Louis asked us to arrive elevenish, so we could settle before his pre-Aardklop braai started. Settling is easy in a house that feels like home; after a quick shower we were ready for Potch-pelle and braai-food. Oh these Sunday afternoons, floating away in good company and ditto food & wine! This tradition we should try to introduce in the Netherlands...
Than comes Monday, busy Monday. This one included: start of Aardklop (kunstefees, cultural festival), and heritage day. To start with the last: it's a South African public holiday, interpreted by some as 'nasionale braai-dag', cause that's what every citizen has in common. The idea was to have a small braai at Monika's, just Potch-friends. It ended up being a big do - what else can you expect when your son is very much part of the Aardklop-organisation?
Monika, Bram and Maud then rushed of to do the Kunste-safari. Our friend Richardt organized this 'visual arts'-tour, and tickets for us three. It's of course always fascinating to see a couple of expositions, and for us it has the extra dimension of doing that in a different culture we got to know and still don't know. That extra dimension we had by the way with all of Aardklop, and have with all of RSA.
Tuesday Bram and Monika got tickets for the one thing Bram was exceptionally interested in: Friends of the Malts. Imagine sitting in a classic university classroom, with 6 glasses of single malt before you, at noon - they were happy afterwards! Meanwhile Maud joined Anel to the 'stallekies'. Maud knows a comparison only for the Dutchies: combine a kermis, braderie en carnaval, take out the kermis-attractions and the carnaval-dress up, and there you have it. We were happy also: finally a chance to catch up, and strawberries & ice for lunch, and boekeparadijs (books paradise), and just browse around. After dinner (Anel's first quiches ever, an experiment worth repeating over and over again) at Anel's new house we fell asleep very content.
Wednesday morning we saw Die Generaal, a play by Mike van Graan: an impressive performance, especially sitting in between these white tannies, watching such a political play. (Tip for the Dutchies: Mike will be attached to the Appel-theater in Den Haag.) In the evening we cooked dinner, left a plate for Louis, imprisoned by work at home, and hopped over to Rich&Steve's to feed them two poor Aardklop-organizers. Bram has mixed feelings about this evening: it was nice, but also led to these guys giving Maud a mountain of music he doesn't like.
Our big event Thursday was Amand(l)a Strijdom singing the blues. Great! Afterwards Bram decided to tuck in early while Maud had a night out with the girls.
Friday we drove to Vanderbijlpark en Vereeniging to get more cloth. There's this concentration of shops owned by Indians selling textiles (the one market the Chinese didn't take over). Now we have everything to make our shades, curtains and couches. The couches are convertible to extra guests-beds, so feel welcome! Friday evening we should have gone to an apparently fabulous blues-band, but after a small stallekies-tour we were just too tired.
Saturday morning we had coffee with Anel's parents - meeting them you know where she inherited being such a good person. Interesting: most of our RSA-friends have parents slightly older than us, meaning they're much younger - how come? After doing a zillion 'leaving South Africa'-errands we caught up with Hettie (again the mom to our friend Gerhard), and than went to Rich&Steve's 'Aardklop is over'-party, a 'designers only' do. It was too nice to leave early, so we skipped the blues-band and a rock-festival. (Keuzestress:-)
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Sunday morning was again tear-drenched for leaving (Maud & Louis always babble about these party-dresses they're going to put on for saying bye but op die ou end they forget), but happy for going to Botswana.
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