HaiBo

Translation – exclamation. Indeed exclamation it has been quite a while since I last go behind the keyboard so we can skip the not so interesting bit and just get down to the fun facts. The 8^th was one of those not so interesting day but on the 9^th after been thoroughly stuff full of food by the cooks I had my debut as Jonny the Wattle crane. For the grade 2 course it was decided someone should dress up in the crane suit and do a bit of pantomime with the kids and well that someone just had to be me. After my career as an actor was over it was back to driving; this time delivering mattresses to the next village, hopefully before the big storm hit. So off I went but TIA and my navigator decided we should stop for a few drink so not been one to say no we did. By the time id managed to get him back in the Bucky (pick-up) the rain was well and truly on its way so driving the 2WD triton up what appeared to be a path, but was insisted to be the road with standard tired on was interesting to say the least, but we survived and the mattresses only got a bit wet so not a bad outcome you could say. The following day I went for another trek up Mt Lebanon but after summiting I soon saw the very big, dark cloud coming my way so it was quickly back down and that was the  end of  that day.  11^th cleaning – boring, moving on. 12^th even worse with exams but the 13^th I was let loose on PNB (Pietermaritzburg) to do the town trip, which basically involved driving round in circles until you found the right shop going in and getting what was on the list. But I had good fun driving around apart from when the back of the Bucky fell open and drop some shopping on the main road, but TIA. In the evening it was time for a birthday Braai but unfortunately this would be the last one for a while as them Braai burn a bit of a whole in the wallet. The 14^th to the 16^th I was kept busy with a course of 74 grade 8 girls so that was interesting. But even more interesting than that was on the evening of the 16^th I was called out to be the emergency pick up driver for a new crane at the sanctuary. But it wasn’t as straight forward as go there picking it up and drive back, oh no. I also had to incorporate drop offs at homes, taxi ranks and a few shops. But eventually we made it to the crane tied its cage down and slowly drover the 2hr drive back along, the motorway, through a few villages, to the petrol station then along the pot whole filled roads that you could loos a truck in then finally back to the centre. Not much happened from the 17-19, I stalked an eland on the 18^th (it got away) and got a bit of a fright when the Koreans turned up at our house. Thinking the bagging on the door was one of my fellow colleges I invited them in but after establishing they where here for the fly fishing I showed them to their dorms and life went on as normal. The 20^th was a day of abseil training, so after learning a few knots in the office it was a hot walk to abseil rock where we put the practise into effect. After quite a bit of fun abseiling we went to our home away from home for the night. A cave. Actually quite a nice sheltered cave with a waterfall in front and a shot walk to the top of Mt Lebanon to watch the sun set. The only problem was the incline of my sleeping spot so I spent most of the night sliding down the hill and not really sleeping at all. The following morning we had organised some “staff training” at giants castle. So after eventually find the car and getting everyone ready off we went to look at the very impressive bushman paintings. The paints mainly painted in the 1800 depict general bushman life and even show the good old colonials shooting people. But there’s also a lot of eland, the San (bushman) liked eland. So after this hard work we went to chill in the river before heading back to camp where for the next few days id be looking after 50odd fishermen. That night I helped out in the kitchen, ran a bar and organised/drove the local taxi service to Nsonger, fitting 16people on one Bucky. The following day I was up at 0600 to help with breakfast, then had planed to do some office work and sleep. But this wasn’t the case. Before I knew it I was been bundled into a car and sent off to marshal the South African Fly Fishing Nationals. I did explain I knew nothing about fishing or any of the rules but they just seemed happy to have enough marshals now. The marshalling business wasn’t too bad, first chap was a nice geezer who should be the ropes and the second one caught a lot of fish so the 3 hours sessions flew by, guess that why they call in fly fishing. In the evening it was back to the same old job, before the same formula on the 23^rd except with a lot less fish caught. And on the 24^th I though it was all over, with one session in the morning then the prize giving in the afternoon. But oh no I had one more 0600 start to give these guys a last breakfast, before the fat lady finally sung.