When I dropped him off at extra maths this morning I said:
“Focus, boetie, or I’ll fix you up!”
He said with a grin, “We’ll settle this after school. I’ll fix YOU up!” and scuttled off inside.
cheeky lil shit.
~~oo0oo~~
Tag Archives: Peter Koos Swanepoel
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.
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~~
Afriski 2014
*** publishing now, but a story I wrote six years ago after our annual winter trip to Lesotho – just ‘parking it’ for the archives! ***
The resort has taken another leap forward this year under PIN management since they got 51% share and with that, management control. Most noticeable was the parking, the roads and the walkways are neater and better paved. This makes getting around easier and safer. In an earlier year, Aitch once slipped on ice and got a big fright. The whole complex is tidy, too, where before material and equipment would be left lying around.
Much of the accommodation has been upgraded – notably the two big units which have been completely re-done and their outside staircases enclosed in glass (red arrows);
Two completely new staff quarters have been built below the dams which frees up more accommodation next to the restaurant. I think its up to 240 beds. Up to 800 day visitors can arrive on a busy weekend day in school holidays!
The restaurant is terrific now. They have expanded to upstairs and down, take two sittings and were fully booked Sunday night. Professional chef, lovely grub.
Weather was two perfect days – midday saw ladies skiing in skimpy tops! One day was too windy for the skilift to run, so the slope people used the Pisten Bully to take people to the top instead. And three average days. With us was the Naude family Michelle and Craig and their three boys, and Tom’s mate Lungelo.
Not moving forward this year was the kids enthusiasm! Jess didn’t ski / snowboard at all – sore knee & wrist. Tom spent about half his snowboarding time doing other things, including sleeping! Three of the five boys who went with us were out on the slope early until they got kicked off when it closed – keen as mouseturd, like Jess & Tom used to be – so it was fun seeing their newby enthusiasm. Times change!
So come next January my two will have to convince me we should go – or we’ll hire out our week for the first time after eight years! Ons sal sien . . !
~~~oo0oo~~~
Sharing Meals
We shared a meal in Vwaza Marsh National Park, Malawi.
On the way there we delayed stocking up with food, thinking surely the next market will be better, but each town was the same: A big market square with lots of stalls, but only a few occupied, and those only offering a few oranges and sweet potatoes, arranged in neat little pyramids. Eventually we arrive in camp not having bought anything. We resolve to fast that night, and go back to Rumphi for some oranges and sweet potatoes before moving on to Nyika Plateau.
The Vwaza game guard comes over to hear if we want to shower and when we’ll be eating. He will light a fire for us. On hearing we won’t be eating, he brings his own sadsa/phuthu/maize porridge on a tin plate! We have a vacuum-sealed sausage of salami, so we add that and share the meal. Everybody wins! He heats the shower just right and carries it up the ladder and pours it into the bucket with a tap on it so we have a hot shower. Luxury! I spoilt that woman!
In the Comores we shared a meal
We delivered a book on Bruce Lee martial arts to well-known Comoran beach guide “Bruce Lee” in the Comores Big island (a gift from a previous guest who heard we were going there). He was thrilled to bits, as he’s a huge Bruce Lee fan, and invited us for supper at his humble palm-frond thatched home in the nearby village where his wife cooked for us. A number of plates with porridge, various veges, and one plate with four tiny fishes – which they put on our plates. We say we must share them, but “No. You are our guests!” they insist. Ai!
In Jozini, Zululand we shared a meal
Whenever I visit Tobias and Thulisiwe’s home on the Makhatini Flats, they treat me to a lovely meal. This time it was curried chicken and phuthu. As always, Thulisiwe gave me a bag of her home-grown roasted and salted peanuts to take home; plus, she gives us each a large leg of her home-grown chicken to nibble on the way. Padkos!
One day we’ll get roast goat, I hope. We go there when Tobias has accumulated enough stuff in Westville to rent a trailer and ship it home to his umuzi.
~~oo0oo~~
Padkos – food for the journey
umuzi – homestead
We Kayak the Kalahari
As a schoolboy I was keen on kayaking and was tickled by a cartoon depicting a kayak on dry land trailing a dust plume with the caption Kalahari Canoe Club! I kept that on my wall for years. Kayak’ing in the desert was just a joke, right!?
In January 2010 we got to the Kalahari to hear the Nhabe River was flowing strongly into Lake Ngami and Aitch’s twin sis Janet and boyfriend Duncan had organised us kayaks! Hey! Maybe you really could kayak the Kalahari!
A reconnaissance trip from Maun to the area with GPS found us a put-in place somewhere before Toteng we turned off on a dirt road, then turned off that into the veld. We got to the riverbank and found where we could launch. No easy task finding it, as this Kalahari “desert” was knee-deep and chest-deep in green grass after the good rains. The magical Green Kalahari!
We returned the next day with two vehicles, four yellow plastic expedition kayaks, hats and lunch. On the way a bird party was enjoying their lunch early. Breakfast really.
Following our tracks in the long grass, we got to the put-in and set off on the beautiful river, flowing nicely between overhanging trees. It was my idea of Paradise! Green green everywhere, with plants, flowers, grasses and birds all putting on a spectacular show.
Almost everything was green – even the insects.
Five Giant Eagle Owls weren’t green They peered down at us blinking their pink eyelids from one thorn tree – that was a special sighting! Fledged youngsters and parents probably.
Also special was a big green snake, I guessed over 2m long that came towards me on the bank as I drifted towards it. (At this point I skat we should remember that snake sizes never shrink in the telling). I was amazed it kept coming. Usually snakes will depart in haste when spying a human. I was no longer paddling but my momentum was still coasting me towards the bank. Even when my kayak’s prow beached, the snake still kept coming straight towards me up to about a metre away. Then it did a strange thing: it grabbed a small green shrub – just 10cm high – in its mouth and only then did it beat a hasty retreat.
Was it a Kalahari Vegetarian Viper? A Nhabe Spinach Nibbler? I was thinking ‘What On Earth?’ till I heard a loud hiss and saw the big flap-necked chameleon he had caught (together with some leaves) in his mouth. Focused on the slang, I had missed seeing a chameleon in that tiny green shrub! Looking up in my snake book afterwards, I’d guess he was an Angolan Green Snake.
Another memorable sight was rounding a bend and seeing four cows drinking: One all-black, one all-brown, one all-white and one all-tan. All uniform, none with a splash of a different colour on their coats. They looked so striking against the lush new green backdrop that we remembered the camera too late – we had drifted past in the current and by the time we paddled back against the current three of them had dispersed. Here’s the white one:
Lunchtime we sat in light semi-shade on the bank, using our kayaks as seats. I remember hardboiled eggs and very tasty sarmies, thanks Janet!
The girls then turned back as the paddling would be much slower against the current while Duncan and I headed on, determined to get into Lake Ngami.
And we did. How spectacular! The trees fell back and the sky opened up and huge reed beds stretched in every direction. Fish eagles cried, ducks scattered before us and herons and cormorants and waders were all over the place. At first we were still in a channel, but after another kilometre or so we could branch into other channels and lagoons out of the main current. We felt like David Livingstone in 1849. Sort of. Just better. Even though we had fewer bearers and porters and guides n so on.
Way too soon we had to turn back to get back upstream to the girls and the vehicles. Big difference paddling against the current.
I use this to show what it looked like when we got out of the river into the lake.
He’s a bird photographer, so he called the shot ‘waders’ – I like that!
This is a trip crying out for a multi-day one-way slo-ow expedition with an overnight on the bank. Seconds – those precious people in any kayaker’s life – could collect you at a take-out point on the lakeshore. To do it though, you have to be free to leave at short notice on those rare occasions when the river is up. Or else you’ll be reviving the old Kalahari Canoe Club – with plumes of dust!
Roll on, retirement!
~~oo0oo~~
Here’s a lovely trip on the Nata river, north and east of where we paddled.
Low Flying in Malawi
We flew in on our first trip to Malawi in 1990. Just me and Aitch. At Lilongwe airport we hired a car from the brochures on the desk, not from the kiosks in the airport. Well, the man on the phone said they didn’t have any presence at the airport to save money, but they were nearby, they’d be there in a jiffy. And they were cheap. I like that.
The airport emptied till it was just us, so we took our bags to the entrance and sat in the shade waiting. There was no-one there but a bored youth sitting in a dark blue Honda with sagging suspension, but we were chilled and the airport garden needed birding. Eventually I went back to the desk to phone the man. He was amazed: “My driver should have been there long ago!”
‘Twas him. ‘Twas our car: The dark blue Honda with sagging suspension. “No, no,” we laughed, “There must be a better car than this!” – thinking of the rough roads we’d be traversing. “Come back to the office and you can choose another car,” said the friendly man. So we did. The office was his house, and we inspected his fleet. Well, bless him, of course it was his best car, he’s good people; so off we headed to Kasungu National Park in a dark blue Honda Civic with Formula 1 ground clearance. We were on safari, and this was our jeep.
In the park we drove with one wheel on the middle bump and one on the left edge of the road. On the open road we drove slowly and avoided anything above deck.
While I was unpacking to occupy our bungalow I froze: a serval! Wonderful! We always love seeing the smaller wildlife. I tried to signal to Aitch as the long-legged cat walked out of the long grass into the clearing. I didn’t want to scare it, so I whistled low and urgent. Aitch came out, and we watched as it came closer and closer.
And closer. And closer till it rubbed itself against my leg! It was the camp pet, it had been raised by the rangers.
We headed further north – to Vwaza Marsh, and then up high to Nyika Plateau, 10 000ft above sea level; then south again to Nkhata Bay, beautiful Lake Malawi and warmer weather. The car went like a dream at twenty km/h and even sometimes at thirty km/h.
South of Nkhata Bay we suddenly came on a stretch of smooth road! I crept the needle up to forty km/h. Then fifty and eventually sixty! Wheee! “Careful, Koos,” admonished my Aitch, clinging white-knuckled to the dashboard (kidding! sort of). Then we came up to the big yellow grader that had smoothed our path. It moved aside and we went past with a wave to the friendly driver. The road condition was now back to interesting, so I slowed down to forty. “Slow down, Koos,” admonished my Aitch. We’d been doing thirty, so this still felt fast to her and I knew she was right, but I had tasted speed . .
WHUMP! We hit a brick and I knew immediately Fuckit Mrs Tuckit that we’d be getting to know this remote stretch of Malawi. I parked on a low level bridge and leaned out to peer under the car: Oil pouring out of the sump. Do you have any soap? I asked Aitch. Here, she said shoving a bottle of liquid soap into my hand. Um, no, a bar of soap. Ever resourceful, she whipped out a fat green stick of Tabard mozzi repellent. Perfect, I said and shoved it in the hole. It went into the sump without touching sides! OK, we were going to be here for a while . .
To break the tension I took my binocs and went for a walk and straight away things got better. “Come look!” I called Aitch “A lifer!” A Fire-Crowned Bishop flitted around in the reeds of the stream we were parked above. ‘Um,’ she said, ‘Don’t tell me that’s why you stopped here?’ Grinning, she made us a snack on the bootlid and we waited. Before too long someone came by. On foot. Two schoolboys who said, Not to worry, we know a mechanic in a nearby village. He will fix it. Great! I said, Would you ask him to help us, please? thinking, Actually guys, there’s no sign of a ‘nearby village.’
An hour later, a car zoomed by without stopping. Unusual for Malawi. Another hour later and a Land Rover stopped, the driver got out and shook his head sadly. He couldn’t help us, he said, as he was in a government vehicle. As he drove off we saw his female passenger appearing to give him a thousand words. He stopped and walked back with a 5l oil can in his hand. “I can’t sell you this oil because it’s guvmint oil, but I am going to give you this oil,” he said. Great, we accepted it with alacrity. It was half full. It was a start.
Another hour or so and three figures approached us on foot, one with a greasy green overall and a red metal toolbox on his shoulder. It was our mechanic and our schoolboys. They had come through!
Soon he had the sump cover off and I started tapping the hole closed using a shifty and a spanner. As I tapped I asked if anyone – perchance – had a bar of soap. Nope. No-one. Holding up the cover to the sun I tapped that malleable metal until not even a glint of sun shone through. I had closed the hole. As we started to replace it, I muttered “I’d give twenty kwacha for some soap,” whereupon one of the guys whipped out a sliver of red Lifebuoy soap from his pocket.
Boy! Did the others turn on him! “How can you be so unkind to our guests?” was the accusation and they refused to let me pay him more than four kwacha for his soap, despite my assuring them that it was worth twenty to me. As we prepared to depart after pouring in the guvmint oil, we gave them each a cold can from our hebcooler, paid the mechanic his modest dues (he didn’t charge traveling costs) and gave the schoolboys and the mechanic each a cap. I had two spare caps and Aitch had one. A pink one.
1500km later we handed the car back and I told the man at the airport: “Please check the sump. Its leaking oil.” It wasn’t, but I wanted him to check it.
~~oo0oo~~
More pictures of our journey from Aitch’s album:
~~~oo0oo~~~
The whole album, as I have now discarded the hard copy:
~~oo0oo~~
Good Advice in Kenya
Aitch and I went to Mombasa in 1998 and checked in at a hotel on Diani beach. The next day I got a lift into town and walked the crowded streets of Mombasa looking for a cheap hired car. Mombasa is quite a place:
I did my sums. I’m meticulous. Not.
While I was on safari hunting hired cars, Aitch chilled on the uncrowded beach and pooldeck, no doubt quaffing ginless gin&tonics. She used to do that, you know! Tonic & bitters. Ginless! I know! You’re right; Search me; Where’s the medicinal value? The personality enhancing factor, PEF? Still, she loved it.
After careful stalking, keeping downwind of my prey and pinpoint aiming, my lone hunting expedition was successful; I found a lil Suzuki jeep. Marvelous. I could turn round from the drivers seat and touch the back window! Almost. I knew they were good cos my chairman Allister told me, and he knows things, him being a Suzuki driver himself. Also JonDinDin once drowned his in the Tugela estuary, pulled it out and it still worked. We had wheels!
Good Birding Advice: Back at the hotel I went for a walk, leather hat on my head, binoculars round my neck. An old man came cranking along slowly on a bicycle, swung his right leg high up over the saddle and dismounted next to me.
‘Ah!’ he said,‘I can see you are English.’ I didn’t contradict him. ‘You are looking for buds,’ he said, also in a way that made me not argue. ‘There are no buds here,’ he said emphatically. ‘If you want to see buds you must go to the west, to the Impenetrable Forest. There are many buds there.’ After I thanked him for this sage advice he put his left foot on the pedal, gave a push and, swinging his right leg high over the saddle, wobbled off. After a few yards he had a thought, slowed, swung off in the same elaborate dismount and came back to me: ‘But in this hotel over here you can see some peacocks in the garden,’ he informed me re-assuringly.
‘Ah, thank you sir. Thanks very much,’ I said, wishing him well and thinking of Kenya’s 1100 species of birds – eleven percent of the world’s total. The USA has about 900, and the UK about 600. He was a character a bit like this:
Good Traveling Advice: We also got pessimistic advice on the roads. We were on our way to Tsavo National Park the next day and we wanted to avoid the main road to Nairobi. We’d heard it was crowded with trucks and buses and we’d rather avoid that, if at all possible. On our Globetrotter map I found a little road south-west of the main road – an alternative route via Kwale, Kinango and Samburu.
‘No you can’t; No, not at all; There’s no way,’ says everyone. Even the barman! Even after I said, And Have One Yourself! he still said no. ‘The bridge has been washed away by cyclone Demoina,’ they all said. This was a bit weird, as Demoina had been in 1984, fourteen years earlier, and had mostly hit Madagascar, then Mocambique, then KwaZuluNatal, well south of Kenya.
Usually I can eventually find ONE person to say ‘Don’t listen to them, the road is FINE,’ but this time I was stymied. No-one would say ‘Yes!’ nor even ‘Maybe.’
SO: We headed off along the road toward Kwale anyway. ‘Tis easier to seek forgiveness than permission, we thought. Aitch, what a trooper, was right behind me in adventurousness and right beside me in Suzukiness. ‘We’ll see new places,’ was all she said. She knows me.
As we neared Kwale a minibus taxi approaching from the other direction did a strange thing: They actually flagged us down to tell us ‘Stop! You can’t go this way! The bridge is gone, Demoina washed it away!’ We nodded, acted surprised, looked grateful, agreed, and thanked them kindly; then we kept going.
And they were right: The bridge over the river between Kwale and Kinango had indeed washed away. But there were recent tyre tracks down to the river which we followed. Below and just upstream of the iron wreckage of the bridge we stuck the Suzuki in 4X4 and crossed the low river. Then we stopped for a break, parking our mini-4X4 under a beautiful shady tree on the river bank:
And we were right: Besides being devoid of traffic, the road surface was mostly good, sometimes great:
Then the honeymoon ended: We ran out of detour and got back onto the main, ‘tarred’ Mombasa-Nairobi road at Samburu: Aargh! Every so often a blob of tar would threaten to cause damage. Huge holes had the traffic all weaving from side to side so trucks seem to be coming straight at you, but it’s actually quite safe, despite Aitch occasionally putting her feet up against the windscreen and yelling at me that there was an oncoming truck. Like I couldn’t see it. Its rather like slow-motion ballet. Most cars and all trucks went slowly, the only vehicles ‘speeding’ – probably up to 60km/h – were big passenger buses with their much better – softer, longer travel – suspension.
Years later, we can find the place where the bridge had washed away on online maps. Here’s the new bridge and new road on the right, with the old road just left of it, and just left of that, the drift we crossed (just left of the yellow arrow) and that beautiful tree in the top picture (red arrow) that we rested under. All the long red mud scar is new road- wasn’t there back then. The old road shows as a thinner, lighter line.
Then we got to Tsavo! I’d wanted to visit Tsavo since I was ten years old, and read books by Bernhard Grzimek. Armand Denis and others! Well, here I was, thirty years later! Yavuyavu! Fahari!
~~oo0oo~~
Yavuyavu! Fahari! – Joy, happiness, yes!
Michael J Allard, the witty, talented painter of the wonderful old man on his bicycle, lived in Zim on a farm, and in Ireland. He died in 2021.
Hluhluwe LUXURY Camping!
Its a sudden decision: Let’s go to a game reserve Dad! – that’s Jess on Friday night.
OK! (I’m chuffed!). I’m working tomorrow, so you guys buy food and gather the camping stuff. Be ready when I get home at 2:30pm and we’ll go to Mkhuze. Remember the tent, mattresses, pillows, your swimming cozzies.
Cecelia helps them. Minenhle & Andile join us. As we head north to Zululand I realise we’ll be cutting it fine. The gates close at 7pm and it’s 3:30pm already, so there’s a change of plan: We’ll go to Hluhluwe/Mfolosi instead. Means no camping and no swimming.
At the gate the usual story: A pessimistic Ooh, you haven’t booked? Mpila is full. The bushcamps are full.
Keep trying, I say cheerfully. Oh! OK, I’ll try Hilltop camp. Just then the kids walk into the office and he gets interested in me and the kids, asking all sorts of adoption questions and Where’s my wife? and Is she a Zulu lady? and so tries harder when there’s no reply on the radio. Will you phone them on your cellphone? he asks me. Sure. We get thru, there’s a chalet available, we book and head off on what turns into a free night drive!
Tom spots an elephant running towards the road ahead of us, ears flapping. I slow down and it turns onto the tar road and walks determinedly towards us, causing great panic on the back seat. We reverse and wait, reverse and wait, giving him plenty of space, till he eventually finds a mud wallow, drinks and heads off into the bush, allowing us to proceed. It’s dark now and later on two more eles loiter on the road and we just wait patiently, watching them in our headlights. All the kids have watched the videos of the elephant flipping the car, so they’re nervous and don’t want to go anywhere near eles. A look at the video will show how many warnings the people in the car ignored.
At Hilltop they’re waiting for us, they give us our key and bring us an extra set of bedding and towels for the fifth body. Bleeding luxury for us were-going-to-be campers.
AND the big breakfast buffet in the restaurant is included.
The dawn chorus the next morning was fantastic. In that magic spell between pre-dawn and the screaming banshees waking up I made a cup of coffee and sat out on the deck listening in the half light. As the kids started waking two trumpeter hornbills landed in full view and the kids got a good look at them through my telescope. I issued a decree banning all post-5000BCE music and they just nodded, acquiescent (!). So birdsong was it.
Meals? All I had to do was eat.
~~oo0oo~~
Madagascar
I never really learnt to be circumspect. I tend to blurt. So what would you like to do now your second chemo spell is over, Aitch? We’d gone snorkelling at Mabibi on the Zululand coast after the first. A six hour drive in a 4X4.
Where? The Great Barrier Reef? But that’s in Oz, m’dear! You do? Um, what I meant to ask was: What, reasonably-speaking, would you like to do?
So I scurried off to do my homework. Costs, flight times, travel time to the reefs, what we could afford. With trepidation I showed her two alternatives: The Great Barrier Reef in Oz vs Madagascar, where we would live aboard a yacht, plopping overboard to snorkel whenever we wanted to.
Phew! She chose Madagascar – and LOVED Madagascar. “My BEST holiday ever!” she enthused afterwards.
We shared the boat with a delightful English couple, Dickie and Claire, with their two blonde girls Sonja and Natasha. Easygoing and relaxed, it was a blissful getaway. They were chilled and accommodating, and so were we. The crew, too, were wonderful folk, friendly, capable, and good chefs! Skipper Bert, chef ___ and teenage deckhand ‘Mowgli,’ who fascinated our Jessie.
It was Aitch, so homework was still done, naps were still taken, routines were kept as far as possible:
Nosy Iranja in the Mocambique channel:
‘My Best Holiday Ever!!’ – Aitch
Don’t Call Me Comrade
I tried. Well, I made a less-than-worthy attempt. My heart wasn’t in the training. I thought, if you live on the route, you gotta have a go. If you live in KwaZulu, you’ll always be asked, Have You Done It? But I could never quite see the glamour or ‘worthiness’ of shuffling furtively round the dark streets long before sunrise. Anyway I thought, Give It A Go. I even tried the flaming hot running shorts Phil Greenberg gave me in the hopes I’d speed up a bit.
I joined a club – maybe that’s where I went wrong? I joined Westville with their red & white hoops ‘caterpillar’ outfit whereas historically I was more suited to be a black-&-white Savage with a Zulu shield, knobkierie and spear on my chest. Years before, I had been a Savage. Running Number 451, so maybe I should have stuck to that? Westville gave me number 159738b or something – I don’t think they valued me like Savages did. That probably put me off my stride a bit.
Anyway, I shuffled and I shuffled and I ran a lot of races. 10km, 15km, half marathons and two 42km marathons.
Here’s an example of a ‘short’ training run in windy, hilly Westville, starting at our home. We took turns hosting our short runs at our homes, with tea n cake served afterwards. This is the run I worked out for the training team:
Walk up River Drive
R into Elvira
R into Rockdale across highway bridge
R Severn – down
L Mersey
L Rockdale – UP for 500m !!
Back all along Rockdale
R Tweed – Done 4km at this point
L Thames – down
R Conway – down
L Constance Cawston – UP & UP
L Somerset – UP & UP (becomes Frank)
L Cochrane (becomes Cleveland – UP) – 6,5km
L Rockdale
R Rockdale (that’s right, Rockdale again !)
R Broadway – UP
L Neville – 8,6km
L Westbrook – down, then UP
L Harrison – UP
L Springvale
R Lawrence
R River – 11,5km
Then eventually the big day arrived and I hadn’t arranged anything so I took myself off to Maritzburg to my folks. Early the next morning my Mom dropped me off at the start – long before sunrise. More dark streets – but now with crowds of lunatics milling around the red brick city hall.
Some guy crowed like a rooster and a gun went off in the dark and nothing happened. Minutes later still nothing had happened. The chatter of the would-be runners had changed to an excited murmur but nothing else had changed. Eventually we started shuffling at a slow walk, then a very slow pace, slower even than my training pace, and some long time later we crossed the START line. The START line! I was tired already! I think I was in Batch ZZZZ.
That’s when I started thinking fu-uck! and I’m afraid that thought didn’t really leave me all day. I knew my pace was slow by the people around me: None of the runners looked like young skinny blonde Wits students, nor like Russians – and if they did look African they looked larger and rounder than me. Also, the few spectators about weren’t saying ‘Well Done!’ or ‘Go! Guys!‘ NO, Instead they were saying Move Along! in a rather critical, nagging tone of voice, I thought, Why’s no-one saying, ‘You’re looking good!? Weird that.
This was confirmed when I passed under a banner that said ‘HALFWAY’ – Half way meant I only had 3km (Plus a Marathon) to go. Springbok rugby captain Wynand Claassen recklessly shot off a gun which left gunpowder residue on my scarlet Westville Running Club shorts. Well, if that wasn’t a pointed ‘Move Your Arse’ hint! Who the hell did he think he was? He had run the race but he’d never won the race, his father had.
En route I caught up with a few long-lost friends: Jacques-Herman du Plessis from Harrismith days; Rheinie Fritsch from army days. Also Aitch and 5yr-old Jessie and 1yr-old Tommy met me in Botha’s Hill for a family reunion. They were all a bit cool though, a bit offish, I thought: Because after a while of enjoying standing and chatting to them, they all said, ‘Haven’t you got something to do today?‘ and sent me on my way. Bugger off, Koos! they said.
So I shuffled and I shuffled and then my spirits rose at a sudden thought! I started to think maybe there had been a collective coming to their senses, as there were no other runners around nor any spectators. Maybe I had got the wrong day? Or maybe everyone had just gone home to a hot bath and a cold beer?
But no, the spectators returned in Westville. Trouble is, they were all packing up their deckchairs. And so the slow torture continued. Shuffle, shuffle. Suddenly a few cops jumped in front of me holding reflective tape as I shuffled under the N3 below 45th Cutting, just before the onramp (usually an offramp) onto the Berea Road section of the N3 into town.
Go Home, they said, We need this road for tomorrow’s traffic. You’ve had eleven hours, they said, and you’ve only done 82km. Where have you BEEN?
So I went home to a hot bath and a cold beer. Look, about this heading: Actually, you can call me Comrade, I’d love that, but only in a liberation sense, not in a shuffling sense. Who knew they only give you a medal for the last 7km? The first 82km are completely ignored!
~~oo0oo~~
So now I’m also guilty of this:
“How do you know if someone has run a marathon?”
“They’ll tell you.”
~~oo0oo~~
The guys in my pics are Dave Williams, Kingfisher and Savages mate; and Dave Lowe, Westville runner; Both have done OVER FORTY Comrades – 41 and 42 respectively to be precise. That is Seriously Certifiable! I told Dave ‘Jesus’ (when he had a beard) ‘John Cleese’ (when he shaved) Williams just the other night at Ernie’s wake “You know you can stop now, right?” and he said No, I failed to finish last year for the first time ever, so this year I have to repeat my 42nd Comrades. Bleedin’ ‘ell!
A bum Rap
Snoozing on Tommy’s bed tonight he lies down and puts his head on my stomach, disturbing me with the racket coming from his Blackberry.
Dad, listen to this rap: It’s 2 Chainz, he’s cool, huh?
All I can hear is a string of chanted F-words.
Dad, he says, taking a picture of my face from navel-level, You could be a rap star. We could call you 2 Chinz.
Hoses himself. So clever. Little squirt. Doesn’t realise these chins were bequeathed to me by my gran Annie and my Ma Mary. Heirlooms.
~~oo0oo~~
Generous Souls
Off we go to St Lucia estuary for a camping long weekend. Let’s take the minimum guys, we can buy food locally. Just clear out the fridge and bread bin and let’s go. We’ll buy charcoal and meat and etc from the local Spar. I won’t even take any wine! Rather we hit the road now, shop later.
Let’s take a tent for the three teenage girls, and the twelve year-old fella and I will sleep in the back of the pickup. The simple life.
Except I realise at the first tollgate that I have left my wallet in Westville. Complication. To turn back or not. In my rucksack I find Tom’s saving card, daily withdrawal limit R300. I had just changed his password, as we had not used the account for ages, so we were good to go. We just gotta be frugal, kids, we got R300 kuphela.
And that’s where they blew me away. All four of them said “Dad, we’ve got money! You can have our money, Dad”. They each had R200 pocket money for the weekend and offered it freely! What stars.
Thanks guys, I may need that, but I have enough to fill up with diesel and we’ll just go easy and discuss it before we spend anything, OK?
The next morning I managed to activate my eWallet and cellphone banking at an internet cafe so could now draw R1500 a day! Problem solved! I gave them each R100 to thank them for their generous offers. Their eyes looked like chocolates and ice creams!
Off we went to the game reserve (entrance fee R245) and to the water park (R120 for the four of them). We wuz rich! The girls bought swimming shorts with their own money.
The next day that amount I could draw had ‘kindly’ been reduced to R200 (“for my safety” – Thanks FNB!), so I had to make the speech again, and again they rallied around with their offer of chipping in, but with Tom’s R300 and my R200 we were fine. We ate boerie rolls both nights – cheap!
Here’s an isimangaliso* pan with buffalo, waterbuck and zebra (click on the pic). The Indian Ocean is just behind that high forested dune:
Tom got on with fishing . .
. . while the teenage girls did what teenage girls do . .
~~oo0oo~~
*isimangaliso means ‘miracle, wonder, surprise’ in isiZulu
wu wei
My garden is a wonderful tangle of KwaZulu indigenous growth gone wild. Interfered with only by my best man Tobias Gumede’s earnestly-felt desire to do something besides pulling weeds! He’s a GARDENER, so why does he get told: Do Nothing!?
Recently he trimmed the undergrowth near the birdbath and the spot where beautiful turquoise Araneus apricus spins her web each night and takes it down every morning.
I had to sit him down and remind him:
Tobias, my good man, remember when we listened to the yellow-bellied greenbul’s complaints (nickname Belly-aching Bulbul) and you told me how it was saying “Don’t shoot the birds, it’s Spring and they’re nesting?” And how you would teach the kids in Jozini not to shoot birds in that season – and how they did anyway!?
Yep, he remembers.
Well, its Summer, and remember: We don’t trim or cut anything till the season fades and we’re sure no birds or other creatures are nesting. And even then we do it with great circumspection? Lots of ‘easy-does-it’?
Oh Yes, He Does Remember and Sorry, He Forgot.
But he forgot again and as I was leaving he asked, Can You Buy Me A Rake? Um, what for, Tobias? Oh, Yes, He Forgot, We Don’t Rake. Right.
Well, I mention this because I have recently found out that unbeknown to me, I garden according to the ancient principle of wu wei. I mean, I always suspected my method was brilliant, but wu wei! That is brill. Its the Zen (or Tao? – or something . . ) art of “masterful inactivity.”
I love it: “The Art Of Masterful Inactivity”! Wu wei! I can do this!
I’m reading a book by Esther Woolfson who lives in Aberdeen in Scotland, called Field Notes from a Hidden City. The review of her book made me want to write about all the wonderful hidden creatures in my garden and generally in Westville, so I bought it with the express intention of plagiarising it. I’ve got to the part where she writes about wu wei and I’m right behind her.
“Less is more.” German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe popularized this slogan among designers around the world in the 1950’s. And the wisdom of this aphorism goes way, way back to the time of the great Lao Tzu, ‘venerable master.’ The concept of Wu Wei became mainstream in China, where great leaders came to see the power of “non-doing.”
I read a lot about books and then occasionally I buy one and actually read the whole thing. Often the book review is better than the book. I bought Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck by Eric G Wilson. Well, it was a very good review.
Back to plagiarism: I will write to Esther and tell her what I’m doing if I get the book done. My wu wei credentials are not confined to gardening, however, so she may be safe.
Here’s the manicured bit for soccer, rugby and biking, with refuges for creatures in front and behind. When the kids stop swimming the pool will be made more frog-friendly. Made? Well, ‘Allowed To Go’ frog-friendly . . . .
So how did I know the beautiful little turquoise orb spider I found in my garden was Araneus apricus? I went to my saucers. This one is seldom in her cups: My favourite entomologist and arachnologist Tanza said:
Hi Pete – I think she is Araneus apricus, a little orb spider. Most are nocturnal, spinning their webs in the early evening and then removing them in the morning. Maybe she got out of bed late . . . ; It is probably a “she” as the males are often (but not always) smaller.- TanzI first met Tanza when she was working with social spiders on the Hella Hella bridge over the Umkomaas river. Hundreds of them obligingly spun webs between the aluminium railings, allowing Tanza to mark and measure at leisure. Usually they’d be in tangled bushes!
They’re fascinating. For one thing, like me they can balloon off and fly away!
~~oo0oo~~
Tanza Crouch’s 9 research works with 278 citations and 2,858 reads, including: The influence of group size on dispersal in the social spider Stegodyphus mimosarum (Araneae, Eresidae) – researchgate.net
Dream On
Wake up TomTom, time to get up.
Ah no Dad, just let me finish my dream.
OK, but fast forward it, fella.
Five mins later: Come on, up you get!
It’s about Father Christmas, Dad.
Well, to stay on his good side you better get up, my boy.
He LOVES me Dad, I’m his best client!
~~~oo0oo~~~
A letter from an earlier time – dictated to Ma Aitch:
Twilight River Serenade
When I paddled the Berg river marathon in 1983, that crazy 200km (‘241km Pete!’ Giel van Deventer reminds me. He’s the Berg historian) f-f-freezing f-f-flatwater f-f-foolishness, the oldest oke in the race was Ole man Myers (ancient: 60 if he was a day). He lost his boat one night when the waters rose (he’d left it too close to the bank). Next day he had to find it downstream and take it back to the start – and so arrived at that leg’s finish VERY late – even after me.
When word came to the camp that he was arriving we all gathered on the bank to welcome him.
He paddled up in the dark singing:
“Roamin’ in the gloamin’
by the bonny banks of Clyde . .“
Ian Myers
~~~oo0oo~~~
The Considerate Crocodile
Now we’re driving home. Dad, did you see the lions come to drink and the one crocodile ate the little lion cub?
No, TomTom, where did you see that?
On TV.
Dad, if I was a crocodile I’d just live on the water and not eat babies. I’d be a vegetarian to other animals!
~~oo0oo~~