Contrasts

I've not yet shared with folk what my goal over here is, so far I have been totally caught up with the going ons of the legal unit generally and all of the government and civil society hosted meetings on various goings on. I have very quickly become acquainted with the hotels and conference centres dotted through out Swaziland. This coming week I will be staying at the Mantenga Lodge for the SWAGAA annual strategic plan.

My main goal in Swaziland is to set up a court watch program, in order to monitor how survivors of domestic abuse & sexual offences are treated by the courts, in procedural terms. On Tuesday morning for example I was at the Magistrates court (finally getting permission to sit in court without the legal staff wondering who I am), two men were in the dock on charges of indecent assault to a 1 year old. Only one defendant could afford an attorney, however his attorney did not show up for the hearing. The trial is now delayed until the end of September and a woman in court, a witness though I do not know her role in the case, was visibly upset by this delay.

As far removed from the grass roots legal issues as could be, Monday morning was spent at Parliament presenting SWAGAA recommendations on the Sexual Offences & Domestic Violence Bill (the bill is now over a year old and not yet a law) to the Ministry of Justice portfolio committee (awesome!). After the entire room introduced themselves, the order of proceedings and background to the bill presented, entirely in Siswati, the chairman of the realises I am in the room and asks, are you Swazi yet? To which I reply, 'not yet chairperson, though I am learning to be i would appreciated it if proceedings were in english.'

For now I look forward to staying at the Matenga Lodge, it is in a place where there are monkeys in the wild! I have not had a chance to see any yet, despite the fact that every person I speak with says that monkeys are everywhere; the foreigners find them cute and the locals quickly point out how dangerous they are for ones car (the people travelling in the cars don't seem to get mentioned as often). I guess that I have been spending too much time in parliamentary meetings becoming a Swazi.