Lavumisa, the border between Swaziland and South Africa.
Over the past three days I traveled to South Africa, Mozambique and coasted through the Swaziland from north to south. The next step, after the border is the east coast of South Africa, its endless white beaches and the amazing ecosystem of St. Lucia.
The tail rich man to enter the African state is a long snake endlessly.
around at the examination office of the border, there is nothing in all shades of brown.
The steppe desert, the dusty road, a handful of earth houses.
account Around me hundreds and hundreds of faces blacks, calm, serene resignation and waiting to stamp the visa and passport. For
I stamp that marks a holiday.
For their work, food and water.
await my turn.
The row does not move.
I sit down, like everyone else.
The hours go by, I relax and stop to make me anxious in the backpack tourists.
I think of what my eyes have photographed in the last days of travel.
Barracks, mud and corrugated iron.
barefoot children in the camps.
women with buckets on his head, directed to the source to fetch water.
No machine, if not mine. All walk down the street.
No shop, a couple of gas stations.
an entire state made up of arid and inhospitable. The opposite of the people that inhabit it.
an entire state made of nothing. And AIDS.
That is, there is.
I think back to a paragraph read on the Lonely Planet. "in the Independent State of Swaziland 25% of population suffers from AIDS."
I look around again, look at this huge expanse of African faces.
One person in four.
I feel lost without even having played.
The African sun is hot, but I shudder inside, down the bottom.
They open a door just for us whites. We are only a dozen in fact, so think to help us quickly reach the 4 star hotels that await tourists across the border.
But approaching the counter, the situation becomes increasingly congested. The crowd is awesome, I'm crushed, pressed by a madman and uncontrolled black embrace. It becomes impossible to move even an inch.
breathe slowly, to avoid some panic, keep our eyes fixed on my passport.
minutes pass, I seem like hours.
I can see far, the clerk at the counter. It 's a white Afrikaner, the panic on the faces and clothes drenched in sweat.
more minutes pass. The employee is now near.
I can extend the passport stamped and get it back to get on the exit door.
Breath.
still breathing.
I feel my heart beating. Forte. A moment ago
beat in unison with others, followed the rhythm of a long concert of African drums.
is said to be in Africa and the Heart of the World.
True.
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