My Men

Who is lazy, who has the backache?

The other Boy

Here's another one for Joost & Cristina: Tom Uyapo. Although nowadays his name is Nyaa or No. He definitely knows what he wants - and what he doesn't want. He wants to race his black bike down the hill, climb in and on everything, walk along edges - in fact, if it's a no-no, he wants it. It is of course impossible to be angry with the cutest boy you've ever seen...

Furniture

Our original plan was to buy whatever we need furniture-wise at Camphill. This carpentry started as a project to train and employ physically handicapped people. The designs are still as nice as they used to be years ago, but after buying our bed we discovered the workmanship has decreased tremendously.
So we checked out the carpentry brigade. Like so many other brigades (a 'learn while working' type of vocational training) there's not much going on anymore.
We decided to look at the big range of Fongkong furniture after all - and saw that would be our one-way ticket to disaster. After only one of Maud's cleaning-sprees this cardboard stuff will fall apart.
Now we have to be true to our reputation as Dutch people and make everything ourselves. We proudly present our first: a combination of couches & guest-beds, with handy drawers underneath. Almost finished, because the finishing touch will be 11 more Indian-style embroidered cushion-covers, and the production of a blue variation.
As Bram says it looks like yacht-furniture, which again is very Dutch, and practical in this small house. The only setback is that we keep explaining to people this is not what we do for a living, design & produce furniture & textiles.

Suffering in the bush

After some braai-less weeks barbies again dominated last weekend.
Saturday Tears & Andre invited their Tanzanian friends and us. As a pre-dinner treat Andre took us around the golf course where they live, in their new cross-country, off the road cart. Meanwhile Tears prepared a great Kalanga okra-dish, a beautiful bream for Maud, and of course pap.
When it comes to braais, things are exactly the same as in the Netherlands: it's a men-thing. So later on Andre had to sweat over the lamb, chicken and, for the non-Muslims, spareribs.


Sunday Pelo & Jeff practiced for the big event next week, Yvonne's graduation party, by throwing a braai. While the girls prepared their salads and pap, we elderly women sipped our drinks and watched the miracle. Men that probably never enter a kitchen except for getting something from the fridge suddenly are chefs when it comes to an outside fire and meat.


Usually they gather around the braai-stand to debate the perfect method. But not when it's Jeff's braai: his superiority when it comes to meat goes without question. So like good little boys they just watched the master in awe.

Village-life

Almost every evening we sit on our stoep, under the pitch-dark, star-filled African sky, plates on our lap, and have dinner while listening to the Wereldomroep-hour. Although Hille's World Services were so much better, sitting outside enjoying the starry African nights is still great.
This morning Bashi brought seeds: the rough butternut from the lands, and something he thinks we call watermelon. He's seen Maud adding spinach and beans to the tomatoes he planted for us, and a growing collection of empty milk-cartons with seed-projects. He helped Bram to build a shade for the spinach-seedlings. Now Maud is all excited because after the successful sprouting of her mom's kouseband she can have a go at the seeds from Bashi's mom.
Bram gave some circular pieces of wood with a hole in the middle to the new neighbour-kids. Yesterday the bigger of the two boys came to proudly show off his van with real wheels. We hope this compensates them for the disappointment their empirical study of the two mekgowa must have been. The first week they studied all our movements in the yard. We water the vegetables, let our washing dry, do some carpentry, empty a plate of food - just the same boring stuff their adults do.


Summer brings a flood of annoying or even creepy gogga's (general name for irritating insects). It also brings the endearing geckos in and around the house, the stunningly coloured lizards sunbathing on the walls, and the beautiful birds all over the yard.


There's a big psychological gap between The City and The Village. City-people keep saying 'Don't come to the office, come to my house around six so we can hang out after doing business', 'Let's start up the Dutch Friday nights at Buddha Bar again', 'Hop over next Saturday, I'll be home' - like Gabs is around the corner (actually it is only 15 k's to the outskirts). But when we say just hop over to our house than, they have this 'Jessis, Morwa, that's the land of far, far away, deep into the bush'-look.
It's funny how distance is more about perception than about actual physical distance! City-people just feel Morwa is remote, no matter how close it is. If they visit, they'll probably drive a 4x4 (except for Andre, he'll come in his speckles white city-Merc because he knows better). They wonder how we survive this isolation, and ask 'but what do you do when you're there?'

Zim's

Here're the kids from our newly found electrician for the car. He's one of the relatively lucky Zimbabweans in Botswana, having skills people need, his family staying with him, and a house (although it's falling apart because it's next to the railway). As Zimbabwe falls apart, more and more people cross the Botswana- and South African borders. Far more than the Botswana- and RSA economy can absorb.
You can imagine the problems that causes: crime, illegal refugee-camps in the bush, houses declared not fit to live in packed with illegals in Joburg. Last year some of those houses burned down (no electricity, so everything is done with paraffin equipment), without any escape for the inhabitants.
At first, years ago, Zimbabweans had good chances in Botswana. Due to their excellent education you still see that many of the good mechanics, chefs, printers, etc are Zimbabwean, like our friend Hardy, the designer & screen printer at Mochudi Museum, and our new car-electrician. But now there're just too many, and many of them don't have skills.
Their desperate situation hurts of course them, but also the Batswana and the South Africans, especially the poor ones. Crime hurts everybody, but the poor people are the ones pushed out of their jobs because an illegal Zim will do the work for a quarter to half of the money. Money that wasn't much to start with; it's the 50 to 200 euro a month jobs that get done for a fraction of the salary now. Often it doesn't pay to exploit illegals like that, because a lot of stuff 'disappears', or you get lousy workmanship and have to redo everything with a traceable local guy.
As I'm writing this, the dogs go crazy. There must be goats or cows to close to the fence, or an unknown visitor. It's mister Tshuma, the elderly Zimbabwean who did most of the stonework around the house. It's really an art, this building of terraces and walls out of natural rock. We already worried about him when he didn't turn up anymore last March, but he's around again, he says, living 'somewhere behind that hill'. Next to being a good stoneworker he knows a lot about fauna (he helped treat the puppies last year) and flora. So we checked out the vegetable pad and the seed projects together, and he came up with a good plan for the poor misplaced Passion Flower. Now I learned it's nice to make a shade out of it, because the snakes avoid contact with Passion Flower.
A lot of Europeans will lean back and say: 'Yeah, but those SADC-leaders, especially Mbeki, always support Mugabe if push comes to shove.' It's okay to be critical, but don't shout too loud if you come from a country that still has an embassy in Harare big enough to service neighbouring countries. Or knowing that the UN doesn't acknowledge the refugee-camp in de north of Botswana has to be properly serviced - for the refugees and to protect the local people from harassment. Or one of the many other ors.

Bua Setswana!

Bashi and the daughter to his aunt in front of Hille's house.

The words for family-members are one of the many things you can't translate directly from Setswana into Western-European languages. So people will use a word or phrase they think comes close. This girl is for sure closely related to Bashi, because her mother (or grandmother, or elder sister, or etc) has the plot next to Bashi's mother, who in turn has the grandmother for a neighbour.
There also is no 'he' and 'she' in Setswana. If I understood right, there is a word for 'child from the same mother of the opposite sex as I am', so the word a woman uses for her brother is the same word a man uses for his sister.
All in one: it's very hard for us to master Setswana! Imagine the confusion in the beginning because there is one word for hearing, smelling and feeling. So Bashi will say he can hear the septic tank when he is walking over the hill towards our house, meaning it's smelly and must be repaired. Luckily the prevailing wind blows the smell away form the house!

Big Boy!

This one is especially for Joost & Cristina, as they met him last year: look how Edu Zachary has grown! He mastered the Bram-word beautifully: 'Brrrrrrrrrrammm', and he's running around like a racing horse. Although sometimes he acts more like caveman, since he stayed with Tom for a week...
We didn't see Tom Umpayo yet, but word is out he's a very sweet boy who only wants to be hugged by everybody (Jeff) and/or a strong-minded guy who wants things to go his way (his dad).