WE’RE ALL GOING ON A SUMMER HOLIDAY

Us Wine Tasting with Charlene

Scarecrows at Mooibege Strawberry Farm

At mothers 70th Birthday Spitbraai party

WE’RE ALL GOING ON A SUMMER HOLIDAY

December school holidays rolled around and we decided to treat ourselves to a trip to Cape Town.  Well actually it was supposed to be a profitable breakaway since we planned to sell corn dogs at a 4 day new years music festival and make some money while we were there but plans didn’t worked out accordingly.  Before leaving, we spent 2 days pushing the wheelbarrow back and forth, emptying the cupboards in the truck to make space for more things to bring back. 

Our holiday in Cape Town was great although traffic was a bit overwhelming and I avoided those dreaded shopping centres as much as I could.  Indoor taps spurting instant hot water, glossy tiles, hallway mirrors, shiny draining boards, wardrobes and an indoor oven were a real treat.  My mother turned 70 and she celebrated the day with a wonderful spitbraai for friends and family.  4 Days later we stuffed ourselves again on Christmas day but sadly I was only able to wish Kyro and his new family in Japan via a computer screen. Rock the River music festival  turned out a complete disaster (opposite to the previous year) as traders were once again told to cater for an expected 8 000 people but only about 2 or 3 000 people turned up.  The wind howled at gale force speed the whole time and we went home with less money than we started off with and a shitload of left over Russians and Cheese Grillers which we would have to take back.

During the six weeks in Cape Town, my mothers’ friends and family dropped off bags and bags of children’s books, toys and clothes, some even from as far as Ireland which Charlene brought over.  Everything needed to be squeezed onto the truck together with our bed (the only remaining thing we owned besides our truck) which we’d stored in my mother’s garage.  We planned to ransack my mother’s garage and relieve her from any possible building material to build ourselves a new house once we returned to Transkei.  The kitchen zink got wedged next to our motorbike which stood in front of the fully loaded freezer with a donated bicycle strapped on top.  Our bed went on top of the truck in typical Transkei style and the weetbix wooden boards and boxes of left over tiles got slotted in between the caravan and the side railings.  The outside cupboards on the truck were rammed full of donated clothes, school bags, knitting needles, beads and pencils while the inside cupboards were bulging with bottles and bottles of tomato sauce, mustard and peri naise left over from the festival.  More boxes of lego blocks, teddy bears and suitcases of second hand clothes were wedged in between gallons and gallons of cooking oil, a kerm board and a broken gazebo (but still usable for a chicken run or something).  The laptops balanced on the porta potty, while the floor was stacked with crates of flour and maize meal, a couple of seedlings for our veggie garden, a toddlers scooter and a big bag of bras donated by someone who was clearly size 46 double D.  2 Bunches of bokkoms dangled above the bed disguising the ever present smell of Russian sausages.  Every time I opened the fridge the dam things were there, squeezed into every possible crevice, reminding me that we would need to eat our way through 80 kg of the stuff over the next few months.  I have an idea I’m gonna start drooling for tripe. 

The four day trip back was a tight squeeze and every time we stopped, we attracted every dog on the block and by the time we arrived back in Transkei I was already getting a bit tired of eating cold sausages since Theo couldn’t reach the stove to try and disguise the taste.

I watched the vegetation change from farmlands to fynbos to thorn trees and finally grassland.  Eventually we arrived home and I hung out the window, waving with both hands as we neared our village and passed people on the road. 

We were home.  Now all we had to do was unload the truck and bit by bit push the wheelbarrow the 50 m to our hut through lush swampy grass which had flourished in the torrential downpours of summer rainfall.  Before donning my gumboots I needed to get rid of the spiders and their webs which made our hut look like something from the movie set of Cocoon and sweep out the layers of mouldy dust, mouse droppings and sand mounds left by whatever other insects had moved in while we were away.  Theo’s job was easy - more Russians.

Ahaa, home sweet home.

Bush Wacking

I’m starting to have my doubts whether spending R13 000 each (a chunk of my pension) on a 28 day Field Guide Course is a good idea for me. I’ve checked out job offers for couples at Game Lodges and they seem to want the guy to take the people into the bush to look at the bokkies and they want the chick to stay home and answer the phone. Probably rightly so since imagine me out there in a jeep with 6 Americans in the back going Oh My God, Oh My God as I disappear into the sunset without a clue as to where I’m going. I rely heavily on GPS and without my glasses I wouldn’t know the difference between a baobab or a boa constrictor.

One of the subjects the course covers is Astronomy. My current knowledge of the stars is that if you join the dots then you can outline pictures of Greek Gods and scorpions but you have to stretch your imagination big time and I know the southern cross is supposed to help you find your way but I’m not quite sure how it works. I mean if I follow a star like the 3 musketeers did, the direction seems kinda vague. I’d just keep going and going in a straight line as if I was chasing the end of a rainbow to the end of nowhere. Can’t see how that would get me back to the lodge after a night of game viewing with 6 Americans fretting in the back seat.

Another subject is Amphibians. I think that’s creatures who live in the water but who aren’t fish. And I have a feeling its limited to fresh water i.e. an octopus is not amphibian but a frog is. I’d need some brushing up on that I suspect.

Reptiles. Crocodiles are dangerous and you can make handbags out of them but I’m not sure what they do with the pointy bits. Face inwards possibly? Digging for a tampon in the bottom of your handbag would be a mission mind you.

I’ve just checked - another subject is Arthropods. And here I thought that was the name of a fatal disease. After reading further I realized its spiders and insects. Funny, I’ve been pondering about Mosquito’s lately. As far as I know it’s the female who bites you and sucks your blood for a meal. So what I’ve been wondering is what does the male mosquito eat to survive? The female? I mean what species, (other than humans where the male can survive on meat and the female on chocolate) do the males eat one thing and the females eat a different food type. I’m puzzled.

Actually all the subjects offered in the Field Guide Course do intrigue me. I’d like to know more about the moon and how it magnetically pulls the water in my body towards it. I’d love to know more about animal hierarchy – I think animals are way more intelligent than humans realize. I’m also intrigued by mans development through the stone and iron age. Learning about botany (possibly even lobotomy) wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I think it will come in handy when the budget is stretched and we need to know which leaves are edible to chuck in the stew.

So doing a field guide course would be interesting and maybe I wouldn’t be expected to be all gung-ho and carry a machine gun over my shoulder to protect the Americans from a charging rhinoceros. Mind you it sounds more appealing than hanging a toilet brush over my shoulder and answering the phones.

I’ll think about my options some more while I try and figure out where the heck Mpumalanga is. I still work on the old system of Transvaal and Free State so I think I have enough stuff to think about before I find time to count the legs on spiders and insects to see what category they fall into. Next week I’ll get the magnifying glass out cos I’d be expected to know the difference between a millipede and a centipede and as far as I can remember we’re talking a lot of legs here.