King’s 1 world status glarion call a reality!

Having spent a good seven days in this beautiful Island nestling in the West Pacific Rim, home to 23 million souls, I should be on cloud nine for being treated like a King, living the life of a retired US dollar millionaire but momentarily I am very livid.

I am peeved at myself, my country, the entire citizenry, the counter-productive and archaic beggar mentality that has come to define us as Swazis. I am angry that a country like Taiwan, with not even one natural resource, can be so productive, so wealth – it even donates not just food but money too to my country with so many natural resources we do not even know what to do with our Iron Ore at Ngwenya or our Diamond deposits in Dvokolwako. We have vast arable land remaining unused yet we complain of hunger and biting poverty.

Mountains and forests take up two-thirds of the total area of this tiny Island while the remaining areas are hills, tablelands, highland and coastal plains and basins yet every little available land is used to cultivate crops. Just like Swaziland, this area is warm with average temperatures of 25 degrees Celsius and worse than Swaziland, it has 615 people for every square metre, making it the worlds 2nd area in population density.

Development

But with their hard efforts in economic development known to the world as the ‘Taiwan miracle’, the per capita income of Taiwan has skyrocketed from around US$100 to its current US$20 000 in half a century.
This has been achieved through hard-work, grit and determination by every citizen of the country – not through hand-outs.

When His Majesty King Mswati III made the clarion call of Swaziland reaching First World Status by 2022, many people felt this was a dream that will never become a reality. Some critics even made snide comments that the King’s visits to First world countries, dining and wining with the High and Mighty might have influence his thinking. Let me say it here and now – the King’s clarion call is a reality and it is not misplaced.
The first world status is only a state of mind.

Perhaps the King did not want to put it bluntly that we need to wake up and smell the Coffee. He did not want to tell us in the face that we must stop being lazy and start working very hard.
He did not want to tell us we cannot all do the blue collar jobs especially because some amongst us had no stamina to pursue their academic studies beyond primary education. Of course, we need to change our beggar mentality and do things ourselves because nobody but ourselves can do something about our appalling situation.

It was a clarion call to say we cannot continue to be like a toddler who screams at the house keeper when he has wet himself. It was call from the Throne that we need to inculcate the culture of learning, develop entrepreneurship skills to have diversity and create a platform to be innovative as a country. Right now, if someone succeeds supplying stationery, everyone then wants to supply stationery. No inventiveness. No diversity.
My experience, in this very short time, here has been amazing. It has been priceless.

With my colleagues at work, we often complain bitterly that our job is tiresome; we work odd hours and there is no overtime claim. And we are talking about one job, for crying out loud! Here it is impossible to do one job – they work two or three jobs and that is 16 hours or more of hard work where every minute counts!

One of our tour guides, Cindy, a student who is studying for degree in Civil Engineering, told me ‘money never sleeps’!
You can only sleep for six hours – not more than that. Yet most people in Swaziland get to knock off from work at 5pm and the only thing they want to do is get a rest or even worse, rush to the nearest bar to quench their thirsty. In this part of the world, this is almost sacrilege or it is reserved for tourists like yours Truly. Here it is work, work, work and more work – for both male and female.

There is nothing of the growing mentality that has infiltrated our fairer sex that “my boyfriend (husband) will take care of me or will pay my rent, buy me clothes, buy me lunch or generally give me money,”. Here everybody earns his/her money and the hard working people, shockingly, are the women. From tour guides, chefs, petrol attendants and generally what we consider odd jobs, are being done by women, beautiful women for that matter. Ones you just want to take to your mother! Beauties with brains!

Our women would die than being seen scrubbing floors of hotels or washing cars. To them, that is speciality, with all due respect, for our Mozambican friends they would tell you!
The odd jobs I am talking about are being done by mostly students studying for P.hd’s or having just finished their degrees! Besides no one here is too old to work. An octogenarian 72-year-old Gogo, with one foot already in the grave, is the one who cut my hair in a saloon in the city centre and I paid a cool 400 Taiwanese dollars – the equivalent of E120. Mommy, did you get that?

Education

Education here is a priority too, as much as joining the army for every boy after finishing school is non-negotiable. The period spent in the army is a minimum of a year and thereafter you can decide whether you want to be a soldier or pursue another career. Perhaps that’s why you hardly see a man so colossal like he has just swallowed a whole cow like Yours Truly.

Obesity is non existent here. Without sounding defensive, maybe it has to do with the kind of food they eat. Whereas we, Swazis, three of us can devour a full chicken and wash it down with a 2-litre Coke within a blink of an eye, here a chicken leg is shredded to such small pieces a full chicken probably lasts for a week. Two of my colleagues, whose names I cannot mention here, would die of hunger in a space of three days here. I had a nasty experience myself on Saturday.

Having had so much sea food - from your delicious prawns, sea weed, oysters, shrimps, frog legs .…yes snake frog legs are part of the cuisine, I was craving for beef. I got the shock of my life when dinner was served – four shreds of beef, which looked like overcooked bacon, and some tired spinach leaves posing as salad!

Good Lord, that was my dinner!

My mind just traced back to the lovely Mbabane Corporate place for that half chicken of the sumptuous Gallitos extra hot!
I took an apple and walked reluctantly to my room at the Five Star Evergreen Hotel in Tainan- a coastal city, down south, and opened my laptop and logged in to follow the MTNFootball.com live commentary of the Soweto derby where my beloved Orlando Pirates Football Club silenced the noisy neighbours Kaizer Chiefs – thanks to Daine Klate’s stupendious free kick, I was beside myself with joy and screamed so loud at the final whistle my Tswana room-mate Leano Monagen, a Chiefs supporter, had to walk out of the room because of my fair attempt in vocal chords ... ’Yiyo le ibhakaniya…woza uzobona yiyo le … yiyo le Bhakaniya woza uzoyibona,”.  I belted. I know I sounded like a faulty diesel generator but I was the happiest Buccaneer alive in Taiwan!

‘Red is hot ... black is back’ ... I told him as we went down to the hotel bar for a few glasses of the finest from the Scottish distillers! After the mighty Buccaneers triumph over the noisy neighbours, four double tots of the single malt that started it all – Glenfiddich 18 year old - is not a bad idea.
We were soon joined by our tour friends from Germany, Switzerland, Norway, England and Hungary. I slept like a baby. Up the Bucs!
One thing is certain, just like us, the Taiwanese are very cultural people who respect their heritage and are proud of their rich history. They are not shy to preserve and flaunt their excellence. Theirs is not just oral history – they have memorial halls, Parks, Museum, night markets and historic sites where the country’s history, culture and best of Taiwan experience is preserved.

Masterpiece

The Taipei 101 building, one of the tallest buildings, in the world is a masterpiece. Until the opening of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2010, this landmark skyscraper was the tallest building in the world. It has 101 floors above ground and five floors underground.
Who is concerned about our proud history and buildings or even our Museum? No one. We simply do not care yet these structures not only define us but forms part of our history. The Taiwanese use such structures to rake in more money from tourists. Making money and being innovative is central in their lives and time here is such an important factor, the nonsensical ‘no hurry in Swaziland’ tag would not suffice here. That’s why it seems everyone has a scooter (motorbike) and there are 15 million of the motorbikes – more than cars!

It makes moving around such an easy thing yet in Swaziland, a couple of hundreds import cars, the whole town grinds to a halt. I laughed in my handkerchief when one of the tour guides, Greg, told me it is laid down law in Taiwan that one man one wife. There is no polygamy and better still, each family can have one or two kids – not the soccer team of children some of us brood.

The main reason, is certainly to save money. It is in their culture that when you are working, you need to save at least 60 per cent of your salary and there is no much difference to what an average degree holder earns in Swaziland.

A high school teacher, which our tour guide Greg is, earns around E10 000 but it is the great work ethic, which sees him take up piece jobs like being a tour guide which keeps him afloat. It is precisely what we need to start doing as Swazis because we cannot continue to complain that our lemons are bitter, we need to turn those lemons to lemonade.

It starts with you as an individual. What are you doing to improve your life?
Talk to you next week...
For now let me catch this high speed underground train to Taichung!

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