What could possibly go wrong

12 Days to departure...
A lot of people ask me what I am most worried about.
I hope I am not being to unrealistic about the whole thing, because I am not actually that worried about anything.
Its not the sharks.
There are sharks, ragged tooth I believe.
Sonja even met a guy there on one of her visits who got badly bitten crossing the lagoon mouth in front of our hut. He was called shark boy. Nice one.But the odds there are very low, and ragged tooth sharks aren't very aggressive.
I reckon watching the kids swimming in the evening off of Fish Hoek is more risky.
There are great whites out there. No question.
I was keen to try and learn to surf while we are there, and will be cautious approaching this. I was also thinking of going spearfishing instead of angling, again, I'll just have to be careful.
Snakes. Snakes aren't too bad. You mainly get night adders. These are poisonous, but rarely deadly. You don't want one of the kids to get bitten, but then again Cape Town has a high population of cobra's and puff adders which are a lot worse.
You have to be a lucky snake to survive out there. Sadly snakes out there don't have the same protected status as they would here.
Lightning. This wasn't really on our radar originally. But then Dave told us about the family that was thrown out of their hut, the three cows that were hit and killed, and a man who was hit and killed. Now it is on our radar. Being the highest hut on the hill and with a metal roof and all.
So I have spent a bit of time googling "how to protect your house against lightning"
Oh, and then last week we found out about the dogs. Two stories about people being attacked and the dogs having rabies. Another new one. We'll keep an eye open for foaming mouths.
Our main dog fear, is our own flea bag coming in having rolled in something unspeakable.
Kids and the water is an issue. We have been drown proofing the kids like mad. Skye (9) can swim like a fish, Mila (5) is pretty good and also half fish. Caleb (3) has just got to the stage of jumping in the pool and swimming lengths. As far as he can on one breath. The breathing thing hasn't really got through to him yet. So we will have to watch them carefully because there is a lot of open water.
Boys are definitely slow learners. By three, Skye was already swimming like a fish.
Water born diseases is quite high up the list. Getting the kids to understand not to drink any other water than what is in their own personal water bottle. All of the village springs have various forms of contamination. If you drink from them without having grown up there, you will get sick. Very sick.That is a definite. Kak one.
I guess I am more aware of the politics. Not knowing when a word or action could ruin somebody Else's hard work.
I guess we will just have to be sensitive to that and not screw up.
But I am not really worried about it. More just aware.

There will be lots of crap times and pressure and madness.
I am sure being cooped up for five days in the rain will drive us all a bit barmey in only 40sqm of cottage.
Sick kids will be stressful with a 3 hour drive to Mthatha hospital.

But, if you weigh things up, there is probably less that can go wrong out there.
Then living in the city.

I am not going to be hijacked in my driveway.
I am not going to be burgled or robbed.
No traffic each morning.
My kids aren't going to get run over by a car.
How many times have you had to rush off to hospital in the last year.
The closest we come to noise pollution is a noisy cockerel in the morning.
And that even that has a definite solution and a tasty end.

If anything I think we are incredibly lucky. We are really privileged to have this opportunity. I don't mean that in a shallow sense. I really do feel lucky.
How many people get such an amazing opportunity and life experience.

So now I do have a worry.
Not to screw it up and waste it.

Nonezile's cottage, our home for two years

Nonezile and her family have been good enough to rent us a cottage for the two years that we are going to be in Nqileni. I think we have got the nicest view in the village.

Instead of a group of traditional rondavels, the cottage we are renting is a small T-shaped building. For lots of practical reasons this has made our lives easier. Each of the arms of the T is a room.

The front door opens into a small 3x4 metre room that Sonja and I will have as a bedroom, but that must also double up as an office space for a couple of months until we either rent or build a single rondavel as an office.
Although small, our bedroom has an amazing view down towards the lagoon and the beach.

When we get a chance we will try and add on a very small porch, just 2 x 3 meters, but big enough to fit two rickety chairs on to watch the dolphins in the sunrise.

We can squeeze our bed inside, plus a small trestle table to work on. If we are lucky we might even get in a set of shelves.

Our room leads into the main living area which is perhaps 4x4 metres. This will serve as our kitchen, dining room and living area. At the moment there is no door, but we will need to get one in if we want any privacy from the children.

The living area is a small room, even with nothing in it, but it has rough wooden rafters with an open roof right up to the corrugated sheeting that lend it a bit more of a feeling of spaciousness.

We won't fit much in the room, we plan for a small counter, a small gas fridge, a low coffee table and a few home made benches with scatter cushions. We hope to get our hands on an old wood burning stove before winter so that we will have some form of heating.

A door off the back of the living area leads to the children's room which is also about 3 x 4 metres. This will be a tight fit for an urban family, and must also fit in a desk for home schooling.

The entire cottage has a mud and dung floor that we paid Nonezile to do after we were there in October fixing the place up a bit. She would have applied the floor in several coats and we will need to add a layer every six weeks or so.

The house had not been lived in for quite a while and was being used for cooking and livestock must have been sleeping there as well by the looks of things.

There were no doors at all, and only some very old metal window frames that were basically rusted right through. The outside of the building was plastered, but has quite a lot of cracks. Inside, the walls were a mix of various materials, but 90 percent of the structure was mud brick. The inside was not plastered at all, and with the exposure to the elements the mud bricks had become quite crumbly.

The floor was basically piles of dry sand and dirt and had a lot of old rusted metal and bits of burnt wood and rubbish mixed in with it.

This is a detail of the condition of the roof. Quite a bit of the roof beams were rotten from exposure to the elements. Have a look at the wall. Lots of character. This is a mix of mud bricks, then a couple of layers of broken concrete building blocks, a couple of planks of wood thrown in, and then topped with a layer of loosely placed mud bricks. This is how the house is built and it seems surprisingly sturdy.

Anyway, we love the cottage to bits and will work really hard to get it habitable when we arrive.

It has lots of character, and will build lots of character in us if we all survive the experience.