Flight of the Bumblebee

So before you think I’m missing in action, or turned into a topless bar lady wrapped around a slippery pole, raising my eyebrows seductively at customers, I better bring you up to speed. We made like a duck and disappeared from the Indian dude’s farm before things turned sour.

The plot thickened when we met the builder and Kalvin’s protégé barman. Turns out he never got the environmental study approved, he made his money from whorehouses which probably explains his obsession with women and I bet you anything the hotels he says he owns are of the same caliber and he either pimps or is a slum lord. The burglaries at the bushpub were apparently personal vendettas against him and he is known to beat up people, even his wife. I’ll never know all the shady facts about the previous girl who worked at the lodge except that her stuff is still there.

We didn’t stick around to confirm how much of the above was true, but followed our instincts and got the hell out of there very quickly. I saw a side of life which saddened me. Proud, smiling Jethro works for no pay, but has a place to stay and lives on a hope that Kalvin will back pay him his wages and things will improve. Goggo goes into town to beg and borrow from friends when things get bad and Jacky left to look for food and never returned. The day before we left, Kalvin brought his 5 Zimbabwean immigrant workers from the bushpub to offload his fridges etc. He never returned that day so we found mattresses for them but they went to bed hungry not knowing what to expect the next day. We left on a sad note aware that there’s different kinds of people out there leading different kinds, some sadder than others.

My knee is still not healed, so job hunting will have to wait but we’re heading in the general direction of Hoedspruit area where all the game lodges are situated.

We stopped at Potgietersrus where I got myself a pair of crutches at the government hospital for R30 (hard to believe) and visited the museum so Theo could check out his hairy Boer ancestors, while I read fascinating remedies such as putting a dead cats skin, fur facing downwards, on your chest to get rid of flu.

We’re staying in Pietersburg, formally known as Polokwane which is in the Capricorn region which is in the Limpopo Province. Yip, quite a mouthful of names to remember but I’m surprising myself. The caravan park where we’ve been staying for 4 days is very quiet and has 3200 hectres of fenced off game park. We’ve seen rhino’s, zebras, blue wilderbeest, jackal and loads of different antelope species. Scrutinizing dung is fun but we’re struggling to identify trees and clearly need to refer to our notes about whorls, stipules and nodes.

Since we’re in a big town we’re doing some maintenance on the bus. Theo’s getting stressed driving around looking for parking in Pietersburg which is as big as Cape Town centre. Today we took the bus in to get the wiring sorted out and now we can travel at night, the hooter works again and the wires which dangle in his lap shouldn’t get so hot anymore. Tomorrow the bus gets a service. Still haven’t painted it yet since the fire bubbled a section on the side but I don’t see the point since the thorn trees will just scratch any new paint job and anyway I’m still working on a theme. Any ideas?

Leaving here in a day or two to somewhere or other.