The Heat!

Hello dears
I am not sure you realise what I mean when I say it is hot here: it is so hot the air feels as if it is blowing out of a red-hot heater. The sun feels as if it will give you third degree burns and it never cools down, even at night. We have cold showers throughout the day and the kids swim, even though there are biting things (invisible and unidentifiable) that leave them covered in red bites. I am in love with my little white fan - it is my most precious possession. I carry it into my office and blow it straight onto me at the desk, and I carry it back to our room at night and point it right over me, under the net. It has saved my life. But today the water pump has broken and there are no cold showers to be had. Will have to go to the pool at the lodge down the beach for a swim when the last guests have left after 3.
I don't usually go anywhere, because that would mean going out of this shady property into that dusty heat glare out there. But naturally I made an exception for the Monkey Bay market and went, alone, in the heat of the midday sun. I felt faint and when I saw myself after two hours of trawling the piles, in the mirror at the loo at the petrol station, I was a vile shade of puce. It was rather shattering! I splashed water all over me and emerged looking as if I had tried to drown myself under the tap. The Malawian attendants, with their usual impeccable politeness, merely smiled cheerily and said "you are most welcome" when I staggered out and thanked them from the bottom of my boiled heart.
(Unbelievably, I shopped in that heat for winter clothes for the Cape winter next year. I bought fleece pants and jackets and jerseys - I was a hero in my own bizarre tale.)
Not much going on here in the heat... Ed got a fever for 24 hours and we treated him for malaria but I don't think it was - Malawians all just nod sagely when anyone sickens at this time of year and say "it happens now. It is the lake." The mangoes are ripening slowly and we drink may many glasses of water all day.
We are heading off to the tea estate under Mulanje mountain in the beginning of November - it has an enormous plantation house, sleeps 10 and has huge shady trees and a lawn and a swimming pool! There are also all sorts of mountain streams to swim in. Can't wait. Have even booked for the factory tour (being a tea head, I think it is a necessary pilgrimage.) (Google Lujeri Lodge and then go green.)
Both islands are full now, but are empty for the few days we go away. Malawi has been full of young Poms who came for the Lake of Stars music festival - colonisers. They irritated us with their arrogance - sending beach boys to fetch kayaks for them with vague promises to pay when they returned and infesting our jetty and generally behaving as if Malawi never got its independence 50 years ago and this was their own personal playground replete with cheerful slaves - but perhaps that was just the thoughtlessness of youth interpreted by the cynicism of age (made worse by the irritation of intense heat) - drink more iced water, dear...
Everyone who comes through here gets all misty eyed telling me what an ideal environment this is for kids. It is and it isn't. It's hard for them - the lake makes them itch and there's nowhere to go to get out except for two places - Gecko Lounge for and ice cream, and Cap Mac Lodge for a swimming pool. That's it for outings, and they only happen once a week as the grownups are all working the rest of the time. It is quite a limited life compared with life in town, where you see many other kids and play at each others' houses and go out to see things like the harbour and the shops and various play parks and whatnot. Buj and Javi at least have a wider circle of friends because they speak Chichewa and have grown up here, but my chaps are pretty isolated with only Buj and Javi to play with. So it's very safe and there's the lake and it's a great experience, but they really want to go home. They remember everything about it - every place they went to, every toy that is waiting for them. Still,, they'll miss it all when they leave.So the plan is to always come back for a month or two during the Cape Winter - and maybe every second year to do Christmas here too (and if we can persuade family and friends to visit us then that would be heaven!)
Must go now - hear the boat chugging towards us full of guests coming off and others are on their way here. The dads are taking the kids to swim in the pool and I'll join them there later. (Damn the pump!)

Baby Jane and Edward Scissorhands

Think it's been a while since I last wrote and then it was a bit of a whine, I fear.
Have got over that negative patch and am merrily settled down to the daily business of life here in the tropics. It is fiendishly hot these days and we have cold showers before bed and then sleep with fans blowing all night. But the upside is that all the trees are putting out bright green leaves as if in anticipation of the rain coming in December - even though there is not a sniff of it yet. Even the baobab at the back fence is beginning to sprout.
I was very honoured yesterday to name the new baby daughter of Edward (our head guide) and his wife Mable (our laundry lady). I was taken by surprise so I suggested my mum's name, Claire. But Malawians can't say i's so it was Crare and they looked disconcerted at that, so I suggested my granny's name Patricia, which was also difficult to pronounce and the baby nearby had the name already so they waited expectantly for another. So I suggested Jane, a name I have always loved for its simplicity, and because of my dear friend of the same name. They loved it too, so this afternoon at 3pm I am off to their house again to eat a meal in celebration of Jane. She'll be known as Jani though, as everything in Malawi ends in "i". (Remember the shopping list? Ben is a scream - he speaks his version of Chitchewa where he just speaks English and adds "i" onto everything!)
(An aside: there are very interesting names here - you know about Lyoness already, but some of my personal faves are Godafoloy (Godfrey) and Cleartone (known as Creaton).)
The boatmen are picking tamarind pods off our big tree in front of our office - it's interesting to eat - you eat the inner soft part of the pod - very spicy. They make a drink out of it here by mixing it with lots of sugar and water. And the kids are jumping on the trampoline which Franklyn is sitting on having a chat with other staff.
A very sad thing happened - our guide Foster's wife was expecting a baby which just wouldn't arrive. She was in the monkey Bay hospital and they let her get to 10 months, and of course it was then stillborn. Horrible. Would never have happened in the first world. People get so used to tragedy here. Staff leave for funerals every second day. But are back and cheerful within a few days. I suppose you get tough.
I won't bore you with another shopping saga - suffice it to say Pam and I did the Lilongwe big city jaunt last week and have returned with souls refreshed by cappuccino, home-made gelati and tortellini - and of course adorned with 30 more magnificent chitenjes from the Tanzanian ladies. (There was a leper there - a man covered in seeping sores who was yelled at by the ladies until he shuffled off - another third world vision!)
And I finally made it to the Monkey Bay market again yesterday. There is always a treat there. I was running short of bras (here bras are made of scratchy nylon with no underwire (necessary post-babes!) according to a pattern last revamped in 1955 - all pointy and Madonna circa 1984!). And blow me right over, but there was a pile of the most gorgeous la Senza bras, brand new, albeit a bit dusty, in exactly my size, in all the colours of the rainbow. I now own 10 - in every shade from orange, through the pinks, to lime green and turquoise and maroon. The joy! They cost the equivalent of less than $1 each. Also bought many boy's clothes, Gap and Oshkosh and whatnot - Ben and Eddie don;t own a new garment amongst them these days and are the best dressed kids in Cape Town (well, I think so - love a bargain!) Bush also owns many loud patterned shirts which he wears with his own inimitable flair and ubiquitous grey board shorts. I also dress Jurie (checked shirts and t-shirts), Buji (superhero things) and Java (anything pink!) (And shared the bra harvest with Gloria in the laundry who had requested help in that area.)
We just had a momentous occasion! A gal in the village had friends to stay - a gay couple, one of whom was a hairdresser. In exchange for a night on Domwe, he cut my, Bush's, Ben's, Eddie's, Jurie's, Buji's, Javi's, Pam's and Lucy's hair! Oh the thrill! We all look very smart. Poor guy must have been finished after that, but he was Edward Scissorhands and did us all with a smile!
Must go now - doing hostess duty on Mumbo tonight - kids will join me tomorrow - short staffed as everyone is off to music fest (not doing stall - long story...)

the strangeness of life

Life in the tropics is getting strange sometimes. Feel very disconnected from my old life in Kommetjie and yet not a part of this one here in many ways. I love working for Kayak Africa and seeing things change and move forward and being a part of it all - it is a great business and the staff are a pleasure and the islands are magnificent and the guest are always happy. We have just won an award from the Department of Tourism here as the most environmentally friendly camp in the country, so that was nice. I was interviewed on the radio when the journos came (as Bush and Jurie were away watching rugby!) - never heard it though, nor did anyone who knows me (probably a good thing) - perhaps it wasn't ever aired! We are also on the Times (of London)'s list of the top 24 green places in the world to visit in their Green Spaces Awards. The judge is coming to see us on Nov 10. So we are really doing well these days. Working life is good - it is just the lack of personal life - friends and family and like-minded people - that is a problem.
I have very little else to occupy my thoughts apart from my motherly concerns - copious guilt as ever about not being the mother of the margarine ads - in fact, not even bearing the faintest resemblance to that paragon who laughs and tosses her immaculate hair and rushes about playing lovely outdoor games with her gorgeous clean offspring whilst cheerfully holding hands with her admiring hubby - all this in sparkling white jeans...could throttle the woman!
Instead I sit sweatily in my kitchen office, in increasingly bizarre chitenje ensembles, grey locks all out of style and unkempt (no haircutters in this village!), trying to keep up with emails and little odd jobs and staff requests for cash and 3 million requests from four demanding children to draw boats and pour juice and hand out junk food and then to separate them when they have their hair-raising brawls with much screeching and yelling (them not me!). It all get wearying.
And then, much as I love my dear husband, he is not the chattiest of personas and is usually as exhausted as I am by the end of the day and then we need to do the suicide hour of bathing four children, after which we collapse in our respective hammocks and exchange a few ideas (usually about work) and then I skulk off to bed to read or watch a dodgy DVD (old sex in the city mini-series at the moment - a girl takes what she can get out here - and I find I am actually enjoying them!) Thank heavens for Pam on the island and Lucy in the office here who are gals after my own heart - if they weren't about I think I'd never be able to vent.
Tonight is the opening of a new bar - oh whoopee doopee. Have to go otherwise it will be considered a slight. So will trawl along after kids are asleep and do what is known in these parts as a "French exit" - a quiet, un-noticed slope off home... even Bush is already planning it as he and Jurie are setting off to watch the rugby - a double header - and he knows that that will be about all the beer he'll be able to take!
Looking forward to coming home now, but can't allow myself to think like that, must live every day properly here and come home triumphant!
Must go now - think I have been garbled.

Weather woes and Ceremonies

Have just seen two fabulous ladies of 84 off to Mumbo. They have been traveling together for 25 years all over the world. One was the professor of anatomy at Wits for 40 years, and took up skiing at 74, but gave it up at 79 as it was just too difficult to catch the ski lift with all that gear. What darlings - very inspiring.
All is going swimmingly here. Joseph is a winner in the office - very charming and a natural. Also one of those people who is so easy to work with as he is not invasive in any way. And Lucy started too - and she, too, is so nice to have around. An English girl, witty and efficient as anything and a tea drinker (in fact all three of us are, so it is a harmonious office these days).
There is a big building programme around base camp these days - we are putting up a bamboo fence to shield sensitive guests from the view of the chaos the children create next to our office! Jurie is also making himself a bedroom upstairs separate from his children so that's a lot of sawing and whatnot. And out in the village it is also roofing season and brick-making season - now that it's hot and the thatching grass is ready for cutting and the bricks can be sun-baked and houses made ready for the coming rains. It has reached that time when the heat begins to build up to a hellish crescendo by November and the rains come to save us from ourselves. Dreading it! Especially as the kids can't swim in the lake at the moment as there are biting midges in it and after one swim they can be covered in little blistered bites that itch like hell and keep them awake. Have resorted to putting a big laundry bucket in the shower and they wash things and frootle about in it and stay cool and clean.
My chitenje outfits are perfect in the heat. But have to get more from Lilongwe again soon as Pam and I want to sell them at the Lake of Stars music festival in October. Let me rephrase that: Pam will sell them there, I will put up cash and organise Billy to sew things, but I will not set foot near the stall. My idea of hell is a music festival full of backpackers all camping on a crowded beach with 24 hour trance music blaring. AAArrrgh. I am very old.
This weekend was very interesting. Irene, our laundry lady, was inaugurated as head of her family. Hers is the family we rent the land from and Joseph is her brother and her father is Phillip the night watchman who sleeps on the boat every night. She shared the ceremony with three others. The party began when family from all the surrounding villages arrived by boat and Jurie's truck and set up fires behind us next to the big baobab. They cooked and sang and the drummers drummed and the party went on until the next morning. Then the ladies washed up and made pala (porridge) for breakfast (after dancing all night). The men by this time were mostly catatonic from beer and there were many lurchers (but always good-natured ones; the Malawian spirit seems to be kindly even when pissed). There was a brief lull and then the exhausted drummers began again and everyone went one by one throughout the day to pay their respects to Irene and her fellow family heads who sat all day on a mat in a hot house and received salutations absolutely impassively. I went to pay my respects and was a bit disconcerted by the solemnity of the occasion. Then in the afternoon things hotted up again and the dignitaries emerged from the hot house, veiled in chitenjes, spouses too, and led by the ancients of the area, they slowly walked to the enormous fig tree on the beach for the real ceremony. This entailed the elders making speeches about the importance of the family (they are of the Madoti family whose ancestor was the first man to come to Cape Maclear. The only reason they are not chiefs is that when the Mazungus (whites) came, they were too scared to deal with them and a fellow called Chembe was the only man brave enough to go forward and talk to the whites. He was then made chief of the area under the British. There is still a Chief Chembe here today, but negotiations are underway to split the village back into two areas, Madoti and Chembe. This is a long story and of course I have heard the Madoti version. Chief Chembe not a popular fellow - he doesn't even live in the village and is always on the take.)
Anyway, back to the ceremony (I am probably boring you all witless, and only continuing in the footsteps of many millions of travelers who think themselves amateur anthropologists and faithfully record their impressions which all turn out to be completely erroneous as we are mere outsiders in the end, but I have a moment and the music blares in my ear and I have nothing better to do and I found the whole thing interesting, if interminable!) - so then the elders got up one by one and renamed the chosen four. This was done by sipping from a cup of sugar cane liquor and then chanting the new name and giving the appointee a sip and then doing it all over again. We were there to represent Kayak Africa - Franklyn had informed us that we were expected to give a large financial gift and to be there in person to present it. So Jurie and I went with the kids to do the thing (while Bush held the fort as by his own admission, it was not his sort of thing - he is a shocking fidgeter!) Jurie had Zoda fetch him beer and was then happy to sit in the shade til called. Ben said the drums were banging his head and was miserable and Eddie was coming down with what later turned out to be a vomiting bug and clung palely to me all afternoon. Not a success with the kids....
We eventually were called by the master of ceremonies and presented our gifts to great applause and then the floodgates opened and all the candidates were covered in new chitenjes and new clothes and cash and whatnot and we sidled off while that continued for the rest of the day.
Poor Eddie then vomited all night and had a high temperature, but was right as rain the next day,if tired. So was I! He spent the afternoon sleeping on a mattress in my office while Ben and Bush went to the pool and Ben astounded his father by swimming perfect freestyle which he said he'd learned from watching Bush and Tintin!
That is probably enough for you by now - sorry if I went on a bit!

yet another shopping trip - well, it's a BIG thing in our lives!

Well I have the generator roaring in my ear so I might not get too far with this. Hell it's noisy!
Pam and I went to Lilongwe the day before yesterday on another epic shopping trip - it astounds me sometimes what we think is normal here! We left at 8:30 - drove 4 hours on those bad roads. Dropped guests at the airport, then did an enormous food shop at the wholesalers, then another at Shoprite (and only one cup of odd Indian spiced tea at a dodgy cafe for refreshment, where the teenage son kept grabbing his willy in its nylon tracky pants - quite oblivious of our jaws dropping in horror at the sight!) and then got dropped at our accommodation at 6pm. We stayed at the Wilderness Safaris lodge this time (I just could not do a backpacker again!) and what a joy it was. A huge ensuite room each, with its own lounge. And delicious dinner and a big bath and in bed with a book by 8! It's run by a gorgeous Malawian woman who just enfolds you in warmth and treats you like a long lost friend. The lodge was packed with a group of ghastly pommy businessmen on a junket - seeing farms they've invested in in Malawi. Yukky sorts who take off their wedding rings when they travel, I am sure, and then ogle and try for an easy fling. Pam and I were very snooty!
The next morning we were on our way by 8 - doing office photocopying and stationery shopping and then on to the chitenje market where we shopped our pattern-obsessed hearts out (the passion only grows!). By 2pm we still hadn't seen lunch or tea and had yet to do the vege market (an legend in its own lunchtime as one has to haggle and price and employ a squadron of eager young boys to carry bags and bags of papaya and banana and pineapples and brinjals and grenadilla and strawberries and anything and everything except broccoli which I crave. Veges and fruit here are fabulous - all organic and home-grown and everything that's now trendy and "green" in the western world, but is just the norm here. But the accountant tells me that Malawians prefer to buy their produce at Shoprite as they assume it's better - isn't that sad? (But not as sad as the Shoprite produce which looks as if it had reached its sell-by date in South Africa and was then trucked in a not-very-chilled-refrigerated van into the interior!)
Only after that horticultural adventure did we flag and insist on lunch and Davi our driver and co-shopper dropped us off at the Italian restaurant (where we ate the best gnocchi (my favourite thing in all the world, and there it was, top of the menu,) and tortellini and gelati and cappuccino I have ever tasted. I have to say that we were almost as overjoyed with the clean loos where we could scrub up a little - we were less than savoury at that stage.
We eventually only left town at 4pm and I drove us all the way home - down Dedza pass (an epic of the tightest hairpin bends) and along the still-incomplete Golomoti dirt road until the Cape Maclear road - when I flagged and Pam took over (we thought Davi needed a rest as he'd carried on shopping while we did lunch). A civet and two porcupines graced our nighttime journey and we got back here by 8pm and unpacked the minibus which was jammed to the windows with food and whatnot (you can't believe the volume of stuff the island gets through in these busy times.
The children were all angelically asleep, but Bush and Jurie were still ensconced with the accountant who is here doing an audit of last year's books. They looked as if they'd been through a longer haul than we had - all furrowed brows and bags under the eyes and hair on end. (The accountant is STILL here this afternoon looking as fresh as if he'd just begun his endless numerical evaluations - I think he is driving the bwanas mad with frustration, but they are staying admirably calm. I am impressed at their fortitude- this is the third full day of this and they are also paying the man for his obviously valuable time...)
Eddie and Javi have just charged in wearing a pair of very girly pink shoes each. Ed has no idea of his gender yet and I love seeing him so proudly stomping about in pink flowery mary-janes. Ben and Buj are fishing in the lake - they put some old nsima in a bottle and when the fish swims in, quickly upend it and trap their catch in a big blue bucket. Endless source of joy. Oh, wrong - now they are drawing sabre-tooth tigers.
Right - now it's the next day and thank God the power is back on and all is peaceful in the office. I must sort myself out and get back into work mode - just fiddled and flustered yesterday as the diesel fumes and thumping generator worked their way into my head!

whatnot

Hello all
It has been like a train station here with all the comings and goings of guests and staff alike!
Buji and Lyoness went to Lilongwe to see the doctor (all is well) and got back last night and now Jurie and Dominique and Liinu have gone off on a recce of Zambia (just for 3 days) so that Dominique can get her passport stamped for another 3 months and Juire can see whether the gay cyclists would like that route for their next fund-raising adventure and Liinu went just for the ride.
Our islands are both full and have been for ages and it is lovely that so many people have come and gone, all happy and delighted with the experience. I am always rendered speechless when one person out of a hundred has a bit of "constructive advice" for us! (Once it was that we should paint our boat blue and white not green and white! What?) I am not so good at looking thrilled at such nonsense. We had one night on Domwe with the kids and Lyoness and Zoda - which was really lovely and peaceful, even though we had to be back early the next morning.
So all in all, the days are busy with a million small tasks interspersed with endless requests to draw sabre-toothed tigers or speed boats or tintin or nankappa or whatever is obsessing the minds of the six-year-olds and their three-year-old acolytes at the moment. And of course the boat bringing guests from the island and taking them to it and people wafting in with questions and wanting to rent kayaks and whatnot. (A couple came in for a look at what we do - they live in Blantyre - and I said that Mumbo offered a more African experience than many of the lodges on the beach, and they said, "Oh no! That doesn't sound our sort of thing at all!" I was astonished! They have chosen to live in Africa, what sort of thing is their thing???? Pretending they're in England I suppose, though Africa is pretty insistent so I am not sure how they manage to ignore all its horrors and beauties...)
As I write, two huge trucks are starting up outside - overloaded utterly and completely with hundreds of women off to the centenary of the CCAP church in a village quite a way from here. Jurie lends them his truck and driver as a favour to the village. The ladies came to sing for him and Buj and Java last month to thank him (and brought gifts of a huge bowl of freshly picked rice and nsima). They sang beautifully and swayed in time to the song (I am always useless at that sort of thing and get tearful and have to hide!).
In the same vein, we donate money to an informal orphanage in the village, run by a man appropriately called Vision. He runs a vegetable garden on the outskirts and the orphans help him with it and he feeds and clothes 150 of them out of the goodness of his heart. He can't register his orphanage as the chief then siphons off all the money, so he does it all on our donation and one from Liinu every month. He has been wanting me and Pam to see the project for ages and so last week we went. We were a bit late and when we got to the garden a shout and screams of joy went up - we felt like Madonna! There were all the children - aged from around 2 to 9, each with an old pot or bucket they use to water the veges and dressed in these little faded floral frocks (made from a previous donation) or rags and tatters. They sang a song and we looked around the garden (we buy lettuce and tomatoes and brinjals and peppers from them for the islands) and then we went to see where they have supper in Visions back yard - cooked by his wife and her sisters. All so organised - again I got weepy. The children all live with their extended families, but are fed by Vision once a day. Quite amazing. I'll attach a pic.
And we had a filmmaker and her photographer husband come to take pics of Mumbo for Tatler magazine, which, if you aren't a Paperweight bookshop fan like myself you might not know, is a very upper crust British mag. The journos came last month and distinguished themselves by not asking a single question! Not my idea of how a journo should behave, really! Anyway, the photographers were much nicer and loved everything about it and were the sort pf people one would like as friends. Oh and he is taking a series of photos of redheads as he says they are a dying breed. So I offered him Bush, who was very disconcerted. But though he stared long and hard at my dear husband, (Oh they are naked photos too!), he ended up not having enough time and photographed the ancient fig tree instead. I was rather sad - would have loved to see a really beautiful pic of Bush in the nick! I looked the photographer up on the internet and his work is truly beautiful. And his wife has just made a film starring Keira Knightly. Perhaps we will have the rich and famous descending on us soon. Buy the Tatler in December.
Off now to have one square of my beloved black chocolate, which I eak (how do you spell that??) out like the elixir of life itself, and extract Eddie from Lyoness's house (Ben is practicing smiles whilst hanging on my lap!) so I can read them Green Eggs and Ham.
Toodle Pip dears!

another shopping trip to the Tanzanian ladies

Hello all
Sorry so long since the last letter (or is it? You might be well bored with these missives anyway, but they help me to get it all off my chest and also to remember the good things.)
My office is as neat as a pin - Dan stopped work here yesterday and I am on my own here. A bit apprehensive about it, but he was sometimes more of a hindrance anyway as he'd lost his zest for the job. But now Clive and Jurie and I are holding the base camp fort until Joseph the driver can become an extra office person and we can get a new manager in - probably only the end of August. So things are going to be a bit hectic here - glad we had our moment in the tea fields! (Which my dad corrected me about - they are not fields, but plantations, apparently. One must get one's agricultural terms correct!)
We are happily ensconced in our little reed house, which has grown since we stayed last year and is perfectly sized now for our family. Ben and Eddie sleep with their beds together under a huge net and are very happy with that brotherly togetherness. They still watch Tintin every evening and of course now that consumes me with guilt as I think I should be reading to them! So I have now begun an after-lunch reading session to assuage the guilt - I am so determined that they should grow up to be readers. I think Ben will as he had a lot of input in the early years (his first words every morning used to be "Light! Book!"), but Eddie has had such a different time and maybe I need to put more reading time in with him. Mutter, mutter, motherly musings are boring I am sure. Apologies.
I feel very old in Malawi. I am the only mzungu mother and most other mzungus are single and on the party circuit, as one is in one's twenties after all. With my grey locks, demanding offspring and inability to booze, I am a real pooper and outsider. Thank goodness for Pam, our island host, as she is a gal after my own heart - more sensible and not so eager for the mindless drinking binge as others - but she is on the island most of the time.
She and I (and Liinu who is back from Finland) had another great chitenje mission to Lilongwe on Tues and Wed. Those trips are hectic! Four hours in a dusty car and then Shoprite and the wholesale shops for acres of oil and loo roll and other such interesting stuff. Then overnight in a dodgy backpacker joint (thank god for earplugs!) In the morning, it's off to the Tanzanian ladies in the market maze (always struggle to find them in those alleyways jammed with tiny shops selling everything you could need in this country: maize sacks, string, bicycle parts, nail polish, bath sponges, cockroach poison - if one had to make a list of what you can buy there it would be hundreds of pages long!) Then more last minute shopping (the list gets phoned in) and then on to Dedza another two hours drive away to the vegetable market (which turned out to be only an early morning possibility - so no lettuce for the guests' salad!) and to order more plates from the famous pottery there. That is an amazing place - not very creative pottery, but a huge concern and gorgeous old brick buildings and a great restaurant which made us tea and cheesecake - an unheard of luxury here! We got back at 8pm that night - dusty, sticky and absolutely finished! (Have loved my iPod here - just plugged myself in and lay back - had to block my ears to hear anything on the really rutted bits of road, but could still hear the strains..)
Got fabulous chitenjes though - so worth it all, and you won't believe how exciting it is to wander around Shoprite after months of no shops but Monkey Bay (which I haven't managed to get to for a month and am suffering withdrawals from the lack.)
Must trundle off now to feed kids (fish gujons and chips tonight - I never what a gujon was until I got here and still would never be able to cook one myself!)