Cricket: Pakistan v. South Africa !!!

The recent improvement to my life as it is here in Grahamstown is that I now own a vehicle as of February 1, 2007. Sort of....instead of purchasing this 1984 Audi with a broken tail light, no front bumper or front license plate and a screw driver holding the passenger side window closed for R 16 000 and then selling it back to the vendor for a slightly smaller sum, the vendor (who is the owner of the Old Gaol backpackers) proposed that I rent the car for R 750 per month. Done deal! This car is an automatic and will probably die any moment. But, I pray to baby Jesus that it keeps scuttling around until March 23, 2007 (the date I depart). See below for my glamorous automobile (the dent in the side was not my doing - the TDSB probably won't believe me anyways):

BATHURST WATERS MEETING NATURE RESERVE

Before I launch into yet another tale of my life as it is in South Africa, I realize that I omitted to include in this blog my hike with my mother in Bathurst on December 16, 2006. Better late than never, right? The nature reserve was called the Bathurst Waters Meeting Reserve. The reason we landed there is because my boss (Sarah) invited mother and I to join her household for supper the night before, which was great fun. I never saw the "party" side of my mother before :) The following day, we set out to do a 10 km hike (approx. 4 hours) at the Bathurst Waters Meeting Nature Reserve [see below for pictures which mark the commencement of the hike].
We decided, due to our excessive merriment the night prior, to pick a relatively flat trail so there wouldn't be too much up-and-down action, so we did the "blue trail". We were warned numerous times about ticks from several people and mother sure did heed this advice seriously - she used up half a plastic container of muskol (deep woods bug repellant) and rolled her knee-high socks over her trousers. Since it was deserted that day, I decided that I would walk next to my mother since we probably wouldn't be seen anyways :)

It was a lovely hike, with variety - a bit of forest, a bit of field. The only "problem" was the excessive amount of spiders on this trail! The spiders were red and black and were quite tiny. However, they made their surprisingly large webs [I had to give them some credit for that] right across the path directly at the level of our heads. I led the way in the beginning, but after walking into a few webs which caused me to scream while flailing my arms in the air and simultaneously brushing myself with my hands in a fit of hysteria, my mother decided to lead the way. She picked up a stick [see below] which was slightly longer than the length of her arm and waved the stick up and down, fully extended forward, when she walked (I was, needless to say, snickering at her: socks rolled up to her knee over her pants, stick flailing in the air....). It should be noted that her "stick-method" is not a fool-proof method by which to ensure that one does not walk into a web. Think about it: if the stick is being waved downwards, and one is walking forwards, that split second before one waves it upwards again can plant your face directly into a spider web....which is exactly what happened to my dear mother. She got so startled, she fell backwards onto the layers of dried dead leaves, rolled down a bit to the side, still holding the stick and blowing raspberries since the web had obviously touched her mouth. After discerning that she was alright, the both of us had to laugh so hard. The silliness of the situation dawned on us, and the fact that we had 9.8 km and 50 million spiders left to go!

Despite that I was laughing at my mother's "stick-method" of spider removal, I copied her shortly afterwards [below is a picture which constitutes evidence of me holding a stick in my right hand]:
Before I close the chapter on the Bathurst Waters Meeting "blue trail" hike, I will torture my blog fans yet again with my flora and fauna pictures from the hike: The picture directly above is a cricket-type of insect (not sure yet what insect it is) that was just dropping out of the trees around 16:30, towards the end of our hike. They seemed to be a bit disoriented since they didn't really move when they first landed on the ground (hence my excellent close-up). There were a lot of them, and I am uncertain why they were dropping to the ground as if Brad Pitt or Jude Law had just walked by...

GRAHAMSTOWN

On the weekend of February 3 & 4, I decided to stay in Grahamstown. Frolicking and gallivanting across the South African country side with Geza and afterwards with my colleague Ruth had make me embrace a quiet weekend. So, I set out to visit my friends (Robyn and Kevin) at their recently purchased plot of land which is located about 4 km outside of Grahamstown. I spent Friday evening there and most of Saturday there. They are busy planting vegetables, creating a borehole, putting up electric fencing to keep the people who are stealing their basil and peppadew plants out and trying to make the plot a business venture that will eventually be a sort of "backpackers". Quite relaxing to sit around their caravan and giggle about this, that and the other [see below].


CRICKET: PAKISTAN V. SOUTH AFRICA

On February 9, 2007, I headed out to Port Elizabeth (about 125 km west of Grahamstown) with my boss (as mentioned above, her name is Sarah), her son Daniel, her husband, three friends and the other Canadian intern (Ruth). After finally managing to locate a patch of grass where we plopped three fold-out chairs and our cooler box of food (we were told at the gate that we were not permitted to use our tin plates, or our metal cutlery) we hit up the beer tent and watched the game. Go South Africa!














The rules of cricket were explained to me some time in October by Monty (Sarah's husband), so, but for a few "dumb" questions, I was able to follow the game quite well.

When Pakistan was at 47 overs, it began to rain. Gently at first which didn't intimidate many people, but then it began to POUR [see below]. Most people squished and huddled under a makeshift gazebo-ish tent thingie [see second picture below] used to promote MTN (the "Fido" of South Africa). I had my "little red riding hood" rain jacket on (which you must all be so familiar with at this point) so I wasn't forced to squeeze in with the masses under the MTN tent.














The picture directly above is a picture of myself and Sarah (my boss) looking quite happy at the cricket match :)

They covered up the pitch with some green cloth and we waited........ and waited......and waited. Eventually, it stopped raining, and the match was to resume. As they were unveiling the pitch again, I felt one drop on my head, which became two, which became three. The bottom line of this story about all the rain is that the cricket game never did resume. South Africa never got its turn, which means the teams draw (impressed with my knowledge of cricket yet?). At that point my boss' son, Daniel, took to playing his own game of cricket and this attracted many strangers who also wanted to play.

We all crashed in Port Elizabeth at a hotel which had an apartment-style suite. The following morning we ate breakfast at one of these "Little Italy" type of restaurants called "Primi". A colleague ordered a regular coffee, not a cappuccino or espresso like the rest of the table - when the coffee arrived, we were all amazed, and then mortified to discover that the coffee, which is served at an "Italian" restaurant, is nothing more than instant coffee! I had never seen my boss grumpier :)