Monthly Archives: March 2019

Gratitude, idyllic landscape, Living in Jo'burg, Sharing My World

How Was Your Weekend?

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Mine was relaxing. We had the requisite load shedding on Friday and Saturday and on Sunday there was none. I took my niece horse riding and it was lovely out in the open spaces amongst the plots, sleepy almost. The flies were abundant though and very persistent, buzzing and landing on my forearms like ten-ton trucks on wings. They felt heavy, it must all the horse manure that they feast on… :-0

I love the wide open spaces which are so close to us in Joburg
©2019 Regina Martins

My niece has lots of work on her plate, she’s doing the International Baccalaureate (IB) and from Grade 11 it’s like a prep for ‘varsity. I don’t remember my Grade 11 or 12 being so onerous. I helped her visualise her work on a Kanban system to help her better manage it – there ‘s a wonderful sense of satisfaction when one task is moved into the “Done” column. She’s experienced it already and its motivational characteristics.

Personal Kanban to manage IB school work
©2019 Regina Martins
Post-it notes and markers, all needed to set up a Kanban system
©2019 Regina Martins

We’ve been blessed to have wonderful moderate weather in the highveld. It’s autumn and it’s still short sleeve and swimming weather. The gardens are still lush due to all the recent rains.

Our international coach camp this year is in Marrakesh. Neither Che or me have been to Morocco! I confess that it wasn’t on my list of places to visit, but now that we’re going there we’re taking the opportunity to explore. I’ve just done the bookings, flights and Airbnbs for our holiday portion after the coach camp.

So we’ll explore Marrakesh, take the train to Casablanca and explore that city. Then we’ll fly to Lisbon where we’ll spend time with family exploring there too – there is no end to my exploration of Lisbon, I love it there. Then it’s off to Istanbul to spend 3 days there before flying back home to South Africa! Now I’m looking forward to it.

Che and will use our backpacks again. This time due to time pressure we’re not doing the G-Adventures thing but crafting our own adventures. We have some research to do. I’m already following a few Marrakech and Morocco accounts on Instagram, now to follow Casablanca accounts to get an idea of what to visit.

If you have any tips for touristing in Morocco please share.

Regina

 

#justsaying, #justwriting, Johannesburg, Living in Jo'burg, Mozambique, South Africa

M2, Idai, Loadshedding, Fibre, Crochet Project

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Ok, well I’m finding my way back into blogging. I confess to having missed it. I checked into my WordPress reader to keep up with other bloggers but I was patchy at best.

Today is a public holiday in South Africa. Things are interesting here at the moment. Loadshedding (rolling blackouts) are back because the situation with Eskom, our state owned energy provider is crumbling under the effects of long term corruption, bad decisions and lack of maintenance. Leadership has been changed in the last six months or so, especially after our previous president stepped down. The reality is that all of our state owned enterprises are bankrupt, from our national airline to the railways to the energy provider.

Couple that with the closure of the M2 bridges which are a main arterial to cross the Johannesburg city from North to South and from East to West, and it makes getting around Joburg an adventure. It turns out that the bridges in Johannesburg have not been maintained in decades and the M2 is showing signs of structural damage making it unsafe for cars to travel along it.

I’m sorry if this post is a bit bleak and I’m giving you my fed-up rant. It is biased I know.

South Africa is a beautiful country, the weather is some of the best in the world. And South Africans take everything in their stride. We survive and in some cases thrive. Life goes on and we must move forward. I still worry though…

That’s the bleak rant. Now for some positive news. We finally got fibre. After years of battling with sub-par ADSL our online experience just got better. It took us a while to get all the configs and set up done mainly because neither me nor Che were home long enough to see things through to the end with the service provider. We eventually did, and I’m smiling 🙂

We’re having a wonderfully hot autumn – it’s 30 degrees today and has been the same since last week. Rainy season is over here in the highveld, unlike our northern neighbours of Mozambique (my homeland :-)), Zimbabwe and Malawi. Cyclone Idai made landfall in Beira a few days ago. Beira is already a city located below sea-level. With the winds and the rains, there is an inland sea stretching long distances. It’s a humanitarian crisis, with people dead, missing, or in vulnerable situations and in danger of starving before help reaches them. These are people who are still on the roofs of their homes, waiting to be rescued. Many resources have been mobilised here is South Africa to help. Have a look at this short drone footage of the damage close to the shore.

There is a huge inland lake created by the floods, ” European Space Agency images show a huge new inland “lake” measuring about 80 miles by 15 miles (125km by 25km)”

The disaster stretches to Zimbabwe and Malawi too, where people are going to be needing food aid for the next 3 months, according to the World Food Programme.

I did say I was going to write positive stuff and it quickly turned sad…

A positive note is that I’ve taken up my crochet project again – I’m crocheting (is this the right spelling?) a bed spread in bamboo yarn. It’s so soft and sustainable too. I get my yarns from Natural Yarns in Kommetjie, and use the Vinnis Colours from the Serina range. Natural Yarns in turn source their yarns from women from an economically depressed rural area of South Africa. The yarn is hand-dyed and balled, and the sale of this product has empowered and brought economic benefits to their community. The yarn is colour fast and the hand-dyed yarn gives my garment a marbled effect. I have 400 granny squares to make and I’ve completed 117! What do you think of the effect?

My bamboo yarn crochét bedspread project ©2019 Regina Martins
Close up of the effect of the colours on the bamboo yarn crochét bedspread ©2019 Regina Martins

Well I started off this post with no specific plan…only to reconnect with you, my readers. It started off with complaining about loadshedding and the closure of the M2 in Joburg, raved about the new fibre connection we have, then took a bit of dip into the Cyclone Idai disaster and up again when I spoke about continuing with my crochet project. My crochet hook and yarn is calling me and I must end off here, this post that is longer than normal for me. If you’re reading this, thank you for making is this far. And leave me a comment 😉

Regina