Life in South Africa……28.02.12 ………. Sam

         These are some of the things I have found

 Out about South Africa so far…

History

·       For a long time people here had to live separately to others until the 1990’s when Nelson Mandela was elected president and he changed everything so that people could live together, this was called apartheid.

Houses

A house in a township

·       Most people still seem to live in separate groups. Some houses are too small and look like shacks.

·       Most toilets near small houses don’t have running water and some toilets they would call long drop toilets because there are no sewage pipes. (You get the picture?)

Currency

·       The currency of South Africa is called Rand and there are 12 Rand to the pound.

·       The notes have all the big five on them (Lion, Rhino, Leopard, Buffalo and Elephant and the big seven (extra two) are Cheetah and Giraffe plus we’ve seen all of them in one day last year!)  there’s a new note coming out with a picture of Nelson Mandela on it.

Population

·       Approximately 55 million people live in South Africa which is less than in Britain because there are 60 million there.

Roads

·       There don’t seem to be as many roads as back in England but there are quite a few more fast straight roads.

·       The roads are measured in kilometres instead of miles.

·       You can drive at 120 kph on the fastest roads. This is about 75mph.

·       The roads can go through mountains or past farms.

·       Lots of roads don’t have tar on them which makes them very bumpy.

Farming

Dirk  digs up some potatoes with Andrew and Sam

·       On one farm where we stayed in the North West Province the farmer grew maize and potatoes. He had just planted some pecan nut trees to sell abroad. We saw sunflowers too.

·       In White River the farmers plant maize, bananas and avocados. We have also seen other fruit being grown such as oranges, lemons and mangoes.

·       You can’t grow bananas in North West Province because the winters are too cold.

Shopping

A roadside stall

·       There are big shops in towns but people also put up stalls to make money for their family. We have seen brushes made out of twigs, macademia nuts, birds carved out of wood and drinks made out of marula fruit.

Schools

·       School starts early at about 7.30 and finishes around 2pm. Lunch is at about 11am.

·       The school year starts in January and ends in December.

Dimakatso and Betty

·       Children are taught in English, Africaans, sitswana, siSwati, Tsonga, Zulu, Xhosa or any other of the 11 or 12 official languages.

·       It can be a long way to school. Dimakatso is 6 and he walks 12km to school every day.

·       You only move from one grade to the next if you pass the test at the end of the year. So you could be years older than some of the other children in your class.

Nature

·       The weather, animals, birds, insects and trees are different but I might do that another day because I am tired.

Bye for now,

Sam

Discovering Matlosane………19.02.2012 Sam.

The North West Province of South Africa;
In fact we had only moved from
Nelspruit in Mpumalanga (on the right)
to Kleksdorp in the North West (in yello)

          Sorry for the delay of my blogging, here is me writing about the last few days……………hopefully you all know the we are discovering a new part of South Africa called Matlosane, and it was a six hour journey to get here however the traffic was horrendous! So then we were stuck on the motorway,

For an extra two hours, in the end I was sat in the car with my mum, my dad and Andrew for EIGHT HOURS! But we did stop for a quick lunch at spur; (a bit like KFC) it was delicious!

          After we had had lunch, we got on to the N12 motorway towards

Jo’burg and then after about twenty minutes people in there cars found out on the radio that a lorry a crashed up ahead, so they got fed up and decided to get off the motorway by using a track on the grass to get to the roundabout to get off the motorway. After five minutes people started to reverse up the hard shoulder and even some people did u-turns as well! It was chaos!

We are staying with the Diseko Family

          We eventually arrived as it was getting dark, and we were staying with a family with three children, the children’s names are Leruo, Gnata and Letlotlo. Their dad is the bishop of Matlosane. The school that they go to starts at 7.30 and they leave their house at 7.00 but they do finish at 2.00.     I‘m glad we don’t go to school that early! I’ll tell you some more soon by for now…………………Sam

09/02/12…Another day at Mercy Air… Andrew…

Hi guys, you may or may not know what Mercy Air is, so Mercy Air is a small place where there is a kind of small airport and also where all the pilots live. So let’s find out what I did today; it was a hot night the last night so I didn’t get much sleep and consequently I woke up late. We had late breakfast and then we had a walk around the site. Afterwards we went shopping to the mall (when I came out a shop crouched up in a corner was a man with a bullet-proof vest on with a grenade launcher in his hands. We tried not to just stand there with our mouths open.

          We then had lunch and all that malarkey until night when we saw thunder and lightning round about 4 miles away, we waited there looking at the site. It wasn’t ordinary lightning either; it was crackling down with speed. As we were walking away, we spotted flashing lights in the grass, they were either fireflies or glow-worms but we were drawn away by the lights; as I am writing this thunder is bellowing down at us with super heavy rain and blinding lightning. Hope we can sleep tonight with this racket!

          Andrew, signing out.

P.S After I wrote this we went outside onto the veranda to watch this surprising scene. The storm passed close to us and we heard the thunder crackling down. It was stunning. We also had a short power cut !   

A typical day at Mercy Air……09.02.12………

We began the day by having breakfast, and then we took our malaria tablets, and thought about what to do before we took some photos of Mercy Air (this is where we are staying and where they keep the planes, pilots and families). We did in the end decide to get in the pool and when we did, it was surprisingly warmer than last time we got in. After we had finished in the pool we walked around the gardens and the plane hangers to take some photos. We were one hour taking photos of the gardens, the plants and trees are REALLY different to home and sometimes we forget how big they are here! Plus we were surrounded by insects and monkeys, and there was a strange bright green insect that was just like a praying mantis. (Creepy crawly).Also we tried to get pictures of monkeys but they were too fast. Then we had lunch, and had a quiet day at Mercy Air.

……………………….Sam

07-02- 2012…A day of botany & zoology… Andrew

Today was the eleventh day in South Africa and a day of rest! We went to a place called the ‘Botanical Garden’ (it is a place where there are thousands of species of plants, (literally thousands) and scenic views of water falls and rivers).The day started of quite cool, well cool in our terms, we took a thin jumper there. It round about 25’c so back home it would be called roasting, but to make it feel slightly cooler there was a cold wind and in the night it rained relatively heavy so it was humid.

         We left at about 11 O’clock because Sam and Mom wanted to go so I had to go with them. Once we arrived, we found the sun was now blazing at around 30 – 40 degrees c and we hadn’t bought any sun cream with us, so we had to do without it for the time. It turned out to be quite interesting in the end. At the beginning I spotted a multicoloured insect which the park said had only been in the park for the last three months., We spotted some strange plants like a Fig tree where the fruits grow on the bark and trunk, and because we came in their summer everything was lush and green, there had also been a flood lately so the waterfalls were thunderous and powerful. Because we were hot me and my brother went over onto the grass and waited… and then we were soaked with water from the huge sprinklers. We came back dry though because the heat had dried our soggy cloths.

         We had our tea and then watched a film and Sam played with the Lego before I slumped into bed as tired as a sloth.   

Thurs2 Feb 2012 - Our visit to Bush Buck Ridge…Andrew:

          Last night was awful; I couldn’t get to sleep,

·        Because I was as sweaty as a pig;

·        Because I was being circled by a mozzie;

·        Because a group of teenagers were having a party.

So in the morning I was as tired as a sloth and got out of bed just before 9:00am, (I thought that last night was a dream, but it  actually true that I nearly set fire to a pillow, but  was even because my mom broke the ladder the other night.) I went to the dining hall once I was dressed and had my breakfast; afterwards Sam was amazed that I could swallow my malaria tablets whole without water.

        Then once we had had our malaria tablets, we had to leave Bush Buck Ridge and go back to ‘Hands at Work’ so we loaded the car up and headed back to ‘Hands’ on the 2 hour drive. Once we got there and unloaded our vehicle and went to a place called Twins (fast food place) it was so refreshing having something so greasy, it was a little bit of home. We went back to ‘Hands’ because we were going to have tea with some friends. After, we came back blogged, worked, Skyped, did our journal and slept.

      Signing out, Andrew.