Category Archives: Africa

Possible Lost Opportunity

In the shadow of old Platberg this weekend I sat down to lunch with an array of superb swimmers at my table. On my right was Sonja du Plessis, Top Ten swimmer; and on my right was Lyn du Plessis, Top Ten swimmer; and on my right was Pierre du Plessis, Top Ten swimmer. And that got me thinking of the days I’d line up next to the pool and on my right there’d be nobody. Nobody.
That’s because I’d fought (and easily won, you’ll see why) for the right-most lane in the shallowest part of the pool at swimming lessons. On my left was Francois vd Merwe, coming up to my navel; and on my left was Deon Joubert, coming up to my navel; and then some even shorter girls; That blerrie whistle would shriek, they’d dive in and I’d jump in – bravely; I’d sink to the bottom – very bravely – then kick powerfully off the bottom in the direction of the distant other side of the pool. We were swimming breadths. The older kids – some of them as old as my younger sister Sheila and the even-younger Sonja – would swim lengths. A few kicks off the bottom and much spluttering and gasping later I’d finally get to the blessed sanctuary of the other side of the pool just short of an asthmatic panic attack, sometimes even earning a podium place – well, if there were absentees due to coughs and colds and Harrismith’s notorious cold weather.
At about the same time I was also not a rugby player. I was in the u/11 second team it’s true, but that’s because there were 29 players and number 29 clearly deserves his place in the second fifteen-man team, nê? So although you could honestly say I was there on merit, there are also lots of other things you could say and I caused poor Giel du Toit much sadness and despair. But at the end of the season, a long season in which he had given me much encouragement and sympathetic ‘moenie worries nie’, he did an amazing thing. He did not say ‘Luister volgende week is netbal proewe, nê?’ No. What he actually did, I swear, this is Giel’s gospel and it is amazing. He had a rush of something to somewhere and he made me captain of the u/11B team for the last game of the season.
So there I was two days later, in Vrede, barefoot in orange, holding that thing I’d heard about and running onto the field at the head of an orange line of fourteen laaities doing something I almost never got to do: Holding the ball.
The rest is history: I scored the winning try against the olde enemy; I converted it; we won the game;

That summer I grew five inches; the next winter I was the tallest oke in the u/13 team; and I scored the winning try against Grey College in the last game of that amazing season. So although Giel may have fluked it and definitely didn’t have anything to do with my growth spurt; and although he may have thought that was going to anyway be my last rugby game ever, he nevertheless changed something in my brain that day. It didn’t last long, but was fun while it did.
And thinking about this long-forgotten little tale, sparked off by sitting amongst those swimmers which, let’s be honest, may have sparked off a debate had DNA testing been available – I mean did they have mermaid genes? dolphin genes? – made me think something else: Why didn’t Joan and Joyce think of something that could have sparked me off Mark Spitz-like? I dunno: Maybe choose me to hand out the oranges at half time at a gala or something equally inspirational?
Makes you think. Joan and Joyce may have missed a big one here.
~~oo0oo~~
nê? – just nod; except, not about the netbal
‘moenie worries nie’ – tut tuts
‘Luister volgende week is netbal proewe, nê?’ – Look, you don’t have a talent for rugby, OK? maybe you can sing?
laaities – athletes of note

Length swimmers at the scene of the torture

Phelophepa! – Good Health!

A combination Sesotho / Setswana word, ‘phelophepa’ means ‘good clean health.’

I had volunteered on the train before, in Bergville; Now Trish and I joined it in Underberg. At the time it was a pet project of Jannie Ferreira, optometry professor at RAU (now the University of Johannesburg). So it was full of RAU students. We had a kombi and on the way up from Durban to act as volunteer supervisor, we repaired to the bottle store and bought champagne, thinking we’d load everyone up and drive off to where we could watch the sun set behind the Drakensberg and its foothills and quaff champers.

Well, we did the quaffing, but well after sunset, as we couldn’t stop till we’d seen the last patient. No way we were going to say, ‘Sorry, come back tomorrow’ to poor people who had come from afar.

Phelopepha (1)
Phelophepa Train Eye Clinic coach
Phelopepha (2)
Phelophepa train eye clinic

After that we went to a farmhouse (the local vet, I believe) where we were treated to a lovely braai.

~~oo0oo~~

There are now two Phelophepa trains and the services it provides have increased. Long may it thrive and arrive at remote stations to provide needs and care and happiness – both to the people waiting at the sidings and to the students onboard.

~~oo0oo~~

Look! There’s a Bottleneck!

My carguard Bridget knows I’m a wildlife n nature fan so she usually has something in that vein to tell me.
Lately she’s been watching a weekly TV program about the sea.

Today she couldn’t wait to tell me about the shark whales;
“You must just see these shark whales! They’re the biggest sharks out!” she says as I open my car door;
I said, Ja, it’s the biggest fish in the sea, that whale shark. She looked at me, too polite to tell me I’m talking kak.
“Anyway,” she says, “the shark whales were fighting with the dolphins but now they’re playing together. The bottleneck dolphins.”

You can learn a lot from octogenarian Bridget. She has taught me about birds too – here: https://bewilderbeast.org/2014/11/25/bliss/.

She says she’s going to watch Safari Live next.

A bottlenose and a whale shark

Wilderness Walk Mfolosi: The Gentle Art of Lurking

Our two walks in the wilderness with the Taylors, Foggs, Janice Hallot and Gayle Adlam blur into one and I have got the photos all mixed up, so here are some more memories from 1999 and 2005.

On the drier of our two walks there was very little surface water about, so around the campfire one night . .

Supper, great food, great wine, comfy chairs. Story (and snory) time now

. . when my companions were suitably lubricated, I put one of my (many) pet theories to them: Tomorrow, instead of walking about scaring the animals, let’s go to that waterhole we saw where a dry streambed joins the Mfolosi river and get comfortable and simply lurk there till lunchtime, like crocodiles! Let the animals come to us. Who’s in favour?

To my surprise and delight they were all so mellow and agreeable – dronk – they voted in favour, and we did just that. It was wonderful! We got comfortable a nice distance from the water, leaning against tree trunks, and watched as all sorts of birds and animals came to drink. My idea of heaven: Lurking with telescope, binoculars, books and food!

These were slackpacking walks, so our kit was carried to the outlying camp by these handy bongolos. Here you can see Dizzi looking for her luggage, muttering “Where’s my bongolo? Why don’t they have number plates, cos all bongolos look the same?”

Dizzi seeks HER bongolo

On the wetter walk it got hot one day and we asked our Rangers if we could swim. They said they knew just the spot. Miles later we got to the river at their swimming hole. But it was occupied:

Mfolosi Wilderness walk 1999 & 2005 waterhole collage

Aw! Two buffs, an ele and a lioness had all had the same idea. We didn’t argue with them, we trudged on. Miles later we crossed the river again, and had a swim. Sort of. Luckily no pictures were taken. These were of a shoes-off river crossing, footwear and footprints:

Wading the Mfolosi

These wilderness walks end with a last night back at base camp. We had left celebration supplies there in anticipation.

Mfolosi Wilderness walk 1999 & 2005-002

Then a champagne breakfast kombi drive before we left the park.

Champagne all round! And there's a shot of Aitch the photographer at last!
– at last our photographer Trish is in a photo – behind Jon’s champagne glass –

~~oo0oo~~

imbongolo – donkey; two donkeys: izimbongolo

Denyse took the kudu, zebra and vultures-on-kill photos in the feature collage

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Memory is a Dodgy Business. I remembered the scene so clearly. Standing next to a fresh buffalo carcase red with blood; looking around, nervous that the lions who had obviously recently killed it might come back and be annoyed with us for putting our feet on their lunch.

We were on a walk in the beautiful wilderness area of Mfolosi game reserve; no roads and restricted access; accompanied by our two armed Rangers, we weren’t in any specific danger, but the feeling of ‘we’d better be careful’ was there, and I kept scanning the area around us.

Or that’s how I remembered it over the years. An actual picture painted a different picture! Photographic evidence of how dodgy one’s memory can be and how the years can enhance it! The top picture was sort of my memory; Here’s the actual ‘carcase’ – it’s a skeleton! No lion would want to look at it! Nor a hyena, nor a vulture! Only detritivores would still be interested in those horns n bones!

NOT Jonathan's picture - his was film-less

Aitch took the picture with her point-and-shoot Nikon. Our group photographer is the colonial Tarzan-like oke on the left. He had the penis-substitute camera and bossed us around and lined us up and made us pose (poeseer, he said, sounding like one of SanMarie’s jokes – she’s on the right with a rifle), and fiddled with his f-stop. A purist, he was still deeply into film and darkroom development theory. So where’s his picture?

He’d forgotten to put film in the camera! We have not let Taylor forget it.

~~oo0oo~~

Here’s the moth that will get to those horns in time:

Moth-horn-borer
Ceratophaga vastella

and whose larvae will make them look like this:

Moth-horn-borer_2

. . and here’s an old-timer-y sepia look to make the carcase look fresher:

– olden daze –

. .and another desperate attempt at the realism I so clearly remember:

– we came upon a freshly-killed buffalo! –

~~oo0oo~~

Fuckit the Fig Fell!

I don’ believe it! In a high-wind storm the beautiful big old fig tree which made the corner – it was THE feature of that whole block! – at the top of our road fell down!

Fig Fallen (2)

I stopped to look, and Jess and Sindi spotted each other. Sindi came running across from Juke’s Pizza where she was working. Typical high-energy Sindi, a run, a hug, much to tell:

Fig tree fallen Sindi running
Fig Fallen (1)
Fig Fallen (3)
Fig Fallen (4)

Here’s the worst part: Seems we don’t have any pics of the old tree standing! We’d taken it for granted and now it’s gone! Petrea, whose optometry practice looks right out on the fig had pics after it had started falling but none of the fig as it always was.

Fig Falls in Salisbury

I searched my albums and found ONE pic of it standing earlier this year – but barely visible in the dead of night! You can catch its outline way in the background between Lungelo and Tom’s heads:

mom-bday-lupa-Tom Lungelo_lightened up

It’s a big loss to the wildlife community. They need all the stopovers, shelters, roosts and feeding stations they can find. And now one is gone.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Things are Blossoming

. . in the garden.

Daughters and exotic weeds. The one a YTT – Yesterday Today and Tomorrow. The other probably also that. And next year.

Jess YTT (1)

When Jess said Have You SEEN Those Flowers? I knew right away which ones she meant as she pointed out my bedroom window. * sigh * I’d been meaning to hoick it out but . . procrastination. Now it’ll have to wait till “Jessie’s” flowers are gone.

Brunfelsia is a South American and Caribbean genus. Some species have an interesting poison that can kill dogs foolish enough to munch on them; Some have hallucinogenic properties; Some get pollinated by hawk moths, some by butterflies, some by hummingbirds.

Sanity Break

Kids – six of them! – driving me crazy so I pack a flask of coffee, some buttermilk rusks, grab my binocs and waai. Three minutes away to the Palmiet Nature Reserve on my doorstep. Just me.

Palmiet Picnic.jpg

Two hours later off to Pigeon Valley in town for another two hours. Palmiet is only 90ha in size and Pigeon Valley a tiny 10ha, but they’re rich in plant and birdlife. These collages are just some of the birds I saw and heard today in the two reserves:

Bird Pics internet

I spotted an old landsnail shell in a tree hollow. New life sprouting out of it.

– thanks Derek Keats –

I tried to get a good picture of a Mountain Wagtail from above; As it flew the pattern was so beautiful. I didn’t get one, and I haven’t found a good one on the internet so far, that shows it as well as I remember it. Here’s the best so far, from Derek Keats at stellenboschbirds.com :

I pinched the pics from all over the internet, and some from Friends of Pigeon Valley‘s Crispin Hemson and Sheryl Halstead. Thank you!

~~~oo0oo~~~

waai – bugger off

Green Cheese

A well-known tactic of the name-remembering incompetent is to use one ‘name’ for everyone when you can’t remember their names. In the sixties Uncle Jack Kemp used to call everyone ‘Cock’. ‘Hello Cock!’ he’d say and you could see his mind racing: Just WHO is this again? I mean, I know him but what’s his name again?! ‘How’re you Cock?’ In the eighties Peppy Peeperkorn, a delightful nurse friend at Addington Hospital when I was sentenced to live there by the army used to call everyone ‘Chicken Legs’! ‘Hey, Chicken Legs! What you doin’?’

I sometimes use Green Cheese: Have you fed Green Cheese yet? WHO!? You know: TC, Matt, Bogie, Shadow, Sambucca! SAMBUCCA! You know I meant Sambucca.

So I made the mistake of asking Tom after one of his home school lessons: ‘What did old Green Cheese teach you today?’ He cracked up and has called his tutor Green Cheese ever since, my protests and explanation and Hey, you don’t DO that! falling on delighted deaf ears.

This morning I overheard him as he walked in to start his lesson “Hey! That’s my chair! It’s made for my arse, not an old Green Cheese arse!’

He should get a klap on his ear from his older, bigger, cleverer, more capable, more focused third year economics student tutor, but instead – as so often with Tom – he gets away with it.

20180919_104529[1].jpg

~~~oo0oo~~~

Ninety in the Shade!

Four generations and friends met at Mom’s house to celebrate her 90th today.

It was an all-day affair that included morning tea and lunch. Even when I got there after two there was cake and cheese and biscuits and olives and chips n dips, coffee and tea. Then champagne and sherry. Mom had to forego her nap!

Here’s Mom n Dad, three pensioner kids, an adult grandkid and two great-grandkids.

20180918_161207

——-ooo000ooo——-

Wisdom & Insight

Note this WhatsApp chat – I’m in green, of course. Bruce is in white.

Note how Bruce tried to side-step halfway by bring in some Algerian, when we all know Algerians suck at rugby.

——-ooo000ooo——-

The stats for the game make amazing reading. The All Blacks won everything except the game:

ON ATTACK:

TRIES – New Zealand – 6 — South Africa – 5

METRES CARRIED – New Zealand – 624 — South Africa – 245

CARRIES – New Zealand – 215 — South Africa – 59

DEFENDERS BEATEN – New Zealand – 39 — South Africa – 12

PASSES – New Zealand – 257 — South Africa – 64

OFFLOADS – New Zealand – 14 — South Africa – 3

POSSESSION – New Zealand – 75.3% — South Africa – 24.7%

ON DEFENCE:

TACKLES – New Zealand – 61 — South Africa – 235

MISSED TACKLES – New Zealand – 12 — South Africa – 39

BREAKDOWN – RUCKS WON – New Zealand – 155 — South Africa – 41

SET PLAY – SCRUMS WON – New Zealand – 9 — South Africa – 6

LINEOUTS WON – New Zealand – 13 — South Africa – 7

DISCIPLINE – PENALTIES CONCEDED – New Zealand – 3 — South Africa – 10

YELLOW CARDS – New Zealand – 0 — South Africa – 1

FINAL SCORE? – New Zealand – 34 — South Africa – 36

A’s and Oy!s

You’ve heard all those “Rich People’s Problems” jokes?
Today (this was in 2016) I heard a big “Indian People’s Problem.”

I was renovating and had to take myself off to Italtile to fetch yet another farking expensive something or other. This time tile mosaic for Tom’s shower floor. R990 just to cut it – tile price excluded.

So my Italtile saleslady says, “How’s Tommy?” – she’s been planning “Tommy’s Bathroom” and “Jessie’s Bathroom” the last weeks, so she’s an old hand, an insider.

I say (mistake – should have stuck to the tried-and-tested “fine thanks”):

“He’s battling at school. It’s exam time, and he’s not interested in studying”.

“I KNOW!!” she exclaims “My 13yr old son is THE SAME! He came back from these exams with two B’s! He dropped his “all A’s” just because he won’t learn. I TOLE him: “You won’t get anywhere if you don’t shine up!”

I’m a diplomat. One who would give his left leg for two B’s. I jis nodded.

~o0o~

The Youthful Elders

The Morons lived right next door to us! The Natal headquarters of the insidious infiltration of our lovely corner of Africa called KwaZulu by that cult cheekily calling themselves “Latter Day Saints” – saints! – lived next door to us in Windsor Avenue! Them who believe Christ appeared in America about one thousand eight hundred years after his death, appearing with his father God in a little dorp called Palmyra in upstate New York to a dodgy character called Joe Smith junior to restore ‘the true faith.’
Right! Lucky Joe! Wasn’t worth much, but hey! HE got chosen!

Joe Smith junior went on to ‘find out’ that the Garden of Eden was actually located in North America. How much time and effort had been wasted searching for it in the Middle East! Also that the New Jerusalem would be built in Missouri. Both places of course, conveniently located near to where old dodgy Joe happened to be.

There are people who swallow this BS, and I would see their minibus full of 19yr-old ‘elders’ depart in the mornings, and in Montclair I’d see their gangly young yank boy-men – always only boy-men, women are a lower rank – walking around in black trousers, white shirts and black tie with a black name tag with ELDER on it in white letters. They would be busily proselytising, mainly among the young people of Umlazi. Did these ‘elders’ ever tell their prey that their church was actually seriously anti black people, I wonder, I doubt. They would tell them, I’m sure, of Smith’s ‘First Vision’, in which God the Father and God the Son appeared to him in 1820 when he was about 14 years old.
This ‘vision’ is regarded by some Mormons as the most important event in human history. Excuse me while I snort at that snert.

Later they tested the wind snd modified that BS to “well, after the birth, ministry, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Modest Joe himself thought the First Vision the most important though: “I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam…Neither Paul, John, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.” That’s bashful Holy Joe speaking, mightier than Jesus and modelled on Muhammad.

Mormons will tell you they are no longer anti black people. And that, actually, they do worship Jesus. Yeah. They changed cos they had to. They will tell you they regard Jesus now to be a higher authority than Joe. They changed cos they had to. They will tell you they no longer practice polygamy. They changed cos they had to. They still however, don’t condemn Holy Joe’s thirty-plus wives, some only fourteen years old, some taken from other men. In fact, the Mormon position on women has changed little since the early 1800’s, when the official view was that ‘woman’s primary place is in the home, where she is to rear children and abide by the righteous counsel of her husband’ (McConkie 844). This attitude, coupled with the doctrine of polygamy and the absolute power claimed by the men of the church, created a legacy of profound sexism which modern Mormonism has been unable to escape.

Did they tell the people of Umlazi of the holy magic underpants, I wonder? Of the multiple wives? How you can only get to heaven through Joseph Smith? Hopefully a lot of their target audience at this point say bullDUST and keep their money and their independence in their pockets! That ANYONE converts to mormonism in this day of easy access to knowledge is astounding. And sad.

See Christopher Hitchens exposé of the weird and sinister beliefs of Mormons.
See the New York Times story on the conversations Mormon leaders have when they think no-one – including Jesus, presumably – is listening; and their story on how the Mormons threaten their members if they go online and question things the church does or says.

Personally, I’d love it if the Mormons got the hell out of Africa and went back to Palmyra.

Here’s what’s gonna happen when they ring the bell at the pearly gates:

thanks cartoonstock
Don’t get me started on the Jehovahs!
And – worst of all? The Scientologists! Tom Cruise’s crowd. Where’s Shelly, Tom? https://www.tyla.com/news/crime/scientology-leader-wife-shelly-miscavige-missing-042660-20260121

~~oo0oo~~

Umshini wami

The South African National Space Agency has put out a call for South Africans to name its latest satellite.

Currently called ZACube-2, it is expected to be launched later this year, but first it needs a new name.

Designed and built mainly by postgraduate students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s French South African Institute of Technology, ZACube-2 is a nanosatellite, comprised of three 10cm cubes. It is scheduled for orbit about 600km above the surface of the Earth.

South Africa’s first cubesat, ZACube-1 was launched in 2013 and named TshepisoSat. Tshepiso means promise.

Here’s ZACube-2:

Satellite ZA Umshini Wami

I recommend umshini wami. Or rather umshini wethu. ‘Our machine’

Aitch MTB Club

On finding out that Aitch had belonged to a ladies mountain bike group, a friend said (in Sept 2013) . . “I didn’t realize she was such a keen bean cyclist – seems there were not many things she did not try her hand at?”

Maybe we can fathom why Aitch got so keen on pedalling . .

The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands. And, when it gets old and  shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the whole community" 
- quote attributed to Ann Strong-
"Marriage is a wonderful invention. Then again, so is the bicycle" 
(and - the bike comes with a far simpler repair kit)
- quote attributed to Jacquie Phelan

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving”

” . . before mountain-biking . . (and electric biking) . . came to the scene, the biking scene was ruled by a small elite cadre of people who seemed allergic to enthusiasm”

“Work to ride – and ride to work”

“Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul”

“If you don’t ride in the rain, you don’t ride”

“Don’t ride faster than your guardian angel can fly”

Here’s one of their guardian angels – who could ride MUCH faster than all of them . . He led their trail rides and looked after them. I never met him but she told me his name. And she’d kick me for not remembering it.

(The Quotes were written on a blackboard at Aitch’s “Angels Mountain Biking Club” coffee shop)

~~oo0oo~~