Celebrate good times, c'mon!!!

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Thursday September 24th was Heritage Day here in South Africa. This is a public holiday where everyone celebrates what it is to be South African. A huge effort is being made out here towards reconciliation and equality, so days like Heritage Day, where the country celebrates its diversity rather than hating it, are fantastic!

The whole day was a sensory delight, I'll keep this brief because my words really can't do it justice, you'll have to watch the video when I get home! Everyone came in wearing traditional Zulu clothing and jewellery, which of course I loved! They had even got white dots painted on their faces in pretty patterns. The tent had been put up outside the Centre & the whole morning was occupied with a fantastic show by the children, where they all got up to sing or dance or both, there was even a group of rappers 😊 All the kids performed for all they were worth, they really put a lot into it. At one point, 3 of the younger, but incredibly talented, girls started dancing & one of the lads was playing the drum & whistling. Part way through the dance, one of the girls, who is particularly shy except for when dancing, had a bit of a "wardrobe malfunction". Basically, they were all wearing kind of wrap-around skirts, which it turns out, can be prone to un-wrapping! The little girl carried on dancing regardless, in fact, she barely even seemed to notice, I was later told that she would keep dancing until the drumming stopped, which was quite some time! The kids all performed in groups determined by their ages, but all were equally entertaining! It still shocks me how even the very young children make such a lot of noise when singing traditional songs. So the singing and dancing continued throughout the morning, and ended with the South African National Anthem, which I think has verses in English, Africaans, Xhosa and Zulu. I did try to film it, but it was tricky given I was standing between Zwe & Nhlaka, who did not want to be filmed, those of you who know the two of them, will know I got severely bullied!

Gugu spent all morning chained to the cooker, creating a feast for us, whilst two of us "dedicated" kitchen hands for the day kept absconding to see what was going on in the tent. Never-the-less (I love words like that!) she did a marvellous job and we all ate heartily together. We had also prepared trays of goodies for the children with chips (aka crisps), lollies & that delicious cake, now fantastically decorated. Amanda will be pleased to know it looked EXACTLY like the ones she baked, even with multicoloured 100s & 1000s! Good job Amanda - clearly you had a vision as to what the future held! After cake was the clear up and then we got the afternoon off! I reckon they're all a bunch of part timers out here! In fact, the next day was a day off too!! I spent it editing the footage from the celebrations and also baking a cake of my own as it was Zwe's birthday celebrations the next day. Honestly, the Zulu life is just 1 big party, they really do find any excuse, Yvonne would fit in perfectly!

The other news of the day is that we pulled Patsy, my car for the next 3 months, out of retirement. Grant drove me to Mpop in her, but then he had to pop to Ethembeni during the day & decided this would be an ideal opportunity for my first journey in her. I found it extremely challenging. Grant joked that after Patsy, any car is tremendously easy to drive and I have no reason to doubt him! I seem to be incapable of changing gear, steering, well driving in general actually, that will come as no great surprise to some of you - please be kind! There are many escapades to come, which I will try my best to inform you of at the appropriate time.

Well I shall leave it there for now,

Over n out

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Comments

[Steve Millard]

Hi
Hi Claire, Glad you're having a good time - I'll pray you stay injury-free this time around :) Sounds like we'll have to pray for Patsy too!