Stonehaven Menus, 28 December 2004

Some folks from back home have asked me about food at Stonehaven and what kinds of dishes we eat here in South Africa, so I thought I would just post some menus from here so you can read through them and see the kinds of food offered here.  Some are typical African dishes, some are just the same things you would get back home.

 

First, our Christmas Day buffet menu.  This is what we gorged ourselves on that day:

http://www.leebryan.us/shxmas.doc

 

The Stonehaven a la carte menu, which I order from just about every night:

http://www.leebryan.us/shmenu.doc

 

And of course, what many of my friends care about more than the food, the Stonehaven Wine and Beer list:

http://www.leebryan.us/shwines.doc

 

Also as an insert in the menu here is a page on the history of Stonehaven, which might make interesting reading for some of you out there:

http://www.leebryan.us/shhistory.doc

 

Bon appetit!

Christmas is over, 27 December 2004

Well, first of all, on Christmas Eve, I got my laptop back with a new hard drive, and everything from the old hard drive was saved.  So I lost no pictures, no email addresses, no important documents or anything.  Im still rebuilding some things, but its now much easier for me again to post to the blog, and especially to post pictures again.  I have posted a slideshow for all my December pictures if you want to browse through them sometime:

 

http://www.leebryan.us/sassdec.htm

 

Included there are some Christmas Day photos.

 

Christmas got started on Thursday when Shirley (Rosemarys sister, cancer survivor this year) arrived with her husband and 2 kids.  There was plenty of work to be done at Stonehaven, in preparation for feeding 500 people Christmas Day lunch, but we stayed on schedule and organized.  We spent Xmas eve afternoon down at Shag Pad, on the water, pulling the kids on the big tube behind the boat.  Xmas Eve isnt a big deal to the folks here, so we planned on eating at Johns favorite restaurant that night, Kentucky Fried Chicken.  However, KFC evidently marks Xmas eve and was closed.  So were the local pizza joints.  Good thing we live in a restaurant!  Stonehaven hamburgers were our Xmas eve meal, and it was an early bedtime for all, since Santa had to come visit (all the way from the North Pole!  He had a LONG way to go!).

 

I woke up about 8am on Xmas morning, with the place already buzzing with staff.  The kitchen had been cooking since 4am.  Lots of Merry Christmases to go around though.  The kids were dying to open presents, but we had to wait for Rosemarys brother and family to drive down from Jo-burg.  Theyre rarely on time, so only got here about 11am, but I kept telling the kids we could even wait a few days to open the presents, they werent going anywhere.  That didnt go over well.  Peter and family arrived shortly and I played Santa and handed out gifts to the kids.  It was wild, just like Xmases at home.

 

The good news is the weather held out beautifully for Xmas Day.  We have been getting a lot of afternoon thunderstorms lately, and I have been told horror stories of Christmas lunches where they were ankle deep in water, trying to siphon water off the lawn so people could get to the food.  At 4am Xmas morning, we did get a loud thunderstorm rolling through that woke us all up, but the sun was out when we got up.  Things were a little muddy on the lawn, but not too bad.  Low 80s, mostly sunny, and dry all day.  We opened our Christmas Crackers, had our Xmas lunch from the buffet, and drank a little wine. 

 

We then packed up leftovers and headed back down to Shag Pad where everyone there was gathering for an evening Xmas meal together (and more wine of course!).  We paced ourselves food-wise.  There were about 70 people at Shag Pad (all 10 member couples plus kids, grandparents, friends, siblings, etc.) so it was also pretty wild!  After eating, we sat out on the balcony overlooking the river as the full moon rose while we had even more wine.  A very mellow Xmas, full of friends and family, which is what Xmas is all about anyway.

 

One of the channels we get on TV here is TCM, Turner Classic Movies, and on Xmas afternoon, they played Gone With the Wind.  I tried to tape it, but havent checked the tape to see if I got it right.  But one of the staff members here, Jenny, went home that afternoon and watched it and kept text messaging me on my cell phone the whole evening at Shag Pad with comments like Damn those Yankees, and Theyre marching into Georgia!

 

Sunday morning, scary news came from Jenny, as her daughter and son-in-law (whom I know well too --- they are regulars at Stonehaven) are on holiday in Thailand on the island of Phuket (NOT pronounced like you think!).  We woke up to news of the tidal wave hitting that island, and it was a few hours before Jenny heard from someone who had been in touch with her kids, that they were OK.  They were poolside when the first wave hit, and literally swam for their lives, as the wave went to the second floor of their hotel.  (their room was on the first floor, so theyve lost everything… money, passports, clothes, etc., and now have nothing but the swim suits they were wearing).  But theyre safe at someones private residence last we heard.  I also have a good friend in Thailand for work, but got an email from Serge last night that he was in Bangkok and only felt the earthquake (he was on the 27^th floor) but wasnt in danger of water where he was.  Scary stuff!  At least with hurricanes we get some warning!

Chris Evert’s Birthday! 21 December, 2004

Little Chrissie is 50 years old today. My, how time flies.

It’s also the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice. The sun rose today at 5:13am and will set at 6:59pm. After today the sun starts its journey back to the Northern Hemisphere, and I’ll follow it there next April 1st!

We had a big Rotary event at Stonehaven on Sunday night, Carols by Candlelight. They have a small band play Christmas carols and everyone buys a candle and sings along. About half of the carols were Afrikaans songs, and even the carols I knew would be sung in Afrikaans and then English. They were mostly church type hymn carols. Noticeably absent were songs like I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas and Let it Snow. It got up to about 90 degrees Sunday, but the evening was wonderfully cool. Rain clouds came in and threatened, but it stayed dry. We also had a living Nativity scene. I officially got homesick listening to some of the songs, and thinking of home.

They sure don’t have Christmas specials on TV here like we do at home. I went to 4 video stores hoping to rent some of our Christmas classics to show them here, but for the most part struck out. I did find the original Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which they all loved. (They had seen the Jim Carey movie, but were interested to see the cartoon it was based on) I’ve also been on a mission to find A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer. They haven’t seen either here. I also looked for old movies: It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. No one here has ever heard of those movies. What a deprived country! I even hit the CD stores looking for Andy Williams’ and Barbra Streisand’s Christmas albums. Nothing. Can you believe?

Last night on TV we watched Fried Green Tomatoes. They enjoyed the movie but had a hard time understanding the heavy southern accents at times. My mouth literally salivated in the scene where Kathy Bates was eating a box of Krispy Kremes. I know one of the first things I’m going to eat when I get back to the States!

Rosemary’s sister Shirley will be arriving here on Thursday to spend Christmas with us, with her husband and 2 kids (they live in Durban). I haven’t seen Shirley since 1984 so am anxious to spend some time with her. She is a recent cancer-survivor, having fought it for the past few years. In September of this year she was given a clean bill of health, so I think it will be a special Christmas for her.

Christmas Day at Stonehaven will be busy. We offer a Christmas lunch buffet and made arrangements to seat 300 people. We accidentally did some overbooking and had to rent another tent for the lawn, and will feed close to 500 people! The lunch starts at 12:30 and I’m told that by 3:30pm, the place is empty and dead, at which time we will pack up leftovers and drive down to Shag Pad for Christmas dinner with friends and family there. So it will be a wild chaotic day for us. The day after is Boxing Day, a big holiday here, so the crowds will be out again for Christmas leftovers!

Happy Chris Evert’s Birthday to all!

Cricket! Ugh. 19 December, 2004

I miss Rugby! It seems to be in a hiatus right now until March. (since I’ve been here, there have been 3 mini-rugby seasons, it seems; Tri-Nations, Currie Cup and South Africa’s European Tour. Those are all over now.) So it’s now Cricket season.

They say Cricket resembles baseball, and in some ways I guess it might, but it’s more tedious and longer. There are 1-day tests (matches), 3-day tests and (!!!) 5-day tests! Can you imagine? And get this. At the end of a 5-day test, it might still be a draw! In fact, it often is! And another thing! Play starts in the mornings, and they get a lunch break and an afternoon tea break! I’ve told them here that at home, sports are all about money, and organizations like the NFL, NCAA and NBA have gone to great lengths to determine our attention spans so they can keep our interest and maximize that advertising dollar! And I’m pretty sure that when they were determining what our attention spans were, one of their first rules was: If the game is so long that the players need a lunch break and/or tea break, the game is too long for the audience. Ya know how sometimes at home, you’re watching a Braves game, and it gets so tedious, that the announcers get off the subject and start rambling about something unrelated, and you suddenly catch yourself going Why are they taking about this? Or else they go into statistics like a pitcher’s ERA when facing blue-uniformed left-handers on a full moon in months that have an R in them? Well Cricket announcers do the same things and worse. I mean, they have to talk for 5 days! John loves Cricket, so we have it on the TV morning, noon and night. England is here visiting South Africa now, and they’re playing a 5-day test in Port Elizabeth. When it’s over (probably a draw) they’ll move to another city, Jo-burg maybe, and play another 5-day test. Then another city. They cover 5 cities. A 5-day test in each. And we’ll have to watch it all.

John: But in a 5-day test, there’s such incredible strategy going on!
Me: Strategy schmategy. Give me action, make it quick, and throw in funny sexy commercials about beer and things. That’s good sports.
I miss rugby!

Some rambling, 18 Dec. 2004

I’m hoping to have my laptop back on Monday, so will see then how much data I lost in the disk crash, and how much rebuilding I have to do. Meanwhile, sill jumping on Rosemary’s PC when I can to check my email. My finger is showing signs of being better from the antibiotics and rooibos, and Guinness has settled back into his place as king of dogs at Stonehaven. So life goes on.

Last Thursday, 16 December, was a national holiday, The Day of Reconciliation. Reconciliation and forgiveness are big things to the new government of South Africa, thanks mostly to Nelson Mandela. Before 1994, 16 December was Afrikaner Day, a day when they celebrated their heritage. The Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria (Voortrekkers were the original Dutch settlers here who crossed the country, spreading out from the Cape) contains the Afrikaner Vow, their pledge with God, and is built so that the sun shines directly on it on 16 December of every year. When the new government was elected in 1994 and Mandela was elected President, they couldn’t do away with the Afrikaners’ big day, so renamed it as Reconciliation Day, a day for forgiveness and making amends with ones enemies.

I haven’t really had a chance to go back and talk about the experiences of visiting the Apartheid Museum in Jo-burg and Robben Island in Cape Town, but both were profoundly moving and educational for me. I learned things I didn’t know and things I had forgotten. The Dutch settled in Cape Town back in the 1600’s as the first white settlers in this area of Africa. There were already 11 black tribes (Zulo, Sotho, Xhosa, etc.) who had spread down through Africa over the centuries before that. The Dutch pushed them aside much as we American settlers pushed aside the American Indians. In the 1800’s the British settled here too, and the Anglo-Boer Wars followed (Boer is Afrikaans for farmer), as the English and Dutch (now Afrikaners) fought for control of the region. For the most part, the Afrikaners prevailed, and the black tribes were pushed aside even further. In the early 1900’s, gold was discovered in Johannesburg, which upped the stakes considerably. Johannesburg became a huge city within a 10-year span, as populations flocked in to search for gold. In those days, to get to the gold, they needed cheap labor, which the black population provided. The African National Party (ANC) was formed to fight for the black workers’ rights in the gold mines. But the white Afrikaners controlled things.

In 1948, the Afrikaner Party won the election for control of the country and immediately started passing laws. The Afrikaans word for separateness is Apartheid. I found the timing of that interesting, that just a few years after the Nazi’s were defeated in Germany, these Nazi-like people came into power down here and fulfilled what Nazi Germany could have been. The laws they passed in the first few years took all rights away from blacks. Subtle laws were passed at first; The Marriage Act, which made marriage (or sexual relations) between races illegal. Then the Registration Act was passed, requiring all citizens to be registered and carry their ID book at all times. Their ID book classified them as White, Black, Chinese, Coloured, etc. Based on what your classification was, they then passed laws saying where you could live, work or go to school. Your ID book controlled things like what line you could stand in at the bank. Black schools made sure their education was minimal, so as to better control future generations. Nightly curfews were in place for blacks. (Rosemary has memories from childhood of the nightly siren going off signalling blacks had to be in their homes). Police could enter black neighbourhoods and homes whenever they wanted and demand ID’s from anyone. Persons caught without an ID or out on the streets after curfew could be put in jail with no trial for as long as the police wanted. In 1963, a small black town-ship 5 miles from Stonehaven, called Sharpsville (we ride by it on the way to Jo-burg) made a political statement by organizing a march in their streets after curfew. The police came in and gunned them down, in what’s known as the Sharpsville Massacre. But it was the first act of political defiance by the blacks. Shortly after that, politically active blacks began being arrested and put in jail indefinitely. Nelson Mandela was a young lawyer active in the ANC, which was still around and fighting for black rights. He was put in jail in 1963. He was released in 1990. All those years, from his jail cell (18 of those years on Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town), he wrote letters, talked to fellow prisoners, and did what he could from a jail cell. But his message was never one of revenge or retaliation. A man who was in jail with Mandela for 5 years gave the tour we took of Robben Island a few weeks ago. He told us of talking to Mandela in prison in those years, and when Mandela would tell them they must forgive their captors and work for a country where all could live as equals, he would just think This guy is CRAZY. They were receiving physical torture in jail (he described it in detail to us), and he talked of how the hate would bubble up in him and he just wanted revenge, wanted these people to suffer like he was suffering. But still, Mandela said no more blood shed, no more torture, just a country where all could live equally. Over those 27 years when Mandela was in jail, Apartheid flourished, even though the world (and the US) sanctioned South Africa and cut off relations. Riots and political unrest grew in the 70s and 80s, until in the late 80s, the Afrikaner government were being forced to give in. Mandela was released from jail in 1990, and it was another 4 years before the first free elections were held in 1994, in which blacks could vote for the first time. Mandela’s ANC was elected and he was elected President. True to the message he had been preaching since the 1950s, he did not want revenge on the Afrikaners or retribution for the years of Apartheid. He wanted South Africa to learn from it and go forward and to never let it happen again. In 1996 their new Constitution was adopted, guaranteeing freedom from discrimination to all, based on race, religion, even sexual orientation. (I haven’t read their whole Constitution but have read their Bill of Rights) Same-sex legalized partnership will be allowed in this country eventually, as court cases are already working their way through the courts. In the same way, they face challenges of multi-partner legalization also. Since many of the black tribes allow a man to have many wives, and the Muslim religion allows the same. Their Constitution says those people can’t be discriminated against either, so there is much legal work and redefining of laws ahead of them. But the groundwork has been laid, and holidays like the Day of Reconciliation are on-going reminders. Their Constitution doesn’t mention God, but somehow I think God approves of the document.

I don’t mean it as a knock to America; I’m proud to be an American and ain’t gonna leave it. But I think we can learn things from a young country like South Africa. We seem to be passing laws that exclude groups, and our politicians use our differences to pit us against each other so they can get the white vote or the black vote or the whatever vote. And it seems like we just go along with our system. I wish we could change that.

The Afrikaans people that I know here (Rosemary is of English decent but there are plenty of Afrikaans people working here and living in this area) are good people. They’re not Nazis, but I jokingly tell them that their predecessors certainly were! And yes, I hear racial slurs here often, and racial stereotyping. No worse than things I’ve heard at home though. Not to defend it, but I almost feel like racism is a human condition, that we are predisposed to staying with people who are like us, and shunning people who are different. Where we have to draw the lines though, are in our laws and governments, I think, and when our racial proclivities lead to hate.

Sorry for the rambling!

Guinness is back! 14 December 2004

6 days after he disappeared, we got Guinness back today. It was a week of false leads, espionage, stalking, and suspicious behaviour. It turned out someone had him the whole time, or at least that’s the story we’re getting. Meanwhile there was a woman who swore to us she had seen Guinness at the SPCA, and described him to a T, even the color of his collar. The SPCA said they’d never had such a dog. We were convinced the woman had him. So we staked out her house and rode by calling Guinness’ name. No luck. Then out of the blue today we get a call from a guy whose story didn’t quite add up, but all we wanted was Guinness, so we didn’t question too much. He had given Guinness to a friend to keep, so the friend met us to drive us to her house. (The girl’s mother had heard a 4-minute spiel on the radio yesterday about what a wonderful dog Guinness was and it’s Christmas and the kids and everyone just want him home for the holidays, so she called her daughter and said the dog belonged to Stonehaven.) There in the backyard was our Guinness, healthy and happy and glad to see us. The mark was still there from his collar though they say it wasn’t on him when they picked him up almost a week ago. But they did turn down the reward, and said we should just give the money to the SPCA or something. So the mystery is still there, but our boy is home and getting a king’s welcome today!

A baaaad week, 10 December, 2004

And of course it’s the busiest week of the year workwise. It all started off with Rosemary almost getting arrested for driving while talking on a cell phone. She was by herself on the way to Jo-burg, and I’m a little sceptical if it was a real policeman at all; unmarked car, plain clothes and she never saw his ID. He was going to arrest her until she cried then he changed his tune and got very helpful. Maybe he was just looking for a bribe and couldn’t handle women’s tears.

The week got worse. I’ve had this thing on my finger for about 3 weeks now that is a raw bloody spot at the tip (right middle finger) and is pretty sore and not easy to type with! I figured it was an infected cut of some kind and have been doing all the right things. Also soaking it in rooibos tea. Rooibos is a South African tea that is said to have healing qualities when consumed or used on the skin. You can even buy rooibos soap here. I drink a cup or 2 every day! But lately I’ve also been soaking my finger in it. So for 3 weeks, the finger really hasn’t gotten worse, but hasn’t gotten better. I know that one of the cleaning women here is a witch doctor on the side (or maybe she’s a cleaning lady on the side), so wanted to get her to do something for it (when in Rome… !!!) but Rosemary called and got me an appointment with a real doctor. Rosemary’s no fun sometimes. So I went and it’s got a long name that I can’t remember, but is basically an infected cuticle. Damn, I was hoping for some rare African disease, eboli or something. He told me to keep soaking in rooibos, gave me 10 days worth of antibiotics and says we have a 50-50 chance it will heal this way. If not, he’ll numb the finger up and scrape it out. Oh yeah, I like the sound of that!

Next up, my PC hard drive crashed. Yes, crashed. My worst nightmare. My life is on that hard drive. The good news is the local vendor that does hardware for Stonehaven can fix it, and working with Dell, it’s under warranty, so won’t cost me much if any. They’re still trying to recover what data they can off the bad drive, so I’m not sure what the damage will be to me yet. I’ve got some somewhat recent backups, and all my favorite pictures from here are safely posted to this blog. I would lose some pictures and documents, but not the end of the world. Just a whole lot of trouble. It would be GREAT news if they can recover everything for me. So meantime (not sure for how long), I can access email via Rosemary’s PC when I can wrestle it away from her, which unfortunately isn’t often. And I can obviously still post to the Blog here. But if I’m slow on answering emails and posting to the blog in the next few days (weeks?), you’ll know why. I think in all my years of computer use, personally, this is my first hard drive crash. So maybe I was due.

But worst of all, our Guinness is missing. Someone haphazardly left a gate open earlier this week that separates us from a hotel on the other side of a major 4-lane road. (the gate is under the bridges down by the river). Guinness was last seen about 48 hours ago in the hotel’s parking lot. We’ve put up fliers all over town and advertised on radio and put up fliers all over Stonehaven letting the world know Guinness is missing. He’s a famous dog around here. We’ve driven cars for miles around on every back street calling his name, and we’ve driven the boat up and down the river calling his name. Nothing. The staff and everyone here are just devastated. We hope he’s safely with someone who just hasn’t seen the fliers yet.

The sun’ll come up tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun…

What a week. Send good thoughts to the Southern hemisphere here! We need them!

A baaaad week, 10 December, 2004

And of course it’s the busiest week of the year workwise. It all started off with Rosemary almost getting arrested for driving while talking on a cell phone. She was by herself on the way to Jo-burg, and I’m a little sceptical if it was a real policeman at all; unmarked car, plain clothes and she never saw his ID. He was going to arrest her until she cried then he changed his tune and got very helpful. Maybe he was just looking for a bribe and couldn’t handle women’s tears.

The week got worse. I’ve had this thing on my finger for about 3 weeks now that is a raw bloody spot at the tip (right middle finger) and is pretty sore and not easy to type with! I figured it was an infected cut of some kind and have been doing all the right things. Also soaking it in rooibos tea. Rooibos is a South African tea that is said to have healing qualities when consumed or used on the skin. You can even buy rooibos soap here. I drink a cup or 2 every day! But lately I’ve also been soaking my finger in it. So for 3 weeks, the finger really hasn’t gotten worse, but hasn’t gotten better. I know that one of the cleaning women here is a witch doctor on the side (or maybe she’s a cleaning lady on the side), so wanted to get her to do something for it (when in Rome… !!!) but Rosemary called and got me an appointment with a real doctor. Rosemary’s no fun sometimes. So I went and it’s got a long name that I can’t remember, but is basically an infected cuticle. Damn, I was hoping for some rare African disease, eboli or something. He told me to keep soaking in rooibos, gave me 10 days worth of antibiotics and says we have a 50-50 chance it will heal this way. If not, he’ll numb the finger up and scrape it out. Oh yeah, I like the sound of that!

Next up, my PC hard drive crashed. Yes, crashed. My worst nightmare. My life is on that hard drive. The good news is the local vendor that does hardware for Stonehaven can fix it, and working with Dell, it’s under warranty, so won’t cost me much if any. They’re still trying to recover what data they can off the bad drive, so I’m not sure what the damage will be to me yet. I’ve got some somewhat recent backups, and all my favorite pictures from here are safely posted to this blog. I would lose some pictures and documents, but not the end of the world. Just a whole lot of trouble. It would be GREAT news if they can recover everything for me. So meantime (not sure for how long), I can access email via Rosemary’s PC when I can wrestle it away from her, which unfortunately isn’t often. And I can obviously still post to the Blog here. But if I’m slow on answering emails and posting to the blog in the next few days (weeks?), you’ll know why. I think in all my years of computer use, personally, this is my first hard drive crash. So maybe I was due.

But worst of all, Guinness is missing. Someone haphazardly left a gate open earlier this week that separates us from a hotel on the other side of a major 4-lane road. (the gate is under the bridges down by the river). Guinness was last seen about 48 hours ago in the hotel’s parking lot. We’ve put up fliers all over town and advertised on radio and put up fliers all over Stonehaven letting the world know Guinness is missing. He’s a famous dog around here. We’ve driven cars for miles around on every back street calling his name, and we’ve driven the boat up and down the river calling his name. Nothing. The staff and everyone here are just devastated. We hope he’s safely with someone who just hasn’t seen the fliers yet.

The sun’ll come up tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun…

What a week. Send good thoughts to the Southern hemisphere here

A baaaad week, 10 December, 2004

And of course it’s the busiest week of the year workwise. It all started off with Rosemary almost getting arrested for driving while talking on a cell phone. She was by herself on the way to Jo-burg, and I’m a little sceptical if it was a real policeman at all; unmarked car, plain clothes and she never saw his ID. He was going to arrest her until she cried then he changed his tune and got very helpful. Maybe he was just looking for a bribe and couldn’t handle women’s tears.

The week got worse. I’ve had this thing on my finger for about 3 weeks now that is a raw bloody spot at the tip (right middle finger) and is pretty sore and not easy to type with! I figured it was an infected cut of some kind and have been doing all the right things. Also soaking it in rooibos tea. Rooibos is a South African tea that is said to have healing qualities when consumed or used on the skin. You can even buy rooibos soap here. I drink a cup or 2 every day! But lately I’ve also been soaking my finger in it. So for 3 weeks, the finger really hasn’t gotten worse, but hasn’t gotten better. I know that one of the cleaning women here is a witch doctor on the side (or maybe she’s a cleaning lady on the side), so wanted to get her to do something for it (when in Rome… !!!) but Rosemary called and got me an appointment with a real doctor. Rosemary’s no fun sometimes. So I went and it’s got a long name that I can’t remember, but is basically an infected cuticle. Damn, I was hoping for some rare African disease, eboli or something. He told me to keep soaking in rooibos, gave me 10 days worth of antibiotics and says we have a 50-50 chance it will heal this way. If not, he’ll numb the finger up and scrape it out. Oh yeah, I like the sound of that!

Next up, my PC hard drive crashed. Yes, crashed. My worst nightmare. My life is on that hard drive. The good news is the local vendor that does hardware for Stonehaven can fix it, and working with Dell, it’s under warranty, so won’t cost me much if any. They’re still trying to recover what data they can off the bad drive, so I’m not sure what the damage will be to me yet. I’ve got some somewhat recent backups, and all my favorite pictures from here are safely posted to this blog. I would lose some pictures and documents, but not the end of the world. Just a whole lot of trouble. It would be GREAT news if they can recover everything for me. So meantime (not sure for how long), I can access email via Rosemary’s PC when I can wrestle it away from her, which unfortunately isn’t often. And I can obviously still post to the Blog here. But if I’m slow on answering emails and posting to the blog in the next few days (weeks?), you’ll know why. I think in all my years of computer use, personally, this is my first hard drive crash. So maybe I was due.

But worst of all, Guinness is missing. Someone haphazardly left a gate open earlier this week that separates us from a hotel on the other side of a major 4-lane road. (the gate is under the bridges down by the river). Guinness was last seen about 48 hours ago in the hotel’s parking lot. We’ve put up fliers all over town and advertised on radio and put up fliers all over Stonehaven letting the world know Guinness is missing. He’s a famous dog around here. We’ve driven cars for miles around on every back street calling his name, and we’ve driven the boat up and down the river calling his name. Nothing. The staff and everyone here are just devastated. We hope he’s safely with someone who just hasn’t seen the fliers yet.

The sun’ll come up tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun…

What a week. Send good thoughts to the Southern hemisphere here! We need them!

Life goes on, 6 December, 2004

Ya know, when I was a kid and would get too excited or obsessed about a football game, my mom would tell me There are a billion Chinese people who dont even know this game is taking place.  Which I found very hard to believe.  I mean, how could a billion people not know about the upcoming Auburn-Alabama game, or whichever important game was next?  Impossible. Well ya know what?  My mother was right.  (I hate those words)  There are several million South African people who dont even know the SEC game took place this weekend.  Of course I always knew the world is this way, but its a little surreal to be here when Im the only person who knows (or cares) about a football game happening on the other side of the world.  We went out for dinner on Saturday night and I had to make them promise me we would be home by 1am game time (not a problem).  I sat there through dinner thinking OK, in Atlanta, everyone I know is bundling up right now, headed out to Jocks and Jills for a pre-game warm up cocktail, then boarding Marta for the Georgia Dome, and getting into the stadium, etc. etc.  And here I am sitting outside in shorts having a wine and curry, and trying to make conversation at the table that didnt involve SEC or BCS talk.  I went through the same experiences the day of the Georgia and Alabama games.  And then Im up all night, literally going to bed as the sun is coming up, and I wake up a few hours later and go downstairs expecting high fives and game discussions (Ok, not really).  Everyone is happy that Im happy that Auburn won, but thats about it.  They can relate, but they really cant muster the excitement I feel.

 

Anyway, strange to experience, even though I knew it would be this way.

 

And yes, I do keep wondering why oh why did I pick THIS football season to go away?  Auburns last national championship was in 1957.  I was probably conceived days after that and born in August 1958.  My college days will forever be known as the Barfield Years.  I missed the whole 1993 undefeated season living in Chicago and didnt get home for a game for the first time in years because I was making plans to move to Atlanta.  Now I leave the country and we go undefeated, win the SEC and should play for a national championship.  But Im trying to be philosophical about missing this year.  Que sera sera.  Meant to be.  Fate. Its me.  Im a jinx.  All those things.  Meanwhile my friends (you know who you are) are thinking of ways to shut down the borders and not let me back into the country.

 

John and Storm are out for summer break.  They get a 5-week break this time of year.  (Unlike our longer summer break, they get 3 shorter breaks a year.  In addition to this summer/Xmas break, they also get 4 weeks in August and 4 weeks in April.)  As Ive mentioned, Christmas season has begun.  I discovered that none of the Andersons have seen Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer nor A Charlie Brown Christmas, nor The Grinch (well, they saw the movie but not the cartoon special).  So Im making it my mission to find these tapes to rent and let them see some classic Christmas shows.  I havent checked the video stores here yet but am hoping those are available.

 

Stonehaven is unbelievably busy right now.  Its Monday and we have 7 functions.  That never happens.  Weve got a record number of functions all this week and the next 2 weeks too.  Business is great.  Not to toot my own horn too much (although Rosemary still quotes Charlie as always telling her that if you dont toot your own horn, nobody else will toot it for you), but part of the reason for this deluge of business is a function book that I instituted here for them to use.  It was a simple thing, but something they had never used before, so Im glad I could help them get it going.  It makes life simpler, makes booking and organizing business much easier for them.  And so we are now seeing the fruit of that.  Unfortunately, everyone is almost too over-worked and very stressed out at the moment.  Long days, 7 days a week.  The staff are just surviving until Xmas, when things will drop off at least for a week or so.  January will start the summer crunch all over again though.

 

Summer is normally the rainy season for them here.  It never rains in Winter.  But so far it has been a very dry summer.  This weekend we drove up to the Vaal Dam (about 30 minutes from here) to see the water level.  Take a look:

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See that No Wake Zone sign?  Thats about where the water level usually is.  So they are hurting for rain, and even though it makes running a function venue miserable, everyone is hoping for the rains to come soon.

SEC!!! 4 December 2004

38-28!!! It's 5:09am here. Only one here to celebrate with me is Kali and she's sacked out on my bed. What a season! War Eagle from South Africa!

On to Capetown, 3 December, 2004

After our Pilanesberg adventure, we spent a day in Johannesburg.  We hit the Apartheid Museum, which has only opened in the last couple of years, to document and memorialize a very low time in South African history.  The museum was moving and reminded me of going to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.  I will write more on the museum in a future blog posting.  We also hit the Gold Mine Museum that day and went down into the mines for a tour:

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Bright and early Thursday morning (Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.), we caught a ride to the Jo-burg airport with Rex who was dropping off the kids at school anyway.  On the ride, we explained to John and Storm what Thanksgiving Day is, and they thought it was a pretty good idea to have such a day to give thanks, plus get out of school for 2 whole days. No Thanksgiving here at all though, just another school and workday.  No turkey, no dressing, no football on the couch.  We landed in Cape Town just after lunch.  Cape Town is the oldest city in South Africa, since it is where the white settlers landed back in the 1600s, and there are still some buildings standing that date back that far.  Those were the Dutch settlers who became the Afrikaners.  The English came here later and fought the Afrikaners in a nasty little war.  Amid all this, the black tribes who had lived here for centuries and had come down through Africa were pretty much pushed aside, kinda like what we did to our American Indians.  I get the feeling the blacks just didnt have much in the way of negotiating power.  Or guns.

 

But I digress.  The city of Cape Town sits at the very southern tip of Africa, although its still about an hours drive down a winding mountain road to reach the actual cape, where the currents of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet.  Cape Town is nestled underneath a huge mountain known as Table Mountain, because its flat on top like a table:

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You can never get lost in Cape Town because you can always look up and see that mountain wherever you are, to get your bearings.  (the mountain is about twice as tall as Stone Mountain)  It is a spectacular setting, and none of the pictures I can post here can really do it justice.  Sometimes the sky is clear over the mountains, other times you can watch clouds roll over it.  Sometimes a heavy cloud will come over it from the other side and drift down the sides as it reaches the city side of the mountain. 

 

The afternoon we arrived, we took a tour of Robben Island.  This is an island prison (like Alcatraz) 11k off the coast of Cape Town, and is where Nelson Mandela was kept most of the 27 years he imprisoned, before he was released and elected President of the countrys new government in 1994.  Here is the view of Table Mountain and Cape Town looking back from Robben Island:

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I will write more about the Robben Island tour when I post about the Apartheid Museum.  It was interesting to take in those 2 attractions in successive days.  I got a real education (some things I knew and had forgotten, others I didnt know) about the Apartheid years.  Robben Island was a pretty emotional tour, given by a man who spent 5 years there as a prisoner.  Not just your average museum tour, thats for sure.  But more on that in another blog posting to come.

 

We saw penguins and seals on our trip out to Robbens.

 

We spent the next 4 days being tourists in this beautiful city.  We did the typical double-decker tour bus to see the various sites.  We shopped like tourists on the Waterfront (reminded me of the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore).  We rented a car one day and drove down the coast to some small seaside towns.  Here is a shot of Ken and our hot little rental car:

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We stopped at the beach where the beautiful people go (and fit right in, of course) and further down the coast at the nude beach, which required a 20 minute walk to reach but was spectacular once we got there.  Some pictures (get your minds out of the gutter):

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The water was icy, even though its pretty much summer here now.  Although some people were out there swimming, I got in up to about my ankles and couldnt take any more.

 

We stopped for lunch in Hout Bay, a beautiful fishing village about half way down the cape:

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The only disappointment of our time in Cape Town was not being able to take the cable car to the top of Table Mountain.  Both times we went up to the cable car station (it was a chore just to get up there), they said the winds at the top were too strong so they werent running the cable car.  Here is a picture of the cable car I didnt get to take:

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And looking down on the city from the cable car station (I think it was a bad hair day or something):

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So Ive left something undone in Cape Town, which means I must go back once more before I leave this continent.

 

So Im back now in my South African home.  Kali was exhausted from the welcome back celebrations, but is now back in the swing of things.  Tis the Christmas season in full swing here (although theyve been having Christmas parties here at Stonehaven since early November).  The stockings are hung by the chimney with care.  Its close to 90 degrees here most days, with a rainstorm now and then, hot nights where I sleep with all the windows open and a fan by my bed.  Somehow it doesnt feel very Christmasy to me!

Pilanesberg, 1 December 2004

Its good to be back at Stonehaven!  After a week of traveling and seeing a good cross-section of South Africa, its nice to get back to a routine.  The welcome home signs were out for me at Stonehaven, Kali was beside herself to see me, and Mrs. Cat promptly brought a freshly killed mouse to my room, so I guess I was missed, which is always nice.

 

Part one of the week was Pilanesberg Game Reserve, part two was Cape Town.  Ive got lots of pictures to post, so will break the week up into sections for the Blog.

 

My friend from Atlanta, Ken, got the usual foreigners welcome when he arrived at Stonehaven:

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As usual, the black staff sang and danced his welcome while the white staff stood there and looked.  Im not sure if Ken was thrilled or embarrassed or maybe a little of both. 

 

I did a lot of driving during the week, which was good for me.  We started out that Sunday in Rexs bakkie, driving to Pilanesberg.  We took our time (taking back roads anyway) and stopped at a small game reserve on the way there and saw some nice wildlife, rhinos and ostriches, roaming the countryside.  The game reserve was one where you drove your own vehicle through it, with warnings not to get out of the car, and to be careful with rolled down windows (which were to be kept UP when in the lion enclosure).

 

Monday morning bright and early in Pilanesberg, we got up at 5:30am for a morning game ride.  This is the kind of ride where they put you on an open-air vehicle and drive you through the different areas where they hope to spot game.  Animals, being what they are, tend to roam and so there is never any guarantee of seeing anything, much less the Big Five.  (The Big Five are Elephant, Lion, Rhino, Buffalo and Cheetah).  So youre taking your chances on any ride you go on.  We did run across a nice rhino family crossing the road that morning, and various other animals, but unfortunately, none of the bigger game we were looking for.  In fact, most of our better animal encounters came at the smaller game reserves on the way to and from Pilanesberg. 

 

So after our early morning game drive, we headed to Sun City, which is truly the Las Vegas of South Africa.  But first we stopped on the way in at the Crocodile Sanctuary (to worship some crocodiles???). 

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We took some touristy type photos:

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Dont worry, that last one is a stuffed croc in a display case.

 

Then Ken decided to feed the baby crocs some chicken heads and parts:

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Sun City is nestled in the hills of Pilanesberg (which is actually a billions-years-old volcano crater), and is 3 main hotels, with gambling, a water park, and other attractions.  Here is one of the hotels, the Palace.

 

We did an afternoon game drive and once again saw rhinos having an afternoon snack, an elephant out for an afternoon stroll, some zebra playing in the mud, some gemsbok, and more elephants crossing the road.  There were about 18 elephants in this herd, a few of them babies.  The landscape, with the setting sun, was truly beautiful.

 

When I was in Botswana last August, the wildlife I saw were much more wild, and stayed away from humans and vehicles.  In Pilanesberg, I found the wildlife was not nearly as leery of us, and really didnt care that we got so close to them.  I think they see people and cars a lot more than the animals in Botswana do, and they dont feel threatened by us.

 

That wrapped up the Pilanesberg part of our journey, although on the way home we saw even more animals.  With me driving and my trusty navigator Ken with the maps, we found ourselves on a long and winding dirt road out in the middle of nowhere, it seemed.  The road was on a map, but said nothing about it being a dirt road.  We were on it for about 20k, and Ken was more confident than I was that we were actually where we wanted to be.  We could actually see the skyline of Jo-burg off on the horizon, so how lost could we really be?  We eventually found the game reserve we were looking for and drove in, once again driving our bakkie past the animals.  We came upon a family of ostriches eating lunch, and the babies seemed to think they needed to check us out.  Mom wasnt too keen on that, so we drove on.  Into the lion enclosure.  This was by far our closest encounter with wildlife.  We were told not to tease the lions, or to linger within 20 meters of them.  We certainly did NOT roll our windows down in this section.  One fellow startled us a little when he came up from behind us, got about 10 meters from us and plopped down for a nap.  I think he was teasing US!  Here are some pictures:

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That last fellow was at the gate when we tried to pass back into the lion area, and the gate keeper, a black woman, came out, opened the gate for us, picked up a rock and threw it at the lion to make him get back, and we drove through (with him literally a meter from the bakkie) and she closed the gate again.  I wonder if she gets health insurance through her job?

 

Then we got to pet the animals!

 

After our close encounter with lions, we stumbled on the crèche section of the game reserve.  A crèche is, even for humans, a nursery school of sorts.  It is where they put the young or sick animals until they can fend for themselves.  There was a baby rhino in one of the pens, and we happened to walk by just as a game warden was taking him out for a walk.  The game warden let us go right up to baby rhino and pet him some, although baby rhino was being a little bit aggressive and cranky unless the game warden kept talking to him to keep him calm and eating. 

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With our courage and confidence growing by the minute, we headed into the cheetah cage.

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She was really laid back and enjoyed a good scratch behind the ear.  She was lying there peacefully enjoying our attention, until she noticed the rhino and got up to go check him out.

 

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So we moved on to the lion cubs.  These were white lion cubs, there were 4 of them, and they also were pretty curious about the rhino taking his walk.

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The lions seemed more interested in the rhino, but they did let us pet them a little bit.

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These lions were a little more stand-offish than the ones I encountered here in 1984:

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But they were pretty gentle and enjoyed some attention, and when I got back to Stonehaven later that afternoon, I think Guiness and Kali were wondering what were those strange smells were on our hands.

 

Good to be back at Stonehaven, but only for a day, then off to Cape Town.  Will post more on the blog as soon as I can!  Unbelievably, some work piled up for me here while I was gone, so trying to catch up on that and write to the blog too.  Be patient Blog Audience.

 

Oh, and BEAT TENNESSEE!!!