A muddle of contradictions

A question often put to us by friends back home is the ubiquitous “Are you enjoying it there?”
This of course has no easy answer.
Sonja best sums this up with her answer, that “on some days we wonder how we are going to last two years here, while on other days we wonder how we are ever going to be able to move back home.”
Life here is a massive contradiction, and although this is often unnerving, and often pushes you to the edge of reason, I also think this is why it makes you feel so alive, so very unique.
Living in Africa means being tough and resilient. You need to be rough, and robust and very ready to laugh. And more than most places, you need a persistence bordering on irrational stubbornness.
Getting anything done takes more
This is what this great, bubbling, pulsating continent is all about.
And because this amazing and alive place is such a contradiction, there are things you love, and there are things that drive you to the very edge of reason.
And oddly enough, all of this is fluid. It changes. You cannot allow yourself to wan to be in control of even the contradictions. These also belong to Africa.
Something that bursts your chest with a deep and positive passion one week, can make you curse and turn crazy for days on end a week later.
That is why I love the reality of the landscape here. Real Africa. No Attenborough. Just huts, dust, woodsmoke and the normality of lives.
Bouncing along a very dusty and pot holed dirt road, transfixed by the reality of life staring at you in the face. The round huts with their grass roofs and deep green and pink painted walls, the wisps of smoke from fires and the contrast of these amazing indigenous nguni cattle against the pale dryness of the winter grass. This is the essence of Africa. This is what three quarters of Africa looks like. Rural. Poor. With few amenities. Small family homesteads. Mud huts. Grass roofs.
There wasn’t an elephant in site and all the buck had been eaten long ago, but this was truly Africa. And I was lucky enough to be slap bang in the middle of it all, drinking it up with my eyes and my ears, smelling it into me. Smiling to myself in the sun. It wasn’t as sexy as the Serengeti, or a lion kill in Etosha, and these things are amazingly. But this was what Africa really was. Game parks are not what Africa is about. It is what the rest of the world wants us to be. But if you want typical Africa, you won't see a lion. You will see this. Mud huts, grass roofs, small vegetable patches. Women cooking on outside fires. Chickens pecking around and cows observing life. Goats up on the hind legs eating the leaves off a tree.
And lots of curious, loud, smiling, happy, peaceful villagers. Tough and trying to survive and make a living and take care of their families. This is what Africa is all about. And I wanted to gulp it down and breath it through my pores.

When I stopped to take some soil samples, I wanted to taste the soil. Instead I rubbed it and breathed in its dust quickly. Like some coke addict with a bad habit. I did it again, got it in deeply. If I was alone I would have taken handfuls of it and rubbed it all over my face and my neck and my arms. Anointed myself with her soil.
Thandomhlaba. Lover of the soil. Lover of earth.

And the people. Smiling, caring, gentle people. Who are demonstrative. Men who hold my hand when they talk to me. Women who rest their hands on my arms and shoulders. People who make me feel part of them and cared for. Children who visit us all the time. Always a small excuse to come and be with you. Join you in what you are doing. Everyone so quick to smile and laugh. Loud talking, long greeting. Simple. A sense of community like I have never experienced.
Except some days these same people will drive me to distraction. Make me curse and swear.
Children I wish I could scatter to be gone always. But that is how it is.
A complex contradiction that you simply experience and allow yourself to be truthful about how it makes you feel at any particular time.
And the beauty and the poverty. Beauty like you only thought Hollywood could conjure up. White beaches, lagoons, green forest. Birds, rolling grassland. Paradise. Exotic, large horned African cattle.
But paradise dotted with small mud huts with dung floors, living eight to a room with no electricity, toilets running water. HIV, TB and dehydration for room furniture.

But God I love this place. When I am not wanting to burn it down and get away from it, then I love it in a way makes my expressions about it redundant.
I cannot express how proud I am of being part of Africa, and being an African. How proud and glad I am my children are African. How much I love and feel a connection with everybody who plants their feet in her soil, and fights everyday, to make a success of their own small African corner.
We are an exciting and dynamic place.
Being here makes me feel alive a hundred different times every day.
I haven’t missed a sunrise since we moved here.
One hundred times per day to thank whoever is out there, that I am here, and not somewhere with a low sky and order and calm and a schedule..
I need the unexpected. The unknown. The contradictions.
One last contradiction of the highest order.
I love being alive here so much, I wish I would die her.
If I had to die.
I mean if you 100% put a gun to my head and told me I had to die. This is where I would want it to be. This is where there is no fear for me. Only a feeling of being whole.
Amongst this landscape. Amongst these caring people.
This would be a good place to die.
If it doesn't drive me crazy first.

The beautiful game, Africa style

Some call it the beautiful game.

Others say soccer is a gentleman's game played by 11 thugs, while rugby as a thugs game, played by 15 gentlemen.

Regardless of which, we thought that the Soccer World Cup 2010 needed some representation on the blog, at least once.

We had Greg, a photographer staying at the lodge recently who kindly allowed us to use some of his photo's. As the world cup is fast approaching I thought we could post a few of Greg's photo's to show you soccer, African style.

The beautiful game, Bulungula style.

A sponsor is donating a solar system for the Nofisi Junior School, and the community has also had a flat screen TV promised to them. These will serve educational purposes, but the sponsor is also determined that the village, with no access to TV whatsoever and very sporadic radio reception, will now be able to watch the world cup matches up in the community hall at the school. This will be very exciting for the soccer mad community.

The village has its own rather good soccer team that wins most of it's matches against neighbouring teams.

"Dangerous Boys" play in a blue and white strip, and practice three times a week.

Matches are normally held on a Sunday and most of the community turns out for the games, which are always held in good spirit and accompanied by "some small" vuvuzela blowing.

Enjoy Greg's pictures

All photo's are by Greg Beadle , 2009

To see more of Greg's work you can check out his website at http://www.gregbeadle.com/

Twitchers Delight

Had a chance to update some new birds seen. Still had no time for any birdwatching, so the additions are just pickings from when I am out and about. Have taken the master list of to about 90 species and again I am sure this could be doubled.

If you enjoy birdwatching, the Buluingula Lodge is an excellent and undiscovered gem. You can wander around the bush all day, in complete peace and quiet, but also in complete safety, amongst four different habitats, and see some really good birds.

An undiscovered gem of African birdwatching.

Get in before it gets discovered.

Had a beautiful sighting of a small flock of flamingo's recently, as well as some resident Fish Eagles, and always see lots of King Fishers and other water birds.

Daves mother, Annette, saw a Narina Tragon the other day which she photographed. These are really shy birds and I have yet to see one.

Bugger.

Also saw some spoonbill in the logoon for the first time.

Any hardcore birders, you can refer to my master list if you want an update.

The photo is by Gene Gage, October 2008.

Some Random Pictures, not of Sonja's quality

Mila and Skye heading off on their donkeys for an afternoon ride. They come and go at will, and when the donkeys are in a listening mood they take them down to the forest to mess around. Riding to and from school is also a favorite.

Tigger off in hunting mode

Cheetah enjoying an Antonio Banderas moment

I didn't catch this fish. A very elderly villager did. But it really is as big as Caleb. And it was caught off the rocks right in front of our village. It isn;t even that big a deal and happens quite often, just not with me.

I didn't catch this one either, although it is more in my league. The kids had a great time cooking their own meal though, and sedgewick can be seen, like a ghost on his last legs, left of last frame, next to Mila

Skye cooking her fish

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

First off, it was actually a Monday afternoon and a Tuesday morning, but none of that rhymes.
Nor is it important.
We lost nine chickens in 24 hours.

It was carnage.
The day started badly for us humans, with a grumpy father, and it ended badly for our two roosters, Goose and Freckles.
Very badly actually.
My bank holiday was rescued at 9am by some generous time-off by my lovely wife to take an hours vigorous canoe up the river in perfect conditions, followed by a family picnic on the edge of the lagoon.
Their day wasn’t.
Our two roosters have been fighting really badly over the past two days. Leaving them all bloodied and worn out. They would quite literally fight each other until they fell down and their was blood all over the place.

It was time for the chop. But the kids were having none of it and I had to slip back quietly from the beach to settle matters. Man to rooster.
One got given to our top neighbour, Nonezile, and the other got given to the neighbour who lives below us, Nosandise.
Both neighbours had to promise not to leave any evidence around for our kids who think the roosters have gone to live in the forest.
By the time we walked back up the hill in the late afternoon, all that remained were our neighbours sitting on the grass in front of their hut finishing off the last of Freckle’s bones.
I felt a twinge of guilt when Mila asked to use my binoculars to see if she can spot her beloved goose in the forest later that evening.
The two fighting roosters have been replaced by the magnificent rooster Larry, who is twice as big and has been retrieved from our other neighbour, Nokulunga.
When we went to sleep last night, our latest batch of chicks were an average of 12 hours old and numbered 10.
sadly, when I went to feed them this morning there were seven little corpses, and two hanging on by a thread.
The most obvious cause was squashing.
The mother seems to have stood on all of them at one or other point during the night.
The kids sadness was compensated by us removing the two remaining chicks to hand rear inside their bedroom.

One has since died.
We have got a very basic system which involves a box, a teddy bear and a hot water bottle.

(Oops, the second one just went as well)

We don’t expect them to last the night, but the kids are pretty keen and top up the hot water bottle every two hours.

Also, again no kidding, honest truth – when I went down to close the coop last night, barefoot from the beach, I cut my foot on something sharp as I was passing the spot Nonezile had her afternoon banquet. You guessed it.
It was a chicken bone from Freckle's carcass.

Layer Cake

My son has gone to sleep wearing eight shirts.
It is exactly 20.8 degrees Celsius, so it isn’t because he is cold.
He can barely move his arms or turn his torso, that’s how tight it is.
It can’t be all that pleasant, but I am all in favour of it. Not only is very good for his posture, but instead of having to dress him for school in the morning, I just need to peel his top layer off.
Why I didn’t think of this years ago I don’t know.
This morning when we all went down to the beach he had put three bathing costumes on top of each other.
“It keeps me warm silly!”
I am hoping this is common amongst three year old boys.

What the cat dragged in

Our cats are killers.
Their most impressive prey are bats.
These are caught in the dark, at speed, and high off the ground.
We quite often get bats in the house. They are very sweet and we are quite fond of them.
They move very quickly and erratically.
Lying in bed, I have tried to follow them in the dark with the light of a torch and it isn’t possible.
They are fast darting little buggers.
Tigger however, is a supreme hunter.
She takes up position on the floor in the doorway, crouched, coiled and ready to spring.
She has cleverly worked out that at this point, the bats need to come down from roof height to fit under the top of the door frame.
This is when Tigger makes her leap, judged to perfection, and at the top of her arc, she stretches out her paw, and seems to just snag the bats with the very tip of one outstretched claw.
We would normally rescue the bats, but to be quite honest they quickly loose their cuteness and appeal, and become leathery, wriggling, wrinkled, evil looking cat food.
Half chewed bats are a common find at breakfast.
Another favourite is a very small grassbird, about the size of a champagne cork with a tail.
Very sweet and with the most melodic song.
The first one we saw we presumed was dead, then Skye noticed that it was still alive.
Unfortunately it was in a cats mouth at the time.
The kids looked to their dad to solve things.
Cats have claws and I discovered that they are mean, shitty, satanic, hissing, screeching little creatures when you try and remove their twitching prey.
Unbelievably, once out (I had to insert my thumb and first finger between the cats incisors. Sore.), the bird flew off unharmed.
I wasn't so lucky, and any adulation from the children was not enough to compensate for the pain inflicted by four sets of claws.
The next time I had a better system.
I was basically a lot more rough and simply threw a towel over the offending feline, sat on it, pinned it down by the neck and got the bird out.
Again alive.
This time I only lost about one pint of blood. And had to deal with the girls shouting, “Don’t hurt Tigger! Don’t hurt Tigger”
However, these are exceptions to the rule. Generally, during dinner, one of the kids says something along the lines of, “Eeughh, gross. There is something dead and bloody under the table”
And generally there is. Blood, guts and all.
Oh, and on the up side, we don’t have mice co-incidently.

Donkey Kong

Our children have been begging us to get a horse.
Skye is horse mad and rides the lodge horses whenever she gets a chance.
Nerve wrackingly enough, at nine years old, and no experience, she often leads the two hour out-rides that the lodge offers as an activity.
I block things out mentally when I hear adults asking her advice on the tightness of their girth, or which horse to ride, or general riding advice.
Firstly, she only knows vaguely how to keep her balance, and it only seems like yesterday that she was learning to tie her shoe laces.
And secondly, and more importantly, it doesn’t matter.
Not only do the horses speak Xhosa, they don’t even listen to that. Ever.
Having determined that her old man wasn’t going to come good on a horse, she started negotiations to buy a donkey out of her own savings.
I think she has her mothers sharp sense of business.
She has negotiated the use of two donkeys “until she gets one of her own” – which will now be never.
The donkeys are not stupid.
We do not need to keep them tied up or fenced in.
They figured out pretty quickly that our house was the only one in the district where they would get anything to eat that wasn’t grass.
When I asked Skye how she planned to feed the donkeys and enquired if she knew how much this would cost, she told me not to worry, “its free dad, we are just feeding them carrots and apples and things from our fridge”
The other novelty is grooming.
This the donkeys like.
Mila and Skye both spend hours brushing them and scratching their itches.
They don't have grooming brushes so they use our hand help dust pan and brush, and some odd shaped sticks.
The girls get so excited, this morning in the dark, I had a torch light dancing around their room in the dark as they got their gumboots on over their pajamas so that they could go and find their donkeys.
I am happy to report that both Zig-Zag and Criss-Cross are also enjoying the royal treatment, and think nothing of spending half their day on our veranda.
The kids love it and disappear off through the long grass, each on a donkey.
Saddles and riding equipment are frowned upon by the way.
You basically grab a bit of mane and then use your bum, heels, and hands slapping their necks to steer and get some forward motion going.
It is pretty fun to watch them all enjoying themselves so much.
Mila, five, can’t quite reach high enough to jump onto hers, so she runs around with this little, green sand castle building kids bucket, which she inverts, and then uses to step on to get her the little extra height she needs.
Of course, the donkey takes two steps forward as soon as she has everything positioned right.
I don’t know who is having more fun.
I have a rough idea who the more stubborn is.
And it isn’t the donkeys.

Kids and preschool

Mila and Caleb on their way home from preschool (escorted by Skye)


Here's a picture of the preschool. We've been operating for two weeks now from our new premises. The incomplete building on the right hand side is going to be a libary. The rest of the buildings include 3 classrooms (for ages 3-4, 4-5 and 5-6), an office, a storeroom and a kitchen. On the left hand side, you can see the beginnings of our vegetable garden.

And inside one of our three beautiful classrooms...

The Birds & The Bees - PG Rated

Hopefully living in Bulungula has saved me from ever again having to suffer coughing fits, related to awkward questions, normally arising at bath time.
Naked parents at bath time create problems for paternal minds.
My own advice to any parents with young kids is as follows:
Never bath together. Ever. No matter how young they are.
Instil a Victorian sense of decorum to anything bathroom related.
Being naked in a bath with three year olds leads to all sorts of awkward questions:
“What those are for dad?”
Easy one buddy, nuts.
This quickly goes down hill as the dreaded pre-curser gets asked “What are they for?”
Soon you are at a dead end -“How do dads get the seeds into moms?”
This is when you submerge to rinse off the shampoo.
Seven years olds also can get their facts awkwardly mixed up, a year or so ago, our now nine year old proudly understood that at birth the woman’s body had all the eggs she would use in her lifetime stored up and ready for release.
This was three decades sooner than her father understood this.
She also, via her mother and school, had a broad understanding that there was an act called sex.
However, she was temporarily under the impression that the mother got “topped up” once by the father, and in the same way eggs were regularly released, so to were the all importent seeds.
One top up and you were good to go.
A point that mothers the world over probably wish was true, no doubt.
She was aghast to realise one day, after learning this was not the case and counting her siblings, that her parents had had sex at least three times.
With a disgusted face, she cringed out, “Gross dad, do you mean you and mom have had sex more than once? That’s disgusting”
She was pretty upset about this. More so than her mother.
(What the hell did she think they had done to earn an hour of TV with treats on Sunday mornings?)
Anyway, no more of this I should think.
Bulungula has cleared all this up.
Our kids have now seen penises in all shapes and sizes.
Penises no longer raise the slightest interest.
Bulls, donkeys, mules and horses seem to live in a constant state of readiness.
They have seen goats, dogs, and even sheep having sex.
Cats on heat prowl around all night.
Chickens might be quick, but even these appear on the radar.
“Dad, the rooster is mating with Pamela Anderson (this is our chicken Pamela Anderson, and not THE Pamela Anderson), and her bum is all open and everything”
Gorgeous.
Followed by Mila asking, “Shame, isn’t that sore?”
I am not kidding you when I tell you that when we were playing “the cloud game” a while ago, one of my wife’s offspring said, “look at that cloud, it looks like two goats mating”
More positive teaching comes in the form of the chickens and their eggs.
One of our chickens had 11 chicks hatch about 10 days ago. One got crushed (Pamela Anderson again) on their first night, but the rest are doing pretty well.
Mr Snuffles (hey, the kids chose the names), has been sitting on another 12 eggs for the past two weeks, and these also started hatching today. This was very exciting and the kids made a lot of trips to the coop to check on progress, and at one stage we brought an egg inside for them to watch it hatch on the bed.
All very educational.
Also, with so many cute calves, sheep, goats and foals around, they are getting a very rounded and positive education.
All good.
One low point of note.
Sedgewick is still alive. And smelling of faeces.
That is not the lowpoint in itself.
The fact that we have twice caught him trying to mate with our very startled six month old kitten is far more concerning.
It really happened.
I think this could safely be described as the low point in any dogs life.
“Dad!, dad! Sedgewick is mating with cheetah”
And by golly gosh, so he was.
We even had time to get a photo to prove it.
This is sex education you can’t get in any school.
I think I can safely assume that I will never have to broach the Birds & the Bees again

Sedgwick with twitching buttocks - about to mount our bewildered cat.

Seven Degrees of Separation (Of dirt from your body)

Putting on my two day old socks this morning and not having bathed for three days, I thought a good point of departure was to share some of our personal hygiene tips.
With very little water, and no shower, here are our Seven Degrees of Cleanliness. These are various options that are availble to us, dependent on time, water availability and our general state of sanity at the point in time.
First Degree -Yhhughh. You just peel off clothes get into bed.Sticky, and uncomfortable.
Second Degree - Spray and brush. To trick your mind, and your bed partner and to create a feeling of being clean, spray on deodorant and brush teeth.
Third Degree - Baby wipes (wet wipes)- you can create a fair impression of feeling clean, and thus sleeping comfortably by concentrating on your face, back of neck, inside of elbows, hands, nether regions, back of knees, and between your toes. You will go through about eight wipes. Don't examine after use.
Fourth Degree - Top and Tail. Quick and and be done indoors when the wind is howling or the rain is pouring. Spread towel on floor, put 10 centimeters (4 inches) of warm water in a plastic tub. Wash, strictly in the following order: face, hands, armpits, squat uncomfortably, glancing over at curtainless window, wash and rinse nether regions, and finally finish off with feet. make sure you throw the water out or the kids might mistake it for the dish washing tub. Unlikely to get a foot massage that evening.
Fifth Degree - Bucket bath. Needs to be done outside. Gets cold in winter, and the wind shrinks and raises various body parts accordingly. With this system you run two main risks, your wife sneaking photo's to post on the blog, and somewhat surprised villagers passing you in the dark and calling out a warm greeting from 10 paces, intrigued by your illuminated white buttocks and your middle age spread. Fill plastic tub with four litres of cold water and two litres of boiled water. Stand in tub naked. Use a plastic jug to pour water over yourself, doing your best to get the water to land back in the tub. Soap vigourously. Repeat to clean off. Allows for shampoo if required. Make haste. Keep your eyes peeled.
Shooting stars are a bonus, and the sound of waves dull the shock of our neighbouring widow eyeing you in the dark.
Sixth Degree - Rocket shower with kids. Pack shower kit and towels and pajama's for the whole family and then trapse down the hill to the lodge for a 20 litre hot shower, with all three children moaning and groaning. If run with military precision and military barking, you can get three kids and one adult wet, lathered, scrubbed and rinsed, before the 20 litres runs out. This is a treat to enjoy two or three times per week. On the down side, you can never really acomplish this without soap in at least one childs eyes, kids screaming, pushing and fighting, crying about who is or isn't rotating to allow all of you a few moments under the water, and worst of all, trapsing back up a very steep hill with three ratty kids, in the cold and dark. Cleanliness - high. Enjoyment - low.
Seventh Degree - Nirvana. You have a 20 litre shower to yourself. Five minutes of pure indulgence. Possibly a treat you have once per month. Ps - Don't swallow the water or you will get a stomache bug

Today we visited the local (one and only) restaurant in the village - the Ilanga Pancake Restaurant. Believe it or not, it's only the 2nd time we've been there since we've moved here (over 3 months ago!). The first time was with Charles' parents last weekend. We enjoyed it so much that we took a family stroll there today.



Charles and the kids walking through the fields


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A quick break in the shade with family pets Sedgwick and Domino




Some of the cattle we passed, grazing on newly harvested mielie fields

And here's a picture of us at the restaurant with Bapou and Yaiyais (Charles' parents) last weekend. Beautiful spot! Spectacular views! And Scrumptious pancakes!

The Sinking of the Lusitania

I am half way through a gripping account of the famous sinking of the Lusitanea during the first world war by the German U- Boat U-20.
I had been torn between keeping it on my bedside table for bedtime reading, or leaving it in the long-drop for accompanying reading.
In the end the loo won the day.
With disasterous consequences as it turns out.
Skye visited the loo earlier today, and in following my instructions to keep the solid drop dry, she did a mid poop shift to the wet loo to have a pee, leaving the lid of the dry, solid loo open next to her.
Then she unfortunately reached for the loo paper, and in doing so, unbelievably, sunk the Lusitanea for a second time.
No German involvement required (if you discount the fact that Skye has a German passport)
Not only that, but my second loo-reading book, the MUCH NEEDED “Guide to East Coast Fishing”, followed the Lusitanea into the murky depths.
This has ruined my day in several ways.
1. I was only half way through a pretty good read.
2. I have lost two good books.
3. My fishing is not in a position to withstand any further set-backs.

I also now find it terribly difficult to relish my quite time on the loo quite as much as I did before, knowing that I am desecrating the printed word below, which I was raised to revere.

You try it and see.

Last Loo Update Ever

Our loo is working like a dream.
No smell, no flies.
Clever Charles.
I sense the potential for a patent.
I have finally put on a proper corrugated roof, and added a vent (I used a piece of standard 100mm diameter plastic drain pipe, which has one end in the business end of things, and the other sticking up above the roof slightly.
The top is covered to keep visiting flies out, and resident flies in (they die at the top of the pipe, trying to get out into the light)
I covered this with a piece of mosquito net that I cut quietly from a corner of her Barbie Princess mosquito net that has butterflies Velcro’d to the sides)
Anyway, all systems go her.
Good job all round.



View from the loo

Imagine the life of a fly born at the bottom of my pit latrine.
Once you have got over the poetic beauty and ingeniousness of the design, you have a quick feed (yum), perhaps copulate, lay a few eggs, and then, while regurgitating and sucking up more food, glancing up you a misty white light. You fly up and up, and up further still until you get to the source. The glorious warm golden sunshine. Fields of fresh cow manure await your pleasure.
But you are stuck behind some mosquito net, and after two days of trying to get out, the last thing your tiny little brain registers, is that you have been foiled by a master.

Water Sustainablility

I now know why people go to war over water.
I watch mine like hawk.
I put a padlock on our tank yesterday because the neighbours little four year old played with it and left it open for a couple of minutes.
Everybody was very aplogetic but I wasn't going to risk our water on a pre-schooler.

Other than showering the kids at the lodge once per day we have become entirely self sufficient.

At the moment we have enough water for Sonja and I to each use eight litres to bucket bath, and we get through about 15 litres per day for cooking, drinking, tea and coffee etc, and washing hands and brushing teeth.
Dogs, kittens and chickens use up another 5 litres
We use a further 10 litres or so for cleaning and rinsing the dishes.
So, if I included kids sharing a 20 litre shower, we can get by on 66 litres per day, for a family of five, plus pets.
An average bath is about 200 litres, so 66 litres is pretty good.

If nobody screws with my tank.

Caleb & Mila Update

Caleb and Mila have both slotted into this new lifestyle with absolute ease.
They head off to pre-school each morning where they are the only two English speaking kids.
Mila comes home every day and tells me all about “my courser friends”
She is planning to marry Nti-Nti, Lindile’s son.
Sorry Adam. Such is the fickle hand of fate.
We have gone from a good Jewish boy, to a good Xhosa boy.
Her main concern is that her ring, which she has, will not fit her when she is a “grown up”.

Caleb, a little concerningly, but much to his mothers delight, (she wants her children to be interesting and free spirited) is going to marry a Prince.
Don’t you mean a Princess buddy?
No! I want to marry a prince.
Who knows, I might get to walk three children down the isle.


Their Xhosa is coming on pretty quickly and they are always singing songs in Xhosa and playing with all the nearby village kids.
They have a great time and are always doing something that gets them dirty.
Very happy and carefree children.
They normally get home from pre-school (a good walk in anybodies book) at about 1pm, and we try and enforce a nap, or at least quiet time.
Then they dash off climbing trees, visiting the lodge finding new suckers to read to them, playing cars with the village kids etc.
I have had to rescue Caleb at least once from the top of a tree. His bloody naughty little sister has no fear and he follows her blindly. I often see his little three year old body higher than I would like.



Mila very nonchalantly came to me last week when I was working on my laptop, she strolled across and said, “Um Dada (she has slipped form English Dad into Xhosa dada), Dada, Caleb fell out of a tree, our climbing ship tree, that we were pretending to be dragons in, and he hit his head on a branch when he fell down, and now he is lying on the ground, and dada, I am thirsty.”
True as bob, there he was under the tree on his back.
I had Skye informing me that she held up seven fingers and he said she was holding up three.
And “he said his name is Gerald.”
“Yes, thanks darling” through gritted teethe.
He seems fine though. He still has a big graze on his forehead, and when he sporadicaly gets a lot of bites (ticks and fleas) I tell Sonja that when he takes his shirt off he looks like a little boy covered in the pox from a 17th century Bruegal painting.
Them scratching their head isn’t always lice. A lot of the time it is chicken mites.

Mila has a habit of talking at the top of her voice, no volume control ever developed in that one, and when I am showering the three of them down at the lodge, in one 20 litre shower to save water, she always waits until there are other people showering before shouting out
“DADA, DID YOU BRING THE LICE SHAMPOO DOWN, DADA?
“I HAVE GOT BAD LICE DADA”

I have become adept at sneaking in and out when nobody is around.

Skye Update

Skye has written several blog updates that her parents never posted.
She is asleep now, so I still can’t post them. Bugger.
She spends her days doing home schooling and enjoying life here and down at the lodge.
Her day starts at 06h00 when she gets up with the rest of us.
At 07h15 she walks Caleb and Mila to Xolisa’s hut, a bit further up the hill, where they walk to pre-school from.

She has about 1 and a half hours home schooling with Sonja (normally in the morning), and another hour and a half with me in the afternoons.

We are most conscious that the change in lifestyle is most drastic for her.
She moved away from all of her friends and activities and had just started enjoying movies and children’s sleepover parties, school team sports, and hanging out with all of her friends.
We compensate for this poorly, but are very aware we need to make more of an effort.
She is very bright, and makes home schooling pretty easy.
I am teaching her Natural Sciences a full grade (year) ahead of her peers, and her literacy is really good and we are well ahead of where she needs to be.
The biggest challenge is keeping her from getting bored with the work.
There is scope to introduce a lot of proejct work that she can do on her own.
There are not many village kids around of her age group so she spends a lot of time with us and other adults.
This becomes really challenging as a parent as you constantly need to be maintaining a balance between being free spirited and a young adult, and having her understand that some decisions are not hers to take.

She spends a lot of her free time pottering around the lodge or horse riding.
She has cut a deal with the village guides who offer horse riding as an activity that she helps clean the riding gear once each week in exchange for being able to ride one of the horses home after the rides.
Looking down from our hill I will see her riding bareback and completely alone, through the long yellow grass, taking the horse to the homestead a couple of kilometres away.
She loves it.
There are also a surprising number of children that visit the lodge with their parents, so quite often she makes friends for a few days with these families and goes canoeing, fishing or horse-riding with them.
We also make sure we fit in the usual family walks and fishing and swimming in the river.
She is slowly picking up Xhosa and seems much more confident greeting villagers and making simple conversation.
She loves all the farm animals and especially now as there are an abundance of baby lambs, kids and calves.
No baby chickens though!
Another favourite is driving the bakkie (pick-up).
I used to let her sit on my lap and steer, and told her when she could open and close the gates we have to drive through on her own, then I would teach her to drive (they are tricky gates, made of barbed wire and loose poles. No hinges here)
Well of course she did, quickly, and so a couple of weeks ago I put her in the driver’s seat.
After explaining which was the clutch, the brake and the accelerator (no automatic here), she calmly put us into first, did a perfect take off, and drove off beautifully. After a couple of minutes pottering along a 4-wheel drive track in first, I explained to her how to change into second, which she again did beautifully and drove us all the way to the lodge and parked.
She has done this a couple of times now, and I proudly reckon she id one of the only 9 year olds in her class to be able to drive a big, heavy bakkie.
Sonja and I have also taken her with us the few times we have had to go away to meetings.
When I drove to Cape Town she was so excited about having some one-on-one time, and loved little things like over-nighting at a B&B and using their little complimentary soaps, and finding a chocolate on her pillow.
Sonja will take her and Mila with her in a few weeks when she has to fly to JHB for business and Skye is so excited about flying again.
She is a great child and we need to make much more of an effort to make sure this remains a positive experience for her.
We’ll do our best, but definitely sometimes fall asleep knowing you could have done better, or been more patient.

Shelter from the Rain

We can finally sit outside and drink coffee on our veranda when it is raining.
It went up in several easy steps.





I had two young men from the village, Wankie and Lindile, helping me cast the concrete.
When we returned from a half our break for lunch the wet cement had kitten prints (several tracks in and out), dog prints (with his back legs showing clearly how he drags his nails with each step) village chicken prints (small) broiler chicken prints (large) Caleb’s foot prints. (I was slightly in the dog box for giving him a bollocking and slipping in a half hearted and frustrated whack (we are a non smack household, mostly, sometimes, when we are being good parents and not grumpy adults)

We got rid of Caleb’s prints, but left all the rest as a memento.

It was raining gently the other evening and it was with great pleasure that I sat under the roof and had a quiet whiskey, watching the lagoon and the coastline floating up at me though the mist in the moonlight.

This morning (Sunday) I had coffee with a good book in a light drizzle, and was distracted by a pod of at least 50 dolphins working their way across the bay.

The famous $135.00 egg

We definitely have the best chicken coop in the village.



We built a simple A-Frame structure that we split into two levels.
The top is enclosed and has special laying boxes, and the bottom is fenced.
There is a simple gang plank leading upstairs that can be raised at night.
The sides of the coop open to enable the easy collection of eggs.

We used to have our single $115 dollar egg, and a cowardly rooster.



The eggs situation now reads $135 dollars for minus 2 eggs.
We bought a lot more feed, and in order to stimulate egg-laying, we took three of our store bought eggs and cleverly let them rot over a week in the nesting boxes.
They made a pleasant popping sound when I hurled them out (in a high arc) into the surrounding grassland.
So we are now two eggs down.

At least they know who is in charge.
I lectured them severely one evening when they were all in and promised not to let them out until they had produced and egg. Just one. A single one between them.
I would have lasted longer than the seven days, but two snuck out when I opened the coop to check on the seventh day.
I didn’t give up so much as give in.
In seven days we never saw an egg of theirs.



The women in the village tell me I need to feed them crayfish eggs.
Any idiot knows this will never work.
I have a farming manual that tells me that based on the body shape (very narrow hip, very long legs) I should “Good laying hens should have … wide apart pelvic bones, and a white, large, moist vent. If they have the opposite wring their necks.”

I have heard stories of lonely farmers, typically from New Zealand, and chickens vents and will not examine mine to see if the they are white, large and moist. However, I would wring mines necks if my kids stopped paying attention for a second.
By the way, I didn’t collect the prawns especially for the chickens. Don’t be silly. I am not one of these sandal making new age tie die sorts.
I was going to use them for fishing bait, and when the weather turned bad decided not to waste them.
Quite a few coincidently did have yellow spawn on their tails.

But that was before the week incarceration, and so this didn't work either, and my results remain at minus two.

Apology Two

Dear Mum and Dad stop Sorry we haven’t written for a while stop Please call off the Minty’s and the rest of the family stop We are all well stop It won’t happen again stop Sedgwick still alive stop Still no eggs stop Kids dirty but fine stop Parents tired but well stop Kitten crapped on bed stop Caught a fish stop See you on the 1st stop Please bring lots of wine stop Enough to drink and leave a lot behind stop Crayfish ordered stop Long drop odourless stop Much love stop

Apology One

Dear Urban Legend

Your Nome de gare, Andrew, is singular but I am convinced that you cannot possibly be just one person.
Your vast reservoir of knowledge is too great for a single individual.
I suspect that you are a secret team of Cambridge and Oxford biogas academics (built around a nucleus of St. Stithians Add-Maths protégés).
You know too much.
Your insights and instincts are too chillingly accurate to be the brilliance of only one person.

But what is your secret project?
What is at the bottom of our long drop that you need so badly?
How can I get my hens to lay eggs?
Are you watching me on Google Earth as we speak?
What is a Walvis Peeter?

Will it be silly of me to bucket bath tonight, out in a chilling wind, both my feet in a metal tub, while around me lightning and thunder crack and roar and explode, my hand silhouetted against the flashes of lightning, held up high pouring water over myself with a metal bowl?

Why did we go offline?

What is a decimal point between friends

Slight maths miscalculation.
We paid $150 for the single egg, not $15.
Don't have the courage to eat it in case it is off.

Those of you in London putting a loo in your back garden

Big mistake on the bio-degradable toilet front.
It is a good idea to sprinkle cow crap to get the bio-degrading bio-degrading.
It is a good idea if you are positive that there are no fly eggs laid in the cow dung before you do it.
If there are they will hatch.
Beautifully.
Noisily.
A friendly, buzzing, black mass whose sole desire is to crawl over your exposed bottom when you least expect it, and awkwardly can't immediately move away.
We fitted our chimney, which killed quite a few.
And I hung down the shaft, and attached a couple of sticky rolls of fly paper.
(with my lips pursed tightly together)
But I was definitley the only one using the outhouse for a week while we got it sorted out.
So wherever you are in London, don't sprinkle fresh cow patty down the loo like we did.

Yet another chicken

Got back home last night after pulling an all day drive.
Left Cape Town at 3am and got home at 6pm.
A long drive.
Made longer having a single CD jammed in the CD player.
The CD unfortunately being Phantom of the Opera.
As the CD player looked ill, I thought I would stick in our worst CD just in case, to cleverly test it.
Well, I got it in, but not out. Then had 16 hours of Andrew Lloyd Webber to keep me awake.
Good stuff.

When I got to Bulungula I saw the most amazing rooster.
Giant, with a tail that would put a peacock to shame.
Paid R80 for him.
He was wild as hell. Took two dogs and two men to catch him. He was so angry he got his wings and his legs tied, and was then bundled into a bag.
He lost his tail in the process.
Just what we needed to whip our crew into shape.
Crack the whip and all.
This moring we were outside when we heard a terrible noise.
The neighbours scrawny, flea-bag of a rooster was giving our a real hiding.
They both ran right past us and into our room, making lots of noise and flapping wings and screeching.
I picked up the scrwny one and got it outside.
When I got back, our bloody expensive prince, had his head jammed behind a piece of wood, hiding.
Things are not looking good.
He spent the ret of the day sulking and hiding in our coop.
We have now spent just under R1000 for a single egg (chickens R420, building materials R500, feed R75) ($15 for a single egg)

Life on the Front Line

While I was away in Cape Town for a few days I received the following email from Sonja, which is pretty typical of life in Bulungula...

Hi my love



Hope you slept well.



All fine here. Xolisa is ill though so we may need to close the ELC for a couple of days – will see how things go today.



No eggs yet, but Goose is looking decidedly broody.



While hanging up the washing (hand washed!) this morning, I was nearly run over by a horny donkey who was chasing the object of his desire. I think she ran to me for protection (who wouldn’t, considering the size of that thing!), and I barely managed to get out of their way! Perils of hanging washing in rural villages.



Have a great day.



S

xxx

Even Uglier

We had the ugliest 3 chickens in the world. Somehow the universe sent us three more.
Sonja picked up two broilers on the side of the road that were destined for the pot.
They are uglier and grumpier than sin.
They must have had a crap life because the are pretty much featherless on their bottoms and backs, and are missing a toe or two.
They are now in heaven, free range, all they can eat, and no rooster to bother them.
The sixth came via the neighbour who gave us the runt from her batch instead of some change she owed us.
Six ugly chickens, 21 days, one egg.
These are our worst statistics to date, beaten only by my fishing stats which read, 48 days, one fish, 100g.



This is Goose. Very masculine.



These are "Sulky Sue", and my one is called "don't get attached to me I am not a pet"



Goose and Freckles stepping out.



Snuffles, sometimes Mr Snuffles, which is a bit weird as she is a hen.

We don't have a pic of Mrs Smith (the neighbour - geddit), she rarely graces us with her presence, eating our food, and then scooting back to her mates at the neighbours.

We are now a place of safety for ugly and ex battery hens.

Absolutely No Ways...

No ways. I am away from home for two nights and my wife posts very unflattering photo's of me in hole filled, old underpants, taking a bath.
Bloody hell. Thats not on.
I am crapping myself because she definitely took some on her cell phone of me wearing a cowboy hat and fluffy slippers (only)- A long story.
A word of caution.
The word, my love, is... "retaliation"
Lets keep it above the belt, eh..

Magic moments...

Braaing marshmallows



Our favourite rockpool



Mud baths



Collecting dinner



Star gazing



We even have netball on our hill! (Charles rigged up a net on a piece of driftwood)