Thanksgiving Blogging

Apparently, it is thanksgiving today.

It really snuck up on me this year more than ever. Primarily because I still haven't really got the whole theory down as to which week the holiday falls on each year. I know it's always a thursday in November, and I know it's always at the end of November. But I was always under the impression it was the *LAST* thursday in November, which would make it next week. Unless, of course the last day of the month is a thursday. Well in that case, my theory would be correct. But not this year. Actually, I've just been instructed by a friend-of-a-friend who happens to be an American living in Johannesburg, that it's always "the 4th Thursday in November". OK, that makes sense then.

At any rate it's hard to feel thanksgivingy when it's over a hundred degrees outside. But nevertheless we'll try and make an effort with our dinner tonight. Nothing planned yet but we'll see what we can do.

Back to Africa...

We were deathly ill last week. Lucky for us, it hit us on the same day and took us both the same amount of time to get over. Only had to take one day off work (it hit on a thursday), and after 3 days of torture and panic-stricken runs back to the toilet every 10 minutes, it was over. But the recovery period lasted a good week. Johannes reckons it was the sickest he'd ever been, with the exception of The Great Food Poisoning Debacle of '03, after our unlucky trip to the Galway Oyster Festival.

Here is a photo of my husband, incapacitated, on the couch:

Poor thing, he was in so much agony. This was about 3 hours before it hit me. I knew it was really bad when even he, the workaholic, wanted to leave the office an hour early that day. Not a good sign.

In other news, we have got vegetables.

I planted them this year.... about a million carrots basically. This is the first time I have personally propagated anything since I was in elementary school and we lived on Timber Trail. Thank goodness carrots are easy and don't require much effort, because it meant that I actually got some edible results!

These two got the award for looking the "most carrot-like". They're actually straight and normal looking.

This one gets 1st prize for looking the most retarded:

I also planted some red onions (we can't find them in the store here), leeks, coriander, chillies, cucumbers, eggplant, and watermelons.

I got one smallish cucumber that tasted like sawdust (?) out of the whole bed - the rest grew to about the size of my thumb and then shrivelled up and died.

The chili plants are only just now starting to poke through, so maybe they'll turn out, maybe not. The red onions are tiny - about the size of a tennis ball. They still taste like red onions however, so I can't complain. The watermelon vines are still growing, and I'm not even really sure where exactly I planted those eggplants, so I've kinda written those off.

Mary, on the other hand, is an amazing gardener.

Here is a photo of her tomatoes. Growing right next to my embarrassingly crooked and way-too-closely-spaced mess of a carrot patch:

Then there is her lovely bed of corn. She transplanted some of my watermelons in between the corn plants for me. Maybe that will give them a chance?

The long, snake-looking apparatus you can see at the back of this photo, is our grey water system. The dirty water from our sinks and baths goes all the way through the house and trickles into our garden through this +/- 30 metre long piece of pipe. We just alternate which bed it drains into, each day. And of course by "we", I mean "Mary".

I dream of someday having a garden from which I can grow everything that one needs to make hundreds of litres of homemade salsa, like my dad's. However, this year was the year I had to go through in order to learn that vegetable gardening in Botswana takes a lot of time and effort and next year I might start by:

a. spacing my crops at reasonable spaces/intervals, rather than throwing a whole packet of seeds into a trench that I dug using my right shoe

b. weeding regularly

c. shade cloth

d. asking around and finding out what succeeds if planted at which time of the year, first.

But nevertheless, I'm happy with my carrots and small red onions. I've never really been much of a carrot eater, but having about 40,000 of them is a good inspiration to start trying new things with them. Next up: carrots in chocolate-peanut butter sauce.

And finally, some photos of the nice, hot weather.

Johannes and Sech

Finally, the pool has been cleaned out and all ready to go for summer. Good thing, too, because summer started months ago!!

Work stuff (J1)

Besides our many trips into the bush, visits by friends, trips to South Africa, and other work avoiding activities, we are actually quite busy with our little business. We do not mention work related things too much, as it is too boring for this blog, but here a quick update of what projects we have kept ourselves busy with over the past months.

On our environmental side we have written environmental management reports for a new airport terminal building, for a new cigarette manufacturing facility and for a proposed office development. We have also written environmental impact assessments for a water treatment plant, an infrastructure development, and we are very busy with a new power line project.
Besides this we are doing environmental construction monitoring for an office development, and have done a household survey for a new village sanitation project, Jill is trying to finish the report for this at the moment.

Environmental Construction Monitoring - Our name is on there somewhere....

On the landscape side we are working on the design of a new health institute, the industrial court, an international school and changes to the president's residence. We have also just been awarded with a big recreational park project (70 hectares), which will have landscape and environmental sides.

There are loads of new projects upcoming, and we have tendered for quite a few new projects. From infrastructure to tourism, office developments etc etc. Just yesterday we had a meeting about a big environmentally controversial new project. On the one hand it would give us full time work for the whole of 2008, but on the other hand we are not sure we want to get publicity being involved in such a project. We will wait and see.

Bored yet? Other news is that our real estate agent from Ireland contacted us today, saying there is a potential buyer for our house. The whole landlord / renter thing is working quite well, but we will see what this buyer has to offer. More than likely some typical Irish developer who is not really serious about the whole thing. In the mean time we are looking at plots and houses over here, not sure how seriously, and how much a bank would be willing to loan us, so don't expect any big purchases soon.

J1

Khutse Pictures (J1)

Some might have seen these pictures already, as I pulled them straight from Steve and Madonna's blog, but here some pictures of our last Khutse trip. Jill told the story already.

Khutse gate

We travelled with a trailer this time, as we had 6 people + luggage. The good old Pajero behaved like a true hero taking all this extra load.

Wild dogs, right on the track


Gemsbok

Camp on our first night, a fire and a big braai of course

What are we looking at????

LION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A nice springbok

This is a very pretty picture, Gemsbok.

J1

All Alone Again...

Well, we got rid of the Australians finally!
(Just kidding!!)

Last week was really fun, particularly due to our aussie visitors. Steve & Madonna came to us fresh off their 3-month Euro-trip, so they were pretty beat and I suspect ready just to pack it all in finally and get HOME (to New South Wales)... but oh no, we did our best to delay them and wear them out further.

First we fetched them in Joburg, where we ate really good food, hung out with our common buddy Alan, and proceeded to blow up the engine in his car. Which really wasn't too much of a bother, as it wasn't fatal and for being "blown up" it seems to be rolling along pretty much perfectly at present... so the guys who fixed it must have been pretty good. From there we went on up to Pilanesburg in the North West Provence, for a bit of camping and game spotting IN THE RAIN. That was queer because I have never camped in the rain in africa in my whole time here, ever. Nonetheless I think they enjoyed it and Steve took some great photos. Maybe some of them will even make an appearance here on this blog, when I get a chance.

Next we spent some time here in Botswana. This included taking them around as well as letting them do their own thing (rhino tracking). The best thing about having these guys around was that they were big on the whole "chilling out" thing and were perfectly happy to sit in the sun and take in the view. Actually, Steve was even happy to help Hannes mix concrete and fix our cable trench. Not bad!

Then we went out to the bush for a couple days before they left. Jéan joined us because he's moving to Scotland this month and we wanted to have one last more African hoo-rah together, which turned out to be a lot of fun. Alan came along too, even though he's an old name around these parts by now. I know he was really excited to spend some time with the visitors. Good thing our rig sits 7 adults, and 6 comfortably. Riding with 6 was no problem at all, actually. We got a trailer for the back, and broke in our roof rack.

The camping experience was pretty much standard for the place that we always go... lots of different antelope species (although this was our first time seeing a herd of Eland - the biggest of them all), not to mention they were in full sprint, racing across the veld. This time we actually got a glimpse of lion (which we usually hear, but not see), and the usual giraffe and such. The biggest highlight for me I think was that we saw at least 6 Wild Dogs, within a mere 30 minutes of driving into the park. Really amazing.

Saturday night after our bellies were full of braai meat and beer, the lions came out and did their scary-roaring thing. All night long, in fact. Only this time one to the north of us (who sounded quite close) seemed to be conversing with his friend who was to the west of us, and proceeded to come closer and closer throughout the night. S&M got the roof tent, while the rest of us 4 stuck it out on the ground in macho-mode.

I will try to put some photos up soon. But for now it's time to go to the gym and then home.

Now we have the next month to plan for our Dutch visitors coming at Xmas.... although most of that planning is already done, so I guess we can just use November to relax and enjoy the back stoop and the puppies!