pincushions + memories

We recently spent a weekend with all my family on the banks of a river which, I think, possibly makes up part of our DNA.

Thirty years ago we were the children immersed in this river, hunting tadpoles, logging hours of exploratory water therapy, learning to swim and navigate rocks and rapids and the boundaries of our own imaginations.

We know its wide still pools of quiet introspection, the deafening thrills of adrenaline-fueled rapids, the places where the reeds close in and the river fills your ears and you could be all alone on the planet with just the dragonflies and the occasional plopping frog for company.

We remember how just up from the river bank the air instantly warms, the scent changes to that of the heat-baked fynbos and ones ears fill with the buzz of cicadas and the wind through the proteas, the river a distant murmur.

Everything is still just as our childhood selves remembered it, but this time with a few additions.

New members - sisters-in-law and grandchildren - new family dynamics, and new cottages in which to dry out, refuel and suspend time.

My parents realised while we there that it was almost exactly the 40th anniversary of the first time we camped there - under a tarp then. Stories of leopards and friends and fires and floods, 'do you remembers' and 'who was that' and 'no I didn't!!'.

The river remembered us, we remembered each other in a different time. We beamed at each other over cheesecake and pincushions and, again, counted our lucky, lucky stars to have grown up in such a beautiful place. To be here still.

under the jacaranda

I've recently finished a monster of a job in Johannesburg.

I was contracted through a long-standing client to do the logistics on a high-level meeting of, originally, 80 experts from around the world. And by around the world I mean really around the world - Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Macedonia ... 20 different countries all in.

Rapidly, as these things are wont to do, our numbers burgeoned beyond 80, making the group too big for the main auditorium in the venue we'd booked - the historic and poignant Liliesleaf Farm.

'But we have to have it there!' they cried.
'Well we can't bloody do it inside,' I replied.

6 weeks later...

Negotiating the precarious space between budgetary constraints and expected outcome I worked with the venue, engineers and external suppliers to put together a tented space on the grounds, under the flowering jacarandas, the territorial hadedas and the hot early summer sun.

It looked great on paper and when I flew up a few weeks earlier to do a site inspection it all mapped out well, in theory. But on the Sunday before the meeting, as the tent went up - more open on the sides than the pictures I'd been shown - and the plastic-tile 'floor' went down - on a bumpy lawn which had not in fact been mowed despite assurances that it would be - and the chairs were delivered - and unceremoniously dumped in a corner of the lawn, all 120 of them - and nothing was quite as it should be, far from it in fact - I stood on that bumpy lawn and wondered what to do first: throw-up, change my name, book a flight to Abu Dhabi .... I thought I might cry.

Instead I started unpacking 120 chairs, and vented my frustration at the first supplier who crossed my path, quietly informed my client that it was fine, but not ideal, and checked the weather forecast for the bazillionth time in 24 hours.

The next day I was there by 07:00 and already things started looking better. With cushions on all the chairs and the big plasma screens in place and the fresh morning air - it felt serene and controlled. I watched from the lawn as the Big Boss arrived in her chauffeur-driven car ... she came slowly down the hill toward me as I stood there taking deep breaths, braced for whatever might be rained down upon me ...

'I love it.' She said, spreading her arms wide as she approached. 'Meeting under the trees, it's the African way.'
I thought I might cry again.

3 days of meeting in a dappled green, outdoor space, 3 inspiring days of ideas and information, people stepping out of the tent to stretch their legs and ending up stretched out on the lawn, still listening and engaging. Not a chill breeze or a drop of rain or a dusty gust to distract them. Just the creak of the trees, the occasional cry of the birds and the warmth of a few perfect African days.

That spirit went back to Jordan, to Indonesia, to Pakistan and after it was all over, I came home to Cape Town, happy and exhausted. I love my job, mostly ;-)