He Just Smiled And Gave Me A Vegamite Sandwich

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I know it’s been a while but hell, time just runs away and life just carries on and shit happens and ok so here I am again. I’ll try to do a quick catch up to where we’re at these days out here in the bush.

After our Mozambique breakaway, we hung around the Nelspruit area for a while and sent our CV’s out to lodges hoping to get a job working as lodge management couple. Nothing concrete materialized, so after chilling for a while for free next to a dam, visiting Theo’s cousin again for 2 weeks in Krugersdorp (city life sucks), we contacted some people listed on helpexchange.com website and 2 days before Xmas we arrived at our destination, a farm near Volksrust, just across the Kwazulu Natal border.
Jeanne and Hannes welcomed us into their home where we kicked off with a homely Xmas, exchanging gifts and all, and stayed for 6 weeks learning about loads of different stuff. Jeanne is a knowledgeable herbalist and uses herbs to make all kinds of concoctions for beauty and medicinal products. She looks and acts like a regular person, has a regular day time job in the dorp but she’s delved into some not so regular stuff like crystals and chakra and fairies and Wicca and she was always stirring caldrons of weird goetters while her cats, spaced out from spending the day rolling in the catnip in her herb shed, chased the dogs around the garden.

Jeanne’s aim is to be self sufficient and not have to buy stuff from the shops and she’s pretty close to her goal. My days consisted of sometimes winnowing the wheat before breakfast (translated that’s standing on the front lawn chucking the jungle oats into the air so the husks (which she had put through the hand mill to separate) could blow away in the wind. Then I’d cream the milk, make butter or yummy white cheeses which she taught me how to make. She makes her own soya sauce (cheat method but so what it tasted awesome), condensed milk, bread, “longlife milk”, coffee from artichokes (who would have thought), liqueurs, fruit cordials, vinegar from cultures, essence, jams, chutneys, ag basically anything lekker exotic. Then I’d bake a bit if I felt like it, which was something new since Theo usually takes care of stuff like that, or I’d pick veggies, or chamomile blommetjies or feed the pigs or make body butter, mozzie repellent, lip balm and such like.

Hannes has his dental lab on the farm so in between moulding false teeth and playing cards, his favourite past time, he showed me how to plait leather thongs into bracelets and belts since tanning hides is his hobby. Theo was chaffed to learn to tan a hide from scratch using the brains - a very smelly business, lots of elbow grease and then smoking the skin to finish it off. A long dirty smelly process but proven since the beginning of time. Theo showed Hannes his way of distilling booze and there was lots of tasting and comparing Hannes’s copper still to Theo’s.

While we were on the farm we enjoyed getting to know Mark, a British WOOFER (willing worker on organic farms), vegetarian on days when the rabbits were served for dinner, conservationist by nature, and who we had lots in common with. We had deep conversations about the meaning of life from a travellers point of view, the difference between Bovril, Marmite and Vegemite and ate copious amounts of Malva pudding which he had learnt to bake while on the farm. I suspect all of Norwich will be subjected to the stuff once he got home.

Then on an impulse I phoned a couple who did the course with us and seems my timing was excellent. They had been working on a lodge, had just been offered a better opportunity and told us to head up to Limpopo if we wanted to take over their old job. Of course we rushed off back to the bushveld but that’s another whole story

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Photos

Theo tanning his hide
Theo and Siphamandla tanning hides while Hannes watches

Theo & Mark
New years at Volksrust farm 2010

Another Tanning Stage
Theo working his hide

Me, Mark & Graham
A day in Volksrust countryside with WOOFERS

Hannes
A day at the office