in the African night

On Sunday evening I did a most beautiful thing with a dearest friend. 

Another outdoor movie. This time on a picnic blanket in the magnificent Kirstenbosch Gardens, still one of my favourite places in the world. 

This time Out of Africa, possibly one of my most watched films of all time. But not for years.

Out of Africa is so precious that I'd trust few people to watch it with me. I will not tolerate any eye-rolling, sighing at its length or critical analysis of its historical facts. You must be invested, all in, to share this cinematic experience with me and as the opening credits rolled and we both snuggled down on our blanket with instantly dewy eyes, there was no other place in the world I would rather have been.

The dreaded South Easter wind had been howling in Cape Town for 10 solid days. The end of year pressure of school and work and Xmas madness mounting. The 4th wave, Omicron, travel bans looming. Friends in distress and friends in despair. Loss and betrayal. It had been a really tough week.

But the wind dropped that evening. The velvety-darkness fell as that haunting opening music rolled across the lawn towards us. 

And as I watched, past versions of myself crept out from between the scenes bringing with them memories - of outfits I constructed in my childhood bedroom to dress like Karen Blixen (the white cotton blouse, buttoned at the neck and pinned with a brooch, the striped African print scarf tied over one shoulder, the khaki skirt I rolled at the waist to get just the right length on my shin), of standing on the dewy lawn in Swaziland in 1994 looking out at the mist lying in the valleys and channeling Meryl Streep, of years and years and years of yelling 'Hello the house!' when arriving at my bestie's (she who lay next to me watching this now). The way that music had always made me feel, the yearning for adventure and the happiness of thinking that even if I wasn't living her life, I lived in Africa already and that was a good start. 

As the film rolled on the sky got darker and more dramatic, and I found myself gazing away from the screen to take in the enormity and beauty of it, and have one of those lucid moments of perfect clarity one occasionally has, where you can stop within an experience, to realise that this is one of the best things you'll do in your life.

Time slowed and exhaled, we wept and laughed. On screen the sound of crickets chirping filled the African night, as around us in the gardens the sounds of crickets chirping, filled the African night.

Bliss.

lost in soweto

Oh wait, before that I got lost in Nyanga.
Well, my Uber driver swore he was not lost but the multi-car pile-up in the middle of a 4-way intersection rapidly filling up with buses, kids, goats and pedestrians peeling out of cars to take their chances on foot felt a lot like lost.
Nyanga is the 'murder capital' of South Africa. My Uber driver kept asking me if I was okay and when I promised him I was (I really was, everyone in the situation - except maybe the goats - were intent on only one thing, getting out of the situation, and nothing felt threatening at all), he chuckled and said if he had tourists in the car they'd be crying by now ha ha.
I made him promise to never get into that situation with tourists, even if it was (usually) the quickest route to the airport.

I got to the airport in time for my pre-Joburg oh-seven-hundred manicure and got to Joburg in time to pick up my hired car and set off for Soweto. My little Renault Kwid (Quip?) had sat nav and a nice jolly English man periodically told me what to do.
Joburg freeways have only two speeds: crawling suicidal depression speed, and terrifying homicidal death wish. I alternated between the two.

Everything was going fine, my exit coming up on the left, when Jolly English Sat Nav man instructed me to stay going straight. 5km later I decided he was talking bollocks and while attempting to change direction via complex spaghetti junctions I loaded Google Maps with Laconic American Lady to see what her opinion was.
She and English man argued for a while - Him: You have gone off course, turn back now. Her: Continue straight - until I managed to turn his volume down, and Laconic American Lady boldly directed me straight into the heart of Soweto and a blocked off, non-existent road.

Soweto is massive, like a city on its own, but not the kind of place you dither around in looking lost. Staying cool, I followed a line of other cars diverting around the blocked off road. I followed those cars down a dirt track, through the heart of a very poor settlement, round a bend, through a field, over an embankment, a ramp over the pavement and viola! arrived at my destination.

Thank goodness Soweto is fairly flat, and from a distance I could see the iconic Orlando Towers - an old coal-fired power station - the University of Joburg campus I was headed to was just nearby...

Later that day my Kwid wouldn't start ... no idea why not ... but I got a new car delivered (sans hubcaps when they realised I was staying in Soweto ha ha) and made my way with Laconic American Lady to the Soweto Hotel.
Again she took me off course (in her defense she took me to the pin, which was off course) and this time, with the light fading and the exertions of the day taking their toll, I wasn't feeling nearly as adventurous and brave. And instead resigned myself to driving around in circles swearing outrageously at her, Google Maps, the architects of apartheid, the necessity of work, being self-employed, night time, the universe in general, hired cars and just fucking everything. Until I stumbled upon the hotel quite by accident - a massive concrete block on Walter Sisulu Square - and stood for a moment enjoying the light from my balcony and marveling at the wonder of this country of ours.

It's a pretty weird and wonderful place when you're able to stay still long enough to absorb it.

the day it rained

Sad news made me very sad yesterday morning.
I was actually pleased that smaller daughter was off school with a cold so I couldn't really wallow -  it's hard to get properly emotional when someone keeps asking for toast with syrup and strawberries and your assistance getting to the next level of Angry Birds.
I imagine this is how mothers the world over keep on keeping on.

I got busy with tax submissions and other frightfully stimulating domestic tasks, popped out to buy some leeks and a bra ... you know, keeping on.

In the background the slow, agonising demise of Zuma churned away ... not for us the excitement of an overthrow, an assassination, a fit of conscience or a public resignation. No, just the living embodiment of the very South African phrase, now now. As in, Zuma is leaving now now. But when exactly remains unclear.
It's hard to drink celebratory champagne in slow disjointed sips. Not good for the bubbles really.
Can you believe it's been nearly a decade since this?

On the horizon thunderheads bubbled up, Google told me 'it's raining in Cape Town, stay dry' and the sun beat down unabated.

Later that evening my lovely parents came for supper.

We had a leek tart, mounds of roasted baby potatoes, beetroot, piles of fresh summery salady things, a fine wine, homemade panna cotta for dessert topped with juicy strawberries and figs, then more figs with blue cheese ... and more wine.
And while we were eating the storm outside got serious.

Thunder, lightning - after dinner we squeezed onto the stoep couch and ooh-ed and aah-ed at the light show playing out around us. At the rain pouring down.
The air got momentarily warmer, as the heat was released from the ground, and then deliciously cool.

My parents dashed out to their car, the girls off to bed, and I sat outside with the last of my wine and just one more fig, listening to the rain, watching the lightning and marveling at how one day can encompass so much.

Even in loss there is gratitude, even in drought there is rain.

UPDATE: He's gone! At 10:55pm on 'Zumatines' Day the old fuck finally resigned! Yippeeee.

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 ;-)

winter holidays

The second term finally dragged to a close, all of us broken and semi-sick and deep bone-tired.

And maybe because we needed them so very, very badly, the holidays settled on to us gently and comfortingly, like a well worn cotton duvet on a chilly winters eve. Exhale ...

Winter mornings when the world seems black and white in its chilly serenity.

Winter evenings when all the colour from the day pools and deepens, dip-dying the sunset as the chill creeps in.

Winter days when despite clammy sand (and dirty fingernails) we still congregate on the beach for a late afternoon cone and a laugh before fleeing home to warm baths and early nights.

Winter is quiet, and measured and calm. Except when it's not of course. But when it is, it is just the balm for the weary mid-year soul.

in time of drought ...

... drinking ants in ones tea becomes less reprehensible than emptying and refilling the kettle before boiling it.

... the amount of ice blocks in ones drink becomes a question of conservation, not taste.

... the merits of paper towel versus water play through your head as you wonder whether to wipe or rinse a greasy pot. You can drive yourself mental playing this 'which is worse/better' game.

... your loo can look like the scene of a horror movie as you resolutely flush with bath water despite your daughters predilection for garishly coloured bath bombs.

... you add, to the other multiple lists in your head, a roster of which plant has received grey water when and which is more deserving.

... the sound of a sprinkler is arresting, and out of place. One instantly harshly judges the sprinkleree.

... a dirty car becomes a badge of honour.

... other people's hysteria about the water shortage weirdly makes one feel calmer?

... small people worry. She brushes her teeth with an inch of water in a cup and when she's finished, swills the last drops around in the bottom and asks, 'What shall I do with this Mum?'

... and when there is rain - it's only happened about twice this year - everyone stops what they're doing to watch it, and all the pot plants go out to play. And everything feels right with the world again, for just a minute.

a cat in the dark

Back in the 80's, our family leased a bit of land from a local farmer to use for camping and holidays.

'The Vlei' was in fact a good few acres of wild waterside property - a long debris-strewn beach, various shady camping spots up under the invasive Port Jackson trees, a clay quarry, and a sandy track up on the hill linking them all and bordering shabby fields filled with shabby sheep.
The vlei itself was a tidal lagoon miles from the ocean - brack, murky, full of weed and half submerged trees waiting to ambush watercraft and unsuspecting shins.

All sounds a bit rough doesn't it? It was. And it was heaven.

Every summer, straight after Christmas, we'd pack up and head down there for 2 or 3 weeks - until school started again really. Only 15 minute drive from our house (yup, best holiday destination ever), my Dad would pop back into town almost daily for the newspaper, fresh milk and to pick up 'a couple more things' from home.
The rest of us wouldn't leave once, getting dirtier and wilder and more feral by the day, as the amount of 'gear' we had down there accumulated and the desire to ever leave dwindled at an equal rate.

Over the years we put in more infrastructure. My Dad built open wooden platforms for kitchen areas, with rough worktops and sheet roofs, wooden benches for around the fire, a few windbreaks in strategic places. A water tank to collect rain - we had to schlep all our fresh water down there in barrels - boardwalks down to the water and every year, a fresh new long-drop loo!

There were flamingos - one evening a visitor 'spoke' to them with her flute, the flamingos falling uncharacteristically silent as she played, only to burble up again with their clucking when she paused - wild horses (can there be anything more mystical to a child than wild horses?), fish eagles, millions of mice - all our books came home with nibbled corners - and one night, there was a big cat.

Family friends were camped a little way down the beach from us, my younger brother and I had been playing in the clay quarry with their kids until after sundown, when their Mum came to find us all and pack us off to our respective home fires.
Our camp was along the beach, but to walk there down the road would be quicker. And, it turns out, darker.

I was a terrible scaredy-cat as a child but, as I've now discovered as a parent too, there's nothing more emboldening than being with someone more scared than you. My brother was scared.
We marched along, fast, keeping our eyes glued to the white sandy tracks leading us homeward, trying not to look at, or think about, the high dark bush on either side.
But it was around a corner when out of that bush, a caracal stepped.

Not my pic. Obvs.

It stood in the road in front of us and stared.

My memory tells me we reached for each other, my brother and I. But it would right, nurtured as it has been by fairy stories of babes in the woods and lost siblings. But more visceral than that is a recollection of his hand - cold, grimy, sweaty - in mine, our fingers so tightly entwined they could have fused.

The cat slipped silently into the bush on the other side of the road, and in one fluid movement, we ran.
I think we were yelling for my parents as we came to the camp, because I remember them meeting us on the road. Maybe, concerned that we were out so late they'd come walking along to find us, but I recall falling into their arms, finally releasing my little brother's hand.

And I'll remember always the first thing my Mum said to us as we garbled out the story, she said: 'Oh you lucky, lucky children, hardly anyone gets to see a caracal in the wild like that.'

Just like that she changed our terror to pride - we felt not threatened and afraid, but special and favoured - and in the same instant taught us fundamental life lessons to carry along always: seek the positive, be empowered by your experiences, relish every single contact you are granted with the natural world and turn every incident into a hell of a good story.

We were lucky, lucky children.

a weekend in tankwa

The morning after the post before I started my day in Durban, hungover AF, 27 degrees C, trying to keep my business brain about myself .... and many, many hours later ... ended it in Tankwa, 6 degrees C, with a cold gin in my hand and the most incredible experience of watching an aardvark snuffle down the road ahead of us fresh in my mind.

Lux accommodation with assorted dead animals.

This one was the deadest.

Love me some shale.

Big skies with tiny daisies.

And other beautiful flowers.

Free kids.

 It was our now annual weekend with these friends. Different venue, same epic meals, litres of wine, kakpraat and ferocious card games.
I spent the weekend in a post-Durban fug - weary and disorientated and slightly drunk most of the time - but so happy to be back with my people and off on an adventure.

a week in Durban

I've been in Durban this week - hosting a group of delegates to the Int AIDS Conference here. Running 5 events, managing their registration and hotels and arrangements, being their bitch really.
(I ran into an old client while here and said just that - her gratifying response: 'Well, you are the best bitch in the business' - ha ha.)

I've run into so many old clients, connections, colleagues, friends. It's been like a live walk through of my CV - filmmakers, activists, artists, funders - I've run into people I've worked with at all the various stages of my career over the last 16 years, including the guy I did my very first large-scale event with, back in 1999! We met for dinner on my first night here - I hadn't seen him since 2001 - and had such a great catch-up.

It's been really good.

Our boutique hotel is totally fabulous - comfy, welcoming, homely, extraordinarily helpful - the group I'm with are fun and relaxed and appreciative. Durban is WARM. The food is delicious.

It's been really busy.

The events have been big. The days long and the conference really frenetic. The body is sore and the feet are tired.

It's been affirming.

A week away, working, adulting on my own not for kids or home, has been restful (in that weird way when after you become a parent any time you're not parenting is restful, despite how busy doing other things you might be) and empowering. To go to sleep and wake up alone allows for rare moments of quiet reflection.
Appreciative clients, epic problem solving, well laid plans - the week has been full of those, and I thrive on them.

It's been sad.

The content is sobering, the problems seemingly insurmountable sometimes. So many people working so hard and, relatively, so little change in the lives of the people most affected by this disease. See this summary of Charlize Theron's excellent address on Opening Night - she's so spot on.
(I realise more and more I'm too cynical and too emotional to get any closer to the work done by the activists I work with. This shit upsets me so much and I have zero faith in governments and policy makers to make a difference. This is the stuff of another post probably.)

But overall, it's been fantastic.

My last event just ended, I have a glass of wine - I'm catching up here, overhearing conversations about harm reduction in intravenous drug users, about multi-drug resistant TB, about the next conference in Paris, about the latest shooting in the States - and goddamn, I'm grateful to be me.

But wait, I have one more job: I'm throwing together a Conference Wrap Party for later tonight. Because these people work hard, because their work is hard, because my body needs to dance and because ...

recovery

Last month's full moon I saw from the plane, as we took off from Cape Town in the middle of job 5/5.

After two full (so, so full) days in the city the whole circus was moving to Joburg for the last day of our programme.

A few hours earlier we'd raced across town from our last meeting, I'd escorted the VIP's through check-in and security checks (the group split in two so as not to risk losing them all in case of air disaster, the Princess boarded despite the ambiguous diplomatic wording on her passport, the diplomat successfully checked through with his travelling pharmacy), phoned ahead to make sure the reception committee was standing by, checked that everyone else was where they should be, dismissed drivers, signed payment orders, found a safe place to leave my car. 

Now I was on my own flight, and never more excited to turn my phone off for 2 hours and be completely uncontactable for the first time in months.

Midsummer, the sun had already set as we took off and the peninsula was virtually in darkness, but as we banked and turned south, the mountain line below us showed a fiery orangey-red outline, like one continuous volcano rim circling the city. With the lights still off for take-off the whole inside of the plane reflected orange, everyone in silhouette and gasping in wonder.

Then we turned inland, away from the last of the sun and flew, as if directly, into a giant, full, heavy golden moon.

It was the most beautiful take-off of my life, a balm to my tired and distracted soul, a perfect reminder of the beauty in the world after two days of heavy meetings discussing all that is wrong with it.

It was a welcome moment of peace and stillness.

This month the full moon greeted us in transit again. Barreling through the Karoo at dusk, listening to dodgy trance music and hoping to get to our destination before full dark, we spied a light on the horizon, casting a rosy glow through the dust.
We rushed to meet each other, and she rode besides us for the rest of the way.

We'd spent 4 days camping with friends and dogs and canoes and a ridiculous amount of good food.
4 days of lazing and reading, starting conversations and fires and happily wiling away an afternoon tending them.
Camp life is the best life.

So when it was time to leave, and our friend mentioned she was pushing on to her cabin further up country for a few nights, it took us all of 15 minutes to decide to join her.
Why go home to the laundry when we could stay on holiday for a few days longer?
Spontaneity is almost a bigger luxury than free time these days so hell yeah, let's turn left instead of right at the end of the dirt road, let's chase the moon further into the backwaters, let's unwind just a little bit more.

It took a full lunar month to recover from 5/5, it really did. But I'm here, new moon, new me.

Big meeting for the next one today, plans afoot and ideas flowing. Rested, ready, recovered and grateful.

back to the beach

New Year's eve found us going back to the beach. This time with GEAR.

We used to sleep on beaches all the time in our youth. Beaches, cars in beach parking lots, back stoeps of unoccupied seaside holiday homes. All illegal.
Back then our supplies list comprised of a kikoi, a dooswyn, and diving gear. Food was caught and cooked right there on a driftwood and kelp fire - crayfish, perlemoen, allekrik, fish.

Not so any longer. The dogs and the kids were the only ones left with any energy by the time we got settled in.

Not another soul to be seen. Us, the oyster-catchers, the seagulls and one putrefying seal in the next cove. Luckily the wind stayed in our favour.

Coolers, coolers, coolers, food, chairs, wood, toys .... tables, watermelon (a watermelon!), pots and pans. Lotsa ice. Dog blankets and food. Lotsa water.
All illegal.

All totally worth it.

31 December is all about the sunset actually (or sunrise on the 1st I guess if you're a morning person). At the end of the last day, or the beginning of the 1st, one should be somewhere, or with someone, meaningful I reckon. Whatever with this hype about midnight.

Midnight found us though - deep in our cups, roaring with laughter on those wild screaming beaches. A bonfire raging, various delicious bits 'n pieces being passed around as they came off the fire. At The Moment we walked down to the surf, fireworks exploding from 3 separate villages in the distance, laser beams of phosphorescence running up and down the breaking surf as far as the eye could see.
We screamed and whooped and smooched and cheered. The dogs ran mad gambits and the sea crashed in the background. We felt alive.

Later, crouching for a wee further down the beach my feet sparkled with phosphor in the sand. Later still I crept into a warm tent, nestled up to two small sleeping bodies and marveled at how loud the ocean really was.
After a few short hours screeching gulls woke me at dawn, then an inquisitive dog nose and finally the enthusiastic sunrise of 2016. The nerdy younger sibling of NYE's cool host, all 'Hey guys, what you doing? Isn't this exciting?' I doubt he ever gets the reception he expects.

A swim in the sea. A beer. A pita bread of pulled lamb, slow roasted overnight on an outdoor fire.

A private beach in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
I can't think of a better way to start a year.

2/5

Jo'burg for 3 days.

Jo'burg is hot at the moment. Still and hot and buggy. I spent a fair amount of time photographing ants and sending them to my Dad. He sent back sketches from his growing portfolio. My Dad's a myrmecologist and it's hard not to catch the um ... bug.

Winged things flew into my hair a lot as soon as it got dark. It gets dark early in Jo'burg, and at the same time, every night.

The first night we sat out late, on the stoep of our guesthouse, planning the next day and flicking bugs out of our hair.

Two days of meeting, 40 participants from all over.
Day 1 started with a ridiculously childish request at 5am (which I ignored), and ended with Baklava Cheesecake (it got my full attention).
Day 2 was soured by transport company fuck ups (I had to throw some toys - it wasn't pretty) but sweetened by a tour of the remarkable place where we were meeting.

It was sobering, in session, to listen to our participants speak of police brutality now in a place so representative of the heinous acts of the apartheid secret police service then.
But it was moving and evocative, out there, to visit the cottage where Madiba lived while posing as a gardner and forming Umkhonto wiSizwe. To stand in the living room in which the Rivonia trialists were seized.

A quick meeting for job 3/5 (it all starts again on Monday), and a terrifying foretaste of the drama which will be job 5/5, a mad dash to the Gautrain and a nearly full moon over OR Tambo Airport.

Home to my dear hearts.

A brief respite, and then I pick up the reins for the next mad sprint. Life is full, life is full-on.

tankwa karoo

Two weeks ago we headed out to the Tankwa Karoo National Park with my whole family - parents, brothers and sisters-in-law - for a long weekend.
It took us over 6 hours to get there.
Because? It's seriously very far from anywhere else.

That's our cottage in the background. 3 bedrooms, 1 kitchen/living space, 1 bathroom (for 10 people!), 1 small solar-powered fridge, 2 gas plates, a big indoor fireplace, 1 hot water 'donkey' (i.e. you have to light a fire and wait an hour for hot water) and one melodious 'wind pump' sighing and creaking outside.
The nearest neighbour 45+ km of bad road away.

Arriving in the dark on Friday night it seemed like we were surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Waking up the next day didn't immediately lead us to believe otherwise - magnificent vistas and awe-inspiring skyscapes yes, but otherwise pretty barren.

Until you started to look more closely.

This vast land is filled with tiny little beautiful things. Random bits of magnificence dotted about the hugeness. Small things easily missed, but miraculous to discover.

And so started 3 days of hanging out together in the Tankwa. Having conversations in random places, stopping regularly to bend over and examine or exclaim.

Our vision, and photographs, continually jumping from LANDSCAPE ...

... to macro...

... and back to just, wow.

For the other thing this wild and lonely place is filled with is signs of human habitation. The most beautiful stone-packed walls, 'rubbish dumps' of ancient wind-tumbled glass bottles, broken bits of pottery and glass in blues and pinks and greens. Sheep dip stations, kraals and ruined houses.
It feels so desolate and yet so full of life - human, vegetable, animal.

It's all about water-retention is this near desert - lots and lots of curly little plants.

We saw gemsbok (or 'hemsbog' as my dear English-speaking 5 yr old calls them) with their eerie masks and flipping 'high-pony' tails.
Elusive ghostly eland - so huge yet so quiet. Apparently their hoofs make a tiny clicking sound when they walk and there's a story that this is the reason the original San language has so many clicks in it.
We saw jackel skulking and hartebees hopping, baboons up to no good (are they ever?) and zebra. A lone springbok frequented the water hole near our cottage and his many cousins took off in waves as we drove across the plains.

Late one afternoon we watched a family of bat-eared foxes for about half an hour, as they played and hunted and groomed in the scrub near our car.

We learnt anew that kids can have the 'best day ever' (Frieda said this at the end of every day) drawing vast pictures in the sand with a trailing stick and a canvas finally big enough to accommodate their limitless imaginations.

We made balancing stones ...

... and then walked away, leaving them to stand until wind or curious animal or time relieved their tension.

To celebrate two birthdays we had a tea party on the edge of a pan. Smoked salmon sandwiches, carrot cake, meringues, brownies, cheeses and salads.

And only afterwards realised we'd had another silent guest in the tree above us.

We took sundowners out to the rim of the world and watched night fall over the far off Cederberg mountains. It was cold cold cold in the evenings but that didn't deter the adventurous types (my youngest brother and eldest daughter) from hunting out deadly scorpions with a UV light in the dark.

But mainly, mostly and most marvelously, we just hung out. Caught up and 'leaned in'. Spent time with our most dearest, in a place so far removed from our everyday, that we were able to just be today.
That was the greatest gift the Tankwa gave us.