I spent two glorious days in Tzaneen with Maggie and Peter at their Avocado plantation. Tzaneen is absolutely gorgeous as well as the Plantation. I spent two days following Maggie around learning about gardening, compost, wormeries and seeing what life is like in the area. Fascinating! I learned so much and I hope Maggie would be proud to know that i got a small wormery set up and the compost is on the way. We also spent plenty of time in the kitchen making homemade pasta, and hot fudge sauce for dessert. The plantation was so peaceful and offered a break from everything, not to mention it is always wonderful to have a hot shower.
I then headed to Skororo to visit Wendy and help her with a world map project. 15 girls from Rodean School in Joberg came out to the area for 5 days to do service projects with the kids from the many Phedisang OVC centres. I didn’t know what to expect but ended up having an amazing time. I was so impressed by the girls. They were compassionate, mature and knowledgeable and had a desire to soak everything up. The experience was profound and I could see a marked change in them when they left. Rebecca, Nicola and Ayanda were the three girls that I helped with the world map. With a little ingenuity and lots of hard work we managed to complete it in time. Thanks Wendy for the amazing opportunity!
Travelling home proved to be quite insane. There weren’t very many people at the taxi rank (come to find out it was due to the strike). I waited and waited for the taxi to fill up and an hour later was still the only one there. The driver came around to me and told me I should hitchhike (‘no thanks!’). Out of desperation I offered to pay him a few extra Rand to take me the 20 miles, he agreed but then 10 minutes into the ride reneged the offer and left me stranded at a cross road and told me to hike. Finally another taxi came along and I was able to make it home. Whew!
I came home to find that things had indeed been affected by the strike. The water had been out since Thursday (I got home on Tuesday of last week). Themby has several gallons of water stored up for exactly this situation but we started to run low the other day. I finally got a friend to come with his pickup and he took the bottles and filled them for us. So now we have enough to last a few more days. The strike is in its third week now. Pretty crazy.
Last night the transformer by our house blew up, so now I’ve no running water (in the yard) and no electricity. No worries, I’m coping and I swear I don’t stink. Lol
On Sunday, some fellow PCV’S came over for Mexican food and Chocolate Ganache cake. It’s always so nice to spend time with them.
WOW! What an experience :)
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