I’ll play my drum for you pa-rum pum pum pum
Gee whizz. We’ve been sitting here without any physical contact with the rest of the world for 3 months but suddenly we’ve been quite the social busy bees. We arrived back from our first trip to East London and away from rural life and the next day Theo’s folks arrived for a visit to see where in the world us wallys are. They found the roads here a bit of a challenge in their new little bakkie but I think they enjoyed their visit and now they have an idea of what our lives are like although it was school holidays. We picked wild plums, visited the quaint Trennery’s hotel and went mushrooming. I’m sure the bags of clothes they brought with will be well appreciated by the needy here.
A few days after they left, my old school buddy, Charlene, who has long since been living in Ireland, came for a visit with 2 of her Irish pals. Unfortunately we had bum weather and grey skies and in fact the whole Eastern Cape was flooded from too much rain and has been declared a disaster area. I guess those ancestors must be upset with someone for not planting their mielies on time. Someone better own up and fix things cos I’m getting tired of squelching around in wellies and not having clean running water. We have a backup rain tank but showering in brown murky water is not the greatest but here I am complaining and everyone else in the village only has a bucket to wash in.
Anyway it was great having Charlene, Sarah and Tim around for a few days. Tim has a house in Morgan Bay (how coincidental is that – meeting someone all the way from Ireland who owns property a short distance from us) so we joined them at his holiday home for a few days. I’ve gotten a bit caught up with the library, preparing lesson plans and the whole school thing so I’ve forgotten about other things in the world so it was really nice spending time with them and meeting Tim’s friends at Morgan Bay. Tim, Sarah and Charlene all practise various forms of natural healing as their livelihood (when they are not travelling) and they are connected by therapy dance movement which they do and the people I met from Morgan Bay were not your average 9 to 5ers either. Professor Mark has designed and built a vegetable garden which is self sustainable and runs on human poo. Quite an involved system by which he used algae in a couple of small dams to clean up the poo which then gets used to water the garden which, by the way, was flourishing. He and Dave were in the process of getting funding and have plans to improve some crappy long drop systems in rural schools to become more user friendly. They have successfully already built a few such systems for schools which they funded from their own pockets. Maraina is passionate about fighting back against Monsanto’s policy of forcing the world to buy GM (genetically modified) seeds. She goes around informing farmers about the facts which Monsanto omit to tell them. Things such as GM seeds only produce one crop which will force them to buy more seeds from Monsanto the next season. Monsanto is busy controlling the whole worlds crops by suing farmers who won’t fall into their trap. She told us that 25 000 farmers in India have committed suicide because they have now become financially ruined. I googled it, and was horrified to find out that its true. Did you know that Monsanto (who already genetically modifies plant DNA) have recently bought a pharmaceutical company which experiments with human DNA. I guess we will soon be able to buy carrots in the shop which can make your eyes blue or cure cancer so everyone will want to give them another Nobel award but no-one mentions that they will have control of manipulating how your body functions without you realising it. So if in a few years time people notice that everyone has to buy lets say hayfever tablets or pills to replace calcium to keep themselves healthy and the pharmaceutical companies keep getting richer then they might wonder why. We, the man in the street, do not think about these things and only raise an eyebrow if the apples at the veggie shop aren’t nice and perfectly crisp and juicy. I might be green but at least I’m not a cabbage can take on a whole new meaning.
Anyway, besides having intellectual conversations, they also all had a zen side to them which I found stimulating. They hauled out a couple of drums and a bag of rattles and shaking thingies and massive cow bells and stick things and we made music. Clearly they do this often but I’m not musical although I can shake my booty around a dance floor (even better after a few tequilas) but this was a new experience for me. I grabbed something to shake which didn’t look too complicated and I tried to keep in time with the drummer who controlled the beat. Someone else clapped in time and hummed a weird noise in my left ear while another guy shuffled around the room knocking sticks together in a hari krishna sort of way. Oh and Sarah gaily played the flute and occasionally freely expressed herself by letting out a noise which sounded like a banshee whatever that might be. This whole musical expressive thing was a bit new to me but somehow it worked and we sounded cool. I’d love to do more and learn to express myself freely other than with words.
Charlene brought puzzles, CD’s and flutes for the children at the library and now that they have taught 2 students to play Campfire’s Burning (Umsi Watcha), the rest spent today quite happy to blow their lungs out in my other ear, not the one which got zenned out. Perhaps I’d better try and learn a note or two and we can have a music session at the library.
In the meantime there is more rain on the way so I guess those thousands of frogs which croak outside can keep the bass beat and lull me to sleep.
Gee whizz. We’ve been sitting here without any physical contact with the rest of the world for 3 months but suddenly we’ve been quite the social busy bees. We arrived back from our first trip to East London and away from rural life and the next day Theo’s folks arrived for a visit to see where in the world us wallys are. They found the roads here a bit of a challenge in their new little bakkie but I think they enjoyed their visit and now they have an idea of what our lives are like although it was school holidays. We picked wild plums, visited the quaint Trennery’s hotel and went mushrooming. I’m sure the bags of clothes they brought with will be well appreciated by the needy here.
A few days after they left, my old school buddy, Charlene, who has long since been living in Ireland, came for a visit with 2 of her Irish pals. Unfortunately we had bum weather and grey skies and in fact the whole Eastern Cape was flooded from too much rain and has been declared a disaster area. I guess those ancestors must be upset with someone for not planting their mielies on time. Someone better own up and fix things cos I’m getting tired of squelching around in wellies and not having clean running water. We have a backup rain tank but showering in brown murky water is not the greatest but here I am complaining and everyone else in the village only has a bucket to wash in.
Anyway it was great having Charlene, Sarah and Tim around for a few days. Tim has a house in Morgan Bay (how coincidental is that – meeting someone all the way from Ireland who owns property a short distance from us) so we joined them at his holiday home for a few days. I’ve gotten a bit caught up with the library, preparing lesson plans and the whole school thing so I’ve forgotten about other things in the world so it was really nice spending time with them and meeting Tim’s friends at Morgan Bay. Tim, Sarah and Charlene all practise various forms of natural healing as their livelihood (when they are not travelling) and they are connected by therapy dance movement which they do and the people I met from Morgan Bay were not your average 9 to 5ers either. Professor Mark has designed and built a vegetable garden which is self sustainable and runs on human poo. Quite an involved system by which he used algae in a couple of small dams to clean up the poo which then gets used to water the garden which, by the way, was flourishing. He and Dave were in the process of getting funding and have plans to improve some crappy long drop systems in rural schools to become more user friendly. They have successfully already built a few such systems for schools which they funded from their own pockets. Maraina is passionate about fighting back against Monsanto’s policy of forcing the world to buy GM (genetically modified) seeds. She goes around informing farmers about the facts which Monsanto omit to tell them. Things such as GM seeds only produce one crop which will force them to buy more seeds from Monsanto the next season. Monsanto is busy controlling the whole worlds crops by suing farmers who won’t fall into their trap. She told us that 25 000 farmers in India have committed suicide because they have now become financially ruined. I googled it, and was horrified to find out that its true. Did you know that Monsanto (who already genetically modifies plant DNA) have recently bought a pharmaceutical company which experiments with human DNA. I guess we will soon be able to buy carrots in the shop which can make your eyes blue or cure cancer so everyone will want to give them another Nobel award but no-one mentions that they will have control of manipulating how your body functions without you realising it. So if in a few years time people notice that everyone has to buy lets say hayfever tablets or pills to replace calcium to keep themselves healthy and the pharmaceutical companies keep getting richer then they might wonder why. We, the man in the street, do not think about these things and only raise an eyebrow if the apples at the veggie shop aren’t nice and perfectly crisp and juicy. I might be green but at least I’m not a cabbage can take on a whole new meaning.
Anyway, besides having intellectual conversations, they also all had a zen side to them which I found stimulating. They hauled out a couple of drums and a bag of rattles and shaking thingies and massive cow bells and stick things and we made music. Clearly they do this often but I’m not musical although I can shake my booty around a dance floor (even better after a few tequilas) but this was a new experience for me. I grabbed something to shake which didn’t look too complicated and I tried to keep in time with the drummer who controlled the beat. Someone else clapped in time and hummed a weird noise in my left ear while another guy shuffled around the room knocking sticks together in a hari krishna sort of way. Oh and Sarah gaily played the flute and occasionally freely expressed herself by letting out a noise which sounded like a banshee whatever that might be. This whole musical expressive thing was a bit new to me but somehow it worked and we sounded cool. I’d love to do more and learn to express myself freely other than with words.
Charlene brought puzzles, CD’s and flutes for the children at the library and now that they have taught 2 students to play Campfire’s Burning (Umsi Watcha), the rest spent today quite happy to blow their lungs out in my other ear, not the one which got zenned out. Perhaps I’d better try and learn a note or two and we can have a music session at the library.
In the meantime there is more rain on the way so I guess those thousands of frogs which croak outside can keep the bass beat and lull me to sleep.
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