Category: this is south africa

Beagle Encounters

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I’ve written a letter of complaint to the kids’ school.

It concerns my daughter’s class outing to Stellenbosch today.

They’re going to a place called Beagle Encounters.

It’s at Spier.

Now to be fair, I haven’t done a massive amount of research into this place, but to be fair, I really don’t need to: the name is pretty much self-explanatory, and the fact that it’s at Spier means it will be overrated, expensive and achingly zeitgeist.

Much like my feelings regarding forcing specific religion and/or political views upon my children, I don’t believe that there is any value in the promotion of certain, troublesome breeds of canine either.

We get quite enough of that nonsense at home, thank you very much.

That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the value of knowing about these things. It’s the pushing of the kids in any one specific direction that bothers me.

Also, having reviewed the proposed Learning Outcomes for Term 2 this year, I can see no link between this visit and any of their classwork. Let’s face it, visiting several slobbering, disobedient, tri-colour dogs is not going to help with Maths or English, PE or Languages, is it?

And even in Science, they’re supposed to be learning about birds. Not dogs.

I’m all for school trips and all, but surely it’s not that hard to simply link them in with something that the kids are currently doing? This seems, at best, a bit of a jolly. And one with an unnecessarily excessive number of flappy ears involved as well.

No, I think I’m well within my rights to let the school know my feelings on this matter.

Tweets I thought I’d get in more trouble for than I actually did

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Number 1 in a series of… well… probably quite a few, to be honest.

This ended up on my timeline yesterday evening:

Local “musical” act “The Kiffness” is referring to the Afrikaburn festival, which took place in the Tankwa Karoo this past weekend. It’s the South African equivalent of Nevada’s infamous Burning Man festival, and the final acts of the event involve the burning of some of the large artworks.

“The Kiffness” makes the point that the materials used in those installations that are burned could be put to better use to help rebuild shacks in townships which are regularly affected by fires.

And he’s right. Perhaps they could be.

But…

If we’re going to choose to police what people can do with their private property and money, if we’re going to choose to police free thought and art – however destructive it may be or seem to be – then let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

Because it wasn’t so long ago that “The Kiffness” voluntarily posted this on one of its social media feeds:

Yep. There’s our protagonist outside one of Cape Town’s more salubrious venues, with a fistful of dollars and a hashtagged promise to #makeitrain*.

An image which I included in my reply to his original tweet:

Yep. Surely, if there are better things to do with the materials used in the construction of flammable artwork, then there were also better things to do with that that R600 – especially in Cape Town’s CBD in the middle of winter?

Some would argue that even if there were no local poverty or homelessness, there would always be many better things that you could do with R600 than spend it at Mavericks.

But I’d say that what “The Kiffness” chooses to do with his money is his choice. Just that his Afrikaburn thoughts might gain better traction were he to practice what he preaches. I’m reliably informed that “The Kiffness” does “jazzy dance and electronic music”, but apparently it doesn’t draw the line at delving into HipHopcrisy.

Sorry, not sorry.

I thought his legion of fan would come after me for pointing this out, but evidently, it was busy doing other stuff yesterday.

Oh, and it’s worth noting that the Afrikaburn organisers do support a number of local charities, including:

The Bergie Bag Project
Bags of food, clothes and medical supplies to homeless people in Cape Town.

I’m sure R600 would go a long way to supporting the cause of those sleeping rough near Mavericks on Barrack Street, and beyond.

 

[For the record: I have no affiliation with Afrikaburn, “The Kiffness” or Mavericks, and have happily, repeatedly and successfully avoided all three during my time in South Africa.]

 

* I am of the opinion that this should likely read “make it rain” – a popular culture reference described thus: “When you’re in da club with a stack, and you throw the money up in the air at the strippers. The effect is that it seems to be raining money”, and not “makei train”, which is the railway route between Minsk and Kalinkavichy, funded under Department of Transport and Infrastructure Minister (now Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs), Vladimir Makei.

I hope this clears things up for you readers. 

15 months later…

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…and while I was away this weekend, this idea was floated (no pun intended) once more.

Cue several (or more) twitter messages, a couple of twitter DMs and even a Whatsapp.

The news story in question details an ambitious plan to capture an iceberg and then tow it to Cape Town before mining it and selling it to the city to enhance the pitiful local water supply.

But only 10% of “their” “idea” is original.
The other 90%, hidden beneath the surface, blatantly rips me off.

In fact, the only two differences between this consortium’s recently announced proposed methodology and mine from 15 months ago, is that they plan to leave their iceberg out at sea and pump water to tankers to bring it ashore (I’m going to flatten the Franschhoek Valley and use gravity) and that they (stupidly) haven’t considered offsetting the cost of this challenging project by selling the final product in small bottles to craft brewers and achingly trendy Woodstock residents.

Still, those omissions are to their detriment and are surely not enough to convince any reasonable court of law that this consortium hasn’t ripped off my amazing idea, and thus I’m looking forward to being flush (only when it’s brown though) with cash real soon now.

Sun City Thoughts

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We leave Sun City today, after a whistle-stop 4-day, 3-night stay.

Herewith a few (or more) thoughts on the last few days. In no particular order.

Sun City isn’t my kind of place. On arrival, the guy at the gate asked if I had reservations.

“Plenty,” I replied, “but the kids seem to be looking forward to it.”

Bdumtish.

Jokes aside, it is a ghastly, hideous place. Faux opulence, faux history and gaudy buildings are the order of the day. It’s repulsive… and it’s also completely incredible. It’s Grand West on South Joburg steroids. The scale of the place and the attention to detail is amazing. It’s other-worldly. And The Palace Hotel (where we’re not staying, see below) is an absolute work of art. You might not like it, but you have to admire the place.

And that’s the thing. If it’s not your thing, you need to get over it and just go with the flow and if you do, you’ll probably have a great time, like I did. Like we did.

This was a last minute, unplanned trip. One we wouldn’t even have considered were it not for the free air tickets that came with our new fridge. We’ve already spent a bomb on our Europe trip later in the year, so economy was key here. We chose the Cabanas to stay in, to save a bit of money. It’s been small and not very luxurious, but it’s been somewhere to sleep – we’ve been out and about the rest of the time.

The staff have been really helpful and are always smiling. That must take a lot of doing at the end of a long season. In fact, the only exception was a rude waitress at the posh hotel we had dinner at on Sunday night. She really did make an effort to be that exception though. Wow.

The breakfast buffet is cheap, cheerful and amazing value (included in the price of the budget accommodation). Two words for you:

Unlimited. Bacon.

Mmhmm. I know.

The Valley of the Waves is a lot of fun. There’s something weird about watching a hundred-odd people standing chest-deep in an outdoor swimming pool, facing a wall and waiting for a single artificial wave every 10 minutes or so. But again, you join in and it’s kinda enjoyable. The tubes were great fun. I didn’t die on the Boomeranga ride, despite a couple of attempts.

The bus service is either brilliant or disastrous. Possibly both simultaneously. We never really worked it out.
(Or you could walk the 550m to the main centre. It won’t kill you.)

Resort-wide free wifi actually works, and it’s literally everywhere: from our room to the beaches of the Valley to the Forest at the back of the fancy hotel. Incredible.

We did a Family Safari Walk on our first morning. It was excellent. Zebras, Wildebees, Kudu and Impala and a lot of stuff you’d never have seen from a truck. The kids learned a lot. 10/10 would recommend.

Sun City is massively incongruous in the North-West Province, which is like an Eastern Cape Lite. You pass Marikana on the way here. It’s a massive reminder of how unequal South Africa is.

There’s water! I have had several long showers. You don’t realise how much you miss them.

There was a bottle of wine for R130,000 on the wine list on Sunday evening.
We did not indulge.

I need to enjoy our last morning before we head back to Lanseria and Cape Town, so I’ll leave it there. Photos will follow. Normal blog service will be resumed tomorrow.

Weekend away

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We’ve parked the beagle with a beagle-minder and we’re using some free flights that came with our fridge (I’m not making this up) to esCAPE TOWN for the long weekend. (See what I did there?)

Blog posts should will continue as usual, and you might even get a few more for your money, depending on whether time and inclination allow.

But if you can’t wait for updates on here, then Instagram might be a good place to go to follow our adventures.