– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
. . these genes from me!?
Jess came home from a nightclub last night – a series of nightclubs, actually – full of the springs of joy.
Hello! What did you have to drink? I asked.
Oh, very little Dad. Behind her back her friend grins.
So, what?
Just three Strawberry Lips shooters, two blue ‘Cocaine’ cocktails and one Smirnoff Blend.
And one Vodka and Coke, says Andile who only drank cooldrink and kept tally.
Oh yes.
The first time: He found a bamboo with a line tied on the end at Kelso beach when visiting the Harveys, Margaret and Bryce. This rustic contraption immediately sparked his interest. A fascination started that has endured.
When Trish’s Dad Gompa Neil found out, he gave Tom two big surf rods as he had decided to give up fishing. We took them along to Cape Vidal and three year-old TomTom waved them around like fly rods in the surf. The fish were quite safe, there wasn’t time for them to grab hold of the hook!
Some of the other times:
Young David was a casual birder back then. Under the tutelage of his fine wife Goldie he has since come on in leaps and bounds. Knows a warbler or two now. He was also a rugged driller back then. He would drill boreholes for water in Malawi, Mocambique and other beautiful Southern African places, boring holes deep into the earth searching for the nectar of life.
His drilling company’s motto was “On The Hole Our Work Is Boring”.
One fine day in Mocambique he got caught short and had to pull over on the way to a drilling site for an emergency evacuation in a lovely patch of forest. He would have noisily scratched a nest (Dave is not a tiptoe-er) and got rid of his voluminous shorts so as not to cause any stains, and settled himself comfortably for the job at hand, probably with some grunting and sighing.
Suddenly, this beauty hopped into view in a patch of sunlight in the gloomy forest interior and gazed in fascination at the amazing and unusual sight squatting in the clearing. Maybe it thought the moon had risen with a weavers nest hanging below it? We’ll never know…
It was a bloody Pitta! Many serious birders search for these things for decades, spending time and money and only getting heartache. Hill saw one while having a ‘veldie’.
Talk about unfair. This is birding a la (com)mode. Mind you, I often say “Don’t chase them. Sit and they’ll come to you.” But this . . !
~o0o~
I can’t believe it! What’s that noise? In My Own House!
On our sea cruise to Mocambique a song was played over and over ad infinitum. It got people crowding the dance floor and forming swaying lines of bodies on the boat and on the beach. It was Hamba Nawe and Jess loved it.
But now Jess had found an Afrikaans version, and our house was sounding like a Steve Hofmeyr shrine. I was aghast. I thought “This Cannot Be!” I’m going to . . .
BUT: I remembered what dear old Mom Mary had done and said when I played Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love full tilt in her house in the Free State back in the seventies: Nothing.
So I was a diplomat. A long-suffering diplomat. I mean, if my Mom could listen to a shrill I’m Gonna Give You Every Inch Of My Love! in the Vrystaat in the seventies, I could chill in Westville, KZN in the next century, surely? Dads will just have to try n be as brave as Moms.
~o0o~
Jess took to ziplining like a duck to water. Calm and unfazed, she’d inspect the gear, make sure all was hooked up and away she’d go without a blink.
She’d been a little nervous before, so I had sat her down and said, ‘Jess, it’s a very strong cable, well attached on both ends and has a breaking strain of three tons. You weigh less than one tenth of one ton, so you’ll be fine. The extra cable also has a three ton breaking strain. Your harness and safety cable can each hold a ton. So you’re fine, kid.’ She nodded.
So how did she do? Check her out! My brave girl. Nonchalant even.
~~~oo0oo~~~
A cold front creeps in from the southwest, bringing Cape Town weather to Durbs. A view from my rooftop parking spot as I left work for home this evening. Disappointingly, it doesn’t look as impressive in the pic as I thought it would!
Lions have been running wild this year. Sad that we think that’s a bad thing? But I spose if one was approaching me with intent I’d also want the ous in khaki to round him up and re-incarcerate him.
Lions escaped from Kruger twice this year, one lot was recaptured, one lot was shot. Then three lionesses and five cubs ran free in KwaZulu and were captured. Today there’s talk of a lion meandering around Mtonjaneni near Ulundi, munching on cows – which I suppose is the reason we won’t tolerate them running free: their manners.
I saw a lion on the loose outside Mapungubwe in 2013. (note: I see I duplicated this story – more or less – here). I had left the reserve, heading west for Botswana when an old grey-haired codger in short pants hopped out of his bakkie and flagged me down, hopping up and down with excitement. “Oom, Oom!” he shouted. “Hier’s n leeu, ek sweer. ‘n Leeumannetjie, Oom!”
I thought “Who’s Your Fokkin ‘Oom’, you Old Goat? You look Fifty in the Shade and Rather Weather-beaten and Ancient to me!” But I’m polite, so I said “Waar?” and he said “Volg my. Sommer hier naby,” and got his scrawny legs back into his bakkie to show me.
Just then a big male lion sprinted across the road toward the Mapungubwe side. On both sides of the road high ‘game-proof’ fences keep animals in, inside the Oppenheimers’ private reserve on the southern side and Mapungubwe National Park on the northern side, so he was trapped in an unfriendly corridor and he was not happy, poor thing.
He was a lovely specimen but he looked anxious as hell and panicky and ran as though he was trying to make himself invisible. When he saw us he dived under a little green bush in the dry grass, laughably small, but Hey! He disappeared under it! He lay motionless and nothing would entice him out.
This bush. Look carefully, he’s in there!
Then he finally did dart out, running eastwards, to the right in picture, along this fence and I left him. I had to get to Botswana. A gate to the De Beers Venetia Limpopo reserve said Duncan MacFadyen gate and had a phone number, so I phoned to let them know one of their lions was awol, running free like Elsa and Willy.
Then on a sudden hunch, I turned the rearview mirror to look at myself. OMG! I saw now what the old codger had seen. No wonder he ‘Oom’d’ me. I should never go without a hat.
~o0o~
It’s a beautiful area:
~o0o~
“Oom! Hier’s n leeu, ek sweer. ‘n Leeumannetjie, Oom!” – Uncle! You the ancient-looking Oom! There’s a lion Born Free here! A male lion, I swear, Uncle!
“Volg my, sommer hier naby” – Follow me; it’s close-by. You go first …
~o0o~
Once a tiger ran loose, and I had advice for its owners …
Pleez pleez Dad! I haven’t seen her for AGES! (yeah, like one week). OK, I’ll fetch her Friday on the way home from work. I enjoy that back route anyway. Instead of taking the N2 national highway then onto the N3 national highway at Spaghetti Junction and home, this route takes me through Yellowwood Park with its dark avenues of huge old yellowwood trees planted around 1885 by Dering Stainbank the sugar baron (don’t take my history at face value, but it’s something like that).
On past the Stainbank nature reserve, over the one-way bridge across the Umhlatuzana River, through the narrow tunnel under the railway line, through the cement factory that Mike Doyle used to run. Up into Bellair past the driveway lined by an avenue of huge palm trees that dwarf the house, past the impressive Albert Luthuli hospital, across the Mkombaan River and into Chesterville at the big shisanyama and beer hall. Andile is waiting outside her home, she hops in and we drive past the Pavilion shopping centre and into Westville and home.
The two girls whoop and give each other a big hello and a hug. Then Andile promptly disappears into the bedroom and Jess into the lounge and they don’t see or speak to each other till suppertime! Of course they may have been busily engaged with each other and a dozen friends on their social media, for all I know. Wifi, after all.
Teenagers!
An earlier pic of them one Easter.
Hate it, but it’s true: Things fade. A month late on our annual tribute. Six years now. Don’t worry, you still do occasionally cause changes to the way we do things, and “But Mom said . . ” is still used to some effect!
Jess still regularly asks if there wasn’t more we could have done to save or cure Mom. When she hears of a new treatment for some or other disease she’ll ask “Why didn’t they do this for Mom?” I explain the difference between bacteria and viruses and cancer to her each time.
Here’s what she wrote to you this Mothers Day:
Yeah, I cried . . .
She was on her Bhejane field guide course up north of Hluhluwe and lonely as anything. Her selfie was taken in the little wooden Wendy hut she stayed in. I love the brave smile.
~~oo0oo~~
The fifteen year old has very definite opinions. On my driving he is clear: Sedate, boring, too slow. “Break some laws, Dad!” he’ll urge from time to time. “Just once!”.
So we went to Bluff Meats yesterday Sunday to bulk buy essentials like biltong, roasts, chicken nuggets and his favourite thick aged steaks. On the way back I need to turn right into Old Main Road. As I’m turning I realise Whoa! there’s a big island across the road, we’re actually at a left-turn-only intersection. Too late, I’m committed, gotta follow through. Luckily mine is a high-rise Ford Ranger bakkie so I hop the island and ‘proceed’ hoping no-one I know saw me.
“Cool Dad!’ says the opinionated one. Tonight he follows up with “Hey Dad that was cool yesterday. You were real gangster for a change”.
At last I’ve made it. Acceptance in gangster circles.
Home with the spoils:
Jess and I spent two nights at Mkhuze. It’s looking very dry and animals were few and far between. Still, we saw lots of the usual dependables: giraffe, zebra, impala, hippo, nyala, wildebeest and – at last! – one elephant. A young bull right next to the road. Jess, who watches too much youtube of eles goring and flipping cars, and had a scare in Tembe Elephant Park ‘thanks’ to bad behaviour by a senior ranger, did not want to hang around, so we drove past him.
Also one band of Banded and two individual Slender Mongooses.
But lots of birds. I won’t give the boring – to me exciting – list (78 species) but I will tell this story. In Mantuma camp – here:
I went looking for pinkspots (pink-throated twinspots). Like this:
I followed their high-pitched trilling cricket-like sound and found them and more! There they were, in a bird party in the grass! Blue waxbills, green-winged pytilias, grey-headed sparrows, yellow-throated petronias, yellow-fronted canaries, red-billed firefinches pecked alongside the pinkspots on the sandy soil. And in the tree directly above them a small flock of red-billed wood hoopoes, a dark-backed weaver and a golden-tailed woodpecker. Just that one bird party made the whole trip worthwhile. I stood twenty metres from them and watched through my Zeiss’ for ages. ‘Saturation Views’!
On my way back to the chalet I watched a black cuckoo-shrike give a full, relaxed display all round me. I didn’t know this jet-black bird could be so BLUE! In the sunlight his ‘black’ shone a beautiful cobalt blue. This picture I found on ethiobirds is the only one that captures it well. See the difference!
Jess was our chief photographer:
~~oo0oo~~
Jaynee J had a luxury courtesy suite at Centurion Park cricket ground and she invited us to watch a game. The Springboks / Proteas were playing someone in an international test match. 2001, so Sri Lanka, maybe.
Jayne didn’t call it a courtesy suite; she called it her ‘champagne suite’. Jayne Janetsky could POUR, and – as always – she had laid in enough stock for a siege. Or a rainy day. And that day Centurion Park was not like this:
It was like this:
This led to puddle-jumping with Jess behind the stadium:
I had great fun watching the people. Especially a guy in the next-door Telkom box, scanning the crowd with powerful binoculars, looking for girls. Whenever he saw someone watching him he’d say “I’m looking for my sister.”
We had to take two year-old Jessica along and it wasn’t really her thing. It rained off and on, so we were indoors with Celebrity Guest Barman Johnno Green, who was intent on quality control, sampling and plying. Boobs and Booze. Aitch and I took turns amusing Jess and keeping her (mostly) out of the adults’ hair.
After a while (cricket matches carry on and on and when you think they MUST be finished, surely? – they stop for tea) I had to feed and change Jess and decided to take her back to Jayne’s home. Change of scenery for her and a break for the adults.
On the way back to the stadium, with freshly-fed and -wiped Jessie strapped in the car seat behind me, I missed the freeway off-ramp to the stadium. Didn’t have a clue how I’d get back to the stadium now, so I was kinda tense and focused and fuming. What if I missed Jayne’s famous lunch? Finally I figured it out and managed a tricky u-turn after the next off-ramp and got back on track. Finally I could relax.
“Pete?” came a little voice from behind me.
Yes my love?
“FUCK!”
“FUCK FUCK FUCK!!”
Oh, boy . . . . .
Quanah Parker: Son of Cynthia Ann Parker and the Last Comanche Chief to Surrender.
I learnt a bit about him in Apache and Fort Sill, Oklahoma back in 1973. Here I learnt more, thanks to Darla Sue Dollman of wildwesthistory.blogspot.com (see her site for the full story).
Hey, they’re making a movie on the life of heart surgeon Professor Chris Barnard.
The 3rd of December 2017 will mark the 50th anniversary of the world’s first heart transplant, so they obviously want to cash in on that.
Aitch worked with him after his heyday until he retired. On 14 December 1983 she went to his farewell. See the post she entered in her diary below (CNB = Christiaan Neethling Barnard).
I wonder who they’ll get to play Aitch? Maybe Olga Kurylenko, Bond girl in Quantum of Solace?
And I wonder what percentage we’ll get of the gross earnings? Surely they won’t cut her kids out of the proceeds?
~~oo0oo~~
Barnard wrote a book One Life. If I wrote a book on Aitch I’d call it One Wife.
~~oo0oo~~
Later: A new book published shortly after this post featured Aitch in a group picture taken at that farewell.
Not that kind! A feathered one.
Familiar Chat
Oenanthe familiaris
pic: wikipedia
It’s 2017 and Tobias Gumede has electricity in his home at last! This Friday he switched on the fridge he bought many years ago – and it worked!
He’s here:
Here’s a pic of his home the last time I saw it:
and a close-up of his environment:
A pre-paid meter has been installed and his wife Thulisiwe will top up her electricity card at the store a few km away, or on her trips to Jozini village.
Hats off to Thulisiwe! Imagine raising seven kids over twenty years before getting running water a few years ago – and now electricity! Here she is with Tobias and five of the kids. In the background as always:
And now they have ugesi, isiZulu for electricity.
Celebration called for!
~~~oo0oo~~~
In 2019 he had a room added on the left side of the house as you see it in the pics. Then he bought a new fridge in Pinetown and had the store deliver it to the bus stop. The bus driver said ‘Sure, R60’ (his ticket was R130); then ‘No, not on top, INSIDE!’ So they fitted the fullsize fridge inside the bus and off Tobias went to Jozini. There he unloaded it and found one of his homies nearby who needed money and had a wheelbarrow. They loaded it up, he pushed while Tobias balanced it for the last few kilometres on the sandy road to his umuzi.
Thulisiwe was delighted, he says.
~~~oo0oo~~~
