Another on-time post!

Our office is located fairly close to the major city park, so we see all the protests as they're setting up. They come to the park to gather and dance, and then march from here. It's quite a sight, even if it doesn't happen particularly often. But today was a very big march, possibly the biggest since I've been here. The public high school teachers were marching for increased salaries. It's unlikely that they'll get the increases, because the government really doesn't have any money. Swaziland is going to have a rough time in the next couple years, so we'll see what happens with the money. A number of people I've talked to think that the marching is a positive thing. They hope that it's building a foundation for people to speak out about issues they care about.

Over the past month, I've been noticing that I have adopted some of the speech mannerisms of Swaziland while I've been here. They're not major things, but they do sound strange. For example, in the Swazi dialect of English, it makes sense to say, "I was lazy to get out of bed." You can understand what it means, it just doesn't sound quite right. Hopefully, getting back to the US will help me cull some of the stranger sayings. But it's quite possible that ten years down the road, a judge will read a brief I've written and think, "That's a very strange way to phrase that."

Have a good Wednesday,
-Ben