other economic opportunities for the poor. In more detail, we wanted TechnoServe’s clients to be using this equity to allow them to access (not replace) other sources of funding, which would allow them to grow their businesses, hire more people, and generally put more money into the economy.

Getting the strategic objectives defined was a good first step, but my next step was to specifically define the financial objectives for our pool of funds. In commercial financing, this is easy. The main objective is obvious: to earn a high return on the investments (with appropriate consideration of risk). In economic development finance, the strategic objectives take precedence and influence the financial ones. This leads to some very nontraditional thinking and challenges in balancing competing objectives.

The range of potential financial objectives in development finance extends from purely commercial returns to giving direct grants, i.e., from getting a high return on investment to getting no return and giving away (losing) all the money. A purely commercial approach to a pool of development projects would require high projected returns (including taking a high percentage of ownership and a large amount of collateral) to offset the expected losses from the high risks. Direct grants are at the other end of the spectrum and would have no expectation of recovering any of the money invested. Although both of these approaches are widely used, from my perspective, they both seemed extreme for the proposed TechnoServe direct funding. The commercial approach provided nothing new to the market and was unreasonable given the nature of the companies that TechnoServe would be supporting. The direct grant approach is simple and straightforward but would have been much less productive in terms of social return on investment since there was no potential for investment funds to be recycled. In addition, grants (giving away money) always set a bad precedent because they destroy the proper market incentives and can encourage dependency.

The approach I proposed was to provide subordinated investment funds at very low rates, recognizing that, over time, the yields on these funds would probably not offset the losses associated with the high risks of these investments. In other words, the pool of funds available for investment would probably disappear over time, but hopefully, it would be a slow process; and the investment funds could be recycled several times before they were completely gone. Although the expectation was that from a portfolio perspective, some investments would fail and that over time a below-market return would not compensate for high risk, every individual investment would be made with a reasonable prospect that it would be repaid. Expecting to lose all of your invested capital, albeit slowly, is a very nontraditional way of thinking about investing. I preferred to call it innovative. I even suggested we start a major marketing campaign calling the concept, “Lose Money Slowly,” but it didn’t catch on. I was better at finance than marketing.

The thinking got even more interesting as I contemplated the form of investments to make. Since the objective of the TechnoServe financing was to allow businesses to access bank loans, the banks had to perceive the TechnoServe investment as common equity or something very similar so there would be no question as to who got the assets if a business went bankrupt. In a commercial environment, TechnoServe’s high risk would be compensated for by the possibility of a high return. A similarly situated private investor would demand ownership of a large percentage of the business in the hopes that it would be successful and generate large returns. However, TechnoServe didn’t want the responsibility of owning any of the business. In other words, TechnoServe wanted to take on a high risk with the probability of a low return. Strange as this sounds, it was probably the only way to accomplish the strategic objective without just giving the money away. Where was Alice in Wonderland when I needed her to explain things?

More Exploring and Cultural Immersion

An Aborted Trip, a Braai, a Wedding, the Reed Dance, and South Africa

At the end of the week we were going to Maputo, Mozambique, a city known for its crime (seemingly less violent than Johannesburg). Evidently, robberies of individuals on the street were somewhat common, so we were told that it was advisable to carry two wallets, one of which you could give up readily. Although robbery could happen, the most pervasive crime was the theft of headlights, side mirrors, and windshields from parked cars. We heard that this was so common that people went to extreme measures to prevent it. Perhaps it was an urban legend, but it was rumored that some people had been known to crack their own headlights, mirrors, or windshields just to make them unattractive to thieves. People also had metal strips welded across their headlights to prevent theft. Evidently, this was quite effective against theft but made it really difficult to replace a defective headlight.

Other than the minor issue of crime, Maputo was supposed to be a very interesting city with beautiful beaches. The weather wasn’t suitable for sunbathing, but we were looking forward to staring at the ocean and walking on the beaches. Then on Monday, we’d visit the TechnoServe office in Maputo to get some insight into the programs in Mozambique.

We didn’t make it to Maputo. We did try, really hard. We got up at 7:00 a.m., very early for us on a Saturday, and left the cottage before 8:30. We had packed carefully to make sure we had all the right clothes and everything else we would need for crossing the border and staying in Maputo. I had heard the border crossing was more challenging than going into South Africa, but I didn’t know how challenging it was going to be. People had told me that you had to have your blue book (car registration) with you and you had to fill out extra paperwork relating to your car (designed to reduce smuggling of stolen cars) on both sides of the border. Since we had a rental car, we didn’t have our registration, but I made sure to take our contract and the form that showed we had switched cars since we first signed the contract.

The drive up to the border was less than two hours and very pleasant as we went through the Lowveldt for the first time and saw the endless sugarcane fields. We also enjoyed the sign warning pedestrians and cyclists against lions and elephants as the road passed through the Hlane (Schl-ah-nee) game reserve.

At the border, we parked our car and went inside the immigration and customs building. We filled out two immigration forms, handed them to the officer, and she stamped our passports, all without any written instructions or speaking. When we drove to the actual border gate, we discovered that we also needed a 654 customs form, so we went back inside. The 654 form required a lot of detail on the car: make, model, year, registration number, engine number, etc. I filled it out to the best of my ability. As the customs officer reviewed the form and was about to sign it, she remarked that I hadn’t included the engine number for the car. I said it was a rental, and I didn’t know the number. I didn’t want to crawl around the engine compartment and assumed that this would get me off. Boy was I wrong! The customs officer had a concerned look on her face and went to speak to someone else in the glass-enclosed area behind the counter. She came back and asked us to follow her as she came out from behind the counter. She said she was going to try and get someone to help us. I didn’t know why we needed help. Wendy and I walked over to the area near the border gate, and she spoke to a middle-aged gentleman who seemed to be the manager. He asked for our rental contract. He showed me, at the bottom of the contract, the section that says the car is prohibited from going to Kenya, Angola, Mozambique, and several other countries. He said we would need a written waiver from the rental car company, and he offered to call them for us. I gave him the number, and he went back inside.

A short while later, he came back out and said that Avis wanted to speak with us. I assumed that they just wanted to verify that the car was really in our possession before faxing the waiver. Wrong again! The woman I talked to in Swaziland said that waivers could only be granted by their main office in South Africa, and it was closed until Monday. I asked to speak to her supervisor. She said the supervisor would not be in until Monday, and even if she were available, she could not grant the waiver. She said she was sorry but pointed out that my contract did say that I couldn’t take the car into Mozambique. I agreed that the contract indicated that, but that nobody had pointed it out to me when I rented the car. (Okay, I should have read the whole thing, but does anyone who has rented hundreds of cars over the years read the whole contract? I did pay very close attention to the rates, which had been incorrect and needed fixing, when I first got the car. Maybe that can be my excuse for not looking more carefully at the rest of the contract.) There was no alternative but to turn around and head back to Mbabane, which we did.

I was incredibly frustrated. Usually in the United States, when I’d encountered similar situations, I was able to speak to a supervisor or a manager who understood my problem, wanted to help solve it, and had the authority to work something out, even if it involved me paying an extra fee, etc. Not here. There was no way out, and no one to speak to. I felt helpless, and I was also angry at myself for not having looked at the contract thus having to share the blame. I just wanted to leave and hurried Wendy into the car. As we were leaving, she asked if we had to do anything about immigration. I didn’t want to be bothered with one more thing, and I said I didn’t think so. So we left. However, as I was driving back and continued to stew, I remembered that the immigration officer did slide our passports through the computer. I wondered if that would show that we had left the country and never returned. Would it give us a problem the next time we wanted to leave the country? Would they think we slipped back into the country illegally? I grumbled to myself about the whole situation all the way home.

On the way home, as a diversion, we decided to stop off at the Swazi Sun Hotel and Spa in the Ezulwini Valley to have lunch and check out the spa. In California, Wendy periodically liked having massages, and she had heard that this spa was good and reasonably priced. The hotel was located next to a very green golf course, which was in sharp contrast to the surrounding brown and red terrain. The large gates, like the outside of the imposing hotel, were white, giving a strong colonial feel to the place. We walked through the elegant and formal lobby to the poolside bar, which was serving lunch. Although the pool and surroundings were more modern than colonial, the whole ambiance was of white wealth. And even though some of the guests were of color, I speculated that thirty years ago, it was a very pleasant, refined retreat where white South Africans could indulge themselves in relaxation, gambling, and sometimes other vices not readily available in South Africa. It was still a beautiful resort, and although the gambling was less of a novelty, it was supposedly still a great place to spend a weekend with your mistress.

After leaving the spa, we went home to pick up my computer and head to the Mountain Inn so I could send e-mails to cancel our hotel reservations in Maputo along with my Monday meeting in the TechnoServe Maputo office. We bought steaks and a bottle of wine for dinner. The steaks were good, but they weren’t the fresh seafood we were expecting by the ocean in Maputo. And the wine was bad; we threw half of it away. Overall, we had survived, and it wasn’t a tragedy, but I still worried whether we were in the country legally.

On Sunday, since we hadn’t gone to Maputo, we had the opportunity to go to a small going-away braai (Afrikaans for barbecue) for one of the TechnoServe employees. She was going back to the United States to attend the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Braais are very popular in Swaziland. This one was held at Mlilwane (hum the M-lil-wahney), a small game reserve close to Mbabane, that was mostly limited to various members of the antelope family but also had warthogs and hippos. When we arrived, the warthogs were plentiful and running free through the camp.

I hadn’t had a lot of up close and personal experience with warthogs, so I didn’t know how meek or aggressive they might be. Consequently, I was a little nervous as a large warthog began poking his tusked snout into some of our food, right next to where I was standing. In the United States, the only animals I’ve ever confronted to protect picnic food have been aggressive birds, so I didn’t exactly know what to do. Initially, I made some mild shooing noises and gestures but was ignored. Not wanting to appear too timid to the rest of the group, I gathered my courage and lunged aggressively toward the warthog; fortunately, he backed away because I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t.

Later, we saw a number of people congregated by a short stone wall adjacent to a small lake, so we went to see what was happening. Immediately on the other side of the three-foot-high wall was a gigantic hippo. We could easily have reached out and touched him. We didn’t think touching would be advisable (hippos look cute but kill more people than any other animal in Africa), but we did enjoy looking close up. The hippo was probably the size of Wendy’s Volkswagen at home. He seemed calm, perhaps even a little dejected as it appeared that he had a cold. Both his nose and eyes seemed to be runny, and we felt sorry for him. We felt for him even more because some of the young warthogs who were also in the area seemed to be taunting him. The young warthogs would approach the hippo’s head and attempt to kick dirt in his face. When the hippo turned and bared his teeth, the warthogs would quickly retreat, but then they would come back and try again. Naughty boys trying to show off, I’m sure.

As we sat and watched this scene continue to play out, six more hippos, both babies and adults, emerged from the swampy pool and joined our friend on the shore behind the wall. They seemed to be eating a bit and socializing with each other. A number of warthogs were also eating and socializing in the same area. It was a very cute pageant. After watching for a while, we decided to go. As we were leaving, we took a better look at the low wall that had separated us from the hippos. It continued on for about twenty feet, but then it ended, and there was nothing to keep these gigantic animals from going around the ends!

On Monday, our office manager called the Ministry of Immigration about our little mix-up at the Mozambique border and was told that we would just have to explain the next time we were passing through immigration on our way out of the country. I hoped that it would work.

On Tuesday, as we drove up the Malagwane grade to work, we were reminded as to how treacherous it was. As we rounded the last sharp curve before Mbabane, we had to slow because of all the cars, including police, on the edge of the road. A number of people were standing and staring over the sharp cliff. The missing section of guardrail gave a big clue as to what had happened. In the next day’s paper, we read that a woman had been driving up the grade, rounded one of the sharp curves, and almost hit the center divider. She overreacted, whipping the steering wheel in the other direction, sending her car through the guardrail and over the cliff. Her car flipped at least once and plunged over three hundred feet down where it came to rest upright. The woman, who had been protected by her seat belt and airbag, was able to climb out of the car and had only minor injuries. A passing motorist had climbed down to help and handed the woman a cell phone. She called her husband to tell him that she’d had a minor accident on her way to work. When the husband arrived at the scene, he said he nearly had a heart attack. Needless to say, the car was a total wreck, and the woman was very lucky to be alive. The crash was the headline in Wednesday’s paper, a welcome change from the usual stories of political corruption and family violence.

The following Saturday, one of the business advisors in our office, Sonnyboy, was getting married, and a number of us from the office had been invited. Seven of us drove in two cars to a small rural town about an hour and a half north of Mbabane. Most of the drive was on tar (paved) roads, but as we neared the town, we turned on to a good dirt road for the last few kilometers. As we drove among the homes and small farms, I remarked that this was the scenery of a developing country, not like what we saw every day in Mbabane. The wedding was to be held in the auditorium of the local high school. We pulled into the high school grounds and parked with the other cars on the grass. It felt like a movie scene of a small town in the rural Unite States preparing for a hometown football game. We walked through the high school grounds, which were quite extensive, to reach the auditorium. The high school construction seemed simple and uninspired but functional and solid. The floors were smooth poured concrete, the walls concrete block, and the roofs galvanized steel. The auditorium had a high ceiling with exposed wooden trusses holding up the corrugated metal roof. It was not large, seating approximately two hundred people in molded plastic chairs. However, one side wall opened with large doors to an anteroom that sat a hundred more. Both rooms were full.

Because we had heard that these events never start on time, we had arrived later than most and were lucky that the people in the other car had saved us seats in the main hall. We sat down as the preliminaries were starting not knowing what to expect, except that it would be a long service. Just to clarify, this was a Swazi-Christian wedding. The Swazi traditional wedding would be the next day and would be only for the family. The service started with singing by what was called a choir but was more gospel ensemble than traditional choir. There were six singers with microphones and amplification. They were accompanied by an electronic keyboard with built-in electronic background rhythms. Two very large speakers flanked the group. Their music sounded familiar but was not exactly like anything I’d heard before. It sounded like American gospel combined with the type of African music recorded by Paul Simon. It had the same effect as American gospel. Most people in the audience joined in the singing, and many stood up to sway with the music. The entire three-and-a-half-hour service was filled with music. After every scripture reading, prayer or speech there was at least a choral response and usually a more formal “Musical Item” as described in the program. As with the preliminaries, these performances by the choral group were usually joined by the rest of the congregation. The songs were familiar to everyone because as people joined in, they not only knew the lyrics but were singing in multipart harmony. The effect was wonderful. It gave a great feeling of warmth and togetherness. We felt very happy to be there and not at all awkward to be the only white faces in the crowd.

After the preliminary singing, the wedding began with the procession of the wedding party down the aisle. But this was not a traditional procession and “The Wedding March” was nowhere to be heard. There were five bridesmaids beautifully attired in lavender satin dresses accompanied by five groomsmen in black suits with white shirts and lavender neckties. They paired up at the rear door of the auditorium and then each couple did what I would call a “disco-stroll” down the aisle to music with an appropriate beat. Each pair took several minutes to dance down the aisle. After they had all reached the front of the room, the groom appeared. He was dressed in a white, four-button suit with a black shirt and a gold tie. He stood out like an eighties Motown rock star. He waited in the aisle to greet the bride as she was escorted down the aisle by her brother. The bride wore white. It was a beautiful (aren’t they always?) traditional wedding dress. Once meant to symbolize virginity, nowadays all U.S. brides wear white. Apparently, this is also the custom in Swaziland since the bride and groom had a three-year-old son together and appeared to be pregnant with another.

Besides the singing, the remainder of the three and a half hours was comprised of evangelical-type prayers, a rousing sermon, ceremonies, and laudatory speeches by friends, relatives, and multiple ministers. It would have been more interesting to us if it hadn’t all been in Siswati, which we didn’t understand since everyone in our workplace spoke English. Occasionally a word or two of English was spoken to describe the next event, and we were able to figure out where we were in the program. Most of the time, we were clueless. We got occasional help from the Swazis in our group when we were supposed to do something. One of these explanations came near the end of the service. Music started playing, and we were told that we were expected to give a donation. I looked for the offering plates to begin making their way through the crowd. But no. This was a different type of donation and a different process. This donation was for the newly married couple, and it was to be placed in a container at the front of the hall. The music that began to play had a good beat for dancing, and that’s what we did. Essentially all of us in the congregation got up and danced our way to the front of the room to drop our donation in the box. Then we each danced our way back to our seats, all the time keeping to the beat of the music. It was joyful, somewhat controlled, chaos.

Shortly thereafter, the ceremony ended, and we followed the wedding party as they exited the auditorium and proceeded to where a late lunch was to be served. Since we had actually received an invitation to the wedding, we were among the “invited” guests and got to eat a sit-down lunch with the wedding party and family in one of the high school classrooms. The other three hundred plus guests had to queue up outside to go through a cafeteria line to receive their lunch served takeaway style in a Styrofoam container. Of course this isn’t bad if you haven’t actually been invited to the wedding. We learned that in the Swazi culture, when you have a wedding, you should assume that the whole village or congregation (or both) will attend, and you must prepare to feed everyone who attends. This can make planning very difficult, but they seemed to have plenty of food for over three hundred people.

The meal after the ceremony was very short, and it was just a meal. There were no other activities. After the long service, much of which had been joyous and beautiful, even if we didn’t understand it, the lack of a reception or party of some sort was a letdown. It felt like all the joy had disappeared with the end of the wedding, and now everyone went back to the daily basics, starting with just getting a meal.

Our exposure to the culture of Swaziland continued during the following week with preparations for the Reed Dance. The Reed Dance or Umhlanga (pronounced phonetically, but the “hl” sound is guttural and tough to get right) is one of the two most important Swazi festivals of the year and is written up as a “don’t-miss” event in all of the travel books. During the festival, which lasts several days, up to forty thousand young women from throughout the country come to the king’s lands in Ezulwini Valley. Here they gather reeds to take to the queen mother’s residence and repair her kraal (technically refers to a cattle pen similar to corral but often used to mean the entire homestead). On the next to last day of the festival, they present the reeds to the queen mother in an elaborate ceremony. On the last day of the festival, the young maidens parade and dance before the king and queen mother. Historically this was done so the king could choose an additional wife from among the crowd. In current custom, we were told that if the king wants another wife, he chooses ahead of time. And unlike his father, the current king wasn’t choosing a new wife every year. The current king had only fifteen wives whereas his father had more than eighty. Also traditionally, the young women would parade and dance completely naked, but modern ideas have impinged on this practice and now the women are at least somewhat clothed on the bottom. Most, however, do participate topless.

Although Wendy was not enthusiastic about the idea, I definitely wanted to see the event. The men in the office strongly encouraged us and suggested that we should attend in traditional Swazi costume. With some hesitation, we agreed and went out with Mkhululi (hum the m then “kuh-loo-lee”), another business advisor from our office, to purchase our attire. The important pieces in the traditional male outfit are as follows: a colorful necklace of fine beadwork in one of several traditional patterns; a long bright cloth wrapped around the torso and knotted to cover the right shoulder; two sarong-type skirts worn on top of each other, not at all matching the top cloth, knotted around the waist to expose the right leg; and a furry loincloth worn over the skirts. My loincloth consisted of two impala hindquarters, which meant that there was a tail bump suggestively protruding from the front, probably purposeful. At least I didn’t have to wear the traditional male underclothing. Evidently, this consists of a hollowed out gourd tied on with a leather thong. I’ll leave the specifics to the imagination, but just thinking about it made me uncomfortable.

Mkhululi had graciously agreed to go with us to the celebration, and so we agreed on a time to meet at his house on Monday. We had to make all of our arrangements early in the week because we both had busy schedules with clients on Thursday and Friday.

Even though Monday was a holiday, we got up early. We wanted to make sure we had time to shower, put on our native costumes, and drive to Mkhululi’s house in time for the festival. We had no idea as to what to anticipate in terms of crowds or how difficult it would be to park. As we were finishing up the struggle to properly attire ourselves, making comparisons to various pictures in the newspaper, magazines, and guidebooks, I got a phone call. It was Mkhululi.

He said, “I have bad news. I called my father this morning to borrow some of his traditional clothing. He asked me what I needed it for. I said that I needed it to go to the Umhlanga. He said, ‘Sorry, but the ceremony was yesterday.’ I said, ‘But today is the holiday.’ He said that today was the holiday only because it was Monday, but the celebration was yesterday. I am so, so sorry.”

My heart sank. We were all dressed up. It wasn’t a fortune, but we had spent several hundred dollars to look authentic. We were lucky enough to be in Swaziland just at the time of the Umhlanga, and we had missed it. I couldn’t be mad at Mkhululi because he had helped us with the clothing and had volunteered to escort us to the event. Around the office, we had mentioned that we were going on Monday, and no one had said anything. I didn’t know what to do. Mkhululi suggested that we go to the king’s lands where the thousands of young women were camping and the festival was held just to see if there were any activities planned for today. Based on our experience over the last two months, this made a lot of sense. In Swaziland, schedules for things like this were not well specified or publicized in advance. Somehow, people just kind of knew or found out. In fact, the specific date of the Umhlanga was only decided and publicized a few weeks prior. It’s not clear how the date is determined. If it were based on the sun or the moon, it certainly could be calculated years in advance, but it’s not. I guess that helps it retain some of the mystery, and more importantly, someone gets to retain his sense of importance because he gets to determine the date.

Not to look entirely stupid, we changed back into our regular clothes and drove to Mkhululi’s house. Mkhululi had just moved into his new house. While he was at work, his wife had done most of the moving and furniture arranging. She was exhausted and needed some sleep, so Mkhululi brought his one-year-old daughter along with us as we drove the few miles to the king’s lands. As we got close to the main festival site, we began to see lots of young women and the temporary infrastructure necessary to support them. It looked like the aftermath of a parade, the packing up of the circus, or the end of a Girl Scout camporee with some significant differences. As we approached, we crossed a small river on a one-lane bridge. Along the river banks, we could see dozens of young women washing their clothes and bathing. Those that were bathing were completely naked and seemed very comfortable with that fact. The Girl Scouts would not have approved.

We continued driving through the bustling crowds of young women and eventually arrived at a makeshift parking lot outside the gates to the king’s residence. A number of cars were parked, and there was a gaggle of police officers chatting among themselves. Mkhululi got out and approached one of the officers to find out if anything official was happening that day. He came back to the car and brought good news. Yesterday had been the ceremonial presentation of the reeds to the Queen Mother. However, today was scheduled for the parade and dancing for the king! We hadn’t missed it! The activities would start at 2:00 p.m. We would come back, and we wouldn’t even worry that the start was probably quoted in “Africa time.” It didn’t matter that we would have to sit and wait for a while; we were going to see the Reed Dance. We took Mkhululi back to his house and agreed to come back at 1:30 p.m.

After a few errands, lunch, and changing back into our traditional clothes, we drove back to Mkhululi’s house. His wife Katy was awake and would go with us to the Reed Dance along with their young daughter. Mkhululi had given us some coaching on our attire so now my two skirts were held up by knotting the ends of the cloth together rather than with safety pins, as had been the case this morning. The cloth around my torso still relied on the safety pins.

We piled into two cars and headed for the stadium at the king’s residence. As we approached, we had the same feeling that we’d had at Sonnyboy’s wedding, like arriving for an important high school football game in a small town, except here the crowds were bigger. We parked in crooked rows in a field next to the stadium and walked along the long fence to the stadium entrance. The metal detector we walked through at the entrance was something I’d never seen at a football game, but the feeling was still similar. The stadium had seats for probably five thousand spectators, but the parade ground in the center was over three times the size of a normal football field. The stands on the near side, next to the king’s reviewing area were full, so we had to walk around the entire field to get to the open seats. As we were walking, we went past thousands of half-naked young women lined up for their parade. We tried not to stare at them, and they tried not to stare too much at us. However, they were looking at us a lot. We definitely stood out. Out of probably four thousand spectators, we were among the less than 1 percent who were white and were probably the only white family in traditional dress. Did I say we stood out? And did I say that Mkhululi paraded us in front of most of the spectators in the stadium before we chose our seats?

Although we felt conspicuous, there was a friendly sensation coming from everyone who was looking at us. The people made us feel that we had made the right decision to dress traditionally. And we felt proud about how we looked. In fact, we got help on looking even better. As we were walking to our seats, two young men came up to us and said that they appreciated our dressing traditionally, but that we hadn’t gotten the outfits quite right. They would help us. I had the most serious problem. Although my top wrap covered the correct shoulder, I was using safety pins, which is taboo. The young men showed me how to knot the cloth so that it was properly held in place without pins. We thanked them, took some pictures, and then went on to our seats.

After the arrival of the queen mother and then the king, the actual events began, which weren’t spectacular. It was not like the closing ceremonies at the Olympics. It was just forty thousand half-naked young women, dressed in costume, divided into local groups, parading in formation around the stadium and then stopping to dance in front of the king. In recent years, the ceremony had attracted more very young girls, and the first group in the parade was comprised of toddlers with their chaperones trying to keep them in order. The second group was comprised of members of the royal family. After that, a knowledgeable Swazi citizen could probably tell the groups apart based on their home towns, but they began to all look the same to me. After a few thousand pairs of naked breasts, the novelty wears off. It was a unique cultural event, and I’m very glad I attended, but I won’t need to go back again right away. Mkhululi hadn’t been in ten years.

Later, when we discussed our experience with our friends and colleagues, we heard a surprising range of opinions on the Reed Dance festivities. Most of the Swazi men and some of the women thought that it was an important part of Swazi tradition and should be preserved. However, most of the women we knew (educated and city-dwelling) thought that it was demeaning to women and was just one example of how the Swazi culture and society were still male-dominated and oppressive to women. Mkhululi said his daughter would definitely participate as soon as she was older, but Katy said that wasn’t going to happen. It reflected the general Swaziland condition, a small country with strong and proud traditions (including a powerful king) confronting the modern world.

We didn’t stay to see all of the sections of young women parade in front of the king or the singing that followed. As we were leaving, a fashionable, attractive woman asked us to pose for a picture. An adolescent, who might have been her daughter, joined us in the photo. We thought nothing of it until we heard later that it was in the local newspaper. The caption under our picture congratulated whoever had helped the tourists to dress so authentically.

On Tuesday, we continued our short vacation and went to Cape Town. Any flight out of Swaziland is expensive, so we drove the four-plus hours to the Johannesburg airport to save over $600. We later learned that the shortest route on the map is not the shortest route in time; we saw a lot of small towns along our drive. We also saw the settlements (shantytowns/slums) near the Johannesburg and later the Cape Town airports. These were the remains of apartheid when black Africans were forced to live in “townships” on the outskirts of major cities. When apartheid went away, the residents of these townships could legally move elsewhere. However, that didn’t mean that they could afford to move elsewhere, so these communities remain. Evidently, they were slowly being upgraded with sewers, running water, and electricity; but this was, of course, very expensive for the government and was taking a long time. Today, the living conditions in the former townships remain a source of terrible frustration for millions of South Africans.