An ominous sky, or a sky full of promise?

Depends on your point of view a suppose.


Click on photo to enlarge for the full effect.

Might make a good cover for a Gothic novel though. Does any one still write Gothic novels? 

Survival.

Took my usual evening walk at about 5:30. Unlike other evenings I was all bundled up against the chill. It seems that the reason tropical storm Irina moved out to sea is the arrival of a cold front from the south west. According to the weather bureau Irina will be back over the week end.


Although the effect of the tropical storm was not as bad as was expected over land, out at sea it was a different matter. A cruise liner, the MSC Symphony, that left Durban harbour at 5pm on Sunday, had to return after encountering 12 meter swells, that's about 40 feet.  


Click on photos to enlarge.

Above an Amur falcon. This shot shows the birds distinctive markings and red feet. 


While walking along the dam wall of the biggest dam on the farm, the dogs decided to go and explore the long grass and marshy ground at the base. In doing so they flushed a Yellow-billed duck and several quite large ducklings. The duck did it's broken wing imitation and lured Lady and Thombi away, Sissy managed to catch one of the ducklings.


Sissy came charging up the dam wall with the duckling in her mouth straight towards me. Realising that my intentions towards her prey were not honourable she changed direction and headed away from me along the dam wall. I ran after her shouting at her to put it down. Eventually she stopped with the duckling still in her mouth, I thought it was dead. Torn between her hunting instincts and obedience she put the duckling down.


Quick as a flash it was on it's feet and into the water only to be attacked by three Black-smith lapwings. It dived under the water and disappeared. I looked to see where it would surface but it stayed down. After a while I saw it lying half submerged on it's side not far from where it had dived. Thinking that the poor bird had succumbed to it's injuries and shock, I raised my camera to photograph it, only to have it dive again. It had only been playing dead.


I kept watching the water to see where it would surface, but no duckling. After a while I became aware of something small floating on the surfaced. I focussed on it with the cameras zoom lens and realised it was the duckling head and bill, the rest of the body was submerged. 

In the photo above you can see the ducklings bill and head just above the water. If you look carefully you can see the rest of the body under the water.

After luring the other two dogs away, the mother duck circled the dam giving alarm calls to warn her brood to stay under cover. Eventually she landed on the far end of the dam from where we were.

Tropical storm Irina 4.

What happened to Irina? Off the Eastern Cape coast it moved out to sea.


Click on picture to enlarge.

The coastal areas got hit hard with torrential rain and flooding. Here in Estcourt, not a drop of rain, just wind blowing up lots of dust. Could have done with some of that rain though, before the dry winter months start in a couple of weeks.
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Alcoholic Angel II.

Part two.

Moments later, while we were still sitting in that bleak kitchen, around the battered table, there was the sound of a powerful truck engine. Then the flash of bright headlights on the kitchen window as a pickup truck pulled into the back yard and the red glow of brake lights as it came to a stop. The engine was switched off, a bang as the truck’s door was slammed shut. Without a knock the back door opened and there stood one of my mother’s younger brothers, Basil.

Uncle Basil was in the building and construction business, he was an alcoholic and the black sheep of the family. In spite of that, he had done very well for himself. Apart from the building and construction business, he also owned a farm outside the town of Tzaneen, in what was then northern Transvaal. All my mother’s family called my father Punter. (That was their nickname for him. What it means I don’t know, but I never heard any of them ever call him by his given name, Andries). Uncle Basil had a very bad stammer  very, very, bad. He stood there in the door trying to speak, his face contorted and twitching with the effort, “P P P P, Punter, w w w w, we’ve ccc come t t t to sp sp sp spend ChChCh Christmas w w w with y y y you”. Then he walked in shook hands with my father and kissed my mother.

My parents stood there stunned.  Guests for Christmas! What now? There was absolutely nothing in the house, not a teaspoon of sugar, no tea or coffee, no milk, nothing. Out in the yard the truck disgorged the rest of its passengers, my uncle’s wife and several cousins. They were on their way to the Natal south coast on a camping holiday. The night before, they had decided on the spur of the moment, to stop over with us for Christmas. It was actually way out of their way and far off the direct route to their destination. Communication was not as easy as it is today.  We had no phone so there was no way that they could let us know that they were coming.

Without another word my uncle walked out and started to unload the truck, while my parents greeted my aunt and cousins, putting on a brave face, pretending they were so happy to have guests. Meanwhile my uncle was carrying in piles of stuff, not just any old stuff. Bags of vegetables, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins and sweet potatoes. Fruit, mangoes, bananas, guavas, and grenadillas (passion fruit), all from his farm. Next came a half a sheep, a turkey and several chickens, all slaughtered the day before, and dozens of eggs. The goodies just kept coming, home baked bread, a Christmas cake, cookies, sweets. Bags of sugar and rice, flour, dried fruit and nuts, it seemed like a never ending stream, a virtual cornucopia, then at last their luggage. In the mean time my father, myself and my brother had got over our shock helped to unload the truck.

When everything was off the truck, my uncle sat down at the table, asked for a glass, opened a bottle of brandy poured a stiff shot, and said to my mother, ... face again contorted and twitching with the effort of trying to speak....“Nnnn now DD Daphne, I i i i w w w want y y you t t t to c c c cook Ch Ch Ch Christmas l l l lunch, j j j just l l l like m m m mom u u u used t t t to c c c cook". My late grandmother was of German decent and knew how to cook a Christmas lunch, and my mother had inherited that talent.

The really strange part is that they decided to visit us at all. In seventeen years we had visited them once in Tzaneen, on our way to Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe). How they knew where to find us is also a mystery as I don't think there was much communication in any form between our families.

God’s angels don’t often appear in all their power and glory most times they appear as ordinary human beings, even as an alcoholic uncle.

Uncle Basil has long gone to his rest. After the Christmas visit we sort of lost touch. Things started to go bad for him as drink took over more and more of his life. I pray that God remembers that he was the angel who brought hope and joy to a family who had run out of both.


I often wondered how much his severe speech defect contributed to his alcoholism.

Alcoholic Angel I.

Part one.

I remember many Christmases from when I was a kid. All of them had something that made an impression on my memory that just can’t be erased. But the Christmas of 1964 is etched so deep that it stands out in sharp relief to all the others.

The year of 1964 had not been a good year for our family. To improve our financial situation my father moved us to a small village about 30 miles from the large city we were living in. This move offered more money, 50 cents an hour as compared to the 45 cents an hour that my father earned at his previous place of employment. With the position went a company house, free lights and water.  The work was exactly the same as in the previous position, and for eight hours   hard, back breaking and exhausting  work, in a noisy dirty factory, he earned the princely sum of four Rand, (R4) a day or about R120 a month.

The previous three years had been hard and very difficult. Serious illness in the family had added to the debt burden and any spare money earned in the new job was spent in paying off these debts. From July 1964, the month we moved to the new place, our main meal of the day consisted of samp, (crushed white maize) and cabbage curry. Samp  took hours to cook, but it was cheap, and we had a wood burning stove and as much wood as we needed. Cabbage we grew in the garden with a few other vegetables, such as onions and tomatoes. There were absolutely no luxuries, we were down to almost less than the minimum.

Christmas eve, 24^th December 1964, and all the cupboards were bare, open the fridge and all you found was the light that came on and empty shelves. My mother always cooked up a storm for Christmas, but this year there was nothing. She went through the motions though, cooking a pot of small onions in a sweet and sour sauce, but that was all there was. After putting the onions and the sauce in a small glass dish into the fridge, she sat down at the table and wept, defeated, no sounds just large tears running down her face.

The whole family was in the kitchen, my mother, my father, me about to turn seventeen in six days, my brother Boyce, fifteen, and my two sisters, Rosemary about eight, and Jo-Anne about nine years old. That kitchen scene is also embedded in my memory, a bare light bulb hanging on some flex from the ceiling. The battered old table and six chairs, everything spotlessly clean, but bare, the very image of poverty. Then my father sat down next to my mother and took her hands in his and wept silently with her.

Seeing my parents weeping left me shattered, until that moment I was sure they would be able to make a plan and our Christmas would turn out as good as all the others. Children cry, not grownups, not your parents, they have the answer to all of life’s problems.

Then my father took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, cleared his throat and said, “Let’s pray.” We all sat around the table while my father prayed a simple prayer, with very few words, asking God to help us, that’s all nothing more.

At seventeen I was already a budding cynic. My thoughts were, “God help us, how?”  Here we were sitting in this bleak kitchen with nothing! Where was anything going to come from. Angels from heaven? Ha! Pull my other leg.

But the Angels were close, they were closer than I knew. 

Tropical storm Irina 3.

It would seem that the tropical storm is moving down the coast rather than directly inland. The front edge of the storm is already at East London on the Eastern Cape coast.

Hope we get some of the rain though. 

Tropical storm Irina 2.

An update on the post of 3 hours ago. With my previous post the satellite photo showed the tropical storm still some way out to see. The satellite photo below shows that the storm has made landfall on the Southern Mozambique coast and north eastern KwaZuluNatal. The advance clouds of the tropical storm have already reached us here in Estcourt.

The map of Southern Africa can be compared to the satellite photo above. Click on the immage to enlarge. 


The rain bird is still calling, and his call seems to have a "I told you so edge to it."

Both immages from Kobus Botha weather.