Hair Today

At last I get Jessie (kickin n screamin) to the hairdresser.
Her hair looks like she combed it with a firecracker (I should have taken a picture). She’s been washing it daily and tying it up in a bun. She’s not combing it all out daily.

I drop her off with Tom and buzz to work. They’ll walk back home via the shops.
“Just get a trim, don’t have it ‘straightened’ as you’ll be swimming all week – it’s not worth it” are my instructions.

So I get a whatsapp pic:

Jess Hair
And then a hurried phone call:
“Don’t worry Dad, I paid for Jess to have her hair straightened with my own pocket money” says her loving younger brother! Talking fast, pre-empting a bollocksing. “My own pocket money” means “an advance which I have yet to ask you for”.
Knows how to arse-creep, that one.

I had also given them the grocery money (Cecelia is away), which is now diminished thanks to the extra hair spend.

“Dad, I bought you a rump steak and choc mint Ola ice cream”. Both his favourites.
No veggies.

I Was Young and Foolish

Today twelve year old Tom comes home with a long face.

Hey, Tom, how was yr day?
Half good.
Oh?
They confiscated my phone!
What? You actually took your phone to school?
Mm
How dumb was that?! *snigger*
Dad! Don’t rub it in! I’m suffering here!
*loud guffaws* followed by a sympathetic hug.

He took his cellphone to school and was busted. School rule: The phone is confiscated for the rest of the term! I laughed like a drain – even harder when he manfully tried to smile ruefully. Damn, Tom! I know Dad.

Tonight was Jessie’s school art exhibition and music and food evening. All three of us went, and Tom had to tell everyone who wanted to hear about his misfortune. Give him his due, he took it like a trooper. He knew he had blundered and was loved and the suffering was his alone.

Tomorrow’s Saturday and I’m working, so just before bed he comes to me with puppydog eyes and asks to please use the iPad tomorrow. I say, I dunno Tom, do you think we can give irresponsible, non-learning, non-listening type of people any treats whatsoever?

He implores: PLEEZ Dad, work with me! I’m hurting! I was young and foolish then, he says, I have matured, I’m a new person now! he beseeches.

A ten-hour turn-around.

20140831_152100 no more selfies

~~~oo0oo~~~

Mahogany and Peachy

Shortly: There are about 3 important genes coding for skin color and we get one of each of those three genes from each of our parents. Lets call the genes A, B, and C.

So every human has two A genes, two B genes and two C genes to make pigmentation in your skin.

So in their cells they will have AA, BB and CC.

Now, if one gene mutates and become less active, you can’t make as much pigment for your skin, and it will get lighter. Maybe it’s one of the A genes which is mutated and becomes an a.
Then your cells will have AaBBCC and you can give both an A and an a to your offspring.

Imagine this happens to the two other genes for skin color.

Suddenly we have 6 possible genes for skin color: A, a, B, b, C, and c. The higher case are good at making color while the lower case are not as good.

Now let humans interbreed and mix and match for generations. The genes for color can be inherited in all kinds of ways. and we’ll end up with these possible combinations:

Skin Colour Genes

You still inherit one of each gene from each parent, but depending on the combination of strong and weak color genes, your skin will have very different coloration.

Now, if you live in sunny places it’s more beneficial to have darker skin, as that protects you from the sun. If you live in dark places it’s beneficial to have lighter skin, as you can make more vitamin D.

So some in some areas one skin color becomes the norm, as people of that color are better adapted to the area.

But it’s still the same three genes and they have not moved or been lost or changed the species more than the amount of color placed in the skin cells.

Skin colour

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Thanks, Pippi Maria Groving, M.Scient in Biomedicine on quora.com: I used your lovely article for this.

Mkhuze Mantuma Camp

Jess and her two mates giggled away the weekend looking for big beasts. Elephants was what they were after, but they stayed in hiding. Eventually we were placing bets on seeing elephant poo! not even the whole animal! Still no luck. We saw lots of rhino and a a few buffalo instead. Plenty antelope and lots & lots of birds. Beautiful.

Evenings they watched movies while I read Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything (again!) and listened to the nightjar.

Mkhuze is very dry, so all the animals from miles around crowd the waterhole. Mudhole, really – very little water. Amazing that just a few miles away at Nsumo Pan there is miles of shoreline and clear blue water, but we saw very few animals there. Just hippos. Wisely croc-shy, maybe?

Dunno if it was this visit or another, but in walking around the camp I saw the bluest bird I’d ever seen – and it was a Black Cuckooshrike! I would have confidently asserted to you that Black Cuckooshrikes are black. Well, usually, but have a good look in bright sunlight:

– ’twas just like this – – the blue of the Black Cuckooshrike – from ethiobirds.smugmug.com – thanks –

Tom back in civilization had a ball too. His weekend was very different to ours: beach, shopping mall, KFC, two movies, a home in Durban North with dogs and pet pythons. Plus he was given three shad his host had caught. He brought them home, scaled them, filleted them and fried them with fresh-cut potato chips. Delicious! Quite the chef, my Tom!

~~~oo0oo~~~

My Namesakes in Mkhuze

A few of my namesakes at Mkhuze this weekend.

DSCN0716

Spot the two old rhinos in the shade under the tree? *Click on the pic*

Then you’ll also see how dry it was – the “water” is mainly mud and algae with a rich dose of dung mixed in.

– Nsumo pan had good water, so the Mkhuze river must have had rain upstream –

~~oo00oo~~

I saw Joan Rivers Live . .

. . in Las Vegas in 1973! Yikes! Can that be?

She died recently, so I thought of the fun she brought us, and that one time I went to her show. Here’s Zapiro’s take on her funeral:

Joan Rivers

She was 40yrs old. She was delightfully rude.

Hollywood Reporter – August 1, 1973

Bravo Sid Gathrid of Caesar’s Palace for giving the summer crowds one of the freshest, brightest and most entertaining bookings of the year in the lady stars Petula Clark and Joan Rivers. Destroying the old hand-me-down Strip myth that two females are artistically incompatible and or have ineffectual drawing power, Pet and Joan’s opening string of standingroom-only crowds found the duo irresistible.

There’s a delightful mix-up of interplay of the stars’ talents; Petula does comedy bits and Joan sings! The “raid” on the other’s forte only adds to the evening’s abundance of style, polish and charm.

Songs Performed:

Color My World/You Are the Sunshine of My Life
Don’t Sleep in the Subway – – – – – LISTEN: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2obt60_petula-clark-don-t-sleep-in-the-subway-w-lyrics_music
Beatles medley: Something/Penny Lane/All You Need is Love
You and I (from Goodbye Mr. Chips)
I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love
(How about them grits)
Your Cheatin’ Heart
You’ve Got a Friend
Band introductions
I Don’t Know How to Love Him (from Jesus Christ Superstar)
What the World Needs Now
Downtown
—————————————-
I went with Jim & Katie Patterson, wonderful host family, and Dottie Moffett, kind friend (who had been an exchange student to Cape Town the year before).

And now she’s gone.

~~oo0oo~~

Dottie’s also gone – way too early at 50.

 
 

Hip Hop Life Lessons

Entrepreneurs’ Day at school. Kids are selling samoosas, boerie rolls, sweets, cupcakes, biryani. What are you going to do, Jess?

“Me and Aik are going to give dance lessons, Dad. Hip Hop”.

OK. She made a poster, cut a CD, cleared a classroom.

And nobody showed up. I hung around, thinking Oh well, every outcome is a lesson. We learn something from everything.

Wendon Entrepreneurs (1)

Then her teacher said “Jess, you need loud music!” Jess had been waiting for her first customer before starting the music (she’s so polite, this one!).

“Dad, I need the car keys”, she shouts. Out the gate to the car and back with a CD.

Loud music and the customers rolled in. Well played, Mrs Gooding!

They made R440 profit!

The Concept of Society

“Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anaesthetic.”
― Paul Bowles

Irks me to see what price is sometimes paid for ‘belonging’ to such a ‘society’.

Hours, days and weekends away from small girl children, money she can ill-afford for travel to ‘meetings’ and ‘services’ far away, clothes to prove you really are a true believer . . .

Day Off

I made a fat sarmie like they make you on a Wilderness Walk in Mfolosi: White bread, tomato and onion, all thick-sliced and buttered, lots of salt and black pepper. Took the binocs to the stoep and munched, washing it down with tea (ignoring the notion that Greenpeace has just tested a bunch of teas and found many have traces of pesticides).

– female black cuckoo shrike – internet pic –

There was movement at the birdbath (there always is). Great! A female Black Cuckooshrike! She’s beautiful!

Also a Redcapped Robin-Chat, a Dusky Flycatcher, two sunbirds, hadedas, toppies & white-eyes as always – and these Purple-crested Touracos.

Made me completely forget I was dodging my day-off chores.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Boys n Girls in the Movies

Took three 12yr-olds to the movies on Friday night. They asked me to disappear before they got spotted with me – ruin their reps, I would.
So I wander off to my man cave substitute, Exclusive Books and wait, surplus to requirements.
They walk in bright-eyed a few hours later.

The movie? Oh, the MOVIE!? Ja, it was good. They’re bursting to talk, but they’d probably arranged “Don’t say nothing”< and I get non-commital grunts.
It couldn’t last. There were GIRLS! Some not even from their school, and some taller than them! They sat near these chicks and in front of them and spoke to them and they took the sweets the boys offered them! And it was a 16 movie, that’s why they needed me away before they bought tickets. But it’s fine, they let them in no problem.
Oh boy . .

Soccer Star, Almost

Tomaldinho! I was seeing dollars sign$ I was going to sign him up with Amazulu in Durban – No Dad!! PSG in Paris!! Oh. My bad. I need new boots, Dad! Lime green ones.

– Soccer Tom – ‘It was nothing chaps! I do this every day!’ – about to be mobbed after scoring –

But then suddenly it was rugby. RUGBY Dad! I need new boots. You can’t play rugby in soccer boots, Dad! I’m a rugger player now!

Hluhluwe with a Seibert

Greg Seibert was an exchange student to Harrismith back in 1972. He mailed me in 2014 to say his brother Jeff was coming to SA for work in Port Elizabeth. He’s with General Motors. I said get him up to KZN and we can go to a game reserve. Short notice, so I booked Hluhluwe.

Hluhluwe JeffSeibert (88).JPG
Hluhluwe with Jeff-collage-1
– eles in the mist –

Greg thought he may join us but it didn’t happen. Very sadly.

~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~

I wrote to friends after: Hared off at short notice to Hluhluwe-Mfolosi park.
Harrismith’s 1972 Rotary exchange student Greg Seibert contacted me to say his brother was in SA. He works for General Motors and I spose he was checking to see if they still sell Chevs in this neck of the woods. He’s from just outside Detroit, Michigan.

Mfolosi was dry and Hluhluwe was burnt, the logs still smouldering from a fire that burnt about half the park. Lots to see in the line of big grey animals plus antelope and painted dogs. Lots of birds, too.

Must get a kombi next time . .

~~oo0oo~~