Frontier Weekend

I had one of the best weekends ever up in the Frontier of South Africa!! We went into the Winterberg Mountains in Adelaide and stayed with host families and did the farm thing! The trip started off with a late start because our transportation was late (very common here) so we had to miss out on our visit at the Senior Citizens home and the tour of the Tomato Tunnel (not sure what that was going to be). We went on a very long drive in two big vans on windy, gravel roads. I was not the only one who got car sick on this trip!

When we finally got there, we welcomed by the over-the-top friendly Winnie, “our new mom”. She and her husband Marness owned a very large farm where they had some crops but mostly mohair sheep, goats and cattle. They also had a ton of other animals like tamed kudu, eland and duikers (all three are things that we look for on the game drives). We first thing we did after lunch was look around the farm. Some people petted the kudu and eland. I almost got tackled by a “tame” duiker that is pregnant and a little anxious. I also chased around a chicken with baby chicks, trying to steal one. When that didn’t work and everyone had seen everything, we went horseback riding. Horseback riding is not one of my favorite pastimes as it involves touching an animal, but I felt a “When in Africa…” moment and so I agreed to ride a horse as long as the farmhand held onto the reigns and walked me. We didn’t go very far, just up the road and back but at least I can say I did that. Other people had a lot of fun and rode numerous times. I’m lucky I had someone walking my horse with me because one kid on our trip fell off his horse while it was galloping around a turn! It was really scary to watch, but he ended up not hitting his head or being stepped on so he was all right. We also walked around a bit and saw impala, springbok (national animal) and fellow deer (a new animal for me to see). Next we went to a cow milking demonstration. Interesting and smelly. It was here that I had my first taste of milk in I cannot remember how long, probably 7 years or so. We were invited to climb down in the ditch between two lines of cows, where they were hooking the machines up to the udders. I got to milk a cow by hand and then squirt the milk into my mouth! Gross! The milk actually didn’t taste too bad, it was just warm and I’m interested to try milk from the store and see if I maybe like it now. The rest of the night we just sat out, looking out into the mountains at the weird farming landscape, watching the sun go down. We had appetizers and sundowners (happy hour drinks). Then we braiied!! A braii is like grilling or cooking over the fire. This night we had poikey (?) which was cooked in a very large cast iron pot over coals next to the fire. The key to cooking this was to cook in layers. It went chicken, noodles and then vegetables and in cooking and serving they were supposed to stay layered. Dinner was great and we enjoyed the food, company and scenery. I was part of 11 people who stayed at Winnie’s farm, the rest of our group went to stay at Marness’s cousin’s farm.

In the morning we were served toasted egg and ham sandwiches and a great tea that I guess we have at home, but I’ve never tried. Roiibos? If you haven’t tried it, find it at the store! I’m pretty sure its caffeine free! Then we got ourselves organized and went on a game drive. It’s just fun to be out in the country, driving around in bakkies (trucks). We all rode in the beds of the trucks that had high railings on the side that we could hold on to. But with 10 people in the back of each one, it was quite a wild ride! I usually got a good, safe spot to hold onto because people think I’m a wuss. But that works in my favor, so I’m okay with it! During the game drive, we stopped at a few pretty lookouts in the mountains to do short hikes. One of the hikes went down to a canyon that we went swimming in. The water was really muddy and there were bugs and crabs in the mud! And the problem with swimming in fresh water, doctors think, is that there may be runoff from the poor sewage systems. I think that’s why at least. But of course, I went swimming anyway. The water was freezing and there wasn’t much to see, but it was still fun. After the drive and the hikes, we went to the big farm and hung out by the pool. The other farm was a very old house and it was a mansion! The farmers there were Francois and Aurelia. Francois showed us his trophy room, which included tons of animals! Any hunter reading this would’ve had a hay day looking at all the mounts this man had! He had zebra, wildebeest, giraffe (I don’t know how that fit in the room cause it really was from neck up!), kudu and tons of kinds of buck that are native to South Africa and other parts of the world! We also saw his gun collection which he was quite proud of. We stayed by the pool and played tennis in the afternoon. Then we went to a sheep shearing demonstration which was painful to watch, but still cool. Francois owns 3,000 sheep and 1,000 cattle! Just imagine how much land he has! He also has the animals like the other farm, kudu, impala, springbok, fellow deer, eland and such, some as pets and some wild. We had a braii again, this time just steaks! But we hardly ever eat steaks or burgers, so it was a special treat! We went for a night game drive that was fun. I saw a lot of animals again, zebra and kudu were my favorite. Then off to bed because we were exhausted.

Sunday we packed up to go home and then went on one last drive in the bakkies to the highest mountain on their land. From the top we could see very far and it was almost all owned by Francois or Marness! Some good group photos were taken from up there. We got back to the bottom and said thank you to our wonderful hosts. I had brought some U of M and Wayzata t-shirts and other trinkets and a couple Nut Rolls that I gave as gifts from the whole group. Winnie started crying because I guess no group had ever given her a gift before (this weekend was organized through the International Education Office at NMMU so many groups have gone through this). I gave each of the hosts a gift and then the bus drivers who stayed with us all weekend got a Nut Roll each! Everyone was so excited! But then we were really sad to leave because we had such a good weekend with these families.

One thing about about this weekend that I mentioned before wasn’t true. These families were not racist at all, I think the group from CSB/SJU who went last year must have stayed with different families because Winnie loved all of us like we were her own children! Something that we did experience though is the concept of land redistribution. This has been a highly debated topic since the time that Nelson Mandela became president. I don’t know too much about it. Just the basics, that all of the land originally belonged to the black population, as they were here first. But the Afrikaners took almost all of the black people’s land and owned the majority. Some statistic like 10% of the population (white) was living on 87% of the land. If you do the math, that doesn’t leave very much room for about 90% of the people. Anyway, just by seeing how much land Francois and Marness owned, brought up the idea of fairness. There were drawings from the San-Khoi people on the cliffs we drove by on Francois’s farm. I think that’s proof that someone lived there before he did.

Then we just drove back to PE and I’ve been doing my school thing since then. Two papers due this week and a four day weekend that will be distracting me from doing the 15 page one! It actually has begun to get colder here, probably 45 degrees at night! It gets dark around 6pm so we can tell that winter is actually coming! Nothing too special this week, just school and homework I think. To all those college students at home: you only have 3 weeks left! So get excited! And to everyone else, sorry you still have to work for over a month L But in case you were getting excited for my homecoming, it is now only 31 days! Absolutely ridiculous!! I’ll post more later!