Squash, Corn and lone Pumpkin

Around here people grow a lot of corn and squashes. As far as I can tell squashes even seem to grow alone in abandoned places. The typical countryside, untouched, looks like this in winter.


So the local grow their corn and squash who need sun on the sand pile around the sand quarries we create to build our pads (for the rig). It is not the tidy affair we are used to but it seems to work.


And then of course sometimes walking around you just happen to come across a lone pumpkin, abandoned here in the middle of the open land.

Weird the picture are loading in black in white!!! But I found out why and changed it !

Fresh Water

The thing about fresh water in Africa, and in South America I would imagine, is that regardless how good it looks you can NEVER drink it and you can NEVER swim in it. I mean NEVER.

But you have to say that when it is 30 degrees Celsius ans super humid, and the water is clear and cool with a firm bottom that you can see, it is hard to resist!
I wonder, can you swim in the fresh water in South America?

Namibia???

I've been working for two days and two nights on about three hours of sleep total...I have a few hours to sleep now and I really should do something about it...that would be do something else than write reports or BLOG!!! but I just received a message from my travel agent and it looks like I will be able to get car rental, flight ticket and everything I need to go to Namibia.
Now I know I should not get overjoy until it is a done deal, but there is not way I can sleep now (anyway I am too over tired to sleep easily) I am letting myself get exited about this trip! I hope it doesn't end up like the Djanet trip.

I really want to go to Namibia...and for the record I also still really want to go to Djanet and I am still planning on going one day.
The funny thing is that in a way I am a very lucky person. I nearly did my masters in Namibia (I bet you didn't know that...that was before I knew any of you guys) but obviously I didn't but in the end I may end up going to Namibia anyway...note I write "MAY end up going"

Waiting for holidays

I am still waiting for confirmation on my ticket to Namibia. Unfortunately as it is winter here it is the busiest time of year for South African to go North where it is warmer and for people from temperate climates to come to this part of the world without having to suffer too much from heat. Funny how some people go somewhere for warmth and some people go there at the same time for cool...Temperature is such a question of perspective.

Work is very busy right now, two days ago it wasn't and at night I tried to take pictures of the bats flying by to eat the bugs drawn to our lights.
With a serious delay on my camera when you want to use the flash repeatedly it is quite the task. But since I had nothing in particular to do it was actually quite fun. The photo above is the best from my point of view but not the sharpest.

Just another day, but a grumpy one apparently

Today started as one of those days. When I got up at 3:00am this morning I was cold, the air was damp and for unknown reason I was grumpy as hell. Then I realized that once again we had no water. So once again I showered with a bottle of mineral water! At least I was ready for that kind of problem and had a bottle with me.
Normally it doesn’t bother me, but this morning since I share the bathroom with a stinky old man (the night company man) and he had not been able to flush the toilet the bathroom was a nightmare.
Man, does this old guy stink or what! Not to mention that the way we are set up I can hear everything that goes on in this bathroom and it is UGLY!

After I sent my report I actually went back to bed (which I never do). Of course when the day company man did not see me at 6:00am, when I usually go for coffee after we have all sent our reports, he worried that maybe something was wrong with me and he came and knocked on my door.

That half hour sleep was enough for me to wake up my bitter twisted self, but not grumpy!

Apparently I am not the only grumpy one though. Today everybody is a little grumpier than usual and there doesn't seem to be any particular reason. Good day to let people rant and rave and remember to just listen and not take anything personally when they go on and on. I've just listen to a 10 minute rant about how Canadians are all the same and make a big deal out of nothing....And later on I listen to day guy tell the mudloggers how he is my second boss!!!! Amazingly enough I just stood there and genuinely didn't care.

I am really mellowing out. Even just a year ago I would have pointedly reminded him that I work WITH him and not FOR him. *shrug* Admit it you're shocked.

More photos of Kruger

Internet is very unreliable but might just be working well enough right now to post some photos from Kruger.

I do like Kruger, not just because of the animals.... In fact for me mostly it is the views. I just like the place. There aren't many high points as you can see in these photos, but when you get one it is worth it!

And I was so lucky that most of my stay in Kruger I practically saw nobody. One of the days...it must have been a week end day or something...I never checked...I did see quite a few people but otherwise I had all those views to myself.

It was actually quite difficult to take a picture of those guys. I had seen them by the side of the road outside of Kruger quite a few times, but they would just run away. Even in Kruger where the animals pretty much have no fear of cars, it was hard to catch them in a photo.


I was really happy when I saw those. They are the rotten flesh smelling cacti. The smell was actually not as strong as I had thought it would be. In the open air it was totally bearable. I had no idea where they grew, but I use to have one...a million year ago, when I still lived in Victoria, but I never bloomed.

Winter may be nearly over

It seems that the coldest part of winter is over! The days are getting warmer (I would guess in the low 30s) and the nights are not as cool (again a guess, but something like high 10s to low 20s seems fair). I am hoping it isn't just a phase but really the trend.
It rained this morning and three days ago, this seems to be the pattern for the dry season, but the vegetation is really tropical so those rains are not enough to keep the all countryside green. Last time I went to town (four days ago) I realize how much more I can see with just that less greenery. If you were to come here for the first time it would still seem very green. The only trees without leaves are the baobabs.

Right now we are just above the Govuru River valley and in the morning we get quite a bit of fog. This is our best location so far. It has a great view.

Giogio the bow hunter

Today I went for a walk with the mud engineer. He is a nice guy from India but is nervous of going for walk on his own outside the fenced compound around the rig. We were going to go just for a short relaxing walk but we met Giogio, a local man who was walking by with his home made bow and two home made arrows. He obviously use them to hunt.Giogio was walking in the same direction than us and we ended walking with him. At the intersection of the road he was such a pleasant guy that we went with him and he took us to his village and his house...Well he really didn't have a house anymore since the cyclone hit pretty hard around here. It was great to have KK, the mud engineer, with me because otherwise I really cannot follow a man home just like this.
Here is Giogio's family at home.
He then proceeded to take us around, first to the village water pump (built by the company I work for here after their last drilling campaign in 2003) and then to the beach roughly 4 kilometres away.
Giogio is a really nice guy. It was nice of him to take the time. He never showed us off as prizes, which normally happens. He spoke very little english and could not understand my question when I tried to ask where he had learned the little english he knew. I tell you he knew a lot more english than an average north american knows portuguese!

What a nice morning this was. A short little walk turned into a long walk (it must have been well over 10km all together) and a great opportunity to go to Shepong (the village), not that far from here really but which none of us had any idea existed. With the houses being huts etc the habitations do not stand out at all around here.

When we arrived at the beach there was three abandoned concrete houses. One had written on it 'This building belongs to the Austral Bank etc etc....' with a phone number. It must have been quite nice in its time. Giogio explained that these houses were abandoned during the civil war.

When we were walking together Giogio saw a bird and tried to shoot it. The sound of the arrow being released and flying scared the bird and he flew away, but the arrow landed just where he had been and went over 2 inches into the sandy ground!

Only Fourteen

I had originally posted the list of all the Nobel Prize winners since the beginning. You may have been lucky enough to miss it. I decided that it was WAY too long and took it off. On this list I have read 14 of those authors!!! Only 14!!!
One of them (Nadine Gordimer) is one of the authors on my 99 African book list and I have found one of her books (though not the one on the list).

Jean Paul Sartre, who until I read another language than french was my favourite author received the Nobel prize the year I was born...I think it is kind of nice...and he declined the prize!

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: love most of his books but could never get past the first few pages of "a hundred years of solitude" which is pretty much THE Gabriel Garcia Marquez book!

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...................

more book stuff

I am really into reading these days.

Last time I was in Johannesburg on my way home I bought a book that truly was just a list, with reviews, of 99 books from or about Africa. They are listed by country. When I was home I retyped the entire thing in alphabetical order by author. With this list in hand I went to my favorite (and the only one I know) second hand book store in Johannesburg, as well as the second book stand at the Sunday roof-top market. I managed to buy quite a few books, not all of them on the list...You know how it goes, once you get interested in something you just find out more and more about it.. Same about African books, as I am starting to dig into it I know more authors, find more books that I want to read. Unfortunately (or is it "fortunately") "The White Nile" is also full of early exploration of Africa books. I am trying to ignore them but one stands out: "the Albert N'yanza, Great Basin of the Nile" by Samuel Baker. Here is what this book says about it: " The Albert N'yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, Baker's account of his next two years' wanderings, is the most readable of explorers' books. It contains indeed the ingredients of almost all African adventures stories that have been written from that day to this....." Sounds good doesn't it.
And this reminds me that when I was looking up book by R. F. Burton I found a publishing house in Montana called Kessinger Publishing in Whitefish Montana (I've just added the link to this blog). They specialize in out of prints hard to find books...and has hundreds of them....Just in case I needed another list of books to read!!!

In the distance

From the road just outside the rig I can see something in the distance. A very tall tree? a tower? (seem unlikely) but I have no idea what it is. Cutting across the bush to it would probably be no more than 5 kilometres or so but with the land mines it really isn't such a great idea. I asked one of the local what it was and from what I understood (I just do not speak Portuguese) he is saying that it is an island.
I think he believes that I am pointing at the island we do see in the distance.

Both, the island and this mystery thing are too small and too far to show in photos, so forget about it.

I just read Dave's blog about his trip to Peru. I had never realized that it was that nice.

Two books

I can honestly not remember the last time I blogged.
I just haven't been into it lately, this and I really do not have a great internet connection. As I type this I cannot be sure that I will be able to post it, so it is a bit of a drag.
I am in Mozambique right now, and it is the middle of winter here. Mostly the temperatures are quite reasonable. I would guess into the 10 deg C at night and up to upper 20s in day time...And of course lots of humidity in the air. That part I like. I am not too fond of the cooler temperatures...It is colder here now (because it is winter) that it is in Calgary (because it is summer)!!!

In about two weeks this rotation will be done and I will try to go to Namibia. It is not sorted out yet.


Right now I am reading "The White Nile" by Alan Moorehead, an old book easily available in second hand book stores. It is supposed to cover the all history of the search for the source of the Nile. Right now I am just at the beginning and the author is describing Burton's and Speke's expedition of 1856. Here is the part where he describes Burton: "Burton, despite the plethora of books that have been written either by or about him, still remains beyond the range of ordinary definition. Above all else he was a romantic and an Arabist; he belongs decidedly to that small perennial group of Englishmen and women who are born with something lacking in their lives, : a hunger, a nostalgia, that can be sent at rest only in the deserts of the East......."

Well written book. I am enjoying it so far.

I've just finished: "Waiting for the Barbarians" by J.M. Coetzee, a South African author who receive the Nobel price of literature, in 2003...I think it was 2003.
Great book!
The author managed to keep the tone of the very light beginning all while really dealing with the issues of political tortures and the extreme people go to in the determination to keep one's country safe in the face of their possibly unreasonable fears.
This was written in 1980 and was not written to describe present day States situation.

Good book. I highly recommend it, for an amazingly easy read which does not insult the intelligence.

Snow?!?!?

The morning I landed in Johannesburg it had snowed the night before!

The driver who picked me up at the airport was telling me about shoveling his driveway in the morning. I asked: "how much snow fell?"...by nine in the morning when I landed all of it was gone. "Nearly an inch" was the answer...and he shoveled it!!
The all thing is so new here I guess nobody really new what to do with it. Some people even managed to create car accidents because of it.
This is why, I guess, South Africans immigrating are going to Perth instead of Canada.

why blog now?

So what is going on right now? and why am I blogging today?

First in a couple of days I am going to Mozambique back on the rig and apparently the internet connection is even worse now than it was then....so expect no blog!

Most of all: I am reading a great book "Waiting for the Barbarians" by J.M. Coetzee.

I seriously started looking into books from Africa or "good" books about Africa and in J.M. Coetzee is one of the classic South African writer who thankfully does not write about the angst of living during apartheid or the end of it. Nothing against people who write about stuff like this but honestly this is not what I want to read.

Anyway, here is the very beginning of "waiting for barbarians":
"I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind? I could understand if he wanted to hide blind eyes. But he is not blind. The discs are dark, they look opaque from the outside, but he can see through them. He tells me they are a new invention. 'They protect one's eyes against the glare of the sun,' he says. 'You would find them useful out here in the desert. They save one from squinting all the time. One has fewer headaches. Look' He touches the corners of his eyes lightly. 'No wrinkles.' He replaces the glasses. It is true He has the skin of a younger man. 'At home everyone wears them.' "

This makes the book sound very light but here is part of the blurb at the back:
"...is an allegory of oppressor and oppressed. Not just a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times, the Magistrate is an analogy of all men living in complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency".
So quite relevant really. I've just started it but I am really enjoying it.

The price at the back is also quoted in Canadian dollars so presumably it is available home. I meant to only buy here what I couldn't get home but this is a thin volume and I couldn't resist.

catching up

Ok, so I haven't blogged in a very long time.
What has happened since last time? Not much I would say.

I worked and I went home.
I worked in Mozambique on the rig, worked in Johannesburg in the office where I encountered more computer problems than one can reasonably expect. I was in Calgary for 4 hours, 45 minutes of which I spent home and then flew to Baltimore.

I spent a week in and around Baltimore and swam in the warm water with the ancestral looking horseshoe crabs, even on the day a spectacular storm rolled in. I love this photo. It was just a "let's try how this comes out" and it really worked out. Three or four really worked out, I'm kind of happy about that.

I flew home for 5 days where I managed to do all the boring stuff one has to do (taxes, pay bills, meet with accountant etc)...Then back to work early because of the computer problems I had when I left.

I am spending a week in Johannesburg.
Today is Sunday and I am taking the day off.

That it folks you have now caught up.