Zulu Culture

OK, that's a presumptuous title from someone who's been in Zululand less than a week, and I won't pretend to know much. And at least one of the people pictured is Sotho, not Zulu... But here are some surface impressions anyway...
The housing appears better than we saw in the north and in Namibia and Botswana, which makes it hard to grasp that this is one of South Africa's poorest regions. Although simple, the houses are better built, bigger and spread out more, with some green around them. Lights dot the countryside at night - there are a lot of homes in the area. There's an equal mixture of block or mud/concrete houses with tin roofs, and traditional thatched rondevals.
The landscape is green and spectacular, so there are jobs in agriculture and tourism, but not enough. Food and water are more available locally than rural Botswana, for instance.
There are very few whites - it's a black province, although there's the usual pattern of a lot of white-owned businesses. Most of the stores in Bergville are Indian-owned, according to our friend Mumtaz.
Many women wear traditional dress, and colours are are flamboyant. Almost every younger woman who has a job straightens her hair, and roadside beauty salons abound. Men mostly wore western-looking clothes - pants and a soccer shirt. Flip-flops or running shoes were common, or bare feet. Toques are the preferred headgear, even in hot weather. We saw a number of women with orange mud caked on their faces to protect against the sun while working.
The roadsides are alive with people walking, carrying things, both in towns and the countryside. We picked up an older man carrying a saw and axe (the ideal hitchhiker!) on a mountain road. He had no English, but understood that he should let us know when we reached his home. We went up and down for 4 or 5 kilometers before he spoke up, so that distance at least appeared to be his walk home after a day's work.
People's faces, especially women's, often seem to show a hard life. Yet there are lots of jokes and laughter too, broad smiles and exuberant Zulu voices.