The Old Biscuit Mill Market

Has it been eight weeks already?  Can it be that this is the last weekend that we have here?  I have SOOO much that I still want to do and see, but it is clear on my Outlook calendar that the days are short.

Saturday mornings, all of the Educators work at the LEAP School doing Saturday school.  This is a day that kids from the local communities, plus LEAP school students, can come to the school for extra tutoring and classes.  The line outside the school forms early, well before the 9:00 first bell.

After the teachers got done with their half day of work, some of us women folk decided to go to the Biscuit Mill Market, located .... ummmm .... to the south of us.  The map continues to evade me, but at least I knew what direction we were going in.  The area we were in would be called a poor white community, but has recently been "gentry-fied", or so said the LEAP teacher that offered to drive all of us.

The Old Biscuit Mill complex has a number of regular permanent businesses, plus a weekend Farmers' Market sort of thing.

I have no idea as to the origins of the Mill, I can only assume that biscuits, or maybe even Rusks, were made here.

Inside one of the buildings is the Farmers' Market ...  and for a Saturday afternoon, it wa PACKED!!

Interestingly enough, this Market was not like the markets in Aixe or even in Barcelona, nor even Novato.  There was only one stand that had any sort of fresh veggies.  Everything else was prepared hot foods, olives, cheese, or pastries of some sort.

I hadn't eaten lunch yet (because all of the Fellows leave this week, food at the Beulah is getting scarce, a cheddar cheese/bacon/egg/cream quice sounded really tasty.

The one I bought for R12 ($1.50US) was the top in the back.

Oh, MY!!  That was good.

What I REALLY wanted, though, was the Milk Tart.  Some hussie .... I mean woman .... bought the last one, right in front of me!  She even took cuts in line, then had the audacity to buy the last one!  I LOVE Milk Tarts, after having my first one a couple of weeks ago after having visited Parliment.

To make myself feel better, I also bought (for dinner) a serving of Paella.  This describes it better than I ever could .....

And here are the guys cooking it ....



I have had Paella in Barcolena, and then Jim has made it for us as well, and I have to say, this was pretty darned good.

I still had a couple of gifts to purchase before I head home later this week, including something for Kitty the Dog.  I thought this African Giraffe Baby would be perfect for her ..

Are you used to seeing Table Mountain in the background of ALL of my photos??

Science brought to Life

After having had so many days of bright, clear, winter weather, Wednesday dawned gray and foggy.  This wasn't a deterrent to Josh's science class though.  I found Josh and his class out in the side yard of the LEAP School, getting some real life lessons in measuring distance over time.


Here is Josh explaining to his class how the test is going to go.  As he later explained to me, the five groups needed to time themselves hopping for five meters, then running, then skipping.

The idea is to visually learn how to calculate distance over time.

Here's the first group of the kids, hopping away ...

Next up - skippers ...  oh, wait ... more hopper.






When I asked him about the exercise later, Josh said he was tired of teaching in the classroom and wanted to get the kids up and moving and have a change of pace.

Looks like this was just the ticket.

NPO paperwork - Complete

The weekend was fun, the safari was fun, but it really is time to get back to why I am here, and that is to get things done in South Africa Non-Profit Land.

If you think back to my task list, one of the big items I wanted to accomplish was to get the NPO (Non-Profit Organization) paperwork done and filed for Iso'Lezwe Caregivers.  If'n you recall, there was some confusion as to whether or not the paperwork had been submitted last year, and umm  .... maybe, but yet, on the Department of Social Responsibility website there was no NPO number, so ummmmm .... vagueness ....

Well, I cut to the chase and said let's just do it.  I gathered Pumla (my spellchecker keeps wanting to correct it to "Puma") and Zaneze, and we hand wrote the forms.

Then, I had the same problem with the constitution.  Whose computer is the original on?  Sammy??  Heidi??  Yuma??  Cut all of that.  Last week, I spent two hours and sat and just retyped the thing.  Changed quite a few typos, fixed the numbering in Word, made the indents look correct, and added in the missing items that were needed from the Checklist in the NPO form paperwork.

Finally .... on Monday .....


Look what she is doing .....

Signing the Iso'Lezwe Aids Awareness/Caregivers Group NPO application paperwork.  Pumla is the Director.

Zaneze is the Secretary, and had her turn in front of the camera, signing as well ....

After the big Signing of the Paperwork, we took a walk through Kalkfontein.  Pumla and Zaneze wanted to show me the home where the HIV/Aids Support Group meetings take place, plus I hadn't yet been to the "top of the hill" where one can see the entire township.

The skinny dog that lives next door to Joyce ....

This little doggie wouldn't look at me ....

If you walk out of Joyce's front yard and turn to the left, this is the view ....

Unemployment for adult males in this township is at about 75%, which would stand to reason as this photo was taken at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Monday.

The neighborhood water spigot.  Homes here do not have water inside of the homes, one must walk down the street to the spigot.

 The top of the hill near the bathrooms.  And as it happens, the garbage dump ...

The top of the hill, overlooking the township. 











I will be back out here on Thursday, meeting with Joyce, finishing up the paperwork.

Safari - Part 3

Let's see .... where did we leave off?

Does everyone understand that I have to break some of these big posts into many smaller ones, or I can't upload them, or it takes hours and hours??

After the elephants and our "cool and refreshing beverage break", we drove over the hills and through the dells, and into the Lion's Enclosure.  The lions aren't in a cage, but they are in a large, multi-acre fenced area, so that they don't eat the other residents.  Getting into the enclosure was like something out of Jurassic Park, what with the electric fences and security gates.

Our Ranger Guide, said that the lions get fed on Sundays and Thursdays.  Because this was Sunday morning, he thought it would be ok and we would not get eaten.

HAHAHA!!!!

In this enclosure are two adult male lions and seven female cats.


Nothing like getting a little sun on a warm Sunday morning ....

Yawn .... time to find a different warm rock .....

There are five lionesses in this photo ....

Here he is - hiding behind the big stick in the foreground .... as I was shooting off photos today, and how elusive some of these animals can be, how you can't see their faces, how a tail will be just across what you want to photograph, it really is almost funny.








I had to wait for this, and wait, and wait, and keep taking photos so the driver wouldn't leave .... then I took so many photos that my batteries went dead, which was the EXACT moment I have the perfect shot, but he did look back again ....

I guess if I wanted to I could photoshop out the barbed wire, but the wire represents my experience here in South Africa.  Everything and everyone is limited by miles of barbed wire.

Looking back at the roaming area of the lions ..

Look at how beautiful that terrain is, like someone took a big hand and just smeared the colors in the hills.

Is it time for the giraffes?

This is a female, very shy ..

more .....  Those are .... ummmm .... I should look up the exact name, but I think they are Eldon's?? 


Much like the White Rhinos and the Elephants, these friends are all out for a Sunday stroll.

The giraffe stopped to munch ...

Closeup.....

And what is a photo album without some flowers. These little flowers were all over the place, but you had to look really carefully to see them ..

Finally, the last of the Big Five - the leopard.  These cats were kept in an enclosure on the other side of the road from the main reserve because of fear of poachers.

It was a lot to take in in one day, and at some point I would like to see big herds of animals, but this, in itself, was the most amazing experience.

Safari - Part 2

How's that for a start to Safari #2?



After we saw the White Rhinos, then the ostrich, we had to drive quite a while to find these pacaderms.  In this photo, Mama is standing at the edge of a ledge, with her baby on the other side. She was somewhat protective of the baby (who is about 2 years old) and fluffed up her ears a lot at us.  She was running here ....

Wait!!!!  Who is coming to visit the elephants, taking their morning walk??  Is it .......  the White Rhinos??  (there are two of them in the photo) ...

There, all four of them are in the same photo.  Our Ranger Guide said that they are not friends, that the elephants just tolerate the Rhinos.  Actually, he said that the Rhinos are not very smart and that the elephants tease them and the rhinos don't even know it.  Here, the Rhinos are down the slope from the elephants.

check out the big ears. The major difference between African and Indian elephants are the ears.  African elephants ears are larger and more banana-leaf like.

One other difference is that the African elephants have a finger-like thing at the end of their tusk, allowing them to pick up small coins or to take a coin out of your pocket.

For most of the trip, we were not allowed to get out of the vehicles, nor come in contact with any of the animals, for health and safety reasons.  Mid-way, we stopped and had a refreshing beverage and to stretch our legs a bit ...  Who knew what good things were kept in those backend lockers!!








The first thing you would notice here, beside the fact that it is ME :) is that I am only wearing a fleece vest, a heavy sweater, and a thermal shirt under that.  Not many clothes on, darned near naked.

:)








One of the other Fellows on the trip, Sarah Diefendorf ..












I spent quite a bit of time, while we were driving around, looking at the terain and trying to figure out how the rocky mountains and sloping hills came to be ... 



When people wonder why Africans can't grow more food or raise cattle, one look at the ground tells you.  This is the ground under Sarah's feet - pure sand and rock.


Next to post:

Safari Part 3

Safari - Part 1

The shuttle picked us up early Sunday morning, 6:00.  That was after a panic phone call from the driver, who apparently was at the "other" #17 Victory Ave. in Pinelands.  Really??  There are two??  Funny, Mr. Delivery, who delivers our meals many nights never gets lost.  But neither here nor there, we were in the mini bus and on our way.  I don't often use the term "hurtling down the freeway", but I would have to have said that as our driver made up for lost time, from picking us up late.

Aquila Private Game Reserve is one of a small handfulls of Game Reserves in the Western Cape.  The Western Cape does not have the large Safari's that Northern Africa has, such as Kenya.  Those are the photos that most of you are famaliar with, the huge herds of gizelles and elephants, hundreds of animals at the watering hole.  This Game Preserve is not like that.  Numbers of animals are carefully monitored and regulated, and one can't have more than a certain number of a certain kind of animal in a certain amount of space, so often, animals get moved (air-lifted) between different preserves.  There are no photos of large herds, but we DID see the Big Five of South Africa (Cape Buffalo, Elephant, White Rhino, Giraffe, and Leopard.)

After a champagne breakfast (we passed on the champagne because it was so darned cold, plus, champagne before coffee???  Nope, not for me.  But we did the buffett which was pretty decent.  Then climbed into our Outback Safari vehicles to find our game.

First up, hippos. There are seven in this photo, two of them are babies.

This baby is about two years old.

A gizelle.  Our Ranger Guide said that the trees you see in this photo can go nine years with no water and without dying, which makes sense considering how dry this terain is.

Next up - White Rhinos.  From left to right, we have Mama, Daughter, and Dad.  You can tell the difference in the sex of a rhino by the size of the tusk.  The photo doesn't show it well, but the Mama tusk is much bigger than Dad's.

A closer look at the girls.  Just about the time I took this photo, they started pawing the ground, and our driver decided it was time to move on.

It took some driving around, but we found Ostrich. This is the male.  You can tell because the feathers are black.Here is his friend - and it must be a female.  Ostrichs are the second fastest animal on the African Continent, the fastest being the leopard.

That wraps up Part 1.  Not wanting to complain or anything, but uploading those few photos took over four!!! hours.  Part 2 will include:

elephants

giraffe

Eldon

the surrounding area

and a Hedgehog.  If the internet stays up that long ....