Shongweni Market, Wozu Moya Craft Store, Phezulu Safari Park

The day started off with an 45 minute drive to Shongweni Market! Based the experience I’ve had with the markets we’ve been to in South Africa, I was expecting to see a small market with people bustling about to buy cheap groceries for their family. I was so wrong!! There were cars EVERYWHERE. It honestly looked like the State fair. The market was so big that it took the group 2 hours just to briefly skim all the little shops. This place was as the South Africans like to say, posh. There were families from all over South Africa coming to spend the entire day at the market with their dog and other relatives. The food scene was POPPIN! Some sections were very trendy, mostly advertising organic coffee and desserts. Some foods were like the things you’d see from a television episode on food trucks. And other foods were more like South African comfort food, which is what I settled for because the line for pizza was too long. At the market you could buy anything from handmade soap, which was surprising very popular within the males in our group, to old vinyl records, to handmade leather shoes, to fancy clothes for dogs.

Next, we drove to the neighboring town called Hillcrest to visit a small little craft shop. In this craft shop were little pins, jewelry, bowls, aprons, and other sorts of cute things. The profits from this store go to help people living with HIVs and AIDs!

Lastly, we drove to Phezulu Safari Park to watch traditional Zulu dancing. Turns out we arrived too early and decided to buy tickets to the reptile exhibit last second. We saw hundreds of alligators just laying around, basking in the sun and was even seriously offered the opportunity to run though the gates they were kept in. No one took the offer. Each of us got to/ was forced to put a snake around our neck! Even though it was a Python that would bite if threatened, no one was harmed.

Lastly, we went to see the traditional dancing! They performed us a dance that explained how men used to ask women to marry them. Each morning, women would come to a river with a bucket to collect water for that day. Men knew of this and waited by the river to meet women. They would talk and such, and if the man wanted to marry a woman, he would have to pay her 11 cows. If she said yes, then the man would go to a fortune teller and after a process of continuously vomiting and then cleansing her body, the fortune teller would be able to tell the man everything he needed to know about his wife-to-be. In the case that everything works out, the weddings would take place over the course of two straight days in which many animals are slaughtered, and many rounds of choreographed dancing!

After the dance, the performers invited people to come inside their homes to learn more about their culture. People slept on wooden pillows, men sat on the left for protection, and women were not allowed to take off their heavy beaded hat after they were married. We even tried homemade Zulu beer! It tasted like probiotic yogurt with a hint of dirt! Yummy!