My name is Muzi Mohale, born 37 years ago in Swaziland. I fell in love with tourism through my high school (St Christopher’s High School 1989-1993 in Swaziland) years, where I was exposed to the backpacking industry. I was part of a group called Prince Makhosini Award Scheme, where we did community work to accumulate the number of hours we positively contribute to the local community and afterwards venture into an expedition. This involved camping at various points and walking long distances back to our school.
We carried with us heavy backpacks which had tents, utensils and food stuffs for a weekend outing. The normal scenario would be to board a bus from school on a Friday afternoon and pitch our tent on another school yard which would be 100km away from our school. The following day would begin, finding our way back to school, though this time around walking. Along the way would take break for lunch, and then continue until evening where we get to setup camp on another destination halfway through to our original departure point (our school).
The next day the same would happen until we reached school. Being boys meant along the way we would compete amongst ourselves as see who had the most endurance and strength to outdo everyone by walking fast and reaching the next destination first. With this kind of competition a lot of pain and suffering would be the order of the day and we developed blisters and walking gear would be damaged.
Annually various schools with the same scheme would gather to then award all participates awards which varied according to the amount of distance and community work covered. They ranged from entry level being bronze, to silver and celebrity status being gold medal.
Below are pictures of myself at Tourism INDABA 2010, in Durban…where I wore daily sponsored t-shirts.
