Staff Blog

Doesn’t Matter if You’re Black or White?

We had the most amazing day the Saturday before last. Three times a year there is traditional event called the Umlangha reed dance. The most well known is performed by virgin girls at the end of August.  Girls from all over the country gather to dance for the King.  They are topless and not wearing much on the bottom, and traditionally the King would choose a new wife each year from out of the young women (he currently has thirteen wives).  But apparently he’s finally given that up as it doesn’t set a good example for the country (I don’t know exactly the reason that he was persuaded to stop, but I do know that HIV spreads quickly through networks of multiple concurrent partners, so perhaps this has something to do with it). Anyhow, we’ve been disappointed that we were going to miss that event (it will take place on August 31 this year), although I think we’re all a bit wary of what it represents.  However, it turns out there are two other similar events: men dance in January and married women dance in July. On Saturday we attended the married women’s dance.