Aaaaaand they're off...

So. We finally made it!

At the time of writing there is less than a week to go till we leave again. (At the time of publishing I'm fiddling with an exciting GPRS connection in Sedgefield 10 days later...)

After grossly and fundamentally underestimating the amount of stuff to be done in switching off one life and heading directly for some kind of bardo before the next one “begins”, we find ourselves in an anticipated flux.

Getting onto the plane on Saturday was supposed to be more of a relief for me than it turned out to be. Cognitively I was expecting more of a halt than I experienced. Anyhow, it was a milestone, and now the lack of urgency, activity and the absence of an endless list of things to do is causing a stress of its own! Go figure.

The girls enjoyed the flight and handled it without problem. I think they are going to like travel. With a mom like Hayley the chances of them escaping this genetic preordination are slim indeed. It should aid their transition from a predictable life to the more nomadic one planned, although they have already made their first requests to sleep at home. We have some way to go yet!

Now… to Zim.

I have not felt any kind of kinship to this state for more than 20 years and being occasionally labeled a “when we” has caused me to patiently explain... over... and over... that there is nothing “when we” in me. Anything that was there died a very long time ago. Probably somewhere in the mid ‘80’s by which time you needed a complex system of taps and dials on the phone, or direct answer to prayer from God to get a dial tone. My sister, determined as she was to spend another hour on the phone began to uncover the code for achieving a dial tone and seemed to accomplish this feat after many hours of toil and endless experiment with different combinations of things including storming around like a thundercloud, banging the phone on the table and swearing at it in a manner that would convince a passer-by that the phone was indeed animate, could obey the explicit commands being given and would indeed burn for eternity. So, when I see the outcome of neglect and mismanagement about me I don’t feel anything but an occasional surprise that such backwardness is possible in a time such as ours.

Just for instance...

This is a tap:

Patently! While this seems like an obvious statement and one would be well justified wondering why I would waste valuable Internet space pointing it out. This tap is not all that it immediately appears though.

Permit me to tell you why...

It’s not that it differs anatomically from its kin in any way or that it has magical functions or anything of the sort. This tap is special because of the geography of its installation. Most people would quite reasonably, and probably unconsciously, assume on seeing the tap that it if you twist the spiky bit, the result would be a gush of the universal elixir. Naturally, this in turn depends on its connection to some kind of supply. Indeed, this particular tap is connected to a municipal water supply. What is interesting about this particular tap is that, according to an sms received from my mom in late November this chap has not been able to deliver on its anti-clockwise demands during the day since 8 August 2006.

No water during the day for 3 months. No water at all for large periods of that. By the way, there is no "fault" in the system, burst pipes and so forth, this is how water is supplied in parts of Zim.

Other interesting things – electric supply is subject to load shedding on a daily basis. If you thought that the winter of 2006 was amusing in the Western Cape, you'd be all laughed out if you lived on Bobs' plot.

Here you can expect to be regularly thrown off the grid according to a schedule of some kind.

Inflation here is around 1700% p.a. By way of illustration, if you have a Z$ 100 000 note in your wallet (about ZAR 400 at the parallel rate) it is physically losing close to 5% of its value every day. If you get paid 100k on Friday by the time Monday rolls around you have just shy of 86k left. The weekend cost you nearly 5 grand a day without you having to do a thing. Aint that magical? Disappearing money!

There are still some valuable things still here though hence our presence.

Not a bad place to spend a week though the scenery is great as always .

Many a pride of Charles Glass has been sunk in good company while taking this in... *sigh*

Bugs settling down to some Darles Chickens Another *sigh*