NOVEMBER MEMORIES

WELL I remember Guy Fawkes day as a child. We would dress up a doll in a pram supposed to be an effigy of Guy Fawkes and go to neighbor’s houses asking for “A Penny for the Guy!” and singing “Remember, Remember, the 5^th of November, Gunpowder treason and plot, We see no reason should ever been forgot” Of course the pennies went on sweets generally black and white striped bull’s eyes!

Guy Fawkes’s father died and his mother remarried a Catholic. Guy was converted to Catholicism. He went off to Spain to fight against the Protestant low countries where he was known as Guido. Returning to Britain he subsequently met Thomas Winter who introduced him to Robert Catesby dedicated to restoring Catholic James 1^st to the throne. Catesby found an undercroft beneath the House of Lords and enlisted Guy Fawkes to take care of the gunpowder needed. An anonymous letter prompted the authorities to search Westminster Palace where Guy Fawkes was arrested for treason and sentenced to be hung drawn and quartered. He jumped off the platform beneath the scaffold, fell and broke his neck. Each year Guardsmen search the Houses of Parliament looking for explosives, a ceremonial remembrance.

Here in South Africa the memory of Guy Fawkes is fading into obscurity although families light fireworks on designated areas only. Animals are usually frightened by the bangs and run away so that the SPCA is busy rescuing frightened dogs and other pets. When I was a girl and lived in Fish Hoek everyone went down to the beach and lit their own fireworks. Of course this was dangerous and eventually stopped.

Guy Fawkes coincides as it does with Diwali. Diwali is the Hindu festival of light celebrated over five days during the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. The ceremony celebrates victory over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. Our Indian communities light fireworks on designated areas.

November is a time when the fall of the Berlin wall is commemorated and of course Britain holds Remembrance Sunday to honour the fallen in both World Wars and other conflicts. Remembrance Sunday on the 11^th day of the 11^th month is always the second Sunday in November when armistice of the Second World War was signed in Potsdam in Occupied Germany by United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States and Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

In March 2000 I was due to attend ITB, the largest tourist exhibition in the world in Berlin, Germany. I had worked out that the cheapest way to get to this city that I had never been to was to drive to Windhoek in Namibia and fly from there to Frankfurt where I would catch a train to Berlin. I was heavily loaded with the travel books that Susan and I produced, Discovering Botswana and Inside Zambia. I duly arrived at the airport in Windhoek only to be informed that Air Namibia’s solitary Boeing had flown to Beira in Mozambique where the Zambezi had burst its banks on the flood plain leading to its estuary to rescue stranded people and deliver food and medical requirements. I sat at the airport for over twelve hours so only departed the next day.

Arriving at Frankfurt airport I was unprepared for this huge airport with its myriad elevators to the various outlets and train stations. I struggled with my boxes of books balanced precariously on a trolley, onto an escalator and down to a station where a train to Berlin was expected an hour later. The train arrived, with the gap between it and the station an obstacle to be surmounted to load the boxes aboard. I looked around desperately for help. Spotting a group of Japanese tourists I gestured with my hands, pointing to the boxes and then pointing to the train. “AH, AH, SO!” The Japs replied and loaded my boxes on board with bows and exclamations. I thanked them sincerely and could only hope that they got the message!

I arrived in Berlin at midnight! It was minus 15 with snow everywhere. Fortunately I had kept the long ski jacket that I bought many years before for a ski trip to Austria and was warm enough. A porter came to help and got me a taxi who very kindly found me a reasonable B & B.

Next day I managed to catch the necessary train to take me to ITB, a huge building and another taxi to deliver me to the door. I walked and walked and walked until I found the Botswana exhibit, my new boots beginning to bite! By the time that week was over my feet were in agony but I was determined to spend the last two days when the show was over to see something of Berlin and together with some other exhibitors caught a tourist bus to Potsdam where the armistice was signed in 1945. I could not face my boots again so put on a pair of sandals with socks. We alighted into deep snow and the tour guide looked at me and enquired “Are these your African Shoes?” I said “Yes” The guide shook his head in disbelief! However after the tour I felt that I had visited a very historic site.

The following year Susan came with me and did not really believe me when I told her just how cold it was. She wore her grandmother’s Burbury overcoat and shivered! We stayed in the old part of the city called Mitte formerly part of Communist Berlin behind the Berlin Wall and were walking along a side road when I glanced to the side to see coats hanging from rails in a small alcove. From the look of the women who were selling these coats and their accents I deduced that they were Russians down on their luck. I took the lead and bought Susan a hip length silver fox fur coat for 35 euros! She ummed and ahed. “This is real fur! I can’t wear this.!” “Look around you, all the Berlin people are wearing fur, besides people at the show will think you are wearing fake fur and this animal was killed a long time ago!”

She was as warm as toast after that and we enjoyed our stay. We had found accommodation in a private flat on top of an eighteen story building. Our beds were on the floor and there was one armchair and a small table. We bought slabs of chocolate filled with liqueur and chomped them in bed with our books in the evenings. Susan is a smoker and had to go downstairs to stand outside the entrance in the snow to have a cigarette! We managed to find our way on the trains and found a lovely warm pub in Mitte that served everything with heaps of potatoes!

We would walk to Potsdamer Platz where the first breach of the Berlin Wall was on 11th November 1989 and at the Brandenburg Gate a month later. From here it was no distance to the Brandenburg Gate and we ventured inside the famous Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden. This hotel was one of the best in Europe in its heyday but was largely destroyed in World War 2. A small portion of it operated until 1997 when it was restored. We also enjoyed walking to Charlottenburg Palace that was built in the 17^th century and expanded in the 18^th with beautiful gardens.

The next time I went to Berlin I was alone but my friend Tiaan Theron, a tour guide in Botswana and his German wife Sabina were there to visit her parents. They invited me to a Turkish restaurant with their Berlin friends. I was chatting to another Botswana friend when Tiaan asked me to refrain from talking about my varied travels. He explained that their friends had never left Berlin. I could not believe it! However one of them told me to go to the Museum that was situated in a shopping centre. I did and there was the story of Berlin from the time it was a group of small huts on the river.

I was fascinated because it encompassed the growth of the city and the country and eventually the Nazi regime and the basis of Hitler’s creed if you like to call it that based on his book Mein Kampf that chronicled his belief in anti-semitism. I was gobsmacked because I realized that Robert Mugabe the President of Zimbabwe had based his regime on the same creed. Mugabe died recently after completely destroying his country by looting, becoming an absolute dictator and causing so many Zimbabweans to flee to Botswana and South Africa. Today in South Africa we have the EFF the third largest opposition party whose leader Julius Malema was a great fan of Mugabe and whose policies in my opinion mirror that of the Nazi’s of yesteryear.

Now to Remembrance Sunday. Susan and I had attended it in London on a couple of occasions but the one that sticks in my mind is the time we went just after the dreadful attack on the World Trade Centre in New York by terrorists on September 9^th 1963. I had been staying at my son Mick’s house in Hout Bay and arrived to find his maid ironing with one eye on the television. I saw these aircraft approaching a tall building and gasped.” Something dreadful is about to happen!”

Here we were in London in November staying with our friends Andrew and Leane who lived in London and were adamant that we should not attend as a terrorist attack was expected. Susan and I decided that terrorists or no terrorists we were going to attend. I had my trusty ski jacket on and as we came up the steps of the underground I was stopped as I walked under the metal detector frame. The policewoman searched me politely but thoroughly and eventually decided that I had some oil on my coat but harboured no firearm or bomb!

We stood behind a group of young men in Burbury coats who were drinking from hip flasks as they cheered the elderly service men and women, some of whom were in wheel chairs marching by, all having served their country in some conflict across the globe. The young men heard Susan and I chatting and turned round. “The Boers are here!”. We all laughed as they were referring to the Boer War in South Africa in 1888 to 1902 when Britain and South Africa were at war because the Boers had rebelled against the English. Local farmers were called Boers and the British at the time under Lord Kitchener destroyed their farms and put their women into concentration camps so cutting their line of supplies. The Boers were renowned marksmen and moved around the country on horseback. Some Afrikaners of today still hate the English!

Looking across the road we could see the snipers on the roofs watching for terrorists. The Queen arrived and walked entirely alone to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in memory of those service men and women. A minute of silence ensued and not a pin could be heard dropping or a child coughing. Her Majesty was completely exposed to the danger of terrorists except for the thorough security of the intelligence and Police Force. Having laid the wreath as the minute of silence ended the crowd rang with the anthem “God Save Our Queen!”

The Union of  South Africa came into being on 31^st May 1910 eight years after signing the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the 2^nd Boer War on the unification of the Cape Colony, the Natal Colony, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony.  Subsequently the country was granted independence in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster.

I was born in 1939 and still remember going to the ‘bioscope’ in Plein Street in Cape Town. We had to stand to the playing of God save the King before the film. Entrance was sixpence and entitled you to a red or green cooldrink. I remember seeing Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta and Bobby Breen with his incredible soprano singing Somewhere over the Rainbow! Years later when we moved to Fish Hoek I had a friend called Maureen who had a lovely voice. We would walk the dunes around Peers Cave that often had a vlei at the base. One day Maureen stood on one dune and I on the other while she sang the same song, her voice carrying across the vlei between us. (A vlei is a stretch of shallow water.) Magic!

I still have a picture of Her Majesty the Queen on my fridge. One year we were in Mozambique at Jangamo Bay when the Royal Wedding of William and Kate was on. I was watching it on the television in a local bar. Mick came up dripping wet from the waves and shook his head at me. “You and your Royals!” I smiled back at him. “You don’t realize that they were part of my growing up!”

Well I remember the day H.M.S Vanguard arrived with their Majesties, King George and Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses. My father had promised to take me to see the destroyer that had served in the war enter Duncan Docks. The day was very hot and his favourite prize pig fainted so I had to listen to the radio while we poured buckets of water over the sow! However my mother’s cousin’s husband was a chauffer for the Government Garage and drove the Royal Family and General Smuts around the city. He told how Princess Margaret was a great mimic and would ‘take off’ the various dignitaries including General Smuts.

Princess Margaret

When the Royal Family were to move upcountry they travelled in the White Train, its coaches pure white pulled by a great steam engine. I was coming home from school, about 7 years old and had to catch a train at Observatory, change at Salt River and catch another to Kuilsriver. My train stopped at Bellville, was shunted out of the way, the passengers all detrained at the station where we waited for the White train to come through. The wait was long and I got very hungry. The friendly stationmaster bought me a mincemeat pie with sticky filling that looked like dead flies but I ate it happily. The White Train duly appeared and I had a good view of the Royal Family through the windows.

I arrived at Kuilsriver station very late with my mother frantic with worry. I had to walk home, some three miles and was further delayed by a flock of sheep being driven to the nearby abattoirs. A Mrs. Brindle lived near our small farm and drove up the gravel road each day like some racing driver. I was slogging along slowly behind the flock when she came through, sheep scattering in all directions with the shepherd jumping to the side in fright while I cowered in the ditch at the side emerging with my uniform filthy! My mother was not amused!

When I lived in Maun for a couple of years my grandsons then grown up would play pool with the Princes who loved Botswana and the Delta where the British Special Forces did exercises with the Botswana Defence Force each year. The Princes were like most youngsters and they enjoyed partying as most young people can in Maun with their bodyguards well in the background. The tale goes that William went home in the early hours with a mate and slept on the sofa. In the morning the father kicked him off the sofa, saying “Who the hell do you think you are, sleeping on my sofa!” quite unaware of who the errant young man was, only the future King of England!

On that I will end this blog and take it to TJ on this very hot Sunday where his son Greg will be prevailed upon to give young Jack, my dachshund a bath as the old back does not like bending down any more!

OF MINING AND SUCH

I was in Zambia writing one of the early guide books that my daughter and I were publishing. My dear friend Diz Bostock was staying with her friends Tony and Ann and she invited me to join them. Their home was on the banks of the Kafue River, a wonderful old colonial style farmhouse with a wide verandah overlooking the river. My bedroom window looked out at the river with the view partially blocked by a very tall tree with a trunk unblemished by the emergence of branches until the very top, where they branched out when it looked as though the tree would reach heaven. Ann called it the Tree to Heaven.

I would sit with my laptop on the verandah writing about my travels and a Samanga monkey would swing from branch to branch on the opposite bank of the river to check t hat I had my nose to the grindstone! Sundays would see us having a leisurely full English breakfast attended by two Great Danes and a Rottweiler who were served exactly what we were eating! One morning Tony asked me if I would like a flight over the Copper belt and I immediately said yes. Only later did he tell me that he had built the little aircraft himself from a kit! However he was a good pilot and the little craft flew happily over the countryside and the town, giving me a birds eye view.

My last blog led me to think of the Copper belt as a natural follow up from that story. I was fortunate in that Orion Mining offered to sponsor a page in my Inside Zambia guide book about the early mining on the Copper Belt. Copper was the first metal used by man in any quantity and mining began over 6000 years ago in other parts of the world. Early Portuguese writing refers to mines in Zambia in the 14^th century. David Livingstone met a caravan with slaves carrying five tons of copper to the coast in 1868.

The first European prospectors found Africans still using old methods of mining and smelting copper. In Shaba an ancient working produced at least 100 000 tons of copper. Smelting was surrounded by secrecy and sorcery, the smelting process believed to be the spirits of the mountain showing their miraculous powers in allowing the rock to pour forth its riches. In 1920 R.R. Sharp and his colleague Raymond Brooks documented the ancient art stage by stage.

In 1962 Ndola Copper Refineries had a stand at the Ndola show where it featured demonstrations of this ancient art. Solidified copper in the shape of a capital ‘I’, a St. Andrews cross or a capital ‘H’ was used as currency throughout South and Central Africa. The early prospectors searched for these ancient mines and most of the modern copper mines originated from them. The copper flower also pointed to the presence of copper; a small blue flower classified as Becium homblei de Wild. Kew gardens found that this plant contains more than 1000 parts of copper per million and the roots up to 4000 parts. In a lot of mine sites the flower correctly indicated the presence of copper.

Tom Davey discovered the lead and zinc deposits at Broken Hill now called Kabwe. This mine had the most interesting minerals in all Zambia with the worldwide reputation of producing beautiful specimens of some 25 different minerals, including lead, zinc, vanadium and copper. When the railway came to Kabwe quarrying began in earnest and the ore was exported to Britain, but the mine was fraught with difficulties and was never a paying proposition. After the Great Depression deeper shafts were sunk and by 1960 Broken Hill had produced 315 000 tons of lead and 625 tons of zinc. The ore eventually ran out and nationalization brought the closure of the mine.

Fired by enthusiasm, Tom Davey asked William Collier and another prospector, J. J. O’Donoghue, to prospect the area around Ndola and Luanshya to look for signs of ancient workings. Collier was walking through the bush on his quest when an old man directed him to the area of the Luanshya stream. Here in a clearing a roan antelope was offering the classic shot. It fell on a patch of grey shale and Bill’s qualified eye spotted green malachite. Adjacent were the ancient workings he had been looking for. The seam he prospected was in a ‘U’ shape and he pegged 50 claims naming one arm of the ‘U’ Roan Antelope and the other Rietbok.

The mining was carried on until they eventually found Bwana Makubwa mine (another story). In 1925 an American engineer Russell J. Parker came to survey the mine and subsequent to his findings William Selkirk arrived in 1926 suggesting a daring program of drilling that revealed the rich vein that gave rise to the Copper Belt of today.

Now I must tell you of Susan, children and my experience buying precious ore. We were trundling over a tortuous pass between South Luangwa and the border into Zimbabwe when we noticed youngsters standing on the side of the road holding rocks from which triangles of amethyst grew. We stopped and haggled, eventually buying a couple that would look good in any display in one’s home. Another youngster was selling what looked like rough rubies in a small plastic container. He would not open the plastic so we took a chance and of course they were fake! The amethysts are still in Susan’s home today, in spite of having gone walkabout when certain guests were staying. However Shaun and Jacques nicked them back on a return visit to these particular guests!

I was in Lusaka when I was shown around a semi-precious gem workshop and bought my one granddaughter Meg a sapphire, a deep red stone that my daughter in law, Maud has today and another purple that Maud is keeping for another granddaughter, Michele. Since then young Neve has appeared so I will have to make a plan for her although at 5 years she firmly believes that the shining ear ring studs in her little ears are diamonds! I think her father will have to rectify that for her 21^st birthday!

Writing about the copper belt brings to mind the Chichele Mofu tree that stands in the middle of the dual carriageway between the mining towns of Kitwe and Ndola. The local people believe it to be a house of spirits where the spirit of an ancient chief resides. The tree has been declared an historical monument. At its base is this poem.

Ye who would pass by and raise your hand against me, harken ere you harm me.

I am the heat of your hearth on cold winter nights, the friendly shade screening you from the summer sun and my fruits are refreshing draughts quenching your thirst as you journey on.

I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table, the bed on which you lie and the timber that builds your boat.

I am the handle of your hoe and the door of your homestead, the wood of your cradle and the shell of your coffin.

I am the gift of God and the friend of man.

Ye who passes by, listen to my prayer . . .

HARM ME NOT.

MEMORIES OF CHRISTMASES PAST

My first memory of Christmas was when my parents bought a poultry farm in Kuilsriver in the Cape in South Africa. They bought me a wind up gramophone with some records they must have picked up in a second hand shop. I remember the titles of two of the songs and have the tunes in my head but as I am tone deaf nobody else recognizes them. The one was called On the Sidewalks of New York and the other Has Any One Seen Kelly, Kelly of the Emerald Isle.

Subsequent Christmases always brought a book or two one of which was a Biggles book. I loved the adventures that Biggles got involved in. We then moved to Fish Hoek where my father built his own house. I remember the first Christmas there when my paternal grandfather came to lunch. Grandfather Goodwin was all of seven foot tall with no fat but a physique to match his height. My mother would cook a huge leg of Pork and a couple of chickens as Grandpa would devour a whole one himself!

Fish Hoek in 1958

Father had built a lounge dining room with a spring floor. The Fish Hoek Old Time Dance Club would dance there every Friday. One of the members had a son, Donald Rowley some five years older than me and the two of us learnt all the wonderful old time dances especially the Strauss waltzes. I last saw Donald when I was fifteen I think when he left for Northern Rhodesia to work in a bank. He subsequently left for Australia and we still correspond!

A special Christmas was in 1959 when I was an air hostess for British Airways based first in Manchester later at Heathrow. My colleague Sue invited me to her home for Christmas in Prestbury. We went to midnight mass and came out to a white Christmas.

The lunch was memorable especially the Christmas mince pies. Warm from the oven we would open them up, pour in a dash of whisky and add a slice of blue cheese, replace the top and oh how delicious! I make them every Christmas! The following day we went Beagling over the Yorkshire hills, walking miles following the hunting Beagles. Sue married a pilot, Doug Croll, while I went back to South Africa.

Years later Sue traced me through Personality magazine and we met here and a few times later in England but sadly have lost touch.

Fast forward to Varsfontein Farm in Paarl in the Cape. My daughter Susan had married Johan (Lofty) Loftus and they were under managers at this thoroughbred stud farm. The manager, Hennie de Jager lived in the main house, a Cape Dutch rambling building with an enormous kitchen. One year I cooked a whole suckling pig with the proverbial apple in its mouth! There were always lots of friends and relations and a Nativity play for the young ones.

One year we planned a family holiday in Mozambique and my youngest son TJ and I my grandson Shaun, now a teenager drove up in my one ton Nissan bakkie with no 4 x 4 capability. We were a week or two earlier than the planned departure and had booked a campsite at Pandane on the coast. The track from Inhambane was thick sand and although we let down the tyres, TJ had to drive like hell to avoid stopping or stalling while Shaun was flung around in the back dodging knives and pots and pans! As we got to the gate of the resort we sank into the sand! Fellow campers came and towed us out. Then we were stuck until we were due to leave. Christmas day saw us eating peas with mayonnaise out of tins and asparagus and mayonnaise! Thank Heavens the wine and beer had not run out!

We were due to meet my elder son Mick at the larny Cardosa Hotel in Maputo and arrived thoroughly disheveled with a large blag plastic bag of soiled clothes that the  stately Major Domo gingerly took straight to the laundry! Now Susan is notoriously late for everything but the following day when we were quaffing beer at the Casa do Sol she arrived dead on time at our one o,clock rendezvous! I will do the tale of Captain Ron and that holiday early in the New Year!

One year my dear friend Joy – and how we met deserves a blog of its own – brought her two sons Garry and Ryan to camp in my Garden in Langebaan. My other friend Joy Bianchi sent her grandson Ryan Pienke came and brought his Motswana friend Bakkie. Another tent went up. My grandsons, Jacques and Shaun were there. In next to no time the six youngsters had crossed the divides of not only race but diverge backgrounds and banded into a happy band of friends.

Now in Langebaan, a sleepy, largely Afrikaner community there was a dance hall called Flamingoes. The youngsters were keen to go but I had reservations as although Apartheid was gone there remained in these small communities a very shall we say reserved outlook on mixed race relations. Jacques pleaded with me and said. “Don’t worry GranMols we will not allow anything to happen to Bakkies!” The next day, all safely tumbling out of their tents I heard from someone that they had virtually formed a posse around Bakkies to make sure that he was safe from any unpleasantness!

My Christmas present from Ryan and Bakkies was a hard cover book – Jamie’s Kitchen that introduced me to Jamie and his down to earth cooking. Ryan is now an accountant in London and I have sent the book back to him. Bakkies is  an Aeronautical engineer in Canada. Garry lives and works in Cape Town and has a son called Baden, Ryan lives and works in Johannesburg and Jacques lives in Cape Town, is due to get married to Danielle in January and move to Johannesburg. Shaun has become a wind farm engineer and works in Europe and South Africa.

TJ married Maud on 23^rd December one year and Maud brought her Afrikaans family to Langebaan for Christmas! I was living in a small corrugated iron cottage while Susan was in the small main house. My kitchen was tiny! I had decided to make this a traditional English Christmas and cook roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. In the end there were thirty five guests with Tiaan and Sabine having arrived from Botswana.

We started with oysters from the Lagoon and then with the help of Sabine we fed the guests who tucked in with much gusto still on a high from the wedding! Every Christmas I insist upon a toast to The Queen and my roast beef was so well received from the Afrikaner guests that they happily stood and lifted their glasses to her!

Finally Christmases in Tofo in Mozambique. One year it rained and rained. Grandchildren were there from Botswana with Ryan and his brother Glen. They were sitting around drinking coffee early in the morning when there was a loud squealing heard coming from below our cashew nut tree! There Nic (my neighbour and owner of Turtle Cove) was supervising the killing of one of his pigs for that night’s Christmas feast! He was obliged to offer us a free dinner!

Tofo Beach, Ihambane Province, Mozambique

Another year I met Graham and Cheryl when they were camping at Turtle Cove, our neighbouring lodge. As they were alone I asked them to join us for Christmas. At first light that morning Graham went down to Tofo Beach and bought a kilo of fresh swordfish which he turned into sashimi accompanied by much beer that was unbelievable! My ham emerged from the Dutch oven looking as if it could grace any cookbook once bedecked with fresh pineapple and a wonderful Christmas ended with a sauce made of Tipo Tinto, the local rum bought in the Tofo market over the pudding!

Jose’ with his family, without whom our stays would not be the same.

I will end with some pictures of the last time we had Christmas at Tofo with TJ and Maud’s children Greg and Neve and Jose our loyal caretaker having done the traditional decorations!

Happy Christmas all!

 

 

OF A ROSE, COURAGE AND JACK

I fell last week. I am waiting for a new hip from the government hospital but the waiting list is one year. I have nine months to go. Occasionally my right leg does not listen to my brain and fails to lift. So I fell on my boob of all things! Very painful, with the pain going right through to my back.

In this retirement village that I live in news travels fast. I was in bed nursing the pain when there was a knock on my window. Enter Eleanor with an ultra sound machine and a rose. “Mary sent this.”

Now Mary has had some sort of throat trauma and cannot speak. Eleanor spends a lot of time with her and Mary communicates on a Tablet. Mary also has a digestive problem and has to feed herself each day with a syringe. Meet Mary on any of the myriad paths in this complex and she always walks with purpose, always smiles. Bends down to pat Jack. Mary lives each day of her life. Unbelievable courage.

I have the rose in a glass next to my bed. I asked Eleanor to please tell Mary just how much I appreciate her gift.

Courage is everywhere in this complex where more women that men live. I never cease to marvel at how these women, after lives that encompassed much pain as well as joy continue to live each day as it comes, many of them giving time to charity. This year we had a craft exhibition and the variety and quality of the work was outstanding! That is not to say that the men don’t have those qualities, it is just that in the part that I live in there are many more women living.

My other precious gift some three years ago is Jack. I was earning extra money doing pet sitting and was at a local veterinary practice handing out printed notices of my services.  The receptionist greeted me having read the note. “You have come at just the right time!” It appeared that a young couple with a toddler had bought a Dachshund puppy without checking whether they were allowed to keep a pet in their flat. They were moving to a proper house soon but in the meantime did not know what to do.

In next to no time a very small puppy was handed to me with his medical card. He had had all the necessary injections. I agreed to keep him for three weeks until the move. I climbed back into my car and settled the little man on my lap. His name I was told was Jack.

Now I had some shopping to do and did not want to leave him alone in the car. As it happened my daughter was staying with me at the time. So I went home, opened the door and handed Susan this little animal. “I am going to do the shopping and will be back soon. Will explain later!”

When I returned Susan told me that Jack had howled his lungs out at my disappearance! In those few minutes of sitting on my lap Jack had decided that I was his person!  As the time came to hand him back I realized that he was so bonded to me that to send him back would be cruel. I consulted the vet who in turn consulted the owner who graciously told me to keep him and he would find another puppy for the family.  Jack had found a home to his satisfaction!

Jack is well known and loved throughout the complex. He likes everyone, loves a few favourites and the staff always greet him. “Howzit Jack?”

One of my neighbours, Murray moved here only a week before her dear husband died. Murray somehow coped by joining the needlework group. She does the most exquisite embroidery. Jack and I often drop in for a chat. However a cat moved in, deciding that Murray had what was needed for any cat’s wellbeing. The cat lies indolently on the back of the sofa while Jack trembles at the end of his leash like some bloodhound on the trail! On the days that the cat is out on his rounds Jack lies exactly where he does! Occasionally he will sit on Murray’s knee surveying the world through the open doors.

Jack has one fault. He hates cats. When he was still a puppy I took him to Mozambique. We stopped overnight in Nelspruit  at Mbombela Backpackers. Here two enormous dogs made a huge fuss over Jack so that he was covered by slobber!

However a large black cat that had the reputation of a Black Mamba snake killer lived there too. The Backpackers overlooked a vlei wetland that had tall elephant grass. Ideal Mamba cover. The black cat would stalk and kill this, the most poisonous and dangerous snake in South Africa. Very, very few people survive a bite.

The cat was on the kitchen counter and Jack gave a puppy bark at it. The cat flew to the ground and proceeded to hit poor Jack with a left and a right just as the line of a song I remember from my youth described! The song lyric ran like this:  “Come on kid! Come on kid, hit him with left and a right!”

Jack also has the run of Heather’s house. Heather had to put her elderly Dachshund, Oliver down and loves Jack to pieces. Jack loves Pat. We cannot pass her house without him scratching for permission to enter. He makes a fuss of her and goes straight to her fridge, standing there in expectation!

One lady here has a severely handicapped son who visits occasionally and drives around in his little automated chair. Jack runs up to him and sits beneath his toes patiently allowing the man to rub him with his toes.

Barbara walks a lot and has offered to walk Jack when my hip gives trouble. Jack can spot her from a long way so I let go of the leash and he gallops up to greet her with much enthusiasm. He is happy to go and walk with her just giving a last look at me to get a double “Okay, go Jack!”

Jack and I had a routine for our walks. Early in the morning we would stroll so that he could read the newspapers on the due wet grass. At eleven we would take a proper walk for exercise. On a Tuesday I would attend art classes and come home in time for the walk. One Tuesday I was late and arrived at twelve. Now I enjoyed listening to a political commentator called Stephen Grootes at that time. So I settled with a glass of wine thinking to take Jack for his walk afterwards.

Jack had been restless with the disruption to his routine and in desperation jumped on to my bed and proceeded to bark angrily at Stephen Grootes’s voice emanating from the radio on my bedside table! I got the message!

Jack can get very angry at me. If he wants a second helping of chicken and rice and I refuse he sits in front of me the picture of indignation with his ears out, glaring, then with funny fierce barks registers his anger! If I tell him to stop he runs around in circles then recommences the performance until I am forced to dish out a little more!

I could go on and on but must be off to give a lift to a friend and thence to my son TJ and his wife Maud and their children Greg and Neve. Jack considers them part of his family and loves to visit! TJ will put this blog on the internet for me. It is useful having an IT son!

 

 

A Miserable weekend on the West Coast

Sitting at my laptop on this miserable weekend in Jozie I am reminded of one such weekend when living in Langebaan on the West Coast of South Africa a good few years ago.

My sister Veronica and I set out on a blustery miserable spring weekend to see the flowers of the West Coast. The West Coast is renowned for its floral splendour in the spring when the winter rain has been good. Oh we hummed and ha-heed but in the end the picnic basket was packed and we were off, taking the coastal road to Elandsbaai or Elands Bay. (The Eland is the largest antelope in Africa and Baai is the Afrikaans name for Bay.)

Grey clouds accompanied us along wet roads with every flower hiding its light under a bushel. However we were intrepid in our search for a pleasant spot to drink a glass or two and eat our picnic and parked near the harbour at Elandsbaai awed by the fury of the waves crashing against the rocks.

Imagine our delight when a seal caught a wave, and, landing safely, promptly fell into his afternoon slumber. Just then a Kombi pulled up next to us and we became acquainted with our neighbour who owned Muisbosskerm, the outdoor eating restaurant on the beach near Lamberts Bay. We pointed the seal out to him and in no time we were into a heated discussion on the pros and cons of shooting seals for their supposed decimation of fish stocks.

Veronica and I took the stance that they had their place in the eco-system and nobody could say without any doubt that they were responsible for the demise of the fish stocks as there were a lot of factors involved. Our neighbour disagreed and a lively discussion ensued washed down with another glass of wine and friendly farewells.

We then made our way to the Elandsbaai Hotel where we were expected and made ourselves comfortable on the table and chairs outside braving the weak sunshine. These South African country hotels are few and far between but such good value where you can always find co-travelers to swap a tale or two with.

Later a walk on the beach found us chatting to some surfers in wet suits in pursuit of the right hand break that Elandsbaai is famous for. The cold Benguela current that hugs the West Coast does not deter these keen surfers.

Wandering back to the hotel we were told that there was just 10 minutes before their famous seafood platter was put before us. It was a feast to be remembered with the crumbed crayfish the star! We stayed the night listening to the sound of the crashing waves beneath cozy duvets.

Next morning we wandered out to the Sonskyn Kafee (Sunshine café) waiting for the sun to come out and tempt the flowers to open. Here we found a magnificent military type jacket bedecked with medals swinging from one of the beams. Mevrou, the owner, told us that it was her husband’s uniform when he was in the Eastonian Air Force. She had a book exchange and we picked up some reading matter.

Rounding the corner we came upon an old gentleman and his Jack Russel dog. He leant on his spade and regaled us with his grievances against the government taking his taxes whilst he had to clear the pavement of weeds himself!

Onwards on the coast road the flowers began to peep out. A woolly sheep gave us a thoughtful stare as her hoofs stood deep in the magical purple carpet of blooms.

Through Lamberts Bay where we could see the Cape Gannets in their white plumage with yellow heads and black marked beaks taking off and landing from the island. We drove past Graafwater (meaning water from a spade) with the sky clearing affording a magnificent view of the dam at Clanwilliam as we crested the last hill into the bustling town where stalls were everywhere and the info desk busy pointing out the vest viewing sites on the map.

After tea and lemon meringue pie in the gardens that were now at their magnificent best in orange, crimson, magenta and white we meandered off along the dam’s western shore stopping every now and then to gasp again at the pallet of colours nature had in her paint box.

We stopped at Citrusdal with the scent of orange blossoms in the hot still air where we bought fresh dates especially for Jamie Oliver’s sticky toffee pudding and a new cultivar of orange/naartjie (mandarin) that we were persuaded to try as it peeled easily, finding it delicious enough to buy a bagful.

As we rounded the corner on the Piketberg/Veldrif road the rain swept down again but we had enjoyed a marvelous two days that had paid off our eternal optimism, the unexpected highlight being the friendliness of the West Coast locals and the characters that we had met.

 

My new Book, Bring Me a Dream, will soon be available on KINDLE and AMAZON …

A STRANGE TALE OF A NEW FRIEND AND A LITTLE WOODEN BOX

I lived in Langebaan village on the lagoon that lies just off Saldanha Bay on the West Coast of South Africa. My daughter Susan and I were producing a little monthly magazine called Out & About on the West Coast.

The magazine diarized current events, horse racing news, stories, recipes and information about the surrounding areas. It was very popular with residents waiting eagerly to read it every month. Susan did the layout and I was journalist and editor and coffee maker, you name it.

One day as I was at my computer writing an article a knock on the door disturbed me. I opened it to greet a strange young woman with blond hair who was not beautiful but very attractive. She held a back copy of Out & About in her hand and asked if she could come in.

Over coffee she introduced herself as Debbie. Debbie had always had a dream of writing and up to now her life and not allowed this. She asked if I needed a hand and could she do an article for the magazine each month. Well I knew how difficult it was to get published and I asked her to bring me an article. She pulled a sheet of paper out of her pocket and handed it over. I told her I would read it and come back to her.

Now just recently geologist David Roberts was picnicking  on the beach at Kraal Bay in the West Coast National Park. David knew that fossil prints of a large carnivore had been found on the dunes here and he began to scramble among the cliffs searching for more animal prints. He found three paw prints of a large carnivore on a rock slab.

David returned to the area a few months later as a scientist with the council for Geoscience to begin research on the geological history of the western coastal platform. He noticed a piece of quartz shaped by a stone age person protruding from the sandstone. Holding the artifact up his gaze was attracted to the low cliffs a few hundred yards away. Eureka! There he spied human footprints!

He splashed across the flats to reach the cliffs and began a systematic search that resulted in him arriving at a pinnacle known as the Pulpit Rock. He hauled himself up to a large block of sandstone and bent to examine it more closely. He brushed away the loose sand and had a heart stopping discovery for here lay two beautifully preserved human prints and so the existence of Eve as she was subsequently named, was discovered who lived and walked along these shores some 117 million years ago!

Debbie had written about this find and her writing was so vivid that I could see the real Eve walking upon the dunes thinking and dreaming much as I had done on many an occasion. I was overwhelmed at my discovery of an exceptional writing talent!

Debbie became my right hand man and little by little I learnt her story. She was married and had three children. Her husband abused her so badly that she ran away from their home in Maun, Botswana. She showed me the scars on her hands where he had forcibly held them against a hot plate on the stove. In desperation she had fled, leaving her children behind feeling sure that he would not abuse them.

She settled in Langebaan and met someone she could love and moved in with him. Some months went by and I was planning to travel to Robertson where Susan stayed on a thoroughbred stud farm with her husband and children. We had a lot of work to do together and Debbie was happy to hold the fort while I was away. However she needed to go away too and it was agreed that I would return on the day she was leaving. She would leave everything ready for me and get going early with her boyfriend.

I took a short cut back that led me to Mooreesburg on a lesser road that ended on the main artery running South to North on the West Coast. I needed to cross over, go through the town and on to Veldrif and so home. At the junction there was a huge accident with fire engines and ambulances and I crossed without seeing it in detail.

A week later Debbie had not appeared and was not answering her phone. We did not have cell phones then. I was not unduly worried but it was unusual for her not to have let me know if she was going to return late. Then my phone rang and a strange woman asked if she was indeed speaking to me. I confirmed that it was indeed I and she told me that she was Debbie’s mother. Debbie and been in that terrible accident that I had passed and had died. Her boyfriend was badly injured and was doomed to a wheel chair for the rest of his life.

I was very upset but was occupied packing up to go to Botswana for more research on the guide book Susan and I were working on,  Discovering Botswana. My friend Joy who lived outside of Gaborone was expecting me. Tidying up I picked up a little inlaid wooden box that had sat on the bookshelf since I moved into the house and what made me lift the lid I don’t know. Inside was a folded A 4 typing paper.

I opened the folds and saw that the letter for that was what it was, was addressed to me. I glanced at the end and there was Debbie’s signature. I knew her handwriting well. I sat down with a glass of wine and read the letter. Tears dripped down my cheeks as her words told me just what it had meant to her to be able to write for Out & About and my friendship. I was touched to the core.

Debbie must have written it before leaving for her trip with her boyfriend and planned to give it to me on her return. I returned it to the little box that had been on the shelf when I moved in, probably left by the previous owners of the house.

The drive to Gaborone went without incident in the bitter cold of a Kalahari winter and that evening Joy and I went to bed early, both in her bedroom. Our beds were opposite and we were both keen readers. Joy had a whisky beside her and I had a glass of red wine, each with a book. We were good companions with no need to chat.

Something made me look up and there was Debbie sitting on the end of my bed. She was pale grey white but unmistakable. She spoke to me, her words quite clear. “Don’t worry Mols, I’ll show you how!” Then she was gone. I was shaking as I lifted my glass to my lips and Joy dropped her book and asked me what was wrong. I told her and being Joy she accepted what I said unconditionally.

Now I had had a few episodes of seeing things having had a grandmother who was Cornish and another who was Irish. The family believed I was what they used to call ‘fey’.

Throughout my trip I pondered on Debbie’s words thinking that I was probably going to die too. However here I am in my eightieth year still very much alive. Looking at the little box I reflect that she really meant that she would guide me through the rest of my life for I have indeed ended in quiet waters with a life rich in friends and family and am still writing and painting. I will never forget Debbie and her words.

 

ALONG THE MOLOPO RIVER

KALAHARI
Red dunes, dry rivers.
Sweaty arms, icy shivers –
Extreme desert –
Upon my soul
Make me gentle
Make me bold
Give me strength
To carry on
In icy wind
And burning sun,
In your special community
If you need a human
Make it me.

My daughter and I took the grandchildren who were very young up to the then Kalahari Gemsbok Park. It is now the Kgaligadi Transfrontier Park in the North Western corner of South Africa. I went to the reference library in Cape Town gardens and did some research on our route.

The Northern Cape was like the old Wild West of America in the early days with bandits and other desperados living on the islands of the Orange River – now called the Gariep – far away from the reaches of the authorities in the Cape.

Our route lay from Upington and across the Molopo River, always dry in this Kalahari world. The Kalahari is an enormous semi-desert that stretches even as far as Zambia, appearing here and there. We stayed on that occasion at the Molopo Lodge and it was here that I first heard the tale of Scotty Smith, one of South Africa’s best remembered notorious outlaws.

Scotty Smith claimed to be the son of a Perthshire landowner, Mr. St Leger Gordon Lennox who educated Scotty in veterinary science and land surveying which attributes were to stand him in good stead in South Africa. When he was eighteen he joined the cavalry and eventually found himself bound for India. On his return his father required him to marry the daughter of his next door neighbour but Scotty refused and his father threatened to disinherit him. Scotty took ship to Australia and it was on this voyage that he gained his nickname, already called Scotty by the passengers because of his nationality, he removed a tight shoe from a thoroughbred horse on the ship, performing the duty of a blacksmith and was from then onwards known as Scotty Smith. Scotty left Australia under a cloud to arrive in the Cape at a time of turmoil in 1877 and took part in the Galeka Gaika revolt of that year. This was a war between the local natives and the government of the time.

Legend around this colourful figure has grown to such an extent that it is hard to draw the line between fact and fiction for he’s been called the Robin Hood of the veld, Captain Starlight of the frontier and the uncrowned King of the Kalahari, which says it all. I’ll relate a couple of his escapades when he operated along the Molopo River and you can imagine this renegade of yesteryear.

Groot (Large) Adriaan de la Rey, a brother of the Boer War General (The South African War between the English and the Afrikaners) set out to catch Scotty who was at that time a notorious horse thief, with a bunch of commandos.

Scotty had his ear to the ground and together with a friend made certain that they met up with their pursuers near the village of Amalia. They accosted Groot Adriaan and asked him where he was going. “To catch Scotty Smith” was the reply. “Oh” said Scotty. “Do you mind if we accompany you?”

Together they all hunted for the elusive Scotty Smith until one night Scotty and his friend volunteered to stand watch so that the commandos could catch up with their sleep. The next day Groot Adraian woke up to find that Scotty, his friend, and all the camp horses had disappeared!

When the long arm of the law got too close for comfort Scotty made for Zeerust – the town a real den of desperados who haunted the notorious Zeerust Club which had its headquarters at the Bucket of Blood Hotel where everything to please the heart of a bandit was on offer – billiards, gambling, women and booze. It was from here that he ventured into the theatre of the Stellaland-Goshen campaigns and successfully spied for the Imperial authorities. Goshen declared itself and Stella a republic in 1882 – 1883 and the conflict was between the Boers and the British Empire that caused its demise and was a forerunner of the second Boer War.

Near Rietfontein a Mr. Bouwer, mounted on a particularly fine piece of horseflesh, met up with Scotty. Scotty was so taken with the horse that he offered Mr. Bouwer fifty pounds for it. Mr. Bouwer declined and rode off to the Police Station where he spent the night in what he supposed was security. The next morning the horse was gone and Scotty had left the money in its place.

One day a farmer’s wife came upon Scotty and that evening he turned up at her doorstep, asking for lodgings. Her husband offered him a bed and a good dinner and it was as the first rays of dawn coloured the sky that the farmer heard a tap on his window. “Goodbye Mr.Thompson, thanks for your hospitality.”

Not much later the farmer’s servants arrived to say that all the horses had been stolen. About two hours later, however, the whole herd of horses was returned with a note from Scotty explaining that they’d been taken in error. “You treated me very well and as your guest I ate your salt – I had no intentions of robbing you – it was a mistake of my men operating in the area.”

Scotty retired in the burgeoning town of Upington on the Orange River and died there – his colourful life adding zest to an already fascinating part of Southern Africa.

OF CHILDREN, DREAMS AND MORE

I left school when I was sixteen, was expected to go to work, earn my living and start paying back my parents for raising me. Thereafter I was to marry well. End of story. Well it did not happen like that and after sailing to the UK and becoming an air hostess in the second intake of British European Airways that subsequently became British Overseas Airways and metamorphosed into British Airways, I loved the life and stayed there for two years. Finally I returned to South Africa and had a lump in my throat when the silhouette of Table Mountain rose from the Atlantic to welcome me and other returning South Africans.

 

I had lost a love and married by the time I was twenty one with my first child on the way. That was my daughter and a boy arrived some eighteen months later. I dreamt of the boy being a doctor. It never occurred to me that the world was moving on in spite of the fact that women had won the vote quite a long time ago, to dream of what my daughter would become. Then I had a niece and a nephew. It was not my prerogative to dream of their path in life although I saw a lot of them in their early years.

 

I married again and had a laat lammetjie – late lamb as we say in South Africa, a son,and decided he would be a civil engineer. Well as they say the best laid plans of mice and men!  Life moved on and my world turned upside down several times but I somehow survived.  

My daughter married a horseman and he became the under manager on a thoroughbred stud farm. My sister’s children were still very young and we would all spend a lot of time on the farm. My sons had taken paths I had never envisaged. The older one was studying to become an accountant, a surprising choice with a creative parent but obviously that gene did not transfer to him. Later he married and had a blonde little girl who is now grown up, doing a post graduate course at university and next year is off to Aspen where she will work on the slopes and then tour South America. I must admit I could not imagine what she would end up doing when she was younger. However she is an amazing artist so some of the old block has rubbed off.  

My niece began dancing during her teens and performed at the Opera house in Cape Town and finally at Sun City near Johannesburg amongst other venues. She continued after school taking a path that neither I nor my sister had envisaged until her knees took strain and she veered off into another direction.  I well remember having a family party at the farm and this little girl was reluctant to leave the fun and go to bed in the little guest cottage. “Come!” I enticed her, holding her hand and skipping. “We will take the short cut over the paddock! Here we go! Tip Toe through the tulips!” The child looked at me in amazement; looked at the green grass then stamped her little foot. “Aunty Mols there ARE no tulips!”

Her brother also took an unexpected path when he began driving horse trucks and when in the UK actually drove for the Prince of Wales! Trucking became his life whilst his passion for hunting has landed him in the Karoo owning a game farm!

My daughter had four children and we dragged them through Southern Africa while we researched material for our guide books, Discovering Botswana, Discovering Namibia and Discovering Zambia.  The children turned out no worse for wear in fact today have a lust for travel! They have displayed tenacity in life that I hope has come from our travels. Now grown up and scattered throughout South Africa they have all sorts of strengths and weakness, ambition and creativity not to forget loyalty and love.

My youngest son chose to be an electrician and moved on to IT. Thank heavens for that as he can guide me through the intricacies of the internet and Amazon etc.  He lives in Johannesburg with his wife so that I am able to spend a lot of time with his boy of eleven and a girl of four who are giving me loads of pleasure enjoying them just as they are. The boy is riding well, carrying on the family tradition of its affiliation to horses and the girl – well when they are that age they already know how to wind their fathers and uncles around their little fingers. This time I am making no predictions!

Below is my painting of my niece dancing the Flamenco!