Wow, haven’t written in too long a time! Will have to start with today and work my way back to the rest of the week… Woke up with beautiful sunshine this morning! Felt like summer.
I think I’ve been here for pretty much 2 months now. It sounds so short! I’m feeling almost completely settled in now. I'm starting to really love it here and appreciate the small things like being able to look at the stars when I have to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. Or being able to stand outside and see the hornbills when I'm washing my dishes. Or just hearing the ocean from my caravan! It's really good to be this close to nature.
It’s also starting to happen more and more that I get people I’ve met around here to just pitch up at my tent to come and say hello or invite me for a beer or something. Not much time for being lonely now! That’s good. Today I went to visit a new friend who got some land from the locals and have been living in the village for around 6/7 years. He’s got a quaint-looking rondavel on a beautiful piece of land next to a river where he’s planting a lot of fruit trees and the works. A very peaceful place.
Yesterday I spent most of the day in the caravan, together with my good Xhosa friend Lucy, trying to make a bag from some schwe-schwe material that I got from Ngcwanguba. I’ve had this bag idea since before I came here and now finally we’re trying it out. I never really won the prize for sowing when I was in primary school, in fact I remember asking my grandma to finish my projects for me on more that one occasion. So let me say it was a little bit difficult and we haven’t quite finished yet. And we’ll only be able to continue the week after this (we’re doing the Axium ‘holiday camp’ teaching project this whole week). But it was a rewarding experience and the bag will look very nice once it’s done. We won’t be able to sell this one, cause I already made the mistake of putting the inside pocket on the inside-out side…!
But it’s okay. Lucy can use the bag and it’ll still look pretty. We’ll learn from our mistakes! I was in any case very excited by the whole idea of starting the first bag of many, using the caravan as workshop and working side by side with my Xhosa friend. We take turns in teaching each other a little bit off each other’s languages every now and then
A few days ago Lucy also took me to go and see where she currently lives in the village. She lives there with her mother, 4 children and I think another brother and his children. On her own piece of land, about 10 minutes walk from where she lives now, she is having a new rondavel and ‘flat’ built, which should be finished in a couple of months.
Normally you’ll find a rondavel (round hut) (Depending on how many family members live there, there might be more rondavels- normally one family per hut -fathers are often absent) and a smallish flat house (which they call a ‘flat’) on every property. I’m still trying to figure out the reason for this. All I know is that sometimes they have one rondavel that is only used for cooking. They’ll make a fire in the middle of the hut and cook some food like samp-and-beans in a big black ironcast pot (driepoot pot- Afrikaans for ‘pot with 3 legs’).
Also in this hut, at Lucy’s place (where she’s living now) she has a beautiful big white hen brooding over her eggs and hatched chicks in a basket. This is the safest place for the hen, away from the curious dogs. In another broken down building she has some more, little bit older chicks that she keeps safe and feeds regularly.
They eat some of the eggs and occasionally a chicken. They also have 2 pigs in a little wooden kraal and some geese and goats. I don’t think all the families have so many animals. Lucy takes care of her animals very well and even has a cute little black kitty. They also plant corn, potatoes and sweet potatoes on their land.
Lucy lives with her children in a good-sized one room hut, where they also have a kitchen table and cupboard where they keep all the kitchen utensils. We had some tea and later Lucy made some very nice nqush (might be the wrong spelling! But it’s basically samp and beans). Together with that she also made a sort of gravy with onions and Imana soup powder. I really enjoyed this meal and would like it on my menu for “The friendly butternut hut”. And I hope our friendship goes a long way!
Can’t remember much significant from the previous few days, other that some beautiful sunsets and Milli that left on Friday morning and that’s when I went to Ngcwanguba to buy the material and buttons, pins etc. When I go to Umthatha again, I’ll look for hand operated sowing machines. No electricity in the villages.
On Tuesday I had an interesting day with a guy I know from Cape Town who was in Coffee Bay for 2 nights. He’s a journalist that works for a fishing magazine and they came to do a story about a crayfish plant in Mdumbi, a place about an hour from Coffee Bay. So I went with to take some pics for them and hear the whole story. They export the crayfish and employ a good number of local people that work at the plant as well as a whole lot of fishermen that catch the crayfish and sell it to them. Sounds like a good business.
Okay I could elaborate more, but I’ve got to go to sleep now. I’ll try not to skip so many days in between again!
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