As I Walked Out One Sunday Morning..

So here's what I did last Sunday (11th April). Everyone was going to the beach for a skottle braai breakfast so I got up early and decided to walk down. It was an absolutely stunning morning; the sun was already high in the sky when I left at seven so it was nice and warm. I got some more pictures of the area to add to my collection – just wait until I return and you have to sit through the photo slideshow, this is where you will start with the 'Oh, that's ANOTHER nice picture of a rondavel on a hill with some nice sun...'

The beautiful TK

I chatted to a few groups of kids and took their pictures, they were all loving it. One group were all playing in a wheelbarrow and looked like they were having the time of their lives, it was so cute to watch. Another group came charging towards me shouting for sweets but then when they saw me get my camera out started doing gangster poses and asking me to take pictures of them, so now I have pictures of 4 year old wannabe gangsters and they forgot all about the sweets. Everybody wins. At the end of the walk down to the beach there is a massive hill (think Kilimanjaro)(actually, don't) and I could see that no one was at the beach yet so I just sat at the top admiring the view and feeling epic.

The kids at the homestead near the beach :)

When I saw the tiny figures below congregating on the beach I headed down to join them. We had a proper fry up/braai breakfast on the beach then went for the obligatory swim in the sea. There were loads of people there since a big group from East London had come over to enjoy a weekend of the chilled back Zithulele lifestyle [that's weekends only by the way!]. I hadn't intended on swimming since I was walking down so offered to watch over Elijah [one of the Gauntlets] while Taryn and Ben went swimming.



Everything was going swimmingly [ha ha ha at my intentional pun] and we were just playing at the edge of the water, quite an achievement for Elijah who is just over a year old. I saw a wave coming that looked a little big so I picked him up, and it was a damned good job I did since it was some kind of tidal wave to rival the one in The Day After Tomorrow! Elijah and I escaped with nothing but a soaking up to the waist but poor Grace who is four was knocked over, dragged under the wave and sent towards the beach, struggling to keep her head above the water. I saw her rush past me on top of the wave with arms and legs everywhere then saw her older brother Josh knocked over two and both of them looked to be in pretty serious trouble.



Suddenly, Ben came out of nowhere at blinding speed, ran through the water to his daughter, scooped her up, ran to the shore and picked up Josh and carried them to safety. If ever a dad was a superhero it would be him! I was so impressed, I'm pretty sure he has some hidden superpowers going on there...

Ben Gaunt: epic Dad

After that drama it was time to head back up to the village for church. Ben and Roger [from East London] were preaching so we all took the opportunity to go as the sermon would be in English as opposed to Xhosa. First up was some singing, mainly of the one hymn [number 74, everyone’s favourite, we did it about three times] and in Xhosa. It makes for an interesting rendition when you don’t know a) the tune, b) the words c) which number the hymn in the book is! I struggled through all the unfamiliar words and the novelty of putting clicks in while you are singing. It's pretty funny to hear as all the clicks come at different times depending on how the people pronounce things. There was praying after that but as it was also in Xhosa, I just made up some of my own.



Ben and Roger's sermons were both centred around the story of the man who built his house on the rock and the man who built his house on the sand and how we should build our lives around Jesus. Following the sermons, we did a bit more of hymn 74, then the visitors got to pick a song to do, have no idea what it was called but there was clapping and hand actions, fun times! Overall, a very worthwhile experience :D



Sammy and I spent some time chilling in our house, enjoying a nice little power cut which was centralised on, er, just our house. Asanda came over for chats having seen me at church earlier. She took me back to see what her house is like – she and her sister stay in one of the rondavels owned by the hospital. I'd never really thought about what her house would be like and I was kind of shocked by how small it was. I think because Asanda works so closely with all of us who are lucky enough to live in the newer accommodation I'd forgotten that she didn't have the same privileges. Her entire home is smaller than my bedroom here and she lives in it with her sister Zandile, her baby nephew Hlumelo and their nanny. They have a bed, kitchen unit and a cabinet and that's pretty much it! Quite humbling to think of when we are complaining about our house and the bugs to be honest...



Anyway, we stopped in at the Vodacom hut, a shop that sells airtime and fat cakes – what an incredible business idea :D After munching our way through the fat cakes, yum yum yum, we decided we should watch a film to pass the afternoon. Sadly, lack of power kind of prevented that plan so we pondered what to do for a while before calling up Sam and I's surrogate guardian, Liz :D She said we could go and chill at hers and use her electricity since she was out having good times elsewhere.



Cut to Asanda, Sam and I enjoying a bit of Step Up and a nice cup of coffee :D We decided to do some washing up for Liz in return for the power usage (not really a fair trade, but what were we meant to do). Asanda showed me how to do hand washing properly so now I might actually have clean clothes as opposed to clothes which I get wet and then dry on the line...



Liziwe came back later on in the evening and asked if we wanted to stay for supper (aka dinner :P) so Sam and I went to get ingredients from our house for once and Liz gave a tutorial on how to cook the legendary dish that is Awesome Chicken. We had a mini-ceilidh to the classic tune that is 5.6.7.8 which was hilarious even though there was some rather suspect dancing going on...Next up Asanda braided my hair which I thought might be a repeat of the spear head incident [see my Port St John's blog] but aside from a comparable amount of unpleasant hair pulling had a much better result. (Sadly for everyone, they are now gone and there are no pictures, haha). We sat and watched Wimbledon, ate chocolate and had generally good times before staying the night.



All in all a good Sunday! Thanks Liz for hosting :D



xxxxxx



PS. I'll post up more about East London and maybe some pics soon!