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.