070713, Elliot

050713 Friday, photos in a forest

For only the second time in a whole year of staying at this campsite in Coffee Bay, I have a camping buddy for a few days who happens to make the best coffee I've possibly ever had.  Donald is doing a couple months road trip with his big dog Luka and I've been lucky enough to have them join me on a little area exploration today at Umtata river mouth and Umdumbi.

Since the April flood this year, the sea is coming up much higher than before at the Umtata river mouth and much of the forest area has been under water.  Quite a surreal landscape...

A dead mule along the way.

A small section of the view at Umdumbi, my own little serengeti.

300613, Hole in the Wall

300613, Portraits of my neighbors

The Reading Hut got broken into a couple of times now.  The weekend before last, someone got in and stole the pvc pipe that I'd just bought for the long drop.  They got in by wiggling the window from the outside in such a way that the lever came loose on the inside and they could open the window.  When I saw what happened I secured the window just a little by hammering in some bent nails so the lever won't lift so easily.  

This just gave me more problems because the next time they came, they simply broke the glass and got the window open again.  And stole my little bookshelf that I brought all the way from Cape Town.  They also took the only chair in the place and the special alphabet carpet that was the only warm spot on the floor for the kids.

Anyway, I'm sure it must be someone that stays not too far away, for them to come back almost every day to steal something else.  So I decided to take a little walk around in the village to let everyone know what happened and let them keep their eyes open for any of the stolen items.  So far no-one has seen a thing but who knows.  

Either way it was a nice walk and good to see all my neighbors again.  I've also decided to call my next exhibition 'Makhelwane' (My neighbour). 

16 June, Youth Day in the Transkei

Tomorrow we celebrate what we now call ‘Youth Day’.  Here in Coffee Bay, rural Transkei, previous apartheid homeland you can sense a little something in the air.  It is long weekend, some tourists have arrived at the backpackers and we also expect the 'shebeens' to be pumping tomorrow and won't be surprised to hear of some stabbings or other violent acts happening amidst the drunkenness.  

But how many of us actually remember what Youth Day is about.  37 years ago, during the apartheid regime, Afrikaans (together with English) was introduced as the languages in which children be instructed in all black schools in South Africa.  In fact, they were forced to use these languages.  Indigenous languages would only be used for religion, music and physical culture.

This meant that black children would rather have to focus on the understanding of the language than learn much about the subject taught in it.  English as international language was of course preferred over apartheid associated Afrikaans, but because the government was Afrikaans dominated it wanted to reverse the decline of Afrikaans among black South Africans by enforcing the 1974 decree that recognized only Afrikaans and English as official languages.

This sparked much rebellion that eventually grew to the mass rally of June 16, 1976, when between 10 000 – 20 000 students walked in protest to Orlando stadium.  The protest, which was intended to be peaceful, turned violent after students took another route when their intended route was barricaded off by the police.  The first shot was fired by a policeman, who said that some of the children were throwing stones.  This started panic and the police let their dogs loose on the children who retaliated by throwing stones at the dogs.  Then the police started shooting directly at the children.  23 People, including 2 whites died on that day.

Following this event, The ANC was established as leading party in the liberation struggle and the Soweto uprising was a turning point to white rule in South Africa that eventually led to the release of Mandela and the end of apartheid.

I think it is important for us to remember our history and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again.  I also ask myself what can be done by us and our government to help the people, that were previously oppressed by our forefathers, because I find it ironic that now, 37 years later, they are still being taught in English (no longer Afrikaans) and mostly the rural people don’t understand English, so after all these years their education has not improved much.  

040613, Port St Johns, The Pont

260513, Cook Stoves For Africa

Smoke costs 1.9 million lives a year, nearly double that of malaria.  One of the leading causes of death for women and small children. And I'm not talking about cigarette smoke.  Across Africa, millions of women in rural areas spend hours every day exposed to the smoke from their cooking fires.  Inhaling of smoke causes lung and heart diseases and many rural  people die, probably not even knowing why.  Other than that, forests are disappearing because of the amount of  wood needed to fuel these cooking fires.

Recently I have been getting involved with a company called 'Global Eco projects' that has developed a cooking stove that needs significantly less wood and at the same time greatly reduces carbon emissions.

The distribution of the stoves has started recently in the OR Thambo District Municipality  of the Eastern Cape (which is where I am) with an initial pilot project of 30 000 stoves.  I've had the privilege to join Kate (SA Operations Manager for Cookstoves for Africa) on some home visits to see how the people are getting on with the new stoves.  The feedback is indeed very positive and people have already been using much less wood than before.  The 'istovu' also seems to be replacing the paraffin stoves that are used in most homes.  

This is a very exciting project that is still going to save many lives as well as many trees!

For more, check out:

www.cookstovesforafrica.com 

Using the new cook stove

the 'istovu'

On a home visit with one of the new users of the stove

150513, New Montessori School Coffee Bay

Last week I had the privilege to help out for two days at the new Montessori School (Ikhaya Labantwana) in Coffee Bay, while some of the other teachers were receiving their training. Previously the Montessori school was much smaller but the new school which opened its doors just a few weeks ago, already has about 30 kids attending. 

I had loads of fun and was happy to spend time with my little friends, some of whom I've already known for a while from around Coffee Bay and the Reading Hut.  Personally I think this school is one of the best things that exist around here.  These kids are learning so much and already have such a high step up in an otherwise very sad educational system.  There are four year olds here who can already put letters together to form words whilst I daily spend time with 9 year olds from the regular public schools around, who still don't know the complete alphabet!  

I really believe that to make a change in the education of a nation (that has lagged behind for too long because of apartheid, poverty etc.) the best place to start is with the little ones and laying for them a solid foundation.  This is what's being done here.

Well done to the magnificently passionate Dawn Brochenin and all her hard work together with those who helped her make this school a possibility!  May the futures of these little ones be blessed.

050505, The fall and rise of the Umtata river bridge

Last week Sunday:

These pics were taken last week Sunday, a week after the flood destroyed part of the bridge.  It is said that the water flooded 3m over the bridge and the debris was still there to prove it.

Here is the bridge from the side that got disconnected to the road

People had to pay R5 for the privilege to use this ladder so that they could get up or down from the bridge to reach the other side.

The debris that got stuck on the bridge

From a distance you can see the debris and on the left where the bridge collapsed

This week Sunday:

This was today, the bridge has been fixed in a week! 

Now we can get to Umdumbi again yay!!

230213, A river ran through it

This picture was taken on Sunday morning, after possibly the most crazy flood night I've experienced up to date.  The river started to flood at about 1am on Sunday morning, the sound woke me and I was not sure what it was since it had been raining quite hard and non-stop for a long long time.  But I was awake and occasionally tried to look out the window to see if it's getting higher.  I could see Ace, the night guard with his torch, walking around and checking the water levels. I also packed a little bag with the most essential things and went out to put it in my car and move my car higher up.

   I heard Aquila (the Boerboel, sleeping in my tent) give a whimper at some point in answer to a frog croaking.  That's when I thought that if the animals are worried it's probably time for me to also start worrying.  It had flooded before but didn't come as high as where I am currently parked, so I did not expect it to get that bad.

By 3am it got serious.  Suddenly the water was inside my tent and I had to wake Aquila (the Boerboel)  to get her out of there. . .  All the time it's pouring down.  From then on it all happened pretty fast.  Ace and Dewald (the camp manager) came to help me carry everything out of my tent.  By this time the water was suddenly much higher and a lot of things just floated off.  I was standing knee deep in water inside my tent looking around at these waves washing through, not knowing what to grab and what to let go, yet feeling strangely calm through it all, knowing Jesus is right there with me in the storm .

 I had to go back and and pack more things from my caravan cause now it looked like there is no stopping to the rising of the water. I then went to take shelter in Dewald's house and found I was not the only one packing even though the other people were much higher than me.  I must say at that stage I was mostly just histerically laughing at the reality of everything.  We were making jokes about packing up and going.   The water rose up to the caravan's entrance and there it stopped and went down.  It's amazing how quickly it goes down again once it's reached the peak.  

It was not the end though.  I was just starting to relax a bit when Dewald told me to come quick. A tree had fallen over on top of my car!  Luckily just the branches, so I moved it out without any damage.  But what I was shocked to see then was that the wind had come up and ripped my whole complete tent of the ground and  all the poles were out.   That has never happened before.  At least there was nothing left inside the tent.  As if that was not enough the wind also broke my caravan's window out.  That is a bit of a problem that is going to be hard to fix.  And the rain pours in...

From there I went over to stay at some kind people's house and got dry and tried to have some sleep.  The rain still didn't stop.  The rain measured on Saturday was 160mm.  The rain measured for Sunday was 300mm.  I anticipated another flooding.    

The water went all the way right up to the little fence you can see on the right.  

To my horror I was right.  On Monday morning when I went back, I was faced with the aftermath of a small natural disaster.  The previous evening at about 7pm, that river flooded again and this time went even much higher.  The whole campsite had to evacuate.  Everything on my side was in shambles.  I was still hopeful that my seedlings were going to survive, because some were still standing on top of the braai after the first flood, but when I got back, there was not even a single braai left standing.  The water went into and through my caravan.    I am soooo thankful I was not there to experience that. 

Mama Grace came around and helped me get the caravan floor cleaned of all the mud that washed through it.  Funny how she's always helping me with mud on my floors.  Previously she had to put it on (The Reading Hut floor) and now she had to take it off.  Anyway I am so thankful for that because it made me a bit despondent to see that and she just took care of it for me in no time.  Thank the Lord for Grace...

 The campsite after the storm

Here you can see exactly where the water went through the caravan

110911, Sunday

 Some girls on their way to church

 At a local church...

A crazy horse chasing sheep... funny little thing I saw today...

090611, Tuesday

My boys didn't pitch up for their class this afternoon, I suspect the ocean might have tempted them away... So I took advantage of the moment, and got one of the ladies to take me into one of the villages in search for a mama who knows how to sow and make skirts.  My idea is that she makes one for me and if it comes out nice, I can perhaps order more from her and we can sell them to the tourists.  Anyway, we never found the mama, but left the material and an example skirt for her to find.  I was happy to bump into some beautiful people from the village though, and of course became a bit happy snappy...