The last few months have been quite busy and eventful, but also filled with happiness.

In early April, having agreed that we would just go out for dinner on the 4^th, I was wonderfully surprised when Helen secretly got together a whole lot of our friends who met us at a local restaurant to celebrate my 32^nd birthday. I must admit that I do find it hard to think of myself as being that old, and a lot of time I struggle to remember that it’s now my age (must be the first hints of dementia) – I can still remember quite fancying a girl who I never quite mustered the courage to try and kiss when I was 12 years old, and now suddenly that is 20 years ago!

April was filled with quite a bit of studies and lots of preparation for the big events to follow, as well as a fair amount of refereeing. By the last week of April, my parents arrived in South Africa, and shortly thereafter so did the first of my friends from as far as Singapore, and as near as Port Elizabeth. My best man Frank organised me a superb bachelor’s party on the evening of Tuesday 30^th April (Wednesday the 1^st is a public holiday in South Africa). We began the evening with a fun but tiring game of touch rugby (in which I had to wear a ballerina’s tu-tu with a Springbok emblem adorning it) after which we headed out to a local night-life area for some food and a significant number of beverages, for which I was dressed in a t-shirt with a picture of a bride and groom and the caption “Game Over”. My future brother in law was ‘kind’ enough to prevail upon me to have a shot of tequila with a Mopani worm in it, and someone made a stupid bet with me to dance on a table with my shirt off (even sober that would have been an unlikely challenge), and my poor Colombian friend Juan had to suffer through me revealing his dark past at 1am, but despite some of the finer details of the later parts of the evening being somewhat vague the next morning, it was an evening of good fun among many friends and family.

On the Friday night, Helen’s parents kindly hosted a gathering of all the members of both our families who were attending, so that they could all meet each other before the big day. It was a very relaxed way to start to put a face to many of the names I had heard over the course of our usual Monday night dinners at Helen’s parents’ house, and I think it made everyone that bit more comfortable on the day of the main event.

Saturday dawned with me alone in bed as Helen had followed the tradition of not being seen by the groom on the wedding day, and had stayed over at her parents’ house. Knowing myself, I had decided well in advance that since ours was a late afternoon ceremony, and that I didn’t want to spend the day thinking about things too much, I gathered a group of several friends who had travelled from far afield to be there (including London, Basel and Singapore) and took them with me to a school where I refereed a rugby game that morning to give me some exercise and keep myself focused on things within my control. We went on to a local restaurant for a nice hearty brunch, before heading home to prepare ourselves.

Having put a great deal of planning into place for the wedding, including holding a rehearsal at our venue the day before, when I arrived at the Rand Club, an ornately beautiful if somewhat faded colonial edifice, it was to find that things were running smoothly and Helen was already upstairs elsewhere in the building preparing herself (as far as I was concerned, that meant my biggest worry for the day – that she might come to her senses and run away – was resolved). My best man Frank did a great job of forcing me to absent myself from further logistical arrangements, and basically told me to let things happen and that he and my other groomsmen would take care of any issues. That said, about half an hour before the main bevy of guests was due to arrive, he walked over to me and said, “There’s been a slight problem, but it is being solved…” It turned out that the bus we had organised to transport more than half of our guests from a hotel in Northern Johannesburg to the downtown area (so as to save them issues with parking and directions in an unfamiliar part of town) had not arrived to pick them up! Luckily my mother saved the day by very quickly getting the hotel management to call up a cavalcade of taxi’s to transport the 75-odd guests who had planned to take the bus.

Though it started slightly late, once things got rolling, it was an unforgettable day. The layout of the club is such that once all of the guests had arrived (and I was able to welcome many of them personally as they entered the club) they were then very efficiently chaperoned to their places along two wide, deeply carpeted staircases above a landing in the middle of the stairs between the ground floor and the first floor. Our master of ceremonies Bruce did a fantastic job of herding people through the different stages of the event, and was superbly aided in this by my Helen’s brother Bryan and my brother Andrew, who also gave us a reading from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin during the ceremony. Helen made her entry down a smaller staircase to the side of the room from the 2^nd floor above the assembled gathering, and then gracefully made her way down the main staircase on her father Nigel’s arm. She wore a spectacular ivory-coloured dress and was radiantly beautiful.

The ceremony itself remains something of a blur in my memory, although I know I blubbed like a little girl several times – such was my sense of being overwhelmed by having Helen by my side as I stood on that landing surrounded by all the friends and family looking down to where we stood, and feeling quite awed by how many special people we were lucky to have with us for the day and how obvious it was that they cared deeply for us and shared in our happiness.

We kept our photography session after the ceremony mercifully brief (we're still waiting for the results of our official photography!), and this was followed by finger-food starters and a welcoming speech from my new brother-in-law Bryan, who congratulated a number of family members and friends who have already, or will during the course of 2013 be turning 60-years old. This was followed by an amusing speech from Nigel, introducing the Richards family, and also Helen. My parents spoke also, at the end of the starters, about the Butler-Wheelhouse and Bosworth-Smith families, and also about how Helen fits into our family very nicely, sharing the same birthday as my mother’s father, and the same name as my maternal grandmother.

At the end of the main course, which was a Cape Malay style fish curry, my best man Frank gave a heart-felt and incredibly kind speech. Not painting over my flaws (well Helen knows these) but explaining that many of them are a counterpoint to my best intentions and ambitions. I was touched by Helen’s sincere and expressive words, as she is by nature a much more private person than I, and yet in front of all those people she put into words the feelings we share. With so many loved ones there, I felt fortunate to be able to thank not only our families but also our friends for all of their kindness and support, and also to be able to explain to them all a little bit of why Helen makes my life so much richer for being herself within it. The rest of the evening was filled with lots of fun: dancing, having a few drinks, and enjoying sharing the day with all the people there with us.

On Sunday morning we had a brunch at our flat, which was a lovely opportunity to catch up with many people, as a wedding is often not a good time to actually get a chance to talk to people. But, by mid-day, having been socialising with people since Friday afternoon, I finally ran out of steam and wanted nothing more than to have everyone leave so that I could share some peace and quiet with my new bride. Unfortunately our honeymoon was doomed to be a brief affair due to the commitments of my PGCE course (which Helen was wonderfully understanding about) so we drove about 90 minutes outside of Johannesburg to a luxurious hotel where on Sunday evening we enjoyed the spa, ordered room-service to go with our complimentary bottle of champagne and fell asleep by about 9pm! It was a well-deserved rest after several weeks of increasing intensity in our efforts to organise and prepare everything for the wedding and we both very much enjoyed our few days of sumptuous buffet breakfasts, walks and mountain bike rides within the grounds of the hotel, even a brief gym session, and several visits to the spa, including a rejuvenating full-body massage.

On Thursday after the wedding I began my first real block of practical teaching experience. I spent two and a half weeks teaching History, as well as filling in a bit in the Geography department of a local private Catholic boys school called St David’s Marist Inanda. It is a very well-run school and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the staff, and getting to know the boys: I had a Grade 10 history class, and a Grade 8 history class (it was interesting to see in practical terms the different levels on which I had to teach these different ages of boys), as well as taking 2 Grade 8 classes of Geography. Some of my time in-between those classes I spent preparing lessons and materials for teaching, but some of it was also spent observing various other teachers’ classes and seeing their different styles and approaches, even to the same content and learner age-groups. It was also interesting to see how the different classes varied in their interactions and characteristics – with some being more participative, some more fractious, and some less engaged than others with the various subjects being taught. It was a great experience and I would feel privileged to be able to teach somewhere with boys (or boys and girls) as willing to participate and eager to learn.

I was very fortunate that this school is less than a kilometre from our house (it was my first choice nomination for this teaching experience) as I was unfortunately involved in a car accident on the Wednesday before this teaching experience started. Luckily, no-one was hurt, but my poor little red car, nicknamed Porky, was a write-off, and for a few days I was car-less. I am incredibly lucky that my mother’s cousin Jane was heading to Europe for a week shortly thereafter, and she very kindly let me borrow her car while she was away. I have now purchased a replacement vehicle – a used VW sedan that is running very nicely.

I have started to make contact with various schools in the Johannesburg area, and have even been fortunate enough to meet with headmasters and deputy head-masters at a couple of the schools I have written to. So hopefully over the next few months I will be able to secure myself a good place to start out my teaching career next year. Helen meanwhile has had a tumultuous few months at work, with her relationship with her boss deteriorating to the point where Helen decided to move on, and fortunately she has managed to find a new opportunity at a very highly-regarded digital advertising agency where she will be starting in July.

At the end of my teaching experience Helen treated me to a lovely surprise: a weekend away in Cape Town. Despite cold, foggy, grey weather, we very much enjoyed meeting up with some of Helen’s family, taking a trip to Robben Island (although I was thoroughly disappointed to find that the little notices which used to be located in each cell, telling in their own words of the experiences of political prisoners who had been in that cell, were no longer there), visiting a quaint little marketplace called ‘Biscuit Mill’ that reminded me of London’s Borough Market, and later eating out at a Mexican restaurant called El Burro (which has to be one of the finest restaurants in South Africa) as well as beating off the gloom with a Sunday afternoon spent exploring many different flavours at a wine and food convention.

South Africa is now well into the rugby season, and I have been very much enjoying my refereeing. Although my father was kind enough to accompany me a week before the wedding to a very disorganised rugby tournament in one of our more underprivileged township areas, in general I have found that this year the quality of games I have been lucky enough to referee has improved steadily, and also that I have been able to gradually absorb more of the teachings of our referee coaches and to use these to make my management of games more effective. I was very pleased to find out at our most recent society meeting last week, that I have been promoted to Level 1 within the provincial referees society (new referees are Level 4). My next step will hopefully be to graduate in time to being named a Pirates-reserve referee – as the Pirates referees are the top referees in the province. But it will take many more games for that to happen!

I soon have mid-year exams coming up but we are also looking forward to some great holidays. In the first week of July, just before Helen starts her new job, we’ll be heading to Singapore and Malaysia for a proper holiday, perhaps in part to make up for our all-too-brief honeymoon. And then in August we’re going to be in Sweden for my mother’s 60^th birthday, and then in London on the 17^th we’re having another celebration of our wedding with family and friends in that part of the world (do let us know if you can join us).

Being married has been a great experience so far, and I continue to feel lucky every day that I have Helen in my life.

Please do get in touch if I haven’t heard from you in a while – for me it is a blessing to have so many great friends in so many different corners of the world. 

The only thing you can ever be sure of is that things don’t stay the same!

Friends, it has been some months since my last update, and it feels like there has been a whirlwind of activity in the time that has passed.

In November last year I left my job as a project manager in the international finance department at ActionAid, and moved to working for a small property company in Johannesburg. I did this for a number of reasons: firstly, to put myself in a more entrepreneurial environment, secondly to learn about sales and marketing (I worked as a commercial and office property broker – earning commission only) and thirdly because it is clear that there is a still a lot that is likely to happen in the development of property in Johannesburg, a city that remains very horizontal, and is only now seeing increasing densification, mixed zoning, and intensification of land use in order to reduce distances and transport pressures for residents and businesses.

My work for the property company was quite a steep learning curve in terms of understanding the commercial property market, how property leasing works, getting to know the big landlords, and familiarising myself with vacant office spaces in my area. I very much enjoyed meeting with different potential clients, finding out about their businesses, and helping them to narrow down their choices and view potential spaces for their businesses. However, as is probably the case in many areas of the world, the global economic downturn has not had a positive effect on the local property market, which remains quite stagnant, with many businesses not expecting to grow substantially, and therefore not requiring much change in their property needs. In addition, I found that I was teaching myself everything, as the opportunities to learn from others within the small company I worked for were very limited (many colleagues were friendly, but very busy, while management took a sink-or-swim approach to matters, offering limited insight). While I had many good meetings and worked very hard, I found that the competition in the industry was intense, and that there are simply too many property brokers out there chasing too few deals, and the deals that got done were frequently made on a basis of personal connections to decision makers in the commercial world – which I, after many years abroad, was somewhat lacking.

Helen was amazingly supportive of my bold new adventure, despite the fact that it meant a fairly significant change in lifestyle as I moved from a comfortable professional salary to living on my savings (I couldn’t take her out for dinner as often, and we cancelled our satellite television contract – a real hardship when the important rugby games simply passed by! :o) What was liberating about the job was that I was totally responsible for my own business decisions and success. And it allowed me to really begin to explore what makes me happy about a job, and what is simply a means to an end. And having this space and opportunity for self-reflection, allowed me to fundamentally re-assess where I see myself going in life, and how I can get there. Many of you will know that I have never felt that my career has ‘clicked’ – I’ve often enjoyed little parts of what I’ve been doing, and I have often wanted to find ways to expand into making more opportunities for myself, but lamented that I don’t seem to have a base as a truly capable or perhaps even excellent practitioner of my field (as those who saw me pass several accounting exams by the slightest of margins, would no doubt attest).

Having realised that I simply do not know enough about property, nor would I be able to learn fast enough to be in any position to be a real force in the industry when the market next turns (which I suspect it will within the next 2-3 years), I was then left to ponder alternatives, bearing in mind the thinking I’d put into what makes me happy and what drives and stimulates me. And I kept coming back to something that many friends may have heard me mention at times, that some day I’ve considered becoming a teacher. I always felt that it wasn’t something one should do without the benefit of some life experience, but also something I felt that I could perhaps be good at. And the more I thought about this notion, and how much I’ve enjoyed interacting with young people when I’ve been refereeing at schools on Saturday mornings, the more I began to wonder why, despite several times previously having begun to or even completed submitting applications to study a postgraduate certificate in teaching (PGCE), I’d always ended up deferring my placement or withdrawing. I spoke with family and friends about this idea. Many were initially quite shocked – we all know teaching can be incredibly demanding on one’s time and emotional commitment, as well as not being a likely path to millionaire’s row. But as I thought things over, I realised that creating a sense of self-worth through engaging in a career with meaning for me, and feeling able to foster a spirit of learning and knowledge in others, as well as being a role model and a person worth respecting – are things that matter to me. As are the possible opportunities that teaching could offer not only to mix my desire for intellectual stimulation, with my passion for sports, but also perhaps to create chances to live and work overseas at some point, and to be able to be a family-oriented person while sustaining a successful career.

The result is that I was accepted at the very last minute, in early February, to take up my deferred place on the PGCE course - studying full-time this year at Witwatersrand University. The course has been intellectually and emotionally challenging, as well as a social exploration: as I’ve met and got to know classmates from so many different backgrounds of class, race, religion and outlook on life. I’m very much enjoying the course, and thoroughly grateful to Helen, my family, and Helen’s family, as well as so many of my friends who have supported me and encouraged me as I’ve come to this point where I am excited and nervous about the challenges and adventures this path is likely to hold for my future.

It is ironic in many ways that I am studying at Wits, because it was at this very university that my parents met and fell in love, later getting married just as my mother finished her final year of studies in 1973. I meanwhile, am due to be married in early May, right in the middle of this course. Preparations for the wedding are going well, although at times it has simply felt like a mad deluge of things for us to do, service providers to organise, and choices to make – with hardly anything left of our evenings and weekends for extravagances like actually talking to friends! But Helen and I have managed to enjoy making those decisions and have worked hard to try to incorporate and acknowledge our families as part of those processes, while not losing sight of our own vision of how we want things to happen. No doubt some minor disaster will occur on the day, but we’re hopeful that by getting our ducks in a row, we can try to limit the scale and effects of any disaster that does occur – wishful as that thinking may be.

The Christmas holiday was really the last significant break either of us has had, and I’m sure that many of you are also wondering how it can possibly be mid-March already – with the beginning of the year feeling like a crazy busy time for many of us. It was lovely to spend a few days in St Francis Bay with my parents, as well as attending a series of weddings before and after that holiday (by then we were analysing and taking mental notes at every one of them!) Work for Helen continues to be pressurised and with a seemingly unending list of things to get done, but she seems to be enjoying interacting with clients and colleagues, and thriving on the challenges of coping in a small but rapidly changing business. Unfortunately, because I have to start my first practical teaching period (3 weeks in a local high school) in May, we will only be having a very short honeymoon of 2 nights then. But we’re already hugely looking forward to our trip to Sweden and the UK in August – and in many ways we see that as our real honeymoon.

In January Helen and I moved in together, and although at first we figured we’d probably stay at her flat, in the end, we realised that my family are being generous enough to let us live at Eton Park for a while, and that a spacious complex with a big swimming pool and green lawns for picnics is hard to beat. It’s been fabulous to know that whatever the trials of the day, I can come home to a welcome hug from my fiancée. And we’ve very much enjoyed adding little touches to the place to make it our own: from getting a few pieces of furniture inexpensively re-upholstered and moving some of Helen’s furniture into the place, to re-painting some of the walls (note to self, painting is hard work and if possible one should always make use of an unequal society to get someone else to do the work better and cheaper than you can do it yourself!), to getting some carpets replaced, and adding a few small art works of our own to the walls. These are still interim measures in some ways, as eventually we have visions of finding our own home, but we’re both tremendously grateful that we can stay at Eton Park in the meantime.

It hasn’t all been work and no play, we’ve still managed to have fun: I made a trip down to Port Elizabeth to catch up with old friends and to see the first ever Super Rugby game played by the newest franchise – the Southern Kings. We were all thoroughly delighted to witness an unexpected victory by the Kings in a game that was hard-fought and filled with excitement – and played in front of a crowd as tough and uncompromising but also enthusiastic as the industrial heartbeat of Port Elizabeth. Helen and I also recently had a weekend away down in the beautiful mountain surroundings of the town of Clarens, with my folks just before they went back to the UK. And we are looking forward to getting away on another short weekend break over Easter with Helen’s folks. Just to keep us young, not long ago we also gathered together a group of friends and family, and after some belly-warming margarita cocktails made with a vintage tequila given to Helen by her brother, we made our way to the East Rand to Johannesburg’s oldest rock and metal club, where we had a thoroughly good party with several sore heads the result the next day!

Having seen a small taste of being called ‘Sir’ (odd but not a new experience as it’s what most people address referees as) and wearing a tie every day (the KGB used people’s ties to strangle them, enough said…) during my first week of the PGCE course which was spent observing lessons at a well-respected private school, I am looking forward to getting my first sustained spell of actual teaching experience in early May, but before that there’s plenty of studying to be done, rugby games to be refereed, little weekend breaks to be had, and the ‘minor’ matter of a wedding coming up. Life promises to be exciting and challenging, and I hope that you are all well and enjoying yourselves wherever you read this.

On Friday afternoon Helen and I arrived at the airport for a weekend away to a secret destination. Unfortunately about 5 minutes after we were due to board our flight, they announced that all flights by our chosen airline had been suspended. After much chaos and uncertainty, it gradually unfolded that the airline had entered bankruptcy proceedings, so we would not be flying to the coast for a weekend away at my family’s beach house after all!

Luckily, we instead got ourselves dressed up, and headed to the referees annual gala ball instead. We had a fun-filled Oscars-themed evening finished off with a nightcap in a cosy hotel bar near home.

On Saturday morning, we awoke from a lovely lie-in, and I made us coffee and tea in bed. On returning to bed, I turned to Helen and said, “I love waking up next to you”. And Helen somewhat sleepily looked over with a smile, nodding at hearing something that I say almost every day. I continued, “How would you feel about waking up next to me for the rest of your life?” At which Helen smiled even more. I pulled out a small box I’d left next to the bed, and asked her, “will you marry me miss?!” At which point she grinned from ear to ear, and kissed me (she did also eventually say “yes”). Then I opened the box, and Helen’s expression turned from joy to confusion, as she saw a ring-pull from the top of a ginger beer bottle inside the box. I then pulled out the cushion inside the ring-box, and underneath it was the actual ring – a vintage late 1920’s to early 1930’s gold ring with diamonds in a platinum bridge. 

We are both thrilled and hope that you will all share in our happiness that we are now engaged!

A-Z an Epic trip to Zimbabwe

Much of the below is taken directly from Helen’s notes on our trip – a huge thanks to her for this.

On Saturday 13th  October, Helen and I woke up as the sun rose, made ourselves a quick cup of tea and then began our drive to the airport in Porky (my little red car) - eating leftover Egg Foo Yong, from the night before, on the way. We indulged in a 2nd breakfast at airport: sharing a waffle at a coffee franchise called Mugg & Bean, then we had a third breakfast on the plane before landing in Harare. Perhaps this was a portent of the week of eating to come!

Flying in over Harare, it looked very dry and brown from the sky – not surprising considering the time of year. October is known as ‘suicide month’ in Zimbabwe as everyone is waiting desperately for the first rain showers of the season – and each day as clouds build up, but then there is still not a drop, it is said to drive farmers that little bit closer to suicide! On arrival, we got through the “international” airport quickly (not difficult given that it was a tiny building) and it was interesting to note the number of signs in the airport written in Chinese. It would seem that the rumours of Chinese takeover of Zimbabwe have at least some basis. We happily met up with the rest of our group: my parents Keith & Pam, and my brother Andrew & Romain. Unfortunately Pam and Keith’s luggage had not arrived from their Kenyan flight but they were determined not to let it get them down, so on we went.

Our pilot Ed escorted us through immigration and onto our private light aircraft – a Cessna 8 seater. It was a small plane, and the flight was rather bumpy. About half-way into our hour-long flight Helen started to turn a rather green shade of pale, and had her eyes firmly shut as she breathed deeply. Unfortunately ten minutes before we landed she had to ask for a paper bag – but seemed to perk up rather quickly after parting with some part of our earlier breakfasts. We landed on the dry and dusty Dandawa strip in the Mana Pools National Park on the northern tip of Zimbabwe, not far from the Zambian border. We were welcomed by a wall of hot air as we climbed out of the plane and onto an open-sided game viewing truck driven by our camp manager Andre, who took us to our home for the next 2 nights.

Kanga bush camp is a luxurious tented camp built around ivory and nyala trees, overlooking a small waterhole that attracts an incredible number and variety of animals. The camp pumps water daily from a nearby borehole which means that it’s a permanent source of water. The interior of the park is very dry this time of year so Kanga pan with its constant water source is well frequented. It is an oasis in what feels like an incredibly isolated and uninhabited part of the world.

Kanga is a relatively new camp that has only been around for 2 years since the tourism industry took off again in Zimbabwe after contested elections. Troops of playful wild baboons were drinking, frolicking and lazing near the water. Luckily they are still too wild to get too close to humans and their stuff (for now). Within minutes of arriving at the camp, we were treated to spectacular elephant viewing - and as the afternoon wore on, the sightings didn't slow down: wart hog, zebra, kudu, eland, hyena & and fish eagle were all spotted.

As the sun set and our party sipped sun-downers on the raised wooded deck overlooking the pan, we were treated to a humorous tussle between 4 elephants who'd worked out that a nearby pipe pumped out fresh water from the borehole into the pan. Much giggling ensued as these creatures sneakily pulled the pipe from each other as we sat only a few meters away. We ate a sumptuous dinner of grilled bream from Kariba lake on the deck with the other guests & guides that evening, and caught a glimpse of a lioness and a few wildebeest with the aid of spotlights. We were escorted through the un-fenced camp to our rooms (Helen and I stayed in tented hut number 3 out of a total of 6).

Our tent was on a raised platform, like the dining area, with an open outdoor shower and running water toilet. The tent itself was mostly mesh-sides to let the breeze low through – which meant that from our bed we could see quite a bit of the water pan and the trees and bush around us through the mesh walls and doors. Helen had a very interrupted night, with her sleep being disturbed by giant elephant stomps around our tent, me waking up every half hour imagining that some animal was about to actually walk into our tent, and a suspected kill in the early hours of the morning with a stampede through the camp and lion howls.

On Sunday morning we had a 5:00am wake up, as was to become our norm during the holiday, and we got dressed and joined the others for tea and coffee & maize porridge (with lashings of butter & brown sugar for some of us) on the deck, followed by a walk in the bush for a few hours with our guide Shaun. We spotted a lioness & her cub, sausage trees & their heavy fruit, fresh kudu remains after a kill likely from the night before (the leg we found on the ground was still soft and rigor mortis had not yet set in) and we tracked various animal prints (lion, cub, leopard, various buck and all their accompanying dung). We were back at the camp by 9 and the heat was already setting in but Helen and I were hankering for some grub over and above the muffins on offer, so the staff very kindly whipped up another pot of mielie meal (maize porridge) for a ‘post-breakfast’ snack.

The rest of the morning & afternoon was spent lazing on the deck or in our room with a view (of baboons’ bums). We relaxed and enjoyed watching elephants up close (including a teeny tiny baby not more than a few months old) as they bathed and wallowed in the mud, ridiculous looking warthog with their toothbrush tails, zebra, guinea fowl, 2 fish eagles singing to one another, and hundreds of baboons bending over & ungraciously revealing their bright pink bottoms to us with every sip of water from the pan.

Considering how remote the camp is, and that it runs off solar power for lights and a generator for a few fridges & freezers, the spreads that were put on at mealtimes was remarkable. Our drinks were always icy cold, the salads were fresh, and the overall cuisine varied & delicious. That afternoon Pam and Keith’s luggage arrived along with a new set of guests - 2 British women (including a doctor from Newcastle) and their guide Doug. At first we were quietly pleased, as the previous other guests had been a couple from Botswana: the wife being a very generously built woman whose passion was photography. Which meant that she would plonk herself down in the middle of one of the two sofas on the deck early in the morning, and thereafter would not move for the entire day except for meals. However, we weren't that pleased about our new arrivals when their guide promptly picked up the tea time coconut cake and placed it in front of his guests at their table, seemingly for their exclusive consumption! Luckily they improved as the evening wore on.

On Monday morning Helen and I missed our wake-up call before sunrise. Apparently, two tents and probably 40 meters away, my parents could clearly hear the staff outside our tent calling out to us: “wake up, wake up!” But I never hear anything like that anyway, and Helen was dead to the world after two nights of disturbed sleep. Later, Helen woke up to the call of 2 fish eagles singing to one another. We strolled to the shaded deck and realised that it was past 8 o clock and that the rest of our group were out game viewing on the truck. Perhaps we were more horrified at the thought that we had missed breakfast, so we asked the staff if they'd kindly whip up porridge and toast – which they did. As we were tucking into freshly made toast, the others arrived back and we discovered that breakfast was still to come!

Later that morning John Stevens, our host for the next 4 days, arrived to pick us up, accompanied by his son-in-law Milo Harrup who run Mana Pools Safari Company. With them we began our game drive transfer to Mana Pools on the banks of the Zambezi River. John is a well-respected guide: having been the park warden for Mama pools for many years. His enthusiasm for the area is quite infectious. We drove around 60km through dirt road, past ‘Crouton’ Forrest, a few baobab and sausage trees, passing zebra, waterbuck, elephant, and eland (biggest buck in Africa).

We drove into Trichilia (sausage tree) camp. Set on the banks of the Zambezi river was our canvas tented home for the  next few days. We were greeted by all the staff on arrival, and each of us given a cooled damp facecloth to freshen up. This eco friendly camp runs almost entirely on solar power and a gas oven for cooking. Generators are not allowed in the river-front concessions. Because the camp was exclusively ours for the next few days, it was made up of a tented kitchen and washing up station, a dining area under a large open-sided gazebo, and 3 tents had been erected for our party – each with a veranda overlooking the river and Zambian mountains in the distance. Leading off each tent was an enclosed open air bucket shower and long drop. Even a little splash pool made of canvas and pumped with fresh river water daily had been erected to stave off the midday heat.

The next few days were spent experiencing one of Africa's great walking wildernesses – as our mornings typically started just before 5am when we would get up and have porridge and tea and coffee for breakfast just as the sun was coming up. By 5:30 we’d be on the open sided safari truck watching a bright red sun rising in the distance. In the mornings we’d usually drive to somewhere, and then set off on foot with John and our tracker whose name might have been Orbit, or Aubert, or Obert, we never did quite figure it out. On Tuesday morning our aim was to track and find lion. We spotted a buffalo kill from the night before, found lion tracks and followed these on foot for a few kilometres. Eventually we caught up with a pride of lions made up of several females as well as a few juvenile males and two maturing cubs.

On Wednesday, we drove for an hour to the far eastern side of the riverfront in the park – to an area known as the Wilderness. There the road stops and the remaining area can only be explored on foot. We followed and observed up-close, another smaller pride of lions, including an impressively maned adult male. Thereafter we walked several kilometres and saw varied bird-life, a hippo returning to water, and Helen and I thoroughly enjoyed the comedy of watching Pam, Andrew and Romain slowly get as close as they could (walking in single file across a flat  sandy plain) to three dozing warthogs.

We learned over the course of our walking treks, that the key to approaching all of these wild animals on foot is to walk slowly, never to appear to be stalking them or being sneaky, and not to look them in the eye or make it too obvious that you’re watching or make them feel like they’re being stared at. Even with lion, we were at times able to walk within 30-40 meters of the pride before they became uncomfortable and would move another 50 - 100m meters away from us to re-settle in another patch of shade under trees. John was always careful not to allow us to bother the animals by ensuring we keept a respectful distance, and he carried a rifle with him, which he would load when we began to walk in more dense bush – the animals that most seemed to worry him were elephants with baby calves, and buffalo.

On Thursday morning we set out to track leopard and ended up walking many kilometres, but the reputation of a leopard for being incredibly difficult to track is not undeserved, and we were forced to abandon our search in the end despite feeling several times that we had come tantalisingly close to finding the owner of the paw-prints we followed. We did however come across a pack of about 17 wild dog under a large African fig tree. We were able to approach on foot quite close to the dogs, who were all dozing in the shade. A few kilometres drive up the road we also saw the pride of Lions we had seen on Tuesday morning. As the sun rose in the sky, we decided that the wild dogs and lions clearly knew what they were doing, so we returned to the shade of our camp to eat and cool off in the plunge pool.

That evening we went back to see the Lions, and for the first time during our trip, we felt a considerable presence of other people there with us – until then we had felt alone during our explorations of the park, and often we had been the only humans within a radius of many kilometres. Although the lions were tired and dozing, with almost 20 people sitting on various parts of a fallen tree about 50 meters away, some of them did at least seem to scan the watchers. It didn’t escape my or Romain’s attention that they seemed most interested in the only two children there – and particularly in a rather chubby little fellow who we immediately dubbed ‘sausage roll boy’, as the Lions clearly ear-marked him as the most easily attainable snack among all of the on-lookers. As we departed from the throng to return to the wild dog, we also saw another vehicle we had passed once or twice before: containing a group of four rather distinctively unattractive people (Andrew dubbed them ‘the uglymobile’) – an older couple and a younger pairing who we couldn’t figure out: she was painfully thin (and promptly became known as Skeletor) and he was bulgingly fat. At first we thought he was the older brother who always got the first helping of food and left her with nothing but the scraps, but later he put his arm around her and we all tried not to think too much about how she didn’t drown underneath him if he got on top of her!

Moving on from the Lions, we revisited the wild dogs we had seen earlier in the day. They were still napping and not doing much at all. We didn’t walk up to them this time, as another group were already on foot in the vicinity and there is a sort of code of honour among the guides not to disturb one-another’s groups. But John is a savvy veteran, and we waited around because he predicted that with only a sliver of the new moon and therefore not much light in which to hunt at night, the dogs would get up just before sunset. True to his word, as if at some signal, first one then another dog slowly roused himself, wagged his tail a bit and then began sniffing about and nuzzling his friends in the pack. For about ten minutes there was much sniffing and bounding about, then when the alpha female roused herself, they began to walk away parallel to the road but through the trees about 100 meters away from us. We drove along the road hoping to follow them as we saw occasional glimpses of white-tipped tails lolloping along through the bush. As they approached a more open plain we could tell that the pace was picking up, and by this time we were driving along the dirt road at about 20km per hour, straining to see them in the distance. Then suddenly, we could see that the pace of their run had picked up tremendously, and seemingly out of nowhere, several of them shot in front of the other car ahead of us on the road at top speed. We reached the place where they had crossed the road seconds later and knew that they must have been close to making a kill. We stopped and for a moment it seemed that they might have gone too far from us. But then we heard them making noise, and jumped out of the truck to follow them on foot through the darkening evening. By the time we approached the dogs, some 150 meters from the road, there was almost nothing left of the kudu they had brought down. With only a few scraps remaining which were being carried away to feed the cubs. It was a truly incredible experience to arrive literally within a few minutes of the kill being made and a stroke of tremendous luck - even someone like John had only seen this a few times in his long career. With a small bark as a signal to the other group within the pack who were presumably hunting elsewhere, the wild dogs disappeared into the night just as quickly as they’d arrived.

On Friday, our last morning at Mana Pools, we walked along the Zambezi river and enjoyed the abundance of bird life. We also watched a hippo walk into the river down one of the ‘chutes’ in the otherwise steep river banks - surprised at how narrow the chutes seemed in comparison to the girth of the hippo. Later in the morning, just as I was ready to consider this the least interesting of all our walks, John showed us tree that used to be a favourite leopard spot. We were standing right under it when a flicker of a tail caught Helen’s eye. She looked over at John who mouthed 'leopard' excitedly. The leopard eyed us cautiously from the dense foliage of the high branches, flicking her long spotted tail vigorously. Baboons nearby started to howl and cajole her as she slid down the tree and landed on the ground with a surprisingly heavy ‘thud’ – making us realise the power as well as the stealth of such a magnificent animal. Before we could react, she dashed swiftly out of sight. It was a great sighting on our last day in Mana!

During our time at Mana we spotted a huge variety of animals, a brief listing includes:

Buck:  eland, waterbuck with toilet seat markings on their bums, kudu that look as though they’ve had cake icing drizzled over them, and plenty of impala (so common they are called mana goats)

Of the big 5: elephant, leopard, lion, and buffalo

Wild dog

Crocs and Hippo’s

Baboons

Civet, honey badger

Favourite birds: carmine bee eater, violet breasted roller,

After our exciting leopard spotting, we returned to camp for a last breakfast. Then two transfer vehicles picked us up around mid-morning and we started the long sweaty trek towards Lake Kariba. Temperatures outside were soaring, and as Helen and I and Andrew and Romain rode in a dilapidated mini van (with “full aircon” according to the driver) it was closer to 40 degrees celsius. So we kept the sliding side door on the side of the vehicle wide open for some air circulation – never dreaming that we would have done this in an area of wild animals before, whereas now we all felt rather casual about nearby antelope and the occasional elephant in the distance. An hour into our 4 hour journey, on a long stretch of dusty road through a forest of leafless trees that appeared dry as a bone, our driver decided to stop the vehicle and have a pee in the bushes. As if this was a sign to the car, there was a sudden popping noise and a woosh of water onto the windscreen as the car’s radiator burst! Luckily Pam and Keith were ahead of us in an old Landcruiser so we radio’d them to turn back. Anxious to get to Kariba, we all piled into the remaining functional car along with all of our luggage, and waved our dejected second driver ‘au revoir’ as we carried on - another 100km of dust road through the park, then up windy roads overtaking large trucks, and somewhat alarmingly passing truck carcasses on unforgiving bends in the road. Arriving at Kariba, we hopped onto a speedboat transferring us 60km south west across the lake.

After our epic journey, we were delighted to arrive at Musango safari camp located on a small island just off the shoreline of Matusadona National park. Here the focus was on water activities: riding a pontoon boat around the islands while game and bird watching from the water, and fishing. Saturday began with a sunrise trip out to identify birds, feeding fish eagles, and fishing (bream mostly, and the odd tiger fish). The fishing skill was largely that of our young guide, Adam, who taught us neophytes how to hook worms, how to strike when we felt the bream bite, and later, with live bait, he taught us to cast, and then once he had managed to strike a tiger fish, he let first Keith and then Romain each reel in a fish that is famed for its fight.

Andrew and Romain very kindly gave Helen and I one of the two cabins that had a plunge pool directly outside and we enjoyed a wonderfully lazy afternoon in the main swimming pool as well as in our delightfully cool neck-deep plunge pool. It was an odd feeling standing in the plunge pool and being observed with curiosity from not more than 10 meters away, by the resident bushbuck who clearly wondered why we were in her territory. We all hopped onto a large catamaran in the evening, sailing towards Bumi Hills as we enjoyed game viewing, getting temporarily stuck on a submerged tree and toasting our eventual freedom with sun-downers. We were all tremendously relieved that our boat captain’s sudden foray chest deep into the water to free the catamaran from the tree had not resulted in anything more than him getting wet – given how many crocodiles there are in the lake and how many stories we’d already heard of both people and local wildlife being eaten by the crocs.

On Sunday, we squeezed in a last sunrise ride on the pontoon, catching a few small bream to be used as tiger fish bait. After a hearty breakfast we took a boat and road transfer to Bumi airstrip, where we met our charter flight to Harare. Luckily this time it was a larger, better air conditioned plane and everyone arrived safely in Harare with their digestive systems undisturbed. Helen and I bade farewell as we flew back to Johannesburg and real life, while the others stayed on to enjoy another week in Leopard Rock and Inyanga.

It was an amazing, unforgettable trip which Helen and I both thoroughly enjoyed. Pam and Keith were incredibly generous in sponsoring the trip for all of us, and we are already dreaming up how we can possibly re-pay their kindness, as well as where we should all travel to for our next great adventure.

As I see the clouds of a possible thunderstorm begin to tighten across the skies outside my window, I am reminded that Spring has begun in Johannesburg. This means an end to predictably blue skies and cold nights, and instead sometimes we wear shorts and soak up fabulous sunshine, while at other times we find ourselves freezing at night, having just packed away all of the winter blankets when a new cold snap arrives!

With August being an often dry and dusty month of dreariness, the Olympics seemed like a good excuse to rouse everyone from their winter hibernation. So, on the Friday night of the opening ceremony Helen and I hosted a fun-loving group of friends to my flat  - with everyone coming dressed either in the colours of particular countries or as athletes of some Olympic sport. To liven things up and help people not to only talk in little groups among themselves, we organised two teams among all of the party attendees, and had our own mini-olympics consisting of events to challenge many different skills. For mental athletics we had a quiz on the history of the Olympics. For cardiovascular stamina we had a team balloon-blowing contest (each member of the team had to blow up a balloon in a relay so that when they finished, the next team member started – with the team with the longest string of balloons at the end winning). And for balance and agility we had a relay-race of egg-and-spoon around the balcony. Later in the evening we also had beer-pong for those in need of liquid refreshment. It was a fabulous event with a great group of people and although we only got to bed at 2am and I had to be up fairly early the next morning to referee, I had a super time not only watching the Lord of the Rings and Village People (er, sorry, I mean the Olympic Opening ceremony) but also sharing many good laughs and a few beverages with friends.

On Tuesday the following week, we saw snowflakes flurrying down outside our windows across the city of Johannesburg. It is not a common occurrence here, and people were running around like Japanese tourists with cameras snapping at everything. It was actually still above zero degrees, so the snow melted almost immediately, but considering how almost all houses in South Africa have no central heating, or even proper insulation, for many it was a bitterly cold snap of weather. Helen and I were slightly worried, as they closed parts of the national highway to Durban and we were scheduled to drive down for a long weekend in Durban only two days later. As it turned out, our drive saw us pass through at least 100km of terrain in which all of the higher hills, often right down to the side of the highway, was blanketed in snow. In fact at one point we had to turn off the highway because a stretch of it was still closed due to ice. This meant that we got stuck in a tail-back of traffic in which a 3km drive had taken most of an hour. Thinking we were being smart, we turned right and went the country-side route, instead of following thousands of others (this was driving on a Thursday public holiday when a significant number of people had all decided to take a long weekend holiday) who went left and through a nearby town called Estcourt. Our increasingly mountainous route over gravel roads was fine until we got to one high point where the snow seemed to have melted into the gravel to make the road a mudbath. We passed one small truck which was parked on the side of the road, apparently abandoned at some point, but didn’t think too much of it, simply being happy to be on the move again. Then we got to the muddiest stretch of road in which a large truck was simply stuck in the middle, having jack-knifed so that the cab and the trailer were pointing in very different directions. As we surveyed the situation in front of us, a 4-wheel drive vehicle which had been following us, cautiously drove through, and despite suffering some wheel-spin, was able to grip enough to wade through the mud and over the contours of a slight dip in the road, up onto a dry section of the track. Helen was driving at this point, and as we passed to the right side of this truck, with a rather steep bank down into the valley on the other side of our car, I could feel that the wheels were beginning to slip and slide over the surface of the mud. Helen quite rightly decided that in an automatic transmission vehicle, she wasn’t comfortable. So before we could get stuck, we stopped, and swapped seats. I then cautiously got us moving again, then gunned the engine slightly as we slipped and slid along the curves of the road, but managed to navigate our way to the firmer parts and up onto the dry road again. Even as I write this I can recall how drenched in sweat I felt, with my heart pounding in my ears, by the time we realised we were out of the worst of it and in the clear. The drivers of the 4x4 in front of us had very graciously waited to see if we were ok (having followed us for the past 25km of dirt road probably assuming, as we did, that our satellite navigation gps was taking us on a good route) before departing. So I think we would have managed to make a plan even if things had taken a turn for the worse, but I am incredibly glad that it all turned out ok anyway. Surfing is fun on a board, not so much in my poor car Porky, who was covered in mud outside and in!

Luckily the rest of our weekend at the coast: first in Shaka’s Rock on the North Coast, and then in Durban on the beachfront, was relatively uneventful and enjoyable. We relished the warm tropical weather of Natal, and enjoyed a good few swims in the sea and the pool, as well as tasty meals and fun walks and cycling along the Durban beachfront. The only sad part was visiting the father of a very close friend of Helen’s who succumbed to cancer earlier this year, leaving Helen and several of her friends bereft of a fun-loving and lively companion. It seems so unjust that people in their youth should be taken away from the world and all the marvels it contains. Though a man of few words, it was apparent that the father was very grateful to us for our visit, and for me it was simply another testament to how wonderfully supportive of others Helen was throughout this difficult time. 

For amateur players, the rugby season is now nearing a close, with only a few weeks left. Luckily, my knee injury seems to be past me and I have once again been enjoying Saturdays out running around. A few weeks ago, in one of my first games back after my lengthy invalidity, I was sent to referee an Under 21 age group match between two fairly large Afrikaans rugby clubs: Alberton and Brakpan. For those of you as unfamiliar with Johannesburg as I was until very recently, neither of these areas on the Eastern side of Johannesburg are celebrated as renown cultural or philosophical centres, but rather for their somewhat industrial aspect and the earthy character of their predominantly Afrikaans-speaking inhabitants. Perhaps I should have been less surprised then when it turned out that qualifications as a boxing referee would have been more appropriate for this match. And after a series of incidents, culminating in a scuffle in which the one team’s coach charged onto the field and jumped on top of his own player to stop him throwing punches at members of the opposition, I was rather disappointed to have to call the game off in the interests of player safety. Fortunately, such incidents are rare, and for the most part it has been a good season with enjoyable games of varying quality being played in many different parts of Johannesburg which I am now able to pinpoint almost solely by the locations of their rugby stadiums (don’t ask me anything else about a lot of those areas though!)

Being the trouble-maker that I am, my membership of the provincial rugby referees society has not come without its difficulties. Not least when I foolishly wrote an open email asking whether it would be a good idea for the society to show more transparency in the way that referees are selected for games and which games are refereed by whom. That was a week of e-mails and back and forth recriminations with various elected and unelected committee officials that I really didn’t need to have added to my plate. In the end, the query seems to have been fairly amicably swept aside, for now at least, in the name of practicality. More recently, the committee of the union seemed to be highly concerned that referees are choosing to leave our province and instead to officiate games in neighbouring provinces. I seem not to have learned my lesson however, as in response to this I have offered my services to the committee to put together an anonymous online survey to the referees society members, to explore what is happening among members and where we as a society can improve – thus far my suggestion seems to have fallen on deaf ears!

Life has otherwise been a delightfully humdrum sort of domesticated existence. Helen and I try to go to the gym a couple of times per week, often doing circuits one day, resistance exercises and free weights another, and sometimes swimming, as well as fitting in a jog around the neighbourhood from time to time. We have also been taking the odd urban hike: nosing around houses and properties in different neighbourhoods as Helen wears in her new boots in anticipation of our walking safari holiday with my parents and brother in October. Although Helen has been working very hard, and I have been doing a fair bit of research into ideas for more entrepreneurial ventures in the future, we have often still found time to watch an episode here and there of a Scandinavian thriller (‘The Killing’) given to me by my folks for Christmas, and also to watch an occasional movie on our lazy Sunday afternoons on the couch.

As the weather improves (though not this afternoon) we are of course finding ourselves invited out to more social events again, and have enjoyed catching up with friends and meeting new people as well as trying new locations. We recently even enjoyed dinner out a local Nigerian restaurant for which I had bought a meal voucher. The food was quite tasty, although not outstanding, and it was somewhat amusing to discover that the menu was in fact a fiction, as there were only two principal main courses on offer on that night (and no starters, and no dessert). Nevertheless, with a spirit of adventure, we’ve kept trying new things – including drinks on the verandah of a very posh hotel, and even having a test drive of a car we both like the look and feel of (the Nissan Quashqai) despite neither of us necessarily being in a position to actually buy a new car at the moment!

Professionally this has not been a year of particularly significant challenge or growth for me, but my job pays decently, and has allowed me time to explore options and possibilities for the future. Not something I take for granted at a time when the global economy continues to be a source of general gloom. With South Africa’s political landscape having particular effects on how large corporations are run, combined with my own tendency to want to do things my way (I fear I hear a few sniggers out there at this admission), I am increasingly looking at more entrepreneurial ideas – with a feeling that this is a good time in my life to take a few more risks and try to make something happen for myself. As always, Helen has been incredibly supportive, and I consider myself very fortunate indeed to have her in my life.

With Winter tending to lean towards more indoor entertainment, we have also been to see several entertaining events – including a one-man comedy show called ‘Defending the Caveman’, which gave some incredibly broad brush strokes to the many differences between men and women, and the effects these differences have on how we interact, but did so in a way that was humorous and often insightful. I unashamedly laughed like a Hyena with a breathing problem the first time I saw it. We also saw another local comedy act which I didn’t enjoy as much perhaps because I was tired. Unintended comedy value has also been afforded by the recent bumbling performances of the Springboks for whom a new coach seems to have heralded the dawn of a past era of rugby tactics. I do not much look forward to tomorrow’s game against the New Zealand All Blacks in the land of the long white cloud. It is a sorry state of affairs indeed that I find myself feeling much more cheered by my recollection of a movie called ‘Searching for Sugarman’ which Helen and I both thoroughly enjoyed, despite my having no knowledge of any of his music before seeing the movie. I highly recommend the film to any of you who have not seen it. We also recently enjoyed a few hours of warm sunshine and a picnic at the Walter Sisulu botanical gardens on the west side of Johannesburg, listening to an up-and-coming Afrikaans rock band called ‘Die Heuwels Fantasties’ (The Fantastic Hills). Johannesburg continues to be a city full of hidden wonders and a constant stream of events which will no doubt give us many more opportunities to enjoy spending time with friends and family as Summer nears.

For those of you who have not already seen, there is pictorial evidence of many of these events on facebook – here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151996918240584.897924.713605583&type=3&l=f214c8732e