WEEK 5

The misery of last week has ebbed somewhat, I seem to have adopted a stoic attitude of: am here now and have to make he most of it ,and trust in those hugely important relationships with all those that I love and hold dear and who are now [in distance terms]..thousands of miles away.
Thankfully humour, is always the great salvager of despair and there is so much here to either give or create joy or to make me just titter or guffaw with laughter.

On Thursday last, I decided to travel the 90 km to Upington.[hereafter referred to as UP] To do a food shop, get out of the office, and try and sort out the third, of 5 bath/shower rooms.

Arriving at the factory I was presented with a list of Upington tasks, to add to my own, by various people who I did and didn’t know [this is perfectly normal for this area] and a full sized bath was being loaded & strapped down, in the back of the bakkie.
The bakkie has THE RAISIN COMPANY emblazoned down both sides with full contact details…it tickles me pink that if, as the driver or front passenger, you open your door slightly and lean out of the window, you are framed in the window, with a bold title THE RAISIN underneath you. I can promise that I looked like a raisin traveling to Up with a bath covered in flapping plastic, flagging my every movement. Regardless of this, I enjoyed the drive, the landscape moves from craggy bare rock mountains that rear up either side of steep and winding roads, to open flat savannas of grey waving grasses and then sudden gashes revealing the orange red soil with the ever present mountains either side, in the distant margins of your vision. I must bring my camera along next time… and take photos of the weaver birds nests that ornament the telegraph poles, great complex haystacks constructed around the T of the pole, by these busy little birds.

Up is probably a third of the size of Newbury. Hardly a thronging metropolis and from its centre, radiating northwards, a sprawling industrial area, stretching out to the airport…Uptonians boast that theirs is the only airport in ZA where Concorde could land [it was there just the once and didn’t stay for long!].
I had to navigate my way to the centre of town, find Pick & pay.Up`s version of Tesco , then to the stationers/bookshop/bank/Post office,then out to the industrial zone, to deal with bath exchanges, decisions on floor and wall tiles, order some wood from Lumber City, SA version of Homebase and then onto a shop that deals in sleepers [railway and mine sleepers!]
Remembering to collect 20ltrs of paint on my way out of Up`, and then some urgent build supplies for the house in Kakenstein {hereafter referred to as Kak!!!]…..space was going to be an issue from the start. By hook or crook I achieved everything on the list and by now THE RAISIN looked like a sharabang, down on its axles with 35 sq meters tiles plus grout /adhesive etc. 7 sq meters decking, a basin and taps all mixed with a weekly food shop and in 33 degrees, by the time I exited Up at 4.00 pm, I was exhausted ,looked ragged and having skipped lunch, promised myself I would stop two thirds of the way home for a cool drink and something to eat at a little pad stall [side of the road café ….this one being very quirky and not dodgy in any way].
Didn’t call Bossy and tell him I was on my way back as we have something of an unwritten law that we don’t bother each other with this stuff like this.
Stopped at VAVAVOOM pad stall!!!! Purchasing coke zero and a slice of what looked like apple cake,As a result of language difficulties, the girls in the shop packed it in a little take away sac so that I felt I really had to take it away and consume American style at the wheel of the Raisin.
Concentrating on the long empty road ahead…I fumbled through the bags on the passenger seat and grabbed for the cake….to my horror, it gave only the impression of a piece of cake from the outside, and collapsed horribly as I grappled for it, it was the stickiest ,sweetest,sloppiest gungy stuff that oozed its way across the seat and over my lap, continuing towards the steering wheel, the floor, my face… everywhere. In spite of the car being at full capacity there was not a single wiping tool on hand…within minutes the car became full of flies settling everywhere that the gunge had landed, and I STILL had to pick up some urgent stuff in Kakenstein…why is it, that whenever you don’t want to meet anyone. you do! so having tried my best to clean myself down I crept into the DIY store in Kak`.It seemed to me, most of the Kak wives were there, initially, all keen to engage me in conversation, and all quite unashamedly looking me up and down …So Sorry women of England … I have done you no favours, they positively puffed up with delight to see the state of me and then The Raisin.
Whilst I am not a vain woman, caught under the searing gaze of the fearsome Kak wives, I felt like a grubby little girl in a grubby big Raisin.
Armed with more supplies, I managed to hurriedly squeeze them into the car, and capped off my day by being rather heavy footed on the accelerator pedal, creating a serious tyre squeal, and nearly upsetting my load, as I exited the car park…. the shame. Homewards, towards the factory, as fast as my load would allow. … Here there were an army of men waiting to offload the raisin…Bossy with a grin that stretched from ear to ear…approached and casually flicking a trapped fly out of my sticky hair…. explained that he had received a running commentary of my every movement from the start of my day to its finish…farmers had seen the Raisin on the road to Up and in Up, they had seen me on the road..fighting off flies , and last but not least one of the Kak wives had called to chastise him for not making the run to Up himself and suggesting I might like to know where the beauty therapist was next time I was in!!!!!!!!!!!....FAT CHANCE.
This little story serves as a further reminder of how tight this community is. Although the spaces around us are vast, the community tends to look inwards to its populace, this appears to be part of a code that the elders of the farming community [also church elders], proactively encourage [these people are the great-great-grandchildren of vortrekkers or frontiersmen]. Keeping an eye on each other is, I am sure, a survival mechanism and in no way malicious, sometimes the community can be a little overzealous in their attentions. I shall be very happy when we are quietly ensconced at the farm, away from the gaze of the Kakenstonians!

Marika and Gerrart [our current landlord and lady] provide a small oasis of retreat from this gaze, they can only be described as individualists, doing stuff, very much in their own style, and they seem not to be swayed by the critical gaze of their community.
These are the guys who, having a son that showed promise as a water skier, became frustrated at supporting his slalom practice in The Orange River [!!!!!], and decided the only answer was to dynamite a hole into the mountain behind their farm and create a man made lake, …this they have done ,800 meters long X 50 meters wide.[ Interesting fact: he loses 500,000 liters a day through evaporation as a result of the heat!]
Nevertheless, a vast stretch of water, which will shortly achieve National status as a water sports venue, but most particularly have national water ski slalom credentials. They have their first national competition here in March… bringing much attention [and business] to the area,. Four guest houses are sandwiched between the semi desert and Game reserve to one end of the lake, and a large club house, to the other.
Much of this weekend, was spent with them by the sides of the lake, dipping in and out of the water, Bossy has moored his jet ski here, so he did all his very best tricks on that!!! Encouraging me to have a go, which I did! Its one of those stand up ones which when driven well, looks as though you are scudding effortlessly and rather elegantly over the water on a hover board, when driven badly looks like a sack of potatoes slopping around on a mill pond, you may guess what I looked like..But hey, I gave it a go!!!

Weekends are about informal socializing with others, no formal invitations are issued, it appears that the Braai holder simply mentions to a few friends it will take place at his house/farm/field and people simply turn up, they bring 2 large cool boxes, one full of cool drinks/alcoholic drinks and ice the other full of meats to braai with. The braai holder’s wife produces a spattering of salads that seem to remain largely untouched.
At a certain point, one of the men starts the braai fire [men appear to take the lead when cooking on braais…Bossy is going to have his work cut out!!!!], two hours later when by his meticulous study of the state of the coals, he declares it ready to braai,; the meats starts to be cooked. It’s generally dark at this point and everyone has become comfortably inebriated, and rather hungry.
The South Africans take their Braai seriously, the kids [boys and girls!] have Braai lessons at school and termly competitions, and a national Braai day!!! ..It’s regarded as an art and an essential skill for the Northern Capetonian man.
I am the girl who pre cooks BBQ food in the oven [especially chicken] and takes it outside to show it the flames, Marika tells me that I am forbidden to do this…as my newest friend, it is her duty to ban me from this abhorrent practice. Further, we may well have been pulled into the bosom of the community now, but sure as dammit we will be unceremoniously excommunicated if anyone sees us doing it. You can now see how serious they are. I have braai`d twice now [Bossy was working!!], just for the two of us to start with…first attempt nearly burned the stoop [thatched area that comes from the roof and which houses the braai area] and followed up by producing burned bore worst [farmers sausage]. Second attempt: 7 out of 10…TBones very edible thanks to Gerrart and Marikas gift of a digital thermometer/prongy fork ,it reads the temperature of whatever meat you have pre set into its computer…still think ovens are easier…but when in Rome!!!!

Thursday 16th October:

Things moving well on the farm now, the two new guest rooms have walls, and windows are going in. The new roof for these 2 rooms will connect to the braai room roof[ this is an area for outside eating, with a huge inbuilt braai. with one open side that faces where the swimming pool will be [currently a hole in the hill upon which the farm is situated] I imagine that we would call it a covered terrace . As to the main part of the house, electrics are in place, air co installed but worryingly not working. Kitchen being held up bay lack of work surfaces, which are being made up in C.T.
Curtains and blinds ordered for all rooms.
Bossy is fretting over the water system here, water is pumped from the river, through to a large dam at the front of the house …the name dam never ceases to confuse me as this is a huge concrete circle about 5 foot high and three X the size of one of those large plastic rigid sided swimming pools. From the dam, water is pumped through a series of filtration sytems,to clean and purify and make the water suitable for washing, baths/showers etc. We have installed a separate drinking water system in the main house. Bossy has become neurotic about making sure this system is working at its optimum and produces squeaky clean water [thank goodness]. Two separate companies have already been replaced as he was unhappy with their proposed management of the new system , until this is resolved…we will not be at the farm!
I’m so desperate to post photos of all of this, but we are still waiting for our container and its contents.

I fly for C.T tomorrow. Hopefully stage 1, of our possessions being returned will be accomplished…..the car will be released [you see Bossy`s priority!] and I have to collect it from the port, drive to the large VW garage in the centre of C.T, get its air co sorted [not working when it left the UK] ask them to put a GPS disc that covers ZA in, and collect Little at 1.00pm from school, from this point [and trusting everything has gone to plan], Little and I have the weekend at a beach hotel in Milnerton.
The deal is, that the weekend is his, and we can do anything [within reason] that he would like to do. Have to drop him back to school on Sunday night, so I will overnight in C.T and head back on 850 km trip to Marchand on Monday. All sounds fine on paper, wait for the update of what really happens.

Love to all, and thank you once again for the wonderful emails, I cant wait to get into the office every morning and check my emails and am set up for the rest of the day, by news…and valuable advice [Kim!!] from home.
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DAWN