from Pretoria, SA
To make up for two months with no photos, I’m going to flood you with them! Now these aren’t the Christmas trip, but they’re a necessary prelude, and I’ll be posting the Christmas stuff as soon as possible!
I know that none of us wants a long and boring narrative about this pre-Christmas stuff, so I’ll just generally say that November included a trip down to the coast near Durban, plus lots of work in the office. Early December played host to a cricket match between India and South Africa, a trip out to an NGO called Ecolink in Mpumalanga, and again, lots and lots of work (many nights I left the office past midnight, and came in again at seven!).
Photos!!
CSIR’s East Gate, by our building; sunset as seen from my office window; an old broken-down bakery converted into a haphazard machinery yard and offices for one of the mainstays of the fight against minewater pollution
The aquarium/tourist trap in Durban (we didn’t pay to enter); Rob enjoying a snack during his birthday dinner out on the coast; our swimming beach at Southport, south of Durban
The solid wood (highly unusual here) coastal house kindly lent to us for the weekend by my supervisor; Nikki’s car (sweet ride!) from the deck; the ocean view; the suburbs north of Durban (un-African?); bizarre highway sighting at 120 kph: man with a motorcycle helmet riding what can only be described as the frame of a truck (I don’t know enough about trucks to know what was missing under the hood, or lack thereof)
The Rosebank market in Johannesburg on Sunday morning. Lots of crafts, curios, art, food, Christmas shopping.
To give you an idea of my normal day, this series is of my walk to work. Although I usually take my bike (an easy cruise down the hill in the morning, a bit tougher coming back), I had gotten a ride home the day before for some long-forgotten reason. Although I technically live on campus, I actually go out and around and come in a different gate to get to my building (walking is about half an hour). The highway running parallel to the closer road is the N1 to Johannesburg and is packed solid at rush hour. The petrol station in the second-to-last photo is very handy for junky refreshments at midnight while trying to finish research proposals.
Two of our co-workers took us to a cricket match between India and South Africa. It was extremely hot and we sat in the sun from 9am to 5pm, so plenty of sunscreen and hats were a necessity. The icecream was just for kicks.
We had a visitor from UBC in Canada arrive in early December to inspect the internship organisations and talk to the supervisors, so Rob and I accompanied her out to White River in Mpumalanga to meet with Rob’s supervisor at the NGO that she runs in her spare time. Ecolink runs all sorts of community projects, from HIV/AIDS awareness to water harvesting. These photos are from the Ecolink property near White River.
On our second day at Ecolink, we were taken out to a water project, where a European funder had provided a water pump and storage bins to provide water for irrigation, chickens, and drinking. The source was a tiny little stream originating at a murky little spring not far off, and it had been dammed with sandbags at some point, providing a water hole less than a foot deep. The pump kept clogging with mud, so the hole had to be dug deeper, and the dam was dismantled to allow more water to flow down to the pumping area.
Our day was capped off with a walk down through the Ecolink property, the mountains of Swaziland (or so we were told) in the background, accompanied by a couple of dogs owned by Sue Hart, founder of Ecolink, veterinary doctor, and children’s writer.
If you’re confused and have a question, that’s what comments are for!
Christmas trip stories and photos will come soon!! Very soon! Just busy at work is all.