I am feeling particularly in love with South Africa at the moment and thus my flurry of blogs. One of the things I have come to luxuriate in are the cut flowers. Since I am not gardening - which I don't miss - I have occassionally allowed myself the luxury of having beautiful cut flowers in our house. I go to Dunkeld Fruit and Flower and wander amongst the buckets of color. I spend 30 minutes putting together a bouquet - just ask Kate who called the process something like epic (I don't think she meant in a good way).
I start with something that catches my eye - usually a flower that is unusual (at least to my American eye), like proteas or these minature birds of paradise. Then I wonder around looking for what might go with it. Adding some, taking away others, determining what is the perfect filler green, until I am satisfied. Then I take it to the guys behind the bouquet counter and they snip and arrange and wrap in cellophane, tie with a big bow, and hand our joint creation back to me.
 | The Protea-The Giant Protea is the National Flower of South Africa What pleasure I get both in the process and in my days of enjoying them in my house. Even now as I write this, I can't help but occasionally glance over and smile at how beautiful they are.
One challenge of moving to a new place is making friends . For some reason, I guess being a relatively friendly person myself, I didn't fully anticipate how hard it would be to transition aquaintances into friends. In fact, this has nothing to do with South Africans per se, who are by and large extraordinarily friendly, just that breaking into existing friendship circles is difficult. So I go to these school events, for example, and even with the wine that I spoke of in my earlier post, it sometimes felt a little lonely as I have no real go-to people yet that I can hang with. All the work was on my side to break into existing clusters of friends to chat - exhausting. I reached my limit of this and decided to do something about it. So, last night we hosted our first margarita and guacamole happy hour for a bunch of Pridwin parents. (Also served as a fantastic excuse to buy the next wave of items to make our house nice - like pots and plants --I thought maybe I left that obsession behind in the States but it turns out it is just as fun here and whole new kinds of plants to learn about. ) All well and good, you are saying, but get to the Spoiled Rotten part. This was a party for about 12-14 people for a couple of hours - not dinner - just margaritas, wine and apps. Bill and I have plenty of experience entertaining and certainly could have pulled this off with no help. But then I asked myself why not get help? Why not ask our housekeeper to stay later and help -and it works for her too because she can earn some nice extra money. So, Trica did her usual cleaning of our house - which is one reason I am already spoiled beyond repair, then spruced up our outdoor living area, then she was sous -chef to my appetizer making. And then while I showered (despite all this help I still only had 20 minutes to get myself presentable - what is wrong with me?), she covered and moved all our apps out to the patio. While we were entertaining, she zipped the kitchen back to order and post-party, she cleared everything away and in a jiff everything was done. Can you imagine - I did not put one left-over away (of course, I found out later that most sadly ended in the trash), wash one glass, wipe one counter. Luxury beyond luxury! But as if this weren't enough, I had asked our gardener to come during the evening of the party to let people in and out of our security gate and watch their cars so nothing would happen to them. (I really will get to that blog on security). He then suggested that rather than come his normal day to do the yard work, he do the gardening the day of the party instead so the yard would look its best. And remember those pots and plants I mentioned before - suffice it to say I was not the one who actually potted them. (Efron also was very happy to have the extra work/money too as he sends it back home to Malawi). I am doing my best to keep my head on straight and to be ever so grateful for this luxurious help, and never become too used to it. In fact, as you can imagine, as nice as it is, coming from my solidly middle-class background, it is a little hard to justify having all this help. But, as more than one person has pointed out to us, with unemployment being so astronomically high in this country (some reports put it at 40%!), who are we to not employ people when we can afford it.
Perhaps given my last post, this one may be ill-timed. Be that as it may, let me share with you one of the many things I find delightful about life here. For those of you who have or have had school-age kids, you might especially appreciate this feature of South African life. At almost every late afternoon, evening school event there is wine. Before the school play, buy a glass of wine at the cash bar (serving also as a fundraiser for the school or PTA), and if you like take it into the auditorium with you. At the Back to School Parent Night, bring a bottle of wine, put it in the communal ice bucket and sip away as you listen to the headmistress talk about the coming year. Going to your son's waterpolo tournament, bring a cooler with a few bottles of wine and some glasses and share around. Now mind you, no one is getting drunk, or really even tipsy. We just sip away and enjoy the evening so much more. My one disappointment is that they did not have wine at the parent-teacher night. Now wouldn't everyone have been so much more relaxed and found it so much more enjoyable if we could talk about our son with his teachers over a glass of wine? Let me add, this feature only applies to events post 5:00pm. Prior to that, like at these endless cricket matches, the hosting school provides tea for the parents. A lovely table set up with china cups and saucers, perhaps a few cookies and serve yourself coffee or tea. Since I can't bring the weather, I think I might figure out a way to at least bring this custom back to the states.
The other day as I was enjoying my little bottle of pinotage on a domestic South African Airways flight - yes that is right, complimentary wine and snack even on my 75 min flight, gotta love this country - I glanced at the warning label as one does and guess what it said? Don't Drink and Walk in the Road - You May Be Killed. One thing I think this illuminates, besides the high rate of alcohol abuse in this country, is how many people rely on walking as their mode of transport. People walk on small roads, highways, on-ramps, across fields. . . When we first got here, it was so weird to be zooming down the highway and see people walking along the breakdown lane, or more disconcertingly, running across the highways to get to the houses on the other side. Given this high rate of walking, you'd think sidewalks (or pavements as they are called here) would be plentiful and in good shape, but of course, the exact opposite is true. So people walk in the road. And cars, by custom though apparently not by law, have the right of way. When I wave a pedestrian to go ahead and cross, she will look somewhat bewildered and then scurry across perhaps afraid I was only kidding and plan on running her over. Or sometimes when I am lucky, I get a big smile like I have done a Mother Teresa kindness. I like those times.  Now, let me be clear. There is a certain segment of the population that hardly ever walks - and if they do, it is for exercise and then best done in a group. I belong to this latter category. A combination of affluence allowing us to own cars and then afford the petrol, and fears about crime drive us, no pun intended, to rely on our cars for every little errand. One parent of a Pridwin boy was joking that her son would get killed trying to cross the road because he has had no experience with it. Maybe we just need the warning, Don't Walk in the Road - You May Be Killed.
Last month when we went to Madikwe, we came across a Bull elephant in " musth": suffering from severe testosterone poisoning--up to 60 times greater than normal levels! This bull was watering itself at a pond. Our guide mentioned that he was quite excited and you can see that in the video when he is peeing. I guess he didn't like us filming him as he gave us a charge to let us know who was boss! This was probably a "fake" charge as an elephant will pull back its ears to protect them in a real charge. Fake or not, you don't want to stick around when a 5 ton behemoth is moving your way.
Later in the video you will see two young male elephants showing who is stronger and tougher by banging into trees, trying to topple trees and whacking each other with their trunks. This is standard behavior among young male elephants, but they are not likely to cause each other injury because they have nothing to really fight over. They still can do a number on the trees!
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