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).

Hille

Sunday October 28, sunset - in my head I hear this song about 'Heaven is a bar, a bar that never closes, everyone is there' - well, something like that.
Some months ago we thought right now we would be having dinner with Hille at Ma Wong's to commemorate his birthday. But we're sitting in front of his grave with a cold Castle and a cigarette, looking at the sunset we admired together so often.
Being back it felt like Hille could hop over any minute to hang out with us, and enjoy Dutch koffie & brandy. But than you realize he won't. We miss his stories, debates and jokes, his readiness to help out. Being the owner of a satellite tele, he was our window onto the world. By now we listen to the Wereldomroep every evening, which is informative, but ever so boring, compared to Hille's World Services.

Office Workers

Tswana dogs do not, never ever, enter the house. That’s unheard of, they don’t even dream about it. So either Maud managed to take a picture of a ghost-dog, or Bram’s new employee certainly has a funny face.
Than again, whenever the guestroom is used as our office, maybe it doesn’t count as the house, and they’re just discussing office-security.

Manure

Our guide through 'survival in the village' Bashi took Bram to get manure, and gave us the recipe for good garden-muti. So the next morning around six Bram and two very excited dogs were busy mixing and applying muti.
Meanwhile Maud extended our vegetable-garden, after which the excitement of 'will the seeds pop up' starts. After just a few days the kouseband-beans Maud's mom gave us peeked. Our spinach-like vegetables followed soon, and now, on the sixth day, the chilli-seeds we took from Tears last April seem to unfold.


It's really like everyone says: 'Anything will grow in Botswana, as long as you water it.' Our Passionflower, Bougainville, Franchipane and Guava blossom, and our fabulous view up to Gaborone is full of trees that turn from greyish & brownish to green. Soon we won't be able to see Jeff's house anymore because the green wall in between is coming back to life. The good rains that arrived with us surely pay off!

Cool-down

Once a year South Africa has it's heritage-day, also called 'nasionale braaidag', because barbie's is the shared heritage of everyone. In Botswana almost every Saturday seems to be 'nasionale braaidag'. Like when we hopped over to Geetha & Bart, who live in an area near to Gabs where the really big plots are. Actually we just came for afternoon-drinks, and sharing memories of Hille, our communal Dutch friend who suddenly passed away last July.
As it got kind of latish, we were invited to stay for 'a braai with friends'. This is one great things of Botswana. Because it's high (1000 meters and higher), and has almost always a fine breeze, the temperature goes down nicely after sunset. That's the ideal time to pour your sundowners, and start the braai-fire. After that, all you have to do is watch the fire, set the table, eat and drink - all in one, the big cool-down after a busy week.

Heavy Duty

Our workload is pretty hectic already. Without any marketing from our side prospects pop up left and right, so we have to discuss with them what they want and what we can offer. Old clients accumulated their design-needs, and have a pile they wanted done yesterday. For ADF's new offices a lot of signage is necessary, Lifestyle's new Francistown-outfit needs signage & marketing-stuff, and so on.
The hardest job of all is again Fashion Lounge Botswana. Yesterday we just popped in to deliver some posters - we thought. Morne happened to be experimenting with both cocktail-recipes and the creativity of his chief-cocktail-mixer. So every time we started to leave, he said 'But I just ordered another'. The first, something bluish, was kind of tasteless, so the three of us shared a glass, and still send back almost full. Thereafter came the 'Martini/Red Bull/secret ingredients'-mixtures: superb! Going home after a few, we crashed immediately. Coming Wednesday we have to take pictures for the new menu - and taste everything. How to survive a job like this?

Puppy-love

Abraham Unkwe & Maud


Morning-walk with the next-door dogs and Jeff's dogs - all of them love to hunt dassies, while Bram shoots his camera.

Broad Wireless

It's wireless and it's broadband (at least for African circumstances), so start surfing, babe!

Shopping

The dangerous part of our new series is that we only post the special dishes we eat. Our daily Morwa-food:


We are so happy with the Indians! Next to ensuring our kind of food is available (Trade Center broadened their range of Basmati-rice again), they supply almost everything.
Our problem with all the Fongkong-shops is you can just buy what you see. Whenever you ask 'do you also have a red one, or a bigger size', you run into the language-barrier. Let alone asking 'can you order 50 of this dark-blue polo's for me', or 'I see memory-sticks, do you also sell usb-hubs?' We keep wondering how the Chinese manage, neither speaking English nor Setswana. But somehow they manage, and push a lot of other shop-owners out of business with their incredibly low prices.


You can get virtually everything in Botswana (except for delicacies like stroopwafels, golden syrup, muntendrop, and nice bilton) - if you figure out where to buy it... The needles for Maud's sewing machine for instance had to be flown in from Europe, until we discovered this small, dark shop, hidden behind the bus station. Mr. Nadeem disappears under his counter, and reappears with little papers, in which needles in every size imaginable are folded. Enter an Indian-owned shop, and you can explain what you want. If they don't have it, they probably know where to go.


Sometimes it's frustrating and irritating, this hunt for stuff. But mostly it's an excellent way to meet people and explore every inch of Gabs. As a bonus some clients consider us shopping experts, and commission us to find frames for our designs, intriguing stuff like swirls and menu-binders, and so on. Getting paid to shop - we know people who would kill for a job like that...

Morwa

It's Saturday morning and life has returned back to normal.
The neighbours' dogs are sleeping on the porch. They are of course on alert: every cow, goat, and anything else that passes, is warned off fiercely. Bram is sketching for clients and helping Tshepo with the model plane his dad send from the States. Maud is doing the textile-part of our shades to be, ironing and writing, while she listens to all the new music the Potch-pelle gave her.

After some days in Morwa we perfectly adjusted: paraffin lamps, candles, matches everywhere, and two jerry cans filled with water in the bathroom (in case of a water cut). We're even happy with the rain. How else are we going to raise our morogo (spinach-like vegetables), tomatoes, pumpkins and green beans? To give us a head start Bashi already put some tomato-plants in our yard.


Now that everything is unpacked, we remember what we don't have: a good mattress, an ups (uninterrupted power supply), fresh Fongkong-dvd's, etcetera. We decide to join Jeff to Maun another time, and to concentrate on shopping and meeting people next week.

Meet & Feed

Part of life returning back to normal is hanging out in News Cafe, because of their fabulous American Iced Coffee and free wireless Internet. And whenever we have lunch in the city with Tears and Andre, we seem to end up there. Creamy pasta Vesuvius, beef burger & salad, stir fried chicken & veggies, and a spinach, mushroom, mozzarella wrap with fries - Bram & Maud really had to keep their dinner-appointment in mind...
Mien (who runs the Dutch consulate) and Bernard (who leads the Botswana University geology department) invited us over for 'een borrel en een prak'. To call Mien's vegetarian moussaka a 'prak' is far from the truth; it's a culinary achievement! (Note the Boerebont cutlery, a traditional Dutch design.) After the chocolate chip ice & fruit salad we almost couldn't move home anymore.
The Dutch consulate in Botswana by the way is by far the friendliest representation we ever encountered. Where else can you just walk in, get more help than expected, and coffee & catching up on top?

And we are back...

... is what we constantly say because of this fabulous spring, according to Batswana. Planting season starts now now, and together with us came plenty of rain, accompanied by heavy thunderstorms, which means power cut after power cut. But we're back on electricity now, so I'll grab this chance to write blog posts.
Back in Joburg I didn't feel like even looking at a computer. Back in Potch it was the same. Being back in Morwa, Botswana, four days by now, is a time-consuming project, but we have to post something tomorrow because next week we might join our neighbour Jeff to Maun (900 k's up north). If so, that will be another computer-less week... So here's Joburg and Potch.

I'm sitting in Newscafe now, having my first American iced coffee since last April, greeting everyone, and trying to update the blog. Text goes fine, put there's a problem with the pictures, so I might have to add the visuals later.
Bit later: some pictures get uploaded now, but in the blogpost I only see the border. Might be my funny internet connection, but if you also only see the border, just go with your mouse into the border and click to get the picture on your screen.

Johannesburg

After one of the smoothest flights we ever had, Bram managed to find a perfect cab & driver while Maud guarded our pile of luggage and had her first skuifie in like 20 hours. Smokers beware: Heathrow's overseas terminal doesn't have smoking area's anymore!
Hassan drove us to Heintje's Joburg apartment, where our small Nissan 1400 bakkie was waiting for us in a very well protected garage. Getting the bakkie started was a bit of a hassle - we needed a mechanic to tell us you have to put the clamps on the battery very tight. We felt ever so stupid.


After a nice lunch with Heintje in Sandton we went to Nick, who as always offered his house as ours. Arriving in South Africa means 'get used to braais'. Nick organized us a nice braai at his house, and even produced lekker veggie wors! We old travellers had to go to bed early, around one a.m., but the others partied on until daylight.
Saturday Nick joined us to Oriental Plaza to look for cloth. To upgrade our Botswana-house we need, among other things, a lot of textile, and that is one of the few things you better get in RSA. Loitering in Oriental Plaza is addictive, if only for the mouth-watering Indian snacks, so Maud got the guys to join her hunt for a nice sareeh for sugar feast, and 'just a few' Indian bracelets.
For a change of scenery we had dinner at a hip new chain: Cape Town Fish Market (now open in London also) in Cresta Mall. In Botswana we have these bar-restaurant clients, so Bram managed to get permission to take pictures.


Sunday morning we had to leave in time to make it to our 12:00 braai in Potch. As always Maud had to shed some tears over leaving our Joburg buddy and home, but it was nothing compared to Nick bringing us to OR Tambo last April for our flight to Europe. Boy was he sorry he forgot sneesies as he got it all over his shirt!

Potchefstroom

It's tempting to bore you with all the details of our first Aardklop-experience, but I'll try to stick to the big picture.


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:-)
extra
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.

Appie & Mussadi

We'll do the 'Back 2 Bots' post later, but we've got one piece of breaking news for concerned friends & family now: 'not our dogs' Appie and his mom Mussadi are alive!
They belong to the neighbours, but took our dog-less yard into their territory (this might have something to do with the grub we offer when there's nobody around next door). We saved the poisoned mom from dying last X-mass (this SAS-survival-guide is a must), and later took almost dead Appie to the posh dog-hospital. As soon as we drove into our yard they rushed towards the bakkie, overwhelmed with joy we're back - and looking kind of healthy for Batswana-mongrels (except for the tick-, flee-, worm- and etc-infections, but we'll see to that).

Sushi & Whisky

Our last meal with Dutch friends this year: sushi & tuna-steak at Marco's. On top of a great meal, we finally got to meet Marco's girlfriend Maaike.
Guess who does the photo shopping? Right, Bram, that's why you don't see Marco, but two Maaike's. It might be a visualization of how Marco's single malt doubles the good things in life.

Neighbours

This post is dedicated to the best neighbours one can have: Winny & Dancker. Seeing our chaotic state they insisted to cook us a decent meal. Thanks to Winny's Indonesian roots we got finger-licking food. On top of that they'll hop over to be the buffer when our stress-levels get too high, which is a very brave thing to do.
We have this vague plan for a renovation of our houses to cater for us when we are really old. When this materializes, our communal nurse should do everything except for the cooking. We'll just convert the kitchen into a wheelchair-friendly environment.

Wedlock

Our bi-annual boot camp 'prepare for take-off' has started. Our stress-levels soar, notwithstanding Tlo & Tau showing us the best way to spend your day.

All in one: we're no fun at the moment. Our 'prepare for boot camp' party weekend on the other hand was absolutely fabulous.
To start with we had our by now traditional commemoration of our wedding day with Maud's foster-parents Janny & Cees (last year). We stay in their Zeeland farmhouse, and have our pick of shows during the Zeeland Autumn Festival. They just finished renovating the house, and the result is stunning!



Maud by the way managed to totally forget 'it' on the big day itself, because she was too busy revamping Bram's study. Is it an excuse she forgot her own birthday also? Anyway, Bram was not amused, but because he's a darling he took her out for Mexican food anyway to celebrate our first date.
It's a pity we forgot to take pictures of the Zeeuwse mussels and oysters we had for dinner, cause there's another traditional Dutch dish for you: cooked mussels and chips. Delicious!!! Also delicious is the famous Dutch raw herring, which you have to eat like shown in this poster Bram designed for a 'megweregwere integration project' (the bearded man is Bram's dad Ivan sr).

Lezzetli Turk yemekleri

Sunday we had our all time favourite 'food with friends'. We missed about three trains because the company was too nice to leave, and still had to do a world-record biking to the station. And the food was a - awesome, b - beautiful, c - cool, d - delicious etcetera.



Mehmet & Astrid definitely made it difficult for the rest of us to match up when it is our turn to cook! Later today Maud will try to make mercimek corbasi (lentil soup) for our neighbours. That experiment might be successful, but it will take some exercise before she can proudly show pictures of her mercimek koftesi; maybe when the next couple-to-cook, Hans & Inge, make it to Botswana coming European spring... By the way, we just have to get a Turkish restaurant in Joburg, Potch and Gabs!



Patlican and filled mushrooms (recipes).

Medelanders

Today our aunt Maria Isabel Dilrosun - Perez Quiroga got her Dutch citizenship.
The village of Oegstgeest isn't that big, so this month there were only three new Dutchies (the one with the big chain is the burgomaster).
The other two are obviously integrated in real responsible Dutch families with work and school going kids. One came alone; the other one brought his wife. Poor Marisabel had to drag along six people, proving us Surinam Indians don't send the kids to school, hossel for a living, and will appear everywhere where there's free food & drinks (we got of course the traditional Dutch coffee with cake).



It's a pity we are in Botswana when the girls, Karen & Daniela, get their citizenship coming December!



The Godfather Haroen: "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse..."
Thank you burgomaster! Your performance is most appreciated.