Zulu!

G'day again.

Well, for those who prior to this mammoth publication were largely unfamiliar with South Africa, this is the entry where I finally encounter probably South Africa's most famous denizens: the Zulu. However, I must caution you beforehand that this does not involve any "Don't throw those bloody spears at me!" moments (sorry, Owen...) - their warrior past notwithstanding, the Zulus are now citizens of South Africa like any other, and those of you addicted to the spectacle of Rorke's Drift and Isandhlwana would probably find them a little bit of an anti-climax.

This all comes about as a result of the Friday trip that I made with Grant, still travelling along the same way despite Mark's departure, from Durban to the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Now, for the more pedantic amongst you (stand up, Al), I have no idea if there actually were 1,000 hills along the valley, nor did I (or do I) particularly care. Suffice to say, the valley in question is indeed bracketed along its length by a great many hills. It's also home to a large Zulu community.

Big surprise, you may say, seeing as how it's in a province called KwaZulu-Natal, in which the Zulus are the majority population. And you'd have a point. The difference is more about the fact that the valley is more of a traditional Zulu setup than the townships around Durban - though obviously, traditional is very much a relative concept.

The endless fetishising by many travellers, especially the more militant of the backpacking community, of seeing things that are "traditional" or "original" or (here's the key one) "untouched" can get ridiculous. Specifically, anybody taking an organised tour to go and see something, rather than finding their own way there, cannot really be surprised if what they see can feel a trifle staged. Certainly, I have no patience for anybody who then proceeds to complain that the tour guide only takes them to see people who dress up for the tourists - although this didn't happen on this trip, I have seen Westerners getting quite irate because they don't think a guide is taking them somewhere "authentic" enough or (this makes me cringe) "off the beaten track". I have every respect for the guys who really do go out and find things on their own, but I make no pretensions at the fact that I will happily take tours to go and see things, preferably with a local doing the guiding, and that I can handle it if these can feel like I'm being spoonfed a particular view.

So, our trip to the Valley was as authentic as I personally feel the need for: the guide who drove us for about an hour up from Durban was a Zulu; the lass who showed us around the area was a Zulu; the sangoma was a Zulu; the local ladies who brought us lunch were Zulu; the little kids who came and sang and danced for us were Zulu. The village was a working community, and there was a minimum of staging stuff. We weren't prevailed upon at every single stage to buy things.

Although I knew the Zulu and the Xhosa were distant cousins (both are members of the Nguni group that migrated down from East Africa), sitting through the presentation by the sangoma made me realise their traditional beliefs are near-identical, and the food and language are pretty similar too. The little kids from the local school did some fairly energetic dancing, largely involving high-kicking and clapping. They then insisted that we try it, too, which provoked a fair bit of amusement (my attempts at high-kicking were notably hilarious). Overall, though, it was far less disturbing than the experience we'd had in Coffee Bay, where the local girls' dance group came and did some traditional dancing at the Coffee Shack hostel, which basically involved them singing and jumping around energetically while wearing just a skirt and necklaces - a bunch of girls in their early teens doing this is not a comfortable thing if you've been brought up with Western taboos about public nudity...

The food was similar to what we'd had in Transkei, with the main staple being mielie (maize), which is ground down and then cooked either as kind of equivalent of rice or cous-cous or something, or laid out as a kind of bread-like cake. Both those descriptions ascribe far too much elegance and taste to it, though - mielie is incredibly bland. It's then generally accompanied by spinach, and sometimes squash/pumpkin. If you're really lucky, you might get some chaka-laka, which is a kind of spicy tomato salsa. Carnivores, I'm afraid, would be disappointed, as meat only tends to be eaten as part of celebrations, not from day to day. It's also mostly eaten with the fingers, by balling up some mielie and using it to scoop up bits of the accompaniments, which is refreshingly messy when you get used to it, but again is a slight challenge to any Westerners wedded to the concept of cutlery!

We also went down to by the river, and had what was probably the most fascinating part of the tour, as our guide regaled us with an explanation of traditional Zulu courtship practices, which are fairly circumspect, and revolve around the girl telling the guy frequently to go away, before finally signalling acceptance with a woven-grass bracelet. Obviously, we all got to make our efforts at making these bracelets (even we menfolk, in the spirit of equal opportunities), which ranged from the good, though the passable (probably where I'd rate my final effort) to the utterly pitiful (where my first effort would lie...).

The other thing we did a fair bit of, unsurprisingly given the name of the place, was climb hills. Which just reminded me how much I hate hills. Ah well. It almost certainly did me some good, and doesn't seem so dreadful from the point of view of an office job, where the most strenuous thing to do is go upstairs to the canteen (and then go and sit out on the huge balcony in the sunshine, looking back west towards the Melbourne CBD in the distance...). It was quite knackering at the time, though. Which made it all the more surprising that I was in the mood for going out that night.

In fact, I reckon what drove me on was going for a curry with Grant. I hadn't had a really good, proper Indian curry since Stellenbosch (and that one got buried under somewhat of a session), and it had been even longer than that for Grant, so we went the whole hog, poppadums, naans, a full blow-out curry. Absolutely blissful. And a lot more elegant than Durban's own unique contribution to the world of rapid cuisine, namely the Bunny Chow. This delightfully-named treat consists of half a loaf of white bread (unsliced), with the innards scooped out, a heap of curry ladled in, and then the removed bread back on top. I've only had one once, last year when I first went to SA, but I quite liked it. Then again, it had curry in, so I was pretty much always going to.

After this, we headed back to the hostel for a couple of beers, after which Grant crashed out, claiming exhaustion and incipient bankruptcy. I ended up sitting around chatting with some other lads at the bar, one of whom, I realised after a while, I had actually also talked to at the same hostel bar some 18 months previously, when I stayed there for a night in my previous time in Durban. English ex-pat, ex-Army, that particular kind of Home Counties accent that sounds a bit like a horse - nice enough bloke, though. I also got chatting to two lasses from Kent, who were (to be honest) both rather stunning and had half the guys in the place in a lather. Which turned out to be handy, as one of the guys was the owner of the bar we'd been at the previous night, and made sure we got in for free, despite it being a Friday night. I then got to spend an hour or so chatting away with the girls whilst watching every single shark in the place come and try his luck (and crash and burn), which, when I know I haven't got a chance of getting anywhere myself, I always find really quite funny. They only stayed around for that hour or so, though, as they were leaving the next morning. I then ended up having a few more drinks with Zuzka, the Czech receptionist, and her Aussie room-mate, Peta, discussing the state of the world, the joys of travelling, Aussie bands, and all those other kind of things one does when moderately drunk and not remotely interested in the music being played. And then, on the walk home, Peta and I got the amusement value of watching Zuzka dancing down the middle of the street. A quirky, but quality, evening/night.

The Saturday was thus, by necessity, a somewhat less busy day. Nice little lie-in, then up to watch the sport - I believe it was the Wallabies vs All Blacks game from the Tri-Nations, though that's largely on the basis of working out where I was for the other games rather than from any particular certainty. I remember it was a pretty decent match, though. After that, I met up with Grant and we popped down the road to a pub to watch the first games of the English Premiership season - unfortunately, the game we both desperately wanted to see (West Ham vs Blackburn) was apparently the lowest priority match (it was due to be shown as a delayed broadcast at 1am, and hence they didn't even tell us the score!), but we got a couple of games to watch. Basically, it was as much about just re-affirming that the annual club football famine of the summer was properly over. And having a few beers. Despite starting the drinking in the afternoon, though, it was a relatively quiet evening, spent at the hostel bar chatting with Grant, Zuzka, Peta and a few other random fellow drinkers. Neither Grant nor I was in the mood for a heavy one, as the next day we were due to be off bright and early (again), heading northwards to the Drakensberg mountains. But that'll have to wait until next time. Until then, remember: I am the Weakest Link. Goodbye!