avelog

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.

We’ve arrived back in Pretoria safe and sound following our African Christmas adventures. I’ll have some great stories and photos up sometime in the next few days, as soon as I find time between report writing, uni applications, and journal articles! I will also be trying to fix the things on this site that have broken (for instance, the google map).

I hope everyone is having a wonderful New Year.

I’ve been really really really busy the last while, but that’s really really no excuse for not posting… but this is:

I’m leaving this morning for Zambia! In about an hour in fact. And I just stayed up all night doing university stuff.

South African cell phone: +27 72 704 8631
We will pick up a Botswana sim card when we’re there.

Rob and I will be following this itinerary:

Dec 14th: Nationwide Airlines flight CE204, from Johannesburg to Livingstone
Dec 14th to 17th: Jollyboys Backpackers, Livingstone, Zambia (+260 3 324229), www.backpackzambia.com
Dec 17th to 20th: Okavango River Lodge, Maun, Botswana

Dec 20th to 23rd: Visit Shadrack at his place in Central Botswana
Dec 23rd to 29th: Unstructured travel, eventually ending up in Mozambique

Dec 29th to 30th: Fatima’s Place, Maputo, Mozambique (+258 21302994, +258 21303345), www.mozambiquebackpackers.com
Dec 30th to Jan 5th: Fatima’s Nest, Tofo, Mozambique (+258 21302994, +258 21303345), www.mozambiquebackpackers.com

Jan 5th to 6th: Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, South Africa
Jan 6th to 8th: Swaziland
Jan 8th: Return to Pretoria

Have a merry Christmas! I’ll have a ton of photos when I get back.

I’ve just uploaded a few photos from the past couple of weeks to show that I’m still alive. The first photos are from a costume/dress-up/ housewarming party that a colleague threw a couple of weekends ago. It’s just a little proof that us housemates are getting off-campus every once in a while.

Costume/housewarming party

I took some photos of a couple of interesting spiders that I found in our house (for all you spider-huggers out there, I took them outside and let them go). One of them was carrying a big egg sack, ready to burst forth with thousands of little baby spiders.

Spiders in glasses! (spiders in glasses… something for the Tickle Trunk shopping list)

The past weekend was our most lively since Kruger Park! Friday night was spent out at Hatfield Square, the students’ hangout, ringed with bars and clubs. Although it wasn’t the most sophisticated social scene, a few beers and good company helped to pass the evening enjoyably.

Beers at Hatfield Square!

Saturday dawned bright and clear, and the three housemates plus Nikki and her roommate headed into Joburg to spend the day at the Gold Reef City theme park. Although the place is advertised as being a good way to educate yourself about the gold mining history of this area (Joburg is essentially built on top of mines), the surface section of the theme park is essentially comprised of the usual assortment of theme park rides (ferris wheel, several roller coasters, log ride, river tubing experience, whirly-gig, pendulum boat, etc…) with a superficial layer of gold mining tackiness layered on top. They do offer tours of the old mine on which it’s built, but we decided that it would be much more worthwhile to take such a tour at a mine that wasn’t a theme park. It was all good fun though, and I even got a few photos on some of the rides (I really wanted to go back and get one on the roller coaster, but we ran out of time!). There were a fair number of school groups there, even a pre-school group, and definitely a smaller proportion of white people than in east-end Pretoria. All the kids and smiling faces simply added to the excitement and carnival feel.

Fun at Gold Reef City!

Around five o’clock the place shut down, and all the crowds made their way out the gate, exhausted but elated. As we were making our way to Nikki’s car, we passed a couple of minibus taxis that had their doors wide open and African popular music cranked up on decent stereo systems. The vans were rocking and the young men and women sitting in the back were in full dance mode! What followed can only be described as a spontaneous ten-minute parking lot dance party, with the teenaged boys most competitive with eachother. It was amazing to see this burst of colour and music bloom around us as we passed through. A few minutes later and everyone drifted off to their cars, taxis and buses.

Sunday was spent preparing a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner for our new friends from work. It was all generated and organized by Rob, on the basis that we should introduce South Africans to some Canadian customs. I cycled to the grocery store in the morning and spent two and a half hours trying to find some hard-to-come-by ingredients while Rob and Rebecca cooked and prepared salads. By the time six o’clock rolled around, we’d been so efficient that dinner had to be warmed up when people wanted to eat. The nine or so guests brough appetizers, wine (which we managed to finish before dinner), and desert, and we all dug in to a wonderful meal, prepared from an assortment of Canadian and American recipes. All in all a great success, and Rob is still eating the leftovers.

Turkey dinner!

On a random note, my bike’s having some serious issues and I think the seat may fall off before I can get my hands on some Allen keys. I also really really regret not bringing my hiking boots, as there are so many places to hike, and boots are the one thing you can’t borrow from someone!!!

I hope things aren’t too cold in Canada yet! I’m sure I’ll miss the snow for a minute (maybe two) this winter at some point.