family news

Col bagged himself a couple of new wives - they're really cool and they've been a massive help during my Widow Twankey Washerwoman week. 

So we're home. King Shaka International Airport was SHINY - shiny toilets, shiny luggage trolleys, shiny, glittery flooring - cool! We had a long, long day and a longer night but we got back to the UK at 5 am yesterday. I think drizzle and chilliness upon arrival home aids the grieving process - boo hooo. 

When we got back home there was a big welcome banner, a cake and even a meal ready in the fridge among other things - how lucky are we, thanks everyone and we can't wait to see you and we'll try not to bore your heads off.

The boys have just gone to school. They looked sort of wrong in uniform. I have been dreading coaxing them back into socks and shoes, they've loved running free and we all feel a bit glum about that. At the military museum last week they ran around the steam engine on an old war ship, clambering up nearly vertical iron steps and swinging on chains, walking across metal grill platforms, and there was not one notice up saying "Keep off this" or "Step away from that". don't get me wrong, it was not easy viewing as a mother - one child piggy backing another across an iron ledge above your head - but it was nice to have the choice! (By the way lots of the parts were supplied by Howdens in Wallsend so I sent my buddies in Tyne and Wear extra love that day.) 

Another thing that's really noticeable in SA is how the kids just run in and out of the traffic. They do it from the beginning and there's no pavements so I guess they just know what they're doing. One day on a long journey inland we saw 2 really tiny school boys walking to lessons and we stopped to take a photo and wave - then they RAN ACROSS the main road in their bare feet to chat through our car window! We were completely freaking out, I thought they were going to get mown down in front of us!! We had a funny chat with them though and gave them some biscuits. Imagine in England - we'd be thinking 'health and safety/stranger danger/peodophiles/allergies' all in one breath. Kids there, they just grow up quicker. In Lesotho our host told us little girls (always the women!) start carrying the water as soon as they can walk, and in the end they can carry 25 litres each. So how come English kids can't carry their own book bag back to the car after school?!

Well enough of this - I've got washing to do. Evie is very lonely today so I think I'll fulfill her dearest wish expressed on safari, "I hate being on holiday, I just wanna go home and watch Elmo's Christmas Countdown". Ha!! 

It's not over till it's over

It’s our last day and there’s a lot to do. So why did we stay up till silly o’ clock drinking wine and hanging out with our New Best Friends John and Susan who have lent us their flat? There’s a bit of me that wonders if we’ll ever get home. We heard Peyman and family didn’t fly out after all this week, but have been put back to the 10^th. I’m sure that won’t happen to us. But there are still a few hoops of fire to jump through and camouflage nets to crawl under – Durban opened its’ brand new airport today and we heard that even the staff don’t know where things are! So we’ll be one of their first passengers…. if we can find the airport in the first place of course. We haven’t got lost for two days straight now but it’s not easy. Did I mention Durban is in the process of changing all its’ road names? The old names are being changed to Zulu names, which are not on the map of course. Also there’s lots of road works and diversions because they’re sprucing up ready for the world cup. Anyway the plan is that we fly to Johannesburg tomorrow at 10.30, then we wait around at that airport until our elusive night flight at 8pm. That’s an awful lot of rounds of Snap.

We had a special meal today and I gave out certificates of bravery… eg. Evie conquered her fear of jellyfish stings, and took it on the chin when she toppled over and grabbed on to a tree trunk for support, but it turned out to be a huge cactus/ tree with spines sticking out of the trunk – ouch. Finlay has become a brave bodyboarder and at one point ate a tomato. Isaac conquered his fear of talking to people who he doesn’t understand easily, and swam in some deep water. Col rescued us from a frog in the house (in a jug with a towel on top – talk about fortitude) I could go on, but you get the picture.

We have had a blast – there’s many snapshots that come to mind as I write – the lady whose house had fallen on top of her in the night; Pete at the farm in Clarens, showing us his glass blowing in the dark, and then producing a baby elephant out of the flames, perfectly formed with tiny ears rippling back as if it were walking – we were enraptured, it’s a wonder we didn’t cause him to burn himself as we were a very interactive audience; the guy who said our accents sounded like Jamie Oliver; the crocodile man who’d had the shirt ripped off him; the couple who were refugees from The Conga, who’d just lost a sister in crossfire back home; the one armed man who sold us a hat at the Lesotho border; Obeking, the little boy who showed us around Dihlebeng School and, realising he was on to a good thing missing lessons, read out every single bit of work on the walls of every classroom, “OK, so this little girl, she says she’s learning about earthquakes, see?. .… and this little boy he says he is too…”; Gavin and the Clarens crowd around a mighty BBQ, cooking steaks the size of the cushions we put on garden chairs; the potato seller who laughed his head off when the tarpaulin roof gave way and soaked me to the skin with skanky water; the waiter who couldn’t hide his terror when we reported that there was a snake under the table; Gibson, the kids’ first little friend who put his arms around their shoulders and helped them settle in; the Zulu actor saying she didn’t think her suitor was up to scratch, “I no marry you, you is ug!”; Megan and Drew’s daughters tucked up all in a row across the bed, with Evie in the middle, not believing her luck; the kids way back at Bokletsa Bana who thought our white man’s noses were so hilarious because they’re so pointy. Heh heh! People, people everywhere - we’ve loved it.

They’re not like the people at home though – nothing can compete with that kind of quality! Which reminds me – HAPPY WEDDING DAY to the Knights!! X x x x x

hello from the hobo's

Did you know hobo is short for 'Homeward bound'? Which we most certainly are not. It seems that we are the last ones stranded - everyone else we have heard of has made it home. But we are trying to have fun, with almost 100% success! We moved into a flat on Sunday, kindly lent to us by a couple we’d never met. It's our 8^th bed of the trip (11^th if you count beds we have left and returned to! I worked this out on a long journey - sad I know.) To celebrate that it is our last bed, allegedly, I unpacked and hung everything up. Yey! We have slowly got the hang of Durban since, but we have got lost many many times too. I have made an effort to put the crime stories to the back of my mind, and anyway when you are among people who live here you just have to get on with it. So we have.

On Sunday we went to church and had lunch with Drew and Megan who were hosting Julian Adams – a bloke we have seen from afar and never met - who has a gift for bringing in the immediacy of God – well exciting. Our family had a series of mishaps throughout church, with Evie falling on to the corner of a metal screen just as it started. She had a yellow/green bump the size of a walnut on her head with a small nick on top. Eeeeeeew!! But by the time I picked her up from the kids club she was jumping up and down on the top of a climbing frame as if nothing had happened. Isaac was bleeding from both toes (football) and then Fin came to me bleeding from the back of a head (tree). It’s never dull. And it made sure everyone got to know us.

We met up with Peyman and Diane from Worthing yesterday at a water park. It was a cool place, really well designed eg. As you floated around the Easy River on a rubber ring, you’d float past the sharks in their tank from the aquarium. There was a water chute that used rubber boats that fitted our whole family inside so we whizzed down there with extra glee. So much fun. It was a bad day to be a muslim though – I felt sorry for the women completely covered up except their eyes, how boiling hot and bored they must have been. And even the guys going down the slides etc – in long trousers and tunics all clinging and wrinkled in the wet.

We have had some good chats with the kids in Durban because it is as if all the extremes we’ve seen round Africa are condensed in to one big melting pot, plus a few different populations thrown in too. At the traffic lights you get people begging at the car window – sometimes holding a baby or pointing to their disability. Our children say we should give them something, but if we did that every time we'd soon run out of money. We've talked about how poverty is very complicated. In Lesotho it seemed as if women were holding the whole show together. It's the women chopping wood, carrying stuff by the roadside, babies on their back, working all day then caring for the family. We met so many kids who were home alone for the day cos mum or aunty is working (even making bricks - so physically demanding). Where are the men? "Drinking" they'd say. (Or AWOL. Or dead. Or HIV+). It's a huge problem that we have just brushed alongside for a few weeks and observed, and I guess our children will have a very black and white view of it, like children do. There are many issues back home but they are more hidden than here, so we've concentrated our chats around what our response will be back in Worthing. Child 2's idea: "Get everyone to come to church then they will hear about love and nocturnal life*" Hmmmm, maybe...

*eternal life

it's not so bad

... and a semi circle

We've made the 4 or 5 drive back to Durban after all! In the end our car hire has ended up dictating our time here, as the latest figure we were quoted turned out to be missing a zero off the end - well almost. So we had to leave leafy Clarens and come back here to get the car back to the airport and pick up a smaller model. Hopefully that is the last big drive we'll do for a long, long time. (Although the times tables are sounding more solid!)

Great to hear my mate Becky is back on English turf and that Debbie is enjoying free entry at Sea World! It's such a funny time I can't wait to swap stories. It sounds fab but it's also a pressure. Our children are totally disorientated - they don't know what day of the week it is or where they are, and we've had some odd conversations about what's happening, "Well we don't exactly know, but we might go to X's house, you know the one with the 2 big dogs... no, not those dogs, the one who had the little girl... no not that little girl, she lives by the sea, no the one who lives in Lesotho, whose dad had a hairy jumper"

For us it's been a bit of a roller coaster - hopes dashed then a great result, then a sudden change, then a BINGO moment. We had two great things in one afternoon today though - the hire company waived a fee (at last, some mercy!!) and we arrived at Drew and Megan's again without knowing quite where we were staying and it turns out we're staying here the weekend - Sing Hosannas! Kids are running around (7 of them altogether) with spears, Col's playing table tennis and later on we're crashing in on their friends' evening - chilli and DVD's. On Sunday we're moving in to somebody's flat. It's weird to feel so vulnerable but every small kindness feels magnified when you are. I've lost count of the times this trip when I've said to someone 'we'd love to return the favour one day'.

So the immediate future's bright. The sun is out. We're all well. There's a craft market on Saturdays!!

Busy doing nothing, working the whole day through

It's been lovely to hear from folks these last few days as we feel far from home. Harold and Betty phoned me from their summer house in Lancing - hurray! We are so disappointed to miss Luke and Ellie's wedding and we want full reports on it, especially the best man's speech.

We are doing OK over here, we've had a change in pace to say the least, not like all the squeezing in of holiday activity during last week. We were a bit weary yesterday after more travelling and the endless sorting out of stuff. The day passed easily - I did a ton of washing and the children were scrubbed - a bit like sheep lining up at the sheep dip. They emerged looking shiny and much less tanned. Evie was the most dramatically transformed, from Stig of the Dump to Pocohontas' exotic little sister. We went out to try and sort out the car (still ongoing) and by the time we came back all the washing outside was damp again - agh!! It seems night falls very quickly here and also Autumn is in full swing. Maybe I shouldn't have given quite as many clothes away when we were in Maseru. . .

Clarens feels very much like home to us and as I've been wandering it's easy to chat as we have a story as to why we're here. There are shops that remind me a bit of the shop in The Waltons, and there are many many dogs that we now count as close friends. The best way to describe it is to liken it to Arundel, in terms of scale and quiantness. It is set amongst the mountains in the Dihlabeng region of the Free State. It is a hub of artistic interest, with more art galleries than you could shake a stick at. It's the kind of place where you could buy something incredibly beautiful to hang on your wall, or something ingenious from a self-assembled craft stall, but you'd struggle to buy a pair of trainers or a cheese grater. It also has the amazing church which I described when we first arrived here - a community which has people coming and going from all over the world. Why here, in the middle of nowhere? Because of people with vision and faith - it's fascinating really. One gets so frustrated with the town planners of Worthing, but I won't start harping on about that now. (One day though!) This church has actualised much that we are hoping to do in our church and local community back home, so we have a strong link with the people here.

Today the kiddiwinks and I went for a walk and shared a chelsea bun, then posted Nanny's 70th birthday card (sorry to miss that too!) which of course was sent by airmail (!?). On the way back I concluded that adults and children are not designed to be together 24/7 like this for longer than 3 weeks. We spent ages looking for a dropped Lego trophy which is helpfully shaped and coloured like a rolled-up autumn leaf. Then Evie said to me, "Mum... our heads are like marbles aren't they? Just really massive big marbles....". Meanwhile I discovered that one boy had drawn on the other's chest before coming out, and that they had invented alter egos which involved extra shouting in the name of being rappers. Ho hum..

I sought out some adult company later on, and, more importantly, borrowed some DVD's!! Result. The kids are doing a bit of work too, mostly intensive times tables and art. The daughter of our absent hosts has an art book which we are using - how handy is that - and we're surrounded by inspiration, not least her art which is stunning. I'll ask permission to put some on here when I get home (when the dust settles - arf arf)