Category: learning curve

The Suiderstrand Log

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If you walk down onto the beach at Suiderstrand and take a right turn, following the coastline along and into the Agulhas National Park, you’ll come across a large log on the beach, about 1½km towards the cottages out at Piet se Punt. Just next to the rocky outcrop know locally as “The Washing Machine”.

It is a big log, so big in fact, that you can see it from space (with a bit of zooming in on Google Maps).

And it featured on my Instagram post “Dog On A Log”, featuring a dog on the log, back in August 2019:

It’s been there for as long as we’ve been going to Suiderstand, and that’s 17+ years. And now, thanks to a bit of research, I found out that it’s actually been there from about the turn of the century, after a Swiss-owned, Panamanian-registered, 24,732 dwt freighter, the MV Sanaga, sank off the south of Madagascar on October 11th 1999.

What? Give us the details, please.

With pleasure.

The MV Sanaga was built in 1979 and was carrying a cargo of logs (see where this is going?) and stainless steel from Durban to China. The logs were teak and mahogany from West Africa, each one about 10m long and each weighing around 20 tonnes.

The MV Sanaga got into trouble, began taking on water and issued a Mayday call. The crew of 26 Indian nationals abandoned ship and were picked up by a passing Japanese container vessel.

The freighter was subsequently presumed foundered. And it seems reasonable that it took the steel down with it, while the logs… well… floated.

But that posed its own problems. The Agulhas current dragged the logs southwards and westwards along the coast of South Africa, where they caused many issues. In January 2000, at Blue Horizon Bay, near PE (as was), a woman and her grandson, playing in the surf, were seriously injured when a wave brought one of the logs down on them:

Iloma Cilliers was helping her grandson, Mark-Anthony Mayhew, out of the water when a wave lifted the huge log on to them and crushed them into the sand.
Cilliers’s husband, Lowie, dug them out and they were treated for serious injuries in the intensive care unit of a Port Elizabeth hospital.

While elsewhere on the Eastern Cape coast, a 10 year old boy was knocked unconscious by a log while swimming, and sadly drowned.

Reports had been received of at least two other children who had suffered head injuries from being hit by logs in the surf at another Port Elizabeth beach.

They also posed a huge danger to shipping all around the South coast of the country.
Several logs washed up in False Bay: at Cape Point, Strandfontein, St James, Kalk Bay and Fishhoek.

And – as we now also know – further east, in Suiderstrand.

As they found out in Fishhoek, you need a large crane to be able to shift these logs. Which makes this seem a bit silly:

Johan Scheepers, a customs and excise official, said people should not remove the logs from the shore: anyone wanting to salvage material washed up on a beach has to obtain a salvage permit and pay 15 percent duty on the value of the object. The logs are believed to be worth thousands of rands each.

Not something you’re going to be able to quietly slip into your back pocket. And since The Suiderstrand Log is in a National Park, not something you’d be allowed to quietly slip into your back pocket anyway.

That weight, and hardwood being what it is (hard), despite the very best efforts of the South Atlantic Ocean, and although there has been a lot of weathering over the last 26 years, it’s clear that the Suiderstrand log isn’t going anywhere soon.

WANT MORE LOCAL HISTORY?
Other stuff that has washed up on the Cape coast from shipwrecks: Rubber Bales.

Sirens and Smoke

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That might mean something else if you were in the Middle East right now, but it’s very much the South and the West of the continent that I’m talking about here. At the moment, hidden away in our little corner of Africa – away from all the sirens and the smoke – seems to be a very good place to be.

Until later today, that is. Because we’re going to have both. But, once you’ve read this post, you’ll know that they’re really nothing to worry about and you can reassure your friends, family and colleagues.

First of all, the sirens. Koeberg Nuclear Power Station will be doing their annual full volume siren test between 10am and 12pm today. You’ll (hopefully) hear it if you’re in any one of the following areas:

Atlantis, Duynefontein, Melkbosstrand, Van Riebeeckstrand, Philadelphia, Bloubergstrand, Bloubergrandt, West Beach, Sunningdale, Parklands, Robben Island and the farms surrounding Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.

Full details here.

There will be a public address message before the sirens, informing you that it’s a test, but just in case you miss that bit, I’m telling you that it’s a test, so you don’t need to panic.

And don’t panic if you see some smoke in the South later today. Weather permitting, there will be a controlled burn in the Westlake Nature Reserve at the junction of Ou Kaapse Weg and Steenberg Road.

I’ve seen another map with lots of fire hydrants marked on it, and I’m sure that the guys in charge of this know what they’re doing. So don’t stress when you see the smoke rising over Tokai (Constantia?).
At least, not today.

More information here, but it’s mainly “keep your doors and windows closed” and “don’t put your washing out”. Sensible, if rather mundane, advice.

So there you go. Chill. Nothing to worry about today.

Unless, of course, you hear sirens in Tokai and see smoke over Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.
That wouldn’t be good. Then you can panic.

Lots.

Don’t get distracted

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With Prince Andrew being arrested this week over his connections with Jeffrey Epstein (although not for that, but who knows where the ongoing investigations may lead), suddenly someone is panicking and pulling out all of the stops in order to distract the world from his connections with Jeffrey Epstein (which certainly do involve that).

Look, I get that “Actually, yes, aliens do exist” is pretty big news, but my first thought was: “Wow. Does he really think that I can only manage to think about one thing at a time?”, but then I remembered that that’s probably true for most of the people that voted for him, and so this is probably something of a master stoke from the Cheeto Cheater.

Epstein Files OUT

X-Files IN

I happen to also think that the current President of the United States sexually abusing young girls on a private island over a period of several years is also fairly important, and I really believe that we shouldn’t let the big orange man let the little green men distract us from that.

OK?

I don’t know what to say

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I said a lot of things here, but sometimes even I run out of words when I read something like this.

The story:

“He just learned how to ride, he got the hang of it right away,” Ethan’s dad, Luis, said proudly. “He wanted to go outside because he wanted to jump on his bike…it was an amazing thing for him.”

Instead, since late January, the schoolboy has been confined to a hospital bed with measles encephalitis, a complication that causes swelling and inflammation in the brain. “He’s pretty much as if he was paralysed,” his devastated father, 41, told The Independent in a phone interview from his son’s hospital bedside.

Sadly, it’s not like anything could have stopped him from being affected in this way.

Well, apart from the measles vaccine, of course. That would have prevented all of this.

But:

Ethan’s parents decided not to immunise him against measles as they did with his three brothers. Three out of four of them contracted measles. Still, despite Ethan’s ordeal, his mom stands by their decision. “We’re not blaming God for this,” said 35-year-old Kristina. “Yes, it hurts, of course, it hurts. But God has chosen Ethan for a reason. God is doing something, and we’re gonna glorify his name regardless.”

“And we wouldn’t change it any other way,” the mom continued. “If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn’t have given my son the vaccine.”

Honestly, read that last line again and then read what happened in the hospital (after they opted to take him HOME(!) for 48 hours while his condition deteriorated further):

“They immediately started giving him fluids, taking blood again, doing all the tests again,” Kristina said, panicking as she watched her son being hooked up to machines.

Then Ethan’s heart rate started dropping.

“The machine started beeping,” she recalled. “And we were really concerned … doctors kept coming in and so then we asked, ‘What number do we need to be concerned?’ And [the doctor] said, ‘Anything that goes under 50.’

“And all of a sudden, his heart rate went under 50,” Kristina said.

The mom recalled that a nurse then shouted, “Ethan, you gotta wake up, you gotta wake up,” and started “pounding” on her son’s chest, before calling for more medics to help.

“It was just one of those moments you just think…no, no,” the mom said, through tears. “This can’t be.”

And then let me share her words one more time:

“And we wouldn’t change it any other way. If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn’t have given my son the vaccine.”

And there it is. If you ever needed any evidence that some people shouldn’t be allowed to become parents. Literally, those last lines are basically an admission of wilful child endangerment.

But these people have become emboldened by what they read on Facebook and by what their pseudoscientific, conspiracy theorist, absolute knob of a Secretary of Health is saying and doing.

“Why do we need to add so much to our children’s bodies?” Kristina asks.

Erm… because it would have prevented your 7-year-old son from having to be fed by a tube (ironically added to his body), from possibly not being able to walk again, and having brain damage for the rest of his life.

To the parents’ relief, doctors were able to stabilise Ethan’s heart rate and he was admitted to the intensive care unit, where his mom and dad sat by his bedside all night anxiously watching the heart rate monitor. The next morning, Ethan underwent another MRI and second spinal tap.

Weird how you suddenly start relying on modern medical science to save your kid’s life once your shitty decisions nearly ended it, hey?

What a horrible, stupid woman.
Good luck to Ethan. And good luck to the rest of her kids.

They’re going to need it.

Weather Man

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Mentioned briefly here, here is some more photography by Russian Arctic photographer, Evgenia Arbugaeva.

This is part of her series Weather Man, tracking the day to day activities of meteorologist, Vyacheslav Korotki for The New Yorker. It’s worth clicking through on this link to see all the images, but the New Yorker piece is behind a paywall, so I have shared the blurb below.

Yacheslav Korotki is a man of extreme solitude. He is a trained polyarnik, a specialist in the polar north, a meteorologist. In the past thirty years, he has lived on Russian ships and, more recently, in Khodovarikha, an Arctic outpost, where he was sent by the state to measure the temperatures, the snowfall, the winds. The outpost lies on a fingernail of a peninsula that juts into the Barents Sea. The closest town, by any definition, is an hour away by helicopter.

He has a wife, but she lives far away, in Arkhangelsk. They have no children. On his rare visits to Arkhangelsk, he has trouble negotiating the traffic and the noise. Arkhangelsk is not Hong Kong. Korotki is sixty-three, and when he began his career he was an enthusiast, a romantic about the open spaces and the conditions of the Arctic. He watches the news on TV but doesn’t fully believe it. Polyarniki were like cosmonauts, explorers for the Soviet state. There are fewer now. Who wants to live like this anymore?

Evgenia Arbugaeva, a photographer who grew up in the Arctic town of Tiksi, spent two extended stays with Korotki. “The world of cities is foreign to him—he doesn’t accept it,” she says. “I came with the idea of a lonely hermit who ran away from the world because of some heavy drama, but it wasn’t true. He doesn’t get lonely at all. He kind of disappears into tundra, into the snowstorms. He doesn’t have a sense of self the way most people do. It’s as if he were the wind, or the weather itself.”

These images are dark, atmospheric and gloomy, as one might expect for the far North. But it’s not always that way. Arbugaeva’s work Tiksi, in which she photographs a family in a dying Arctic town, bucks the trend by employing bright colours against the cold, white snow, cleverly painting a wholly different picture of an otherwise depressing scene and situation.

It’s amazing what subliminal messages can be shared with just simple light and colour.