A bit of Swazi Culture

Me and Kevin went to the cultural village yesterday afternoon. This a area where you can see a traditional swazi village community and watch a performance of traditional dancing and singing. After we took a tour of the village and walked down the water fall in this area. It was very nice to see something traditional and see how it is some of the people in the country side are still living. Our guide informed us about the traditional swazi culture. Here are some points I remember.
1. The oldest son stays with the family in the village and he inherits the fathers land and property.
2. The youngest son also stays with the family in the village and he will inherit the mothers land and property.
3. In traditional swazi culture a man can have an many wives as he can afford. Each time he marries he has to pay "Eee-bowl-la (a dowry) to the women's family which is in the form of 12 cows (Each cow is about $800 dollars here). So it is expensive to get married here.
4. Swaziland is ruled by a King who has ultimate authority but he does appoint a prime mister who reports directly to him. The government is run by a cabinet of ministers (Finance, health, education, etc). The current King has 15 wives and is 40 years old. The King is always from the same family line which is the "Dlamini" family. He has to be the only child and the only son born to a wife of the King at the time of the current Kings death. So there is never an apparent aire to the thrown while a current king is reigning. The Dlamini's also do not inter-marry so the mother of the King is never a Dlamini.
5. The women are usually not allowed to eat the brains of the cow cause she would become as smart as a man.

Now those are some traditional pointers but there is a very modern christian based society here as well. A great deal of the population is very religious (Christian) and that from what I can see has lead to a few problems here. The clash/tension between the traditional swazi culture and the White-Christian value system is very evident, at least it is to me. Take for instance the issue of polygamy, not really a christian value. I can go one but you get my point and one would think that in a country with such a high HIV rate that there hyper religiousity would be to there benefit but so far not so much again on that front. Those with HIV/AIDS are highly stigmatized here (which with 4 in 10 being infected is a lot of peopel to stigmatize)and all the men are expected to get married and have children. That means that a lot of gay men (because gays and lesbinas exist in all cultures) are not allowed to live there live as gay men here at all. I can go on about how this is affecting the epidemic here (homophobia, shame, self-hatred are never good things).

So I have been here long enough to begin to pick up some language as well and I know hoe to say good morning, good night, hello in Siswati their native language, although for the most part they all speak engish. I have one week left here, then I am off to Cairo, Egypt for a vacation before coming back home.