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