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?'