South Africa is one of the most beautiful countries that everyone dreams to visit especially if someone is booking a tour with Sunway Safaris. It’s a great experience that you will never forget. Below are some of the thing that you must not miss when you visit South Africa, I (Sfiso) was recently on tour did what we call the Rainbow Route SAa17.
On this tour we visit amazing place like Kruger National Park , Eswatini highlands , Hluhluwe imfolozo park (the oldest park in SA), the Drakensberg Mountains, Addo Elephant National Park ,Tsitsikama and Table Mountain. Let us take a look into one of the small countries that I have visited recently
ESWATINI/SWAZILAND
Eswatini is a small country with a population of about a million people and is about 17400 km square got independence in 1968. It is a landlocked county and it got its name from KING MSWATI 3RD and their official languages is English and Isiswati. The Swati people are very spiritual people and they are more deep into their cultures, but on the other side they do believe in Christianity religion but they will mix it with their traditional believes, they will practice several types of ceremonies annually like UMKHOSI WOMHLANGA that will be known as reed festival that takes place in August the last week or the first week of September.
THE REED FESTIVAL
This is an annual event in Eswatini where more than 10000 unmarried virgin girls travel from various regions come to participate in this event; this event was created in about 1940s under a rule of Sobhuza the 2nd. The main reason for this event is to promote abstinence in youth until they reach the right age. Swati people are known as polygamist as well so in this event men can choose a wife but then that means they must be prepared to pay about 11 cows as bide price (dowry).
PEOPLE OF ESWATINI
This people are very friendly they will be welcoming with a smile. They are hard workers most of the time you will find them in the maize field, of which it’s their staple diet. At some point they do lot of craftwork that they sell to make s an income
Traditional healers and Diviners
This are people that help in the villages if there is someone is sick or sometimes that person will go the fortune teller usually will be the female. The fortune teller will predict the problem then sent the person to the traditional healer that will give the person the treatment. Fortune tellers go to training that last about 6 months but traditional healers learn the herbs from others.
So finally Eswatini has become one of the tourist attraction with it culture and rituals. It’s a very beautiful country to visit I personally enjoyed the stay there with friendly people.
