Foreign Language

Language
There are 11 official languages in South Africa. These are: Afrikaans, English, Zulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi, isiNdebele Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga. I have learned a few Afrikaans words but not much else. In particular, Xhosa is quite a difficult language, as there are many “clicks” rather than what we would recognise as letters! Zulu seems to use a lot of soft “sch” sounds, a cross between “loch” in Scottish and “Schloss” in German. Many towns and cities are now being renamed from English to an African language, so Pretoria becomes Tshwane, Johannesburg is Egoli and so on. But even English can be confusing! For example, “I’ll do it just now”... Now I would think that means, “I’ll do it right away”. But it doesn’t. It means, “I’ll do it soon”, or in a short while. If you want to say what we mean by “Do it just now”, you must say “Do it now- now.”
Also, like our southern European cousins, there is a “Manyana” tendency! It can be quite frustrating. I have made contact with several schools who seem eager for me to visit, but so far only two have actually delivered! First it was, “Wait for the new term” (that was in January). Then it was, “Soon it will be Easter”, then they had three weeks Easter holidays! So hopefully I will get a few more visits underway in the next couple of weeks! The reading programme starts this week and so do the school visits to the library where I volunteer.
This manyana tendency has extended to the car. As you may remember, we had a few difficulties with the BMW. It was to be fixed “just now”. However, it proved more difficult than the hire company expected, so they gave us an Audi which was very nice. Then on Friday, when we were setting off to Mpumalanga, the BMW was still not ready, so they exchanged the Audi for a Mercedes! Not than I’m complaining! I will find it difficult to go back to an ordinary run around when we get back to Scotland!
We enjoyed our weekend stay in Sabie, which is a bit like Aberfoyle. The whole area is commercial forestry, so although it was very green, it had those huge blighted areas common in the Trossachs , where the trees have been cut but new trees are not yet big enough to make the area pretty. There were some lovely villages with lots of craft shops, forestry and mining museums and so on. Further up the Escarpment (no sign of Tarzan) the scenery was very dramatic. At some point we were above the clouds and could see mist and cloud like ribbons along the mountain sides across the valleys. We visited a famous viewpoint called God’s Window but unfortunately he had his curtains closed! The mist was so thick we couldn’t see a thing, even the roadsides were obscured and that is not a good thing when you are 4300metres up a mountain with a sheer drop on one side, believe me! We spent a lot of time following, then overtaking huge logging lorries, some with a trailer behind making them double length. Every time we stopped to look at a view or a battle site from the Anglo Boer War, the damned things would get past us and we’d have to wait for a straight stretch to overtake again! The hotel had wonderful entertainment on Saturday evening. All the kitchen staff sang, danced and played local instruments including a huge drum. I loved the drum, in fact I bought one on Sunday, much to Les’ dismay. It will make a nice side table when I get fed up of beating it, or more likely when Les gets fed up of hearing it! The area is famous for trout fishing and although Les didn’t get to try his luck, we bought some pate and smoked trout from a farm shop for dinner on Sunday night. The trout were originally destined for somewhere else. The man who brought them in the early 1900s had trout eggs on ice but the ice began to melt before he reached his planned destination so he released them into the lakes and rivers of Mpumalanga. Duh! Ice melts in the African Heat!!! But it has turned the area into a huge holiday resort, for which the locals are no doubt very grateful, not to mention the tourists like us!