The Kingdom

How many virgins can you fit in one field? Well, according to the organisers of the Umhlanga Reed Dance Festival in The Kingdom of Swaziland, over 80,000. I don't know if there were actually 80,000 there, because I lost count after two hundred. But there were definitely lots of them there. In fact, there were virgins as far as the eye can see. And they were all half naked.

Now you might think that for a virile young man such as myself that this would be the perfect outing, especially with my camera in one hand and no chance of reprimand in the other. But I didn't really enjoy the ceremony. There were girls there as young as nine, and I'm not too comfortable around naked girls who haven't even reached their teens (or ones slightly older than that, to be honest). I took a few photos, obviously (rude not to), but these were from afar or behind wherever possible. Although the latter also brought some uncomfortable viewing.

The purpose of the festival is ostensibly to allow the King (the seemingly omnipotent ruler of Swaziland) to choose his next wife, so all the girls in the Kingdom who are yet to be tainted by manflesh come together and present themselves to the King. And he then choses one of them to join his harem. But to me this seemed a bit farcical.

I don't know how on earth he is supposed to choose one girl from among the masses spread out before him, and I also don't know how he is supposed to be certain that their maidenhead is still intact. It seems that this whole aspect of the festival is a bit artificial, and the lucky lady is chosen prior to the event. Instead, the event has come to be a time when the young girls of the nation come together to celebrate their virginity, which is supposed to be maintained until marriage.

They see this as culturally significant, but obviously from a Western observer of a country where the HIV infection rate is over 25% the fact that girls can be proud of not sleeping around should help to prevent the further spread of infection. How much effect their being proud actually has, no one can be sure, but every cultural aspect should help, as tradition is one of the most significant reasons for the astronomically high rate of HIV/AIDS.

However, just because I felt uncomfortable taking photos, it does not mean that others didn't. This was a tourist fest beyond my imagining, and it made me think of what it must have been like to stand in front of Buckingham Palace waiting to catch a glimpse of William and Kate (or 'Catherine' as she seems to be called now) having a cheeky smooch. Everyone literally fighing over the most opportune photo taking point, and those with the biggest cameras somehow thinking that gave them the right to be at the front of the crowd. 'Excuse me,' I said in response to one such excuse for a rather hard shove, 'but I am taking mental pictures.'

I do not like to stereotype nations or races, but there were two very prominent cultures on display in the tourist area of this spectacle: The Japanese and the Germans.

To be honest, I don't have a problem with the Japanese being there with their cameras. They make the best cameras and they take so many photos that they must be good at photography - and I suppose that is why all the official photographers hailed from the Orient.

But the Germans...grr...

As I say, I hate to stereotype nations - I have met some wonderful German people since being out here, some of my favourite, in fact. But I have also met some I absolutely detest. The kind that will get up at 5am to put their towel on a sun lounger by the swimming pool. They also think it is their god-given right to have exclusive access to the best viewpoints from which to stick an 8ft lense on the front of their semi-expensive SLR and take too many photos of a few virgins who just want the chance to be looked on by a fat man in a cape with some feathers in his hair (Mswati III, to you and me).

It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't all male and over fifty. When they decide to take a picture on 30x zoom of a twelve year old's breasts they have gone too far. And obviously I know exactly what they were taking pictures of, because they put their camera right in front of my eyes whilst taking the picture, so I am unable to anything else but their perverted media.

But this failed to ruin Swaziland. The people are lovely, the public transport incomprehensible (it costs 4 Rand - 35p - to go anywhere, be it 200m or 10km) and the scenery is fantastic. Nevertheless, my stop there had to be fleeting, because aside from watching parading virgins, there isn't all that much to do.

So I decided to come to Jo'burg. Which is fine. It is perfectly safe if you stick to well populated areas, travel around in groups and make sure you are in your accommodation before dark.

However, by the time my bus left Swaziland it was 1.30pm, and it is a 5-6 hour journey to Jo'burg. So naturally, I arrived in darkness, on my own, looking for a hostel in a rather deserted part of town. I have been in such situations before, and they were fine - but they were not in the city with the highest violent crime rate in the world.

Nevertheless, I still felt able to get annoyed at the taxi driver when he overcharged me (you wouldn't pay a fiver for a five minute taxi ride even in London), so perhaps that gusto saw me through to safety. Although tomorrow I'm off to stay in Soweto for a while. Heard of it? Arguably the place where they hate white people the most in the entire world. Lucky I'm slightly tanned then - I should be fine.