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