My Year of Meaningful (2011)

I have been rather uninspired to blog lately, and yet I'm busy enough that there's lots of things going on that probably deserve to be written about for my own journaling sake, I just need more motivation (or time)!

First of all the annual Queen's Day party spread put on by the dutchie embassy was last night and it was pretty fun, except for the fact it was a reminder that all our friends have flown the coop. Normally all 3 of our MIA BFFs would've been there - Ubs b/c her FIL is dutch, and P & G because they are the dutch. I'm feeling really annoyed and sad these days about the fact that our social life has basically just about vaporized since the new year, because of this. Like we were thinking, when Soo & Mx had to back out of our Easter trip, we would have probably only had 2 other friends that we actually like well enough to invite them to go instead, here. And of course they couldn't get the time off work, but still it makes me think... why am I spending my young adulthood in a place where I have no buddies?!?!? G-city is really like a small country town when it comes right down to it, and it's hard to think optimistically about finding like-minded people our age to hang with, particularly when it's such a transient society and everyone's coming and going with the wind, on their UNDP contracts or their Peace Corps training sessions or their World Bank grants, etc.

Anyway I was just lecturing Brandon on the importance of being positive the other night, so I'm whipping myself into "chin up, kid" mode and have resolved to just press on with optimism. Taking a page out of my own book, as it were. Replacing the negatives with positives, etc. This coming Saturday I invited Soo & Mx over for dinner, they haven't seen the new place yet and we need to bond because I gotta look after my slowly dwindling peeps. Pro-active, that's me.

Tonight we have the Annual General Meeting of the Animal Peeps Society, which could turn into a kerfuffle with a dash of uproar and a sprinkling of aggro, but I'll be interested to see exactly what happens. Elections will be held, grievances will be aired, disgruntleds will be grunted. Watch this space. All I know for certain is that The Mr. is not going to stand for Treasurer again, but we're probably both going to be on the committee another year. Then THAT'S IT. Fer real. One more year.

I'm enjoying Twitter. I joined up because of Brandon and came on totally green - didn't even know what the hell he was talking about. But it's grown on me. Not because I'm obsessed with telling the world all my ego-ridden deep and meaningful thoughts every 10 minutes (tweeting), but because I like seeing all the tweet roll of all the people I'm following throughout the day. All my favourite sports teams' notifications, the 2nd love-of-my-life Jeffery Donovan (aka Michael Westen from Burn Notice), and of course my mates. It makes me feel like I'm in a society of friends again. Ahhhhh human contact - and I don't have to scroll down 20 pages of FB news feed to see what my few twitter friends are doing, nor surf the web to find out if the Cardinals actually beat the Cubs...

This weekend we put in some hours manning the Animal Peeps booth at the mall and adopted out a few pups, cooked some nice dinners, went on a big hike up the mountain we live on, and logged some good hours at the gym. It was all rather relaxing and nice to finally have a 2nd weekend at home. Working a lot with the new big pup J., and he's getting to be a really good boy. We nearly have the difference between "sit" and "lay down" nailed. Onward!

Labels: animal peeps, mis amigos

... ugh, I hate writing accounts of my rendezvouses with the great african bush, but I'll try and do it in 100 words or less:

the last 1/2 of the easter trip was great. we continued to eat and drink well, and drive around and read and watch the sun set and the moon rise and all that stuff. I worked on my animal track identification and can now pretty much 90% tell you a brown hyena's tracks from a spotted one. And lion from leopard and all that rot.

ok is that enough?

oh wait, and we blew a tire coming home somewhere along the cut line we followed from the Kgalagadi to Khokhotsha.

Pictures were taken, they're all on FB, yadda yadda yadda.

Right now I'm in a foul mood because I'm supposed to be writing my assignment plan for my course, and it's due tomorrow and I'm having a hard time keeping my mind on my research. I mean who cares about this crap, really? I mean, latest developments in energy law and policy MY ASS. Sooooooooo not interested.

But alas I press on.

I miss my friends. :'(

P. keeps writing me from the Netherlands and making me realize all my BFFs here are well and truely gone. Have moved on. Doing great things with themselves. -sigh-

BUT! The autumn has come to G-city and it is beautiful. I love this time of year here, and it comes on so suddenly (Botswana is a land of very few slow-transitions. It's all very black & white, weather wise). I love it love it love it. And I love FINALLY being at home once in awhile, enjoying our new place, and particularly enjoying it on the weekends... I mean when was the last weekend we were actually HOME ALONE?! Even now as I write that, we've only had one, and it was this past weekend.

It's confusing when all of my Northern Hemisphere friends keep carrying on about spring... I want to carry on about autumn and how awesome it is, but it just feels wrong somehow, as everyone on twitter and the FB and blogs and whatwhatwhat is talking crocus and flower buds and green grass and long days... whereas here I am sitting in the orange and yellow Mophane trees and early darkness and pumpkins. Eish!

Labels: BW-general, camping, house

...im just waiting for something to come out of the oven so thought i'd hitch up the old blog wagon for just a sec.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona... What a movie!!! Loved it so much. Oh the volumes I could write about all those characters. But this is an iPhone and this is a touchscreen keypad from hell. Let me just say Well Done, Woody. VERY well done. And at least Javier B. has now got his redemption in my eyes anyway as I'm still pissed at him for even being within an ugly stick's length of that damn No Country For Old Crap.

(this was written several days before hitting "publish"... For obvious reasons. Part II still to come!)

I'm sitting here waiting for the boys to grt back from the dude with the welder, it's 8am on Easter sunday, and Im all alone for miles and miles... So I thought I might as well give the mighty iPhone its firdt workout in half a week by starting a blog post- even tho there aint no reception for daaaays.

Right so it's been full of surprises so far, here at halfway. This always happens in the bush on long trips... I dont know why we always act so surprised. Murphy's Law indeed.

Day 1 we made it to Jill's farm in Tsa-town, by way ofa yummy fried chicken stop at "the lick". We pitched our tents in one of her old goat kraals and used town as our last stocking point- clean water, cookies for smores, diesel, beers, etc. And played non-stop with her new puppy. Toooo cute. Next morning we loaded up a buttload of firewood (not allowed to collect it in the park) to the point our roof rack bowed big time under the weight of it. Not a brilliant move, boys.

About 30 minutes down the sand track to Mabua, the thing started shifting, and for the next 4 hrs it was a cat and mouse game of stop, pick upthe pieces that had come flying off, and shove another "Getaway" magazine in the ever-growing space between the fast-bending brackets and the rim around the roof that it was SUPPOSED to be buckled to.

We limped to the park gate like this and figured it'd be fine if we could just make it to our first campsite-100km away...in deep sand...with severe corrugation... At about 10km per hour at this rate... But hey we had all day and dammit we needed that wood!! So we made lunch by a salt pan 10km in, and pushed on. Long story short, about 50km away from our intended campsite, the bad track takes its toll on the laege plate supporting the rear axle. Snapped right in 2 with a huge BANG. A thousand miles from nowhere in the middle of the desert. Plus when we get out to check... There's a spare tire missing from the back door where The Mr. had rigged it up- you always need 2 spares in the bush. Yeah this is not good- not only is that tire over 1500 bucks, if the drive shaft goes now, in this state of affairs as the truck is in, we could rip a wheel right off the bottom of the vehicle. Now that would be sime pickle. And the sun is going down. And the campsite is still 50km away at 10km per hour, and even that campsite is only a tree with a sign... No people, no help... and still a further 95km away from the next park gate with a POSSIBLE satellite phone or people in general- like other campers who just might moonlight as bush mechanics(?!?!) And even that gate is STILL oh a good 80 km from a small South African town where there MIGHT be a real mechanic.

Anyway. Our heroes, The Mr. and Alan, get under the truck and diagnose the problem and tru their best to jerry-rig up a temporary solution, but after a lonnnnng delib-session, we decide rhe safest thing to do is limp it back to the nearest campsite we can make it to (about 20km behind us), pray no one is there already (a big ask considering this park is BOOKED OUT solid,for easter, half a year in advance - but its only thurs, so there may be hope), spend the night, maybe the boys can rig up something better in the daylight, MacGuyver-style, with a toothpick and a piece of bacon, and then limp it back to the main gate we just came in today, and pray one of the rangers has a welding kit. If not, itll just have to be a 10kmph drive, the whole way back to Tsa-town... All 110km of trecherous sand track.

So, 20km and nearly 2hrs later, we've commandeered someone's campsite at B-pan, luckily it was empty... There's only 2 sites at that pan- if it had been occupied it wouldve been rough-camping under a tree or something for us. Actually it was a beautiful site, overlooking the pan. Irony is, THIS is the exact site we're booked in for, for the last 2 nights of our trip! A nica preview anyway. I made a positively delicious rich lamb neck stew with red wine and garlic rolls while the boys stared into the fire and stressed out. Coming to termswith the fact it was highly likely our itenerary was changing and there was no way we were getting all the way to where we were supposed to be for the majority of tha trip (>200km to the west) and with all the other sites in the park all booked out for easter... Well, WTF are we gonna do??

Day 3 saw these guys up at the crack of a sparrow's fart and under the rig. I kept sleeping, even with them banging and thumping my digs around. Later i gave up the idea of vacation sleep and instead made an amazing pot of percolated Jamaican blend coffee and aniseed biscuit with museli and fresh fruit. I watched some great birds and practiced my spoor-identification in the sand around our camp. There was lion, hyena, jackal (not sure what kind), hare, millipede, and a dozen different kinds of antelope.

Around 11 they said they had something feasible organized for The Great Limp 2009 trek to begin. It involved a yellow luggage strap and I think either a piece of rubber or part of the cover to my roof tent. I dunno. Not asking. I notice that &$@! piece of crap roof rack has been smashed to pieces and is now in a heap by the trash bin. So is the firewood. Now with no rack on top, but with projected speeds of nothing over 10kmph, they say we'll just throw 2 days worth of wood up on top of the tent and itll be fine and wont fall off.

We drive allllllll the way back to the gate, and HOURS later we're there. I must say at that speed its much easier tolook thru binoculars. Anyway.

So, ranger at the gate says yeah theres a welder un the park, but at the northern gate, about oh, half a days drive away, but his maintenance man is there now and coming back tonight, so he'll just radio him to bring it with. In the meantime, try campsite No. 2 or 3, right by the gate, maybe no one will be there tonight b/c nobody likes that one. (Well, it is RIGHT next to the gate) So halleluja and jubilation, we might get welded tomorrow!!! To celebrate we unpack at No. 3, break out the sundowners and I'm just organizing the hors d'ouvres of cheeses and Kalamata Mission olives and a smoked tapenade and chutney... when the rightful owners of No. 3 drive in. Naturally. Luckily they're nice people and feel bad for us so they offer to go share No. 2 with the people who're already there- its a much bigger site.. This is funny b/c this had already happened to us at No. 2.... An hour earlier they had driven in as we were setting up on their turf and we had sheepishly excused ourselves to No. 3. Oops. Again. I feel bad... I normally hate campsite hijackers. Bitch, book your site and stay there!!! This aint a first-come-first-choice system, yo!

So after a phenomenal lamb chop and boerwors braai and a gastronomic experiment that resulted in probably the best dessert ever (which we christened the "Podgey Pie", after our bff in Ireland) we sat and enjoyed a brandy under the full moon at our hijacked campsite and hoped that the weldind machine was safe in a park vehicle somewhere on its way between here and Hukuntsi.

Day 4-
It wasnt.
Fast forward thru this day bc it was basically just a bunch of sitting around in the shade, reading.... DAMN we all got some reading done... watcing birds, eating, drinking, washing up (luckily there was water at the gate, so we didnt have to dip into our rations), and I taught Alan how to bake a bread in a pot in a hole in the ground. Ironic cinsidering I dont even bake bread in the kitchen. So at least we had a nice slice of fresh raisin bread with butter for our afternoon coffee.

As far as dude at the gate knew, mechanic dude HAD left Hukuntsi with the welder the night before. Maybe he just stopped off to see some family or check in on his cattle post on the way back?

Just stay at No. 2 tonight, bc SURELY no one will be there (and no, the gate rangers have NO idea which sites in the park are booked. Naturally)

Well we werent going to sit around and waste the sunset again and the beautiful park. So we CRAWLED at 5kmph to the nearest water hole for sundowners and sat and looked over M-pan and watched some Kori Bustards and springbok and oryx out on the pan, took some photos, saw a full puff adder, drank some lovely icy cider, and did a (slow) night drive back to No. 2. Saw lots of nightjars and coursers and no one was there waiting to give us an angry beat down! Yea! In fact not only was there no one at 2, no one was at 3 either...so we COULD'VE just stayed put from the night before!! But no bother... the welder cimes tomorrow... surely he comes tomorrow.

So I whip up a quick and easy pasta with a red wine chili and garlic sauce, we crack open a good bottle of Shiraz, enjoy the giant moon, tha owls, and Alan makes more Podgey Pies. This time we wxperimented with a variation entitled: "Podgey Pie Goes to Wimbledon". Divine. There is a new addiction in town and it aint pretty. There will be kilos gained. Lots of them.

Which brings me to today- Day 5. Maitenance dude shook us out of our tents bright and early this morning, and the boys went up to the gate to see if something could be fixed.

If so, itll be one more night of campsite hijacking (hopefully somewhere else actually NICE in the park, we'll see) til our booked nights at B-pan kick in tomorrow, and we can finish this trip on schedule. Really then the only negative thing to come out of all this is that we missed our 4 nights in the west, but really is that such a big deal? 2 nights of that wouldve been at a site with just a tree- no pit latrine, in other words...DIY, i.e. "Dig It Yourself". In the meantime we had water nearby, here, instead. Bonus!! And anyway we're still camping in the bush, chilling out, reading, seeing stuff, and most importantly, eating like badasses!
-----------

Recipe for podgey pie:
Peanut butter, chocolate, marshmallow, melted between bread in a campfire pie iron. For Wimbledon vers., use Tennis biscuts instead of bread... They're coconut wafers, basically.

WOO HOO! Only a 2-day work week for me this week.

And boy howdy do I deserve it, having just finished my DEADLINE EXTRAORDINAIRE last week. I dumped my ginormous 380 page EIA document on the desk of the client, happily, the week before everyone will be pissing off for easter... HA! So that buys me a bunch of time while he attempts to get himself (and his 5 or whatever bosses) to read every word and review it... (over easter? yeah RIGHT!) and I can carry on with my trip and wash my hands clean of it at least til I get back and he's finished with his review.

OK! So I have other things weighing on my mind, but now they're not so big and bad (yea!).

1. Menu Planning
2. Water and diesel planning/logistics (middle of the Kgalagadi = no shops or fuel)
3. Packing
4. How to feed our buddy Alan for 7 days when he eats the equivalent of his body weight at every meal
5. Writing notes for Eric (housesitter)
6. The Animal Peeps Annual General Meeting where a bunch of rich old white ladies are going to attempt a coup and try to overthrow our existing committee (yes! it's insanity!)
7. The fact that I have to turn in THREE assignment plans when we get back from the bush, and I haven't yet started them.
8. The Namibia Project (more on this later)

As far as menus go, I see it like this: We've got 6 dinners to deal with, 7 lunches, and about the same amount of breakfasts. AND I don't want to gain any weight, AND space in the truck fridge is a VERY precious commodity, as it only runs when we're driving, so freezing will not *really* be an option, although certain meats stay frozen longer than others, etc. (the answer there, is, by the by, that you eat all your tinned foods towards the end of the week, and all your fresh foods at the beginning. It's not rocket science, but still, there's planning involved)

Anyway, my 6 dinners:

1. Braai
2. Lamb neck potjie stew
3. Potjie chilli & bread in a pot
4. Broccoli & rice potjie casserole w/ bacon
5. tuna pasta
6. spaghetti

Lunches =

Toasted sandwiches in my campfire sandwich toaster, hotdogs, beans, etc

Breakfasts =

rusks, coffee, ziploc bag omelets, cereal, maybe pancakes (depending on how long the eggs last)

OK enough blogging for now.

I may be the bane of my FILs existence, he may resent me for the fact that his eldest has flown the proverbial Cow Coop, he may blame me for brainwashing his potential legacy-propagating offspring, but...

oddly enough, the one and only time he actually directs any conversation - and I mean ANY conversation (grrrr) - my way, is when he has a "smart question" that he wants answered. I mean it's so bizarre. He would never, EVER ask my opinion on anything that he's loudly pontificating on, he would never ask an interested question about my background, interests, etc., and God forbid he would ever ask for any input into whatever it is he's boasting/bragging/lecturing about. BUT! Let's say the topic is "The Middle East", "Religious History", "Current Events in Eastern Europe", etc... and all of a sudden it's: "So... do YOU know the answer to this?"

e.g.:

FIL: "there was a very large ex prime minister of Israel, oh, let's say 5 years ago, and he was struck with a dramatic illness and went into a coma for a very long time before his death.... (head whips around toward my direction and eyes go big and inquisition-y) do YOU know who that man was?"

ME: (thinks hard, nearly goes bust, but pulls it out at the last second)... Ariel Sharon!

earlier...

FIL: "Mormons and Amish aren't the same. They are similar religions, I think, but.... (whip, eyes, etc) do YOU know what the differences are????"

ME: "actually yes. blah blah LDS stuff Joseph Smith, exile from Missouri, polygamy laws, doctrine change, breakaway sects, American religion etc... amish stuff, shunning, baptisty-baptism, Swiss-german religion, etc etc (basically not even close to the same thing as Mormonism), etc."

FIL: "Zebras. Always look fat. GO!"
ME: "Gas. Stomachs. Not like cows. Only 1. Grass is all they eat. Lacking ruminant qualities of a cow's stomachs which digests the stuff better. Permanent bloat. Even a starving zebra = fat."

or, just continentally...

FIL: Number of people with AIDS in Africa!
ME: 25 million!
FIL: Number of people in Africa!
ME: 900 million!
FIL: Most populous country in Africa!
ME: Nigeria at 125 mill!
FIL: Ex Portuguese colonies within Southern Africa that today still speak Portuguese!
ME: Angola and Mozambique!

gah!
I can't figure out if he's trying to set me up, trap me, expose me for the stupid idiot he thinks I am, or if he really actually believes that I know more about stuff than I'm letting on (by sitting quietly and not disrupting his constant soliloquies, ALL.THE.TIME) and wants to test the depth of the waters... or maybe he just thinks I have a well-read brain that retains stuff??? I have no idea. But it's almost slightly eerie.