Alas, the holidays are now very much over but I’ve certainly enjoyed them. As usual, South Africa has thrown in some little surprises to spice things up, such as becoming a chauffeur for a few days after my friend badly sprained her ankle, rescuing a dazed kingfisher and the discovery that Clarens has not one, but two waterfalls. Who knew!

Thankfully I got to make the most of my weekend before work by spending my days with the youth from several churches across South Africa, some coming from places around 9 hours away crammed into one small buckie/van-thing, luggage and all. It was nice to see the event come off without too many glitches after spending the prior week organising name tags, teams and sleeping arrangements. Mum, you’ll be pleased to know your organisational skills have rubbed off ! Africa definitely put its best foot forward and there were a few days of glorious scalding sunshine with a bit of rain in the evening to cool things down. Every once in a while I pause and think how strange it is that if I weren’t a Christian I wouldn’t have met so many people I’m glad to call my friends; I did this far more often when in a room full of 100 people who don’t speak English as their first language, and with whom I’d have very little in common besides my religion. Of course it was a little intimidating at times as my Sesotho isn’t the greatest, and some people there weren’t Basotho and so spoke a different language but it was great to just talk to them and have a laugh (in English of course). Besides the worship and enthusiastic dancing from many a person in the hall we also all enjoyed messing about and getting to know one another. From making a war cry for our teams, building human pyramids to being bombarded by random objects in an extreme version of ‘bring me a…’ it certainly gave me memories that will last.

The first couple of weeks back at work have been quite tumultuous but by the grace of God I am still keeping on top of things after my role completely changed within the school. It’s certainly different working more closely with the younger children in the school, and though I miss the older students I built a good working relationship with I still get hailed from across the school and bombarded by hugs when I see them. I’m certainly enjoying the benefit of a shorter school day, though the constant ‘blow your nose!’ as I’m seeing trails of snot run down noses and faces is taking some getting used to. Besides the height, the main difference is having everything I say translated into Sesotho. Made it rather interesting during story-time before school ended; I’d picked up a book which seemed short, and forgot its length would effectively be doubled so I had to paraphrase and hope they wouldn’t notice.

After all this time I finally made it to Lesotho this weekend, hurray! It’s weird to think that you can see Lesotho from Clarens but because of the boarder crossing being an hour away it makes it much harder to get to. It was a very surreal experience driving through Buta Bute to the village where I was staying. Discounting the popular western belief that you see zebra and lions running around the roads terrorizing everyone, Lesotho very much fits the stereotype you learn in England. You don’t have running water, villages still have chiefs, many people don’t have electricity there, and those who do are frequently affected by load-shedding and the vast majority of homes I saw were made from mud and straw. I have to say though I’m so glad I was staying in a mud and straw roundhouse rather than a tin roofed building as they are much cooler in summer and remain warm in winter. It was certainly a refreshing break from everything because there’s no reliance upon technology for entertainment, which means you talk and have a laugh when you’re all failing miserably to pick up a new card game, and resort to Junior Monopoly. Oh and my wonderful hosts introduced me to pumpkin pie (courtesy of a monstrously proportioned pumpkin that was growing in their veg patch), and it was so delicious!

To those that don’t understand the frustrations of the inefficacy of the South African postal service, it is as follows: there’s the constant threat of postal strikes and after a 3 month strike last year the timely delivery of post is somewhat skewed. Sometimes parcels from the UK never arrive, sometimes they may arrive within a month, sometimes after four or ten months. It feels like pure luck if something arrives. We had school post arrive recently that had been redirected through Kenya! Only a few weeks after I first arrived at the end of July my lovely nan asked if there was anything she could send me in a parcel which is difficult to get hold of here. My answer was of course chocolate. That’s not to say South Africa doesn’t sell chocolate, or even Cadbury’s for that matter but unfortunately for whatever reason the recipe is different. And it just doesn’t taste the same. At all. So I’d been told the parcel was sent and as time went on it seemed less and less likely it would ever arrive. Throughout the following weeks I was repeatedly told that the worst thing to do when sending chocolate by post is to put on the parcel import label that it is in fact chocolate. Alternatives suggested have varied between wedding photos to second-hand clothes. It became very clear that whoever works for the SA postal service likes chocolate. So imagine my surprise (and of course sheer delight) when after returning from Lesotho last weekend I was handed a large parcel containing all my favourites! I’d even received postcards from Vietnam and Thailand that I thought would be lost forever. Let us hope that this is a good omen for future parcels send to SA without the need for ‘couriers’ in the form of friends or acquaintances coming to and fro.

As ever blasted mosquitoes are the bane of my life and try to eat me alive every evening, or wait till I’ve nearly fallen asleep before whining just past my face then flying away again. It’s like a gross parody of Jaws where the music/buzzing gets louder and louder, and then it stops and leaves you slapping every part of your body in the hopes you’ll by some miracle kill it. The one positive thing about mosquitoes is that they are slower than bluebottles, which seem to have superpowers that make them impervious to insecticide aerosols. They take great delight in persistently trying to land on your face and it’s infuriating.

Now to enjoy what feels like a well deserved weekend.

Here it is, the long overdue Christmas special edition!

Since my last post it’s been much of the same with a few additions here and there. I went to my first South African wedding! I wasn’t sure what to expect when I turned up, but even before it began there were lots of differences that were obvious. For one, anyone can turn up so it’s impossible to gatecrash a wedding here, secondly there was the unfortunate unscheduled ‘load-shedding’ (power cut for those in the UK) which warranted a trip to a nearby farm to borrow a generator so the wedding wouldn’t be in the dark and without a band. After the generator was sorted and the arrival of the bridal party the wedding begun with dancing! There were around six couples that did a dance up the aisle before the bride and bridesmaids entered, after that it was pretty much the same ceremony as in the UK, except the ring bearers who also do a dance up the aisle. Being their summer here it is also their wedding season, so a lot of conversation has revolved around them naturally. Something new I learned was the tradition of lobola, meaning ‘bride price’. The prospective husband pays the fiancé’s family a certain amount of money (couples I know said they had to save for months or even years!) that’s supposed to bring the two families together, but it’s become more controversial as some have been demanding lobola just for the money. When most in the country were still farming, the groom could give the bride’s family livestock (around 8 or so cows, depending on negotiations). Since most families aren’t farmers by vocation this is much harder to do as instead of giving cows the groom gives cash. Not ideal if you’re saving for a wedding and setting up a home! To make it easier for the couple the bride has a Kitchen Tea Party, like a more civilised bachelorette party where guests bring everything you’d need for your kitchen. Personally I think Kitchen Tea Parties are something the UK should have, they sound amazing.

Asides from attending weddings and general socialising I’ve been enjoying the copious amounts of sunny days (a little too much at times), cycling around the dam that is looking substantially fuller with all the thunderstorms, and feeling very ‘country’ by helping myself to all the fresh and home-grown produce my friends have in their gardens while their away. Who could say no to perfectly ripe and humongous peaches or highly coveted raspberries?

Of course not to ignore the strangeness that has been my Christmas this year I shall try my best to explain why it has felt so alien. In effect I’ve had two Christmas days this year; one with the family I live with which was on Christmas Eve, and of course Christmas day itself. It’s impossible to generalise South African traditions around Christmas because of the multitude of different cultures, and they are so extremely different. Some families do not give presents at all, and they see no need to go hunting for a specific type of tree, cut it down and drag it into your house before decorating it with lights and baulbauls. Christmas day for them is stripped down to what’s really important – eating together as a family, and of course celebrating the birth of Jesus. It may not feel very Christmassy to me with the absence of gaudy and brightly coloured decorations everywhere, but it is a nice relief from the usual stress of buying presents for people and hectic traffic getting to anywhere that has shops. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, Basotho families will often give their young children new clothing at Christmas to last them the year. Other families make the effort to have Christmas a tree and swap presents and follow more European traditions, albeit in shorts and t-shirts! Sadly the excessive heat does mean that Christmas jumpers are rendered redundant, and because it’s Clarens the pressure for men to wear a singing Christmas tie is non-existent. Secondly there is the never-ending debate of what to eat on Christmas day, to have a full roast with all the trimmings, or a braai (BBQ), or something else altogether. I managed to experience both with a stomach busting six-course meal at the Courtyard on Christmas Eve, and my first potjie (a stew cooked in a cast iron pot over embers) for Christmas Day lunch. A yummy alternative that gave me some relief in the knowledge I didn’t have to face another huge meal, given that I was still full from the day before. For those who know my family the juxtaposition between my relaxing and eating lunch in the sunshine outside in S.A and the ‘usual’ feeding of the masses with exploding things for entertainment and chasing naughty children round the house most the day… it felt strange to say the least!

Bring on NYE celebrations with don pedro drinks, a braai and wonderful company! 

What a busy month it’s been, and probably the most memorable Bonfire Night I’ll have for a long while. What happens when you mix overly enthusiastic British people, explosives and pyromaniacs together? One angry neighbour and a visit from the police apparently! Basically… we’d spent a hilarious day trying to explain to the kids what Bonfire Night was all about to which they responded, “so you make a person and celebrate burning it because someone tried to kill the king hundreds of years ago?” Did really put it in perspective, but we continued nonetheless. After raiding the recycling bins for materials we convened later in a large garden where it felt appropriate to pretend it was actually cold and eat the traditional fare of burgers/hotdogs etc. Sadly the South African weather felt it appropriate to rain on our parade so to speak and made it necessary to douse our firewood with petrol and use countless matches before we had a fire. What some of us didn’t know when we put our Guy Fawkes on the fire was that a few felt it would liven things up by putting bangers and firecrackers in partitions of the costume. Gave us quite the shock! Next came the ‘fireworks’ (if they can be called that) which consisted primarily of very loud bangers. Soon after came the highly disgruntled neighbour telling us to ‘please desist immediately’, and then shortly after that the police showing a generalised type of concern after they heard the bangs from the other side of the town! Ironically we had in our party the person responsible for local security. 

Something new I’ve learnt this month about the culture is the naming ceremony of new wives. When a woman gets married, it is traditional for the husband’s grandparents or parents to decide on a new name for her. What makes it such an important ceremony is that the name decides the name of the first child. For example if someone was called Matshidiso, the ‘ma’ stands for ‘mother of’, and then the child’s name would be Tshidiso. The name is often influenced by events or characteristics that occur around the time of the marriage or pregnancy. Say, if it was during the rainy season the wife might be called Mapula (pula means rain). I thought this was a rather risky business as surely you couldn’t count on the sex of the first child so how do you decide on the name, but I’ve been told a lot of the names are genderless. While I’m on the subject of names and their meanings a group of us had a very interesting conversation about what peoples’ names were in English, and what English names would be in Sesotho. We had a ‘baggage’, someone’s first and last name meant road and cat etc. and I found out my name would be Palesa, meaning flower.

Despite my approbations about the food, I also tried a koeksister after one was offered to me. A sickly sweet sugar soaked donut that’s fairly greasy still. It was as unpleasant as it sounds but I can at least say I tried! To add to my list of new foods that I’ve tried I can add dipabi (a powder you eat that’s made of ground mielie, sugar and salt) it wasn’t completely unpleasant, but trying to eat a powder without any water was a little awkward to say the least. Another traditional Basotho dish I had was mahleu, which is a sweetened porridge made with sorghum. Definitely won’t be having that again- it was like having a wheat/oaty-ish tasting thick smoothie. Definitely pushed the boat out and also had jwala jwala, a traditional beer made from fermented sorghum that is given as a ‘you are welcome here’ kind of thing. I’m not a beer drinker at the best of times, but because I was offered it by the chief of the nearby Basotho cultural village you can’t really decline without being extremely rude. Again, it had a thick texture and tasted like yeast (not the enticing freshly baked bread smell, but just yeast) mixed with yoghurt. At least I can say I tried! Maybe try an ‘easier’ new food next, like ostrich.

One more week to go now until the school breaks up for the Christmas/summer holidays, which will be great; 6 weeks of lie-ins, creativity and long walks or cycling. Does also mean many of my friends are returning to England for a month which is a shame, but a good number of families are around for the majority and I’m going to try and get to Cape Town for a bit so I can waddle with the penguins, drink cheap wine, see the sights and swim in the sea, hurrah!

Well to my list of novel experiences I can now add ‘breaking in’, and it wasn’t into my own home either! Spiked metal fences surround a large number of houses and properties in Clarens, and a percentage of these have electronic gates. This can be problematic during a thunderstorm as it can blow the fuse to the gate and trap you inside your own home until an electrician can come to fix it. It is also problematic if you happen to be house-sitting/pet-sitting for a friend and the fob they gave you to the gate has no battery in…and they aren’t your regular AA batteries which can be hard enough to get hold of here haha. Thankfully house keys are not yet electronic (as far as I know), so I only had to get over this 6ft tall fence with jagged metal bits on top without tearing a limb off. After unsuccessfully trying to climb a fir tree parallel to the gate (curse my short height and someone’s foresight in cutting off the tree’s lower branches), I returned to the front of the property and only just succeeded in shimmying over while trying to placate their intimidatingly large dog that was making his displeasure clearly known. It’s a miracle none of the neighbours saw me and I’m glad they didn’t as it certainly couldn’t have looked good.

I’ve not tried any new ethnic food such as walkie-talkies or koeksisters (for those of you who watched this year’s Great British Bake-Off, it featured in the doughnut week): a cholesterol-exploding doughnut that is plaited, deep-fried then soaked in warm syrup. The idea of having one to myself frightens me, and I’ve had it on good authority that they are at their best when fresh, else it’s just a glob of sugary dough that only tastes of sugar. Ostrich and springbok are definitely a possibility though.

This week I was faced with the undeniable reality that a notable percentage of the locals still use witchdoctors when there were concerns that a child in school was wearing something around the top of his arm. I've certainly heard conversations about land being burnt to get rid of 'curses' put upon properties by disgruntled neighbours who've seen a witchdoctor, and ceremonies that endorse ancestral worship with rituals claiming to draw power or help from the bones of dead relatives, but the association of wearing a band round the arm, ankle or waist with witchcraft certainly never crossed my mind. I'd forgotten about this all when I wore an anklet to work and was repeatedly questioned by various children as to where the anklet came from and who gave it to me. Will have to avoid doing that in future!

In other news I’m starting to get used to the frequent thunderstorms, though it has made me question my sanity a few times. I am constantly doubting my eyesight and wondering whether the lights did just dim a little momentarily, or I blinked and forgot. Being able to hear the thunder before the storm arrives is another object of humour to me, as though the storms have their own Jaws theme tune = shark thing going on. Hearing of temperatures getting near to 0’C back home in England is only serving to heighten the disorientation my body is feeling right now, when I’m wandering around in shorts and t-shirts. I beginning to wonder how December is ever going to feel Christmassy without Costa’s seasonal salted caramel/cinnamon hot chocolates, Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, the weeks spent in anticipation of the ever elusive snow-days, or any number of things I’ve come to associate Christmas with. Now faced with the prospect of having what is the summer holiday over here during Christmas feels absurd; six weeks of braais (BBQs), sunshine soaked walks and near daily thunderstorms with a distinct lack of Christmas spirit amongst the locals. Apparently Christmas trees aren’t so big in Basotho culture though they are more of a tradition in Afrikaans families. So yes, I will be sad that I’m not at home over Christmas but then again I recognise that it would be missing an opportunity to see more of South Africa, and experiencing it from a different point of view. Reading a good book whilst sunbathing (doused in factor 50 if the rumours of the heat are true) will be a good perspective to begin with.

Hopefully before the Christmas/summer holidays I’ll be able to climb Mt Horeb again and attempt reaching it’s summit, though it will be necessary this time round to be aware of any snakes due to the warmer weather. With any luck it will be possible to take photos of the landscape from up high so I can show you just how much the view changes after a bit of rain. It’s become all to clear why some people are tempted to burn the land (albeit with great care and caution) before the end of the winter as it makes the new grass to grow far quicker after rainfall. The juxtaposition is shown quite well on Mt Horeb where a good half of it burnt and is now well on its way to becoming a luscious green colour, and the unburnt half is only green in patches.

The holidays are officially over now for me after a week of enjoying the sunshine that is typical for Clarens and a week in the unexpectedly green and rainy place that is St Lucia. I made the most of my free time with multifarious walks and cycles around Clarens that went some way towards improving my non-existent tan, helping organise resource cupboards at work which threw up the strange discovery of a science experiment book…that was my brother’s when he was 10…which was 15 years ago. If ever there were a perfect example of Freud’s unheimlich, opening a book on the other side of the world that’s over 15 years old with your mother’s handwriting in is it. Finding a clarinet in one of the cupboards was also a pleasant surprise and I had a quick tootle to make sure it worked before replacing it.

I’ve also been playing tennis more than I’ve done in years (which isn’t saying much as I haven’t played it since P.E in secondary school), and let’s just say I’ve a lot of practice to do! Thankfully, my lack of skill in tennis playing has been compensated by some level of competence in game nights where sheer violence, shouting and frustrated cries follow the game that is nertz. From the occasional slaps and name calling to accidental facial punches it certainly eliminates the need to watch action movies!

Sadly with the arrival of the school holidays and my cheeky extension of it with a trip to St Lucia my Sotho hasn’t improved much, if at all. I can sometimes remember the word for listen? Alas, my knowledge of the Basotho culture also hasn’t made any headway either. However, during the 620km long car journey to St Lucia I experienced what I could only describe as a sort of reverse culture shock as we neared larger cities, i.e. Durban. The sight of a train-track felt so alien and out of place in my experiences of South Africa, and seeing more than 10 cars on the road at one time felt like a traffic-jam. And the sea! It was so pleasant to hear the sound of waves crashing, and an even greater surprise to feel how warm it was in comparison to my native chilly Atlantic Ocean. Because of the difference in altitude between Clarens and St Lucia, the humidity levels were significantly higher by the coast and made even the gloomiest days warm enough for shorts and t-shirts. It also meant everything was a bright green without the tell-tale scars on the landscape of wildfires that are common higher up, and super-sized or brightly coloured. Gigantic palm trees, a multitude of hibiscus plants, freakishly sized flying beetles and frightening huge insects were wherever you looked.

Undeterred by the weather, the group I went on holiday with embraced our British heritage and ignored the rain and wind we’re so used to back home. We thoroughly enjoyed a blustery boat tour of the estuary in St Lucia and were rewarded with close encounters of the fauna and flora including a shark, hippos and a giant kingfisher. Thankfully our trip to the Hluhluwe and Imfolozi Game Reserve was joined by glorious sunshine and enabled some fantastic photographing opportunities of the landscape and animals. At one point on the journey we were actually able to see three of the Big Five standing in the same place and rotating. Behind us was a herd of buffalo, in the distance crossing the river was a whole family of elephants (babies included), in front of us was an island of vultures who fancied themselves important enough to make an appearance in the panoramic of iconic animals, and to our right basking in the sun underneath a tree was a lioness also admiring the view. Throughout the rest of the day we were blessed with incredibly close encounters of various rhinos (no more than 10 ft away), elephants, giraffes, countless buck, warthogs, zebras and baboons. They were all very kind and posed for the camera with smiles and what felt like practised stances. Cape Vidal was next on our list of places to visit, and again our car journey was occupied by staring out of the window trying to spot animals, and interrupted by shouts of ‘stop!’ and ungainly uphill reverses to stare at kudus, stripy or horned nyalas (depending on the sex), more impala and what I can only describe as miniature red deer whose name I’ve forgotten. Stops at viewing points fraught with expectation were rewarded with sightings of fisher eagles, more hippos and when eating lunch whilst avoiding the rain at the beach we were even graced by fleeting glimpses and spouts of water from whales.

Impromptu visits to the nearby butterfly dome and cheese farm provided light entertainment and more wildlife sightings such as sunbirds, and the less glamorous goat. Overall, besides ooh-ing and ahh-ing (and a few ewws too) over impressive animals there was plentiful card playing, reading, relaxing, walking and haggling done in the general location. What more could you ask for from a holiday?

I realised the other day I still haven’t properly explored Clarens, which feels almost comical. Two new girls arrived last week and they’re telling me about shops in Clarens and if I like them, and I can only reply I wouldn’t know! Determined to make my own homemade bread on a regular basis, and therefore decided it was nigh on time to finally explore the infamous Purple Onion deli. I can only describe it as a culinary Aladdin’s cave in a place like Clarens: sun-dried tomatoes, posh chocolate truffles, harissa paste etc. It seemed to have it all (besides the ever elusive goat’s cheese, sadly). As a result of a successful shop I was able to make a very tasty loaf of sun-dried tomato and rosemary bread. Not quite sure that Paul Hollywood would’ve approved of its texture, but it made marvellous cheese on toast! I also passed up the opportunity to try ostrich steak the other day, but after comparing someone one’s to my traditional steak, I was still content with a slab of beautiful medium-rare cooked cow. 

It’s been a busy few weeks with our first ‘Come Dine with Me’ styled evenings in Clarens. The first night was fantastic; although everyone knows everyone else it allowed us to have great banter, but we were all quiet when the English chocolate mints were revealed. Definitely a showstopper move, and impromptu entertainment was provided when two people I work with tried the After Eight Mint game where you have to put one on your forehead and wiggle it down into your mouth without using your hands. It will be interesting to see what happens when we see the final edited ‘episode’ as we are scoring one another in secret. The second night will be tomorrow and will be a marvellous end to the week that has included the school’s long-anticipated Cultural Evening (in no less than three different languages!) which included sea shanties, rainbow songs, Afrikaans pop songs, traditional dances, star-dances, poetry reading etc. and was super (photos and video clips to follow). It was also Heritage Day this week, which justified a day off work — though I have yet to fully investigate what it’s all about— lots of braais across the country, and afforded the opportunity of seeing the internationally known Drakensberg Boys Choir which exceeded all expectations and had a very diverse programme which included old European classics, traditional South African songs, and a good ole bit of welly slapping, stomping and clapping. The enthusiastic grandparents sitting next to us who couldn’t clap in time definitely added to my enjoyment of the performances!

To think that in all my time here I can count the number of times it’s rained on one hand (just)! I officially experienced my first proper African thunderstorm, though some locals would dispute this as it was puny in comparison to what it could be, a 2/10 for effort. However, it still meant unplugging everything from sockets and sitting indoors in comfort whilst watching multiple strikes of lightning bounce from one mountain to the other, hopefully my camera will have caught some decent photos !

It’s only one more week until term finishes now, and I can’t help but feel a week’s break between the terms is not enough when the existence of the half-term is but a myth. However, the promise of a short final term and a week of fun activities/class trips definitely makes it more palatable. Knowing that my holiday to St Lucia is very quickly coming up and affords the luxury of an extra week off is certainly the cherry on top of the cake. 

It’s now officially September and the summer is well and truly on its way. Hurray, an end to dust getting everywhere and the endless need to put on or take off layers!  

New experiences since my last post include climbing up a mountain (Mt. Horeb, which looms over all of Clarens and can be seen from my bedroom window), awkwardly changing at the top of a mountain after doing the ice-bucket challenge at the top while hoping no one was using binoculars, and having my photo taken purely because of the colour of my skin and hair. The new food I’ve tried this time is skambana (I am purely guessing on its spelling and I’m sure someone will correct me). It consists of a generous chunk of bread hollowed out, traditionally with acha (?) – a spicy and vinegary condiment – lining the bottom, followed by a Russian sausage, spiced chips, cheese and a slice of polony before replacing the bread that was taken out to create a monstrous ‘sandwich’. What was it like? Trying to eat it was like trying to eat a highly stacked burger, that is, you can’t without it going everywhere! I did give the acha a go but we couldn’t be friends, more from the flavour as opposed to its spiciness. Will have to think of more new culinary adventures I could do soon, with the very firm exclusion of ‘Walkie-Talkies’. For those of you who have not heard of these, they are the cooked heads and feet of chicken, hence the imaginative name. In addition to changing on top of a mountain, I had the very novel and surreal experience of trying on clothes in a shop when 'the lion sings tonight' starts playing; it would be strange enough if this happened back in England, but you have to laugh and appreciate the irony of it in South Africa.

I’ve also been lucky enough to start working alongside a group of wonderful ladies from the church with the People of Hope project. The project provides physical, emotional and spiritual support to a range of people in the local townships whether it’s medical care, food, cleaning or prayer free of charge. My involvement has up until now been very restricted because of the language barrier but I’m hoping being immersed in it with the help of the team will soon change this. Having been around the school for over a month the kids are confusing me less often with all the other teachers, and I will regularly be hailed with ‘Teacher Rosie!’ from Foundation Phase children whilst hurling themselves from the jungle gym/squealing as they try to climb up me for a hug or piggy-back. It’s unfortunate that I have yet to learn most of their names in return though! My role in the school has definitely evolved to be giving a lot of support to children struggling with literacy or numeracy skills for various reasons, and I feel really blessed that they’ve not shown (one certain child excluded) any unwillingness to learn or moodiness, which has made everyone’s lives a bit easier. With the end of the school term looming it’s also created a sudden splurge of activity and bustling over all those kinds of things schools do, but there’s now a week’s break in October to look forward to and after that an exotic trip to St Lucia (in South Africa, not the Caribbean) which is on the North-East coast. It will be so nice to see the sea again, alongside the strong possibility of seeing hippos and other large mammals.

This last week in particular has been very busy for Clarens and the surrounding areas because of multiple huge bush fires that have popped up and decimated anything in its path. Even Mt Horeb didn’t escape and was quite literally lit up like a Christmas tree where the line of fire snaked round like fairy lights. I’ve almost felt more at home with the regular wop-wop of helicopters or planes that were carrying water to fight the fires. Now that they are all over it’s decidedly quiet again and the landscape has a definite singed look to it, but apparently this will just mean rapid growth when it does rain.  You can almost see now a faint tinge of green in places as tiny shoots of grass are appearing here and there, and the township is beginning to look very pretty with the amount of blossom trees that are planted around.

I don't think my Sesotho vocabulary has improved very much, whilst my German ironically has thanks to my German friend Danny. It also appears that there are quite a few different handshakes around which are always good to know about. Upon racking my brain for other newfound cultural knowledge I can't come up with anything other than that in South Africa it's men before women (unless you are married to an English woman, then you learn the epithet of 'happy wife, happy life', or at least the benefits of a healthy balance).

As quite a few have been asking, here are some of the things I’m loving and hating about South Africa:

Loving:

Reliability of sunshine and heat everyday           

General friendliness of everyone you meet

Abundance of scrumptious places to eat out

Gorgeous walks nearby

Hating:

The size of hills and cycling up them

Lack of English chocolate

The effect of altitude on my baking!

Unreliable/unpredicatble postal service