In the land of the Zulu

I'm not going to go into a whole lot of explanation today, I think most of the pictures speak for themselves. But, a quick background. Saturday was Heritage Day here in SA and also King Shaka Day. King Shaka is the celebrated Zulu warrior king who took on both Boers and British. Sept. 24 celebrates the life and death of this renowned warrior. It is very much a Zulu day and not aimed at tourists. In fact, other than our little group of five, we only saw two others that appeared to be tourists. It was a great day and we felt very welcomed into the Zulu culture.

A group of dancers and drummers let me try out the drum. Apparently I was terrible. But I had fun. And my drumming promptly developed a new dance circle. A different, more skilled drummer took over and the dancing (consisting primarily of high-kicks and stomping) started.

George (American/Kiwi) gave the high-kicks a go. I was impressed (apparently he had studied kung-foo). Again, people came running to see the white-man do high-kicks.

A big circle formed and this lady took over dancing for George.

And then Ellie showed everybody that a white-girl has some skill too.

Ok, great day at the King Shaka Day celebrations.

Sunday we spent at Umhlanga (pronounced Um-shlanga), which is a community on the coast just north of Durban. It is quite beautiful and the calmness was a marked difference from the day before.