Mawabeni Graduation
Last week we were finally able to have the graduation service for the young men from Mawabeni who we trained in various aspects of building. The service was held at Willow Park in the new (and nearly completed) dining hall.
The young men could invite 2 people each to the ceremony so they could show off what they had done in the last 5 months. This meant that I needed to try to find transport for 30 people to get from Mawabeni to Willow Park (about 20klm). Being true Zim style a majority of my transport plans did fall through at the very last moment … but we did manage to get everyone there after calling on some favours… if there was just one extra person we wouldn’t have had enough transport.
We had en excellent time with the young men and their families, they enjoyed showing off their work and their families were so proud of their accomplishment. One mother, when we handed out the certificate to her son got up and did a HUGE dance and African song/chant … she was as proud as punch.
Unfortunately, the hall isn’t quite complete yet. The paint that was stolen from our house was the paint we purchased for the hall, so we need to go across the border to buys some more. We also need to make some changes to the roof structure, as the company who constructed the roof didn’t make the cross beams strong enough and they are pushing against the walls making them crack under the pressure.
Baboon Frenzy
Last year we were really lucky and had absolutely no baboon stealing any of our crops. This year however they have come in nice and early and have began to plunder; not only have they plundered some of our crops but they also attacked Willow Park’s dog. Tiger (the dog) took it upon himself to try and sort out the baboon, but unfortunately they ganged up on him and gave him a massive hiding. The girls from Samkele heard his yelping and came running and they scared off the baboon by throwing rocks. Poor Tiger … he is getting better now though.
1st Birthday Party
On Monday, Alice, one of the babies from the Sandra Jones home celebrated her first birthday with all the other kiddies from the home at the Hillside Dams. It was a great afternoon with party hats, snacks and even a birthday cake.
Another good night
Last night I was welcomed back to Falcon College (one of the only larny (posh) boarding schools in Zimbabwe) to worship and speak at the mid week service. This is my forth time out there and it gets better each time I go out. One thing that amazes me the most is how polite all the young men are; as we drive to the chapel the boys will stop on the side of the road and give a single wave and say hello; then after the service, a majority of the boys will come up and shake your hand and thank you for coming out. You never get this type of politeness is OZ (not on a large scale anyway). ROCK ON!!!
Another fire
Just the other week we had a second fire at Willow Park. This one wasn’t as bad as the first and we were able to get it under control fairly fast. We had all of the girls from Samkele as well as the teachers and the Willow Park workers getting in and fighting fires. Believe it or not, I was there too getting involved and helping put out the flames. It only took about an hour and it was all sorted. Then later that night it started up again. The workers got up out of bed and contained it again … no damage done thank goodness.
Another little fella to look after
The other day, Jodi was sitting in our lounge room and saw movement by the door from the corner of her eye. As she looked over she saw a little tortuous venturing towards the open door. It is a fairly fast mover, Jodi went out of the room for only a moment and it had gone out the door and into the garden. These little fellas don’t take much to look after; in fact they find there own food and are totally self sufficient; they just pop out every now and then to sun themselves and say “g’day”.
Good suggestion mate …
In one of my previous blogs I asked for suggestions on what we can do in regards to all of our stuff go missing. Someone emailed me and gave a “thumbs up” suggestion to start up a “chipin” to help replace the items that were stolen.
So here it goes … there are two easy ways you can chipin … firstly you can click here OR if you look across to the right and click on the picture of Jodi and I looking confused, you will be able to see what went missing and how much it will cost to replace.
Now comes the easy part … by using paypal, you can help us pay for some of the stolen items. Thank you for chipping in!!!!
You can either laugh or you can cry????
About 3 months ago, Jodi and one of our friends found and purchased really nice outdoor furniture from a store in the industrial area at a ridiculously low price. Over the last 2 months Jodi and our friend have been calling and wanting to know where this furniture is and how much longer it will take to be made and delivered. Finally, on Friday, some of the furniture was delivered and we stored it in our carport and we had planned to stain it ourselves on Saturday (after my game of golf). The following is where one has to find a comical side to anything and everything that happens in Zim.
As I have recently mentioned in other blogs, we have had two instances on a Friday night of someone getting into our property and stealing stuff … at least this time no one broke into our property … but … on Friday night something we didn’t expect to happen happened.
I got up as usual on Saturday morning to prepare a cup of coffee before my game of golf. I opened up our dining room curtain to look out at our drive way and behold something that I would never have imagined stood before me. Our thatched carport had collapsed … not only had it collapsed but it had annihilated the outdoor coffee table and broke the double outdoor lounge chair that Jodi had been waiting so long to get.
One has to stop at a moment like this and try to find positives …
- no one was inured;
- our car was not damaged because it was not parked under the carport;
- it missed smashing our trailer;
- not all of the new furniture that Jodi had been waiting for was damaged;
- it is another story I can blog to you all.
Laugh or Cry????? We chose laughter … what else could we do?
What more can we do????
Last week, just after finding our fuel drum close to empty we borrowed a 20lt jerry can from our friends so that we could at least get to a filling station to fill our car. All was good. I think it was very the next day we headed off to Botswana to do our monthly grocery shop as well as purchase some supplies including 40 litres of paint for the Willow Park dining hall and a few other nick knacks for around Willow Park and our house. The house we live in doesn’t have a huge amount of storage space so I did need to leave the paint under the carport again for a few days and then I would take it out to Willow Park. It was in these few days that someone got into our property again and stole our last two metal jerry cans (they were out of eye sight … at least it wasn’t our friends jerry can) and the 40 litres of paint for Willow Park. I think the thing that frustrates us the most is that this time it was done in broad daylight whilst Jodi and I were out for only 30 minutes. Both Jodi and I are at a loss at what we can do … we changed our gate remote codes again, we padlock the gate of a night time and moved everything else that isn’t nailed down to the back of the property … but other than that I don’t know what else to do … do you have any suggestions?????????
More Stuff Missing.
After changing the codes to our gate and not having our maid and gardener living on site any more we were starting to feel more secure in our property. Last week we needed to put some more petrol in our car, so we went to our large 200 litre drum where we store our fuel and went to siphon some fuel out to find that there was only about 10 litres left where there should have been at least 100 lts. It seems that whoever was stealing our cement, wheels and jerry cans was also taking their time in filling up the jerry cans with the fuel from our drum.
Where have you gone????
The other day Jodi and I woke up to find a whole heap of white feathers scattered around our yard. We did a head count of our bantams and it seems that one has been abducted (it was my favourite one too). We don’t know what type of animal could jump our fence, eat a whole bird and then jump back over the fence … we are still conducting enquiries but I think that they will come up null and void.
Our missing Bantam
A mans work is never done
Over the last few weeks we have been noticing a pretty yet many yellow bird weaving hanging nests on a tree outside our window. In the morning he would start … by the evening he was finished and by the following morning he would be starting another one and the first one had dropped to the ground. I felt sorry for this little fella as it seemed like they hadn’t contacted a good structural engineer to draw up the designs for his nest and they kept on falling down. It wasn’t until last weekend that a friend informed me that it wasn’t the engineers’ fault that the nests were falling down, nor was it the male birds fault that they were falling … actually it was his intended spouses’ fault that the nests would be constructed and then dropped. This poor male bird has to go out and find grass, and then spend countless hours weaving it together to create a lovely abode for him and is lady … but if the lady does not think that it is good enough OR large enough he has to start on another one. My heart bleeds for this poor innocent male bird that is doing his best for his lady which never seems to be good enough.
Tell me it’s not true … please it can’t be
I was sitting in my office yesterday morning just about to blog a few stories and had a telephone message to get to Willow Park ASAP … they think that some chickens have been stolen. I jumped into the car and went out to investigate to find that 15 chickens in total had been stolen during the night. The thieves cut their way into the yards and then into the chicken coops … I can’t believe this … we started with 100 day old chickens … 61 died because of bad feed and now 15 have been stolen; this leaves us with 24 layers. All lessons learnt I know … but it is hard all the same.
I think one of the things that makes it worse is that some of the girls in Samkele thought they had heard a car during the night. It is one thing for locals to steal because they need food, but for someone to drive into Willow Park (who can afford a car and fuel) and to take the chickens is a whole different story … shame.
I am in the process of looking at the money made from the sales of our eggs to try to secure the chicken yards a lot more. We are hopefully going to make our coop doors more impenetrable by welding more bars onto them and making the door ways sturdier. I know that this will not ensure the chickens security, but at least it will be a bit more of a deterrent for would be criminals.
Theft at Willow Park
On Monday morning the YFC drive came back from Willow Park with extremely bad news. Over the weekend someone had broken into the teacher unit and stole a HUGE amount of items (blankets, selected clothes, 2 burner cooker, cooking equipment as well as their food and stationary for the Samkele girls). Thankfully the teachers were not there (they come back into Bulawayo over the weekend) and no one was injured.
Life at Willow Park
I hang my head in shame for not blogging this earlier … but the other week there was a massive fire at Willow Park. Our workers did an absolutely fantastic job putting out the fire and it took them over 9 hours to contain it. I heard from my man on the ground that we had almost lost our chapel and our brand new dining hall, but thankfully they had been able to contain the fire … the only thing that did get damaged was a pipe leading the a septic tank, but it was all fixed by the end of the next day. This fire (even though it was hard to contain) was a benefit to Willow Park, we needed a lot of the grass that was burnt to be slashed (cut) anyway … so in theory it has saved our gardeners a lot of time because they no longer have to slash these areas.
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- Looking from the hill over Willow Park Agriculture and beyond
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- Looking at the Volley Ball Court
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- Behind a classroom
Did you know?
We found out a couple of days ago from two sets of friends (who got stopped at two seperate police road blocks) that is an offence to drive a “dirty car”. How peculiar is that?? With the amount of cars that are driving around Bulawayo that are definitely not road worthy (even in a smash’m up derby) they choose to pick out people driving “dirty” cars and fine them … it is VERY peculiar indeed.
Last Saturday before golf
I have started to play golf with a few church friends on a Saturday morning (tee off is at 7am). Before packing the clubs into the car I thought I would take a quick wander outside just to see if anything else had gone missing from the night before (as stuff had gone missing the previous Friday night). I shouldn’t have been surprised … but even more stuff had gone missing … this time it was the last 2 of the old tires, two jerry cans full of petrol, two empty jerry cans as well as four 50kg bags of cement. This time we knew that this loot couldn’t have been thrown over the fence … I would pay a guy (or girl) a lot of money if they could through a 50 kg bag of cement over our security wall … it’s highly improbable if not impossible. This confirmed our suspicions that either our gardener was stealing this stuff or someone, some how had gotten their hands on our security gate key.
We questioned our gardener again and of course nothing was found out … we were at a loss. The whole weekend was on the internet trying to find out how to change our gate remote codes so that whoever was getting in (or out) could not do so again. It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that I could get someone out to teach me how to change the remote codes … so it is all changed now and we are eager to see if they come in again on the Friday to take more stuff.
Where has all the …. gone???
The challenges started at the beginning of last week. We live in a VERY well secured property with a large stone wall; electric fence on top of the wall as well as a large electric gate (which is the only way into the property). As we felt secure in this “compound” we did not feel obliged to lock up all of our fuel jerry cans, bags of cement and various other nick nacks that we have accumulated over our time here in Zim which we stored under our opened thatched carport. We also had four spare tires and two flat trailer wheels sitting under this shelter as well.
It was on the weekend before last that both Jodi and I noticed various things not being where we saw them last … we both just put it down to our gardener putting them away. It wasn’t until the Tuesday that we put two and two together and realised that a whole heap of stuff was missing. As we totalled things up we found that 2 of the 4 spare wheels were nowhere to be found along with 2 metal jerry cans, 2 plastic jerry cans as well as the 2 wheels from the trailer. We also deduced it would have had to have happened on Friday night. We questioned our gardener and maid about these things but didn’t know anything about it.
We called the police and due to fuel shortages had to go pick them up from their station as well as drop them back off after their investigation. Of course nothing was uncovered and they left with the assumption that it was someone (I am thinking the bionic man) jumping over our HUGE electrified fence and then throwing all the items over and then, they themselves (using there bionic abilities) jumping back over the fence. We however thought that it was either an inside job or someone had taken a copy of our gate remote … VERY interesting.
I blog my appologies
I know that I haven’t blogged for the last week and a bit and I am sorry … it has been a rough couple of weeks with loads of “challenging” things happening. I will let you guys inside our lives over the next couple of days and fill you in on the things that have been happening.
Ooopsies … my bad!!!
With all the excitement about the chickens I have forgotten to fill you in on the progress of the building. It wasn’t last week … but the week before that we had the Mawebeni boys come back to Willow Park to complete a little bit of flooring as well as clean up some of the mess they made whilst mixing the cement as well as get taught on how to fix lights. They had a great time learning how to fix the lights, but as with many young males didn’t really like the cleaning too much.
Look at the size of these
The other day when I was bringing all the eggs back into Bulawayo I noticed that a couple looked a little larger than the others. When I got back to our place I pulled out the trusty scales to find out how much larger they were. Apparently, an average sized egg is about 50g’s (according to my sources) and the largest one this week was 75g’s. These chickens are finally starting to pull their weight at Willow Park; just the other week I was getting worried that they were not laying enough and now they are pushing out massive sized eggs.
What a big egg
Have you seen a chicken lay an egg?
To be honest, before last week, I had never seen a chicken lay an egg. Now that I have witnessed this interesting event, I thought it is imperative to share this occasion with all with my fellow bloggers …. Enjoy!!!
Things are changin’
Our property manager recently retired and so I have been helping in getting things sorted around Willow Park. This man was a good farmer, but not so good on the administrational side of things and the office and quite a few of the storerooms are an absolute mess. Just last week, Jodi and I spend a few days cleaning out the office and getting it back into a workable state. I could not believe the amount of “historical” documentation that was being kept (in no order) and had definitely passed its date of necessity. The property manager, I think, had a phobia of throwing things away, thus we had a wide range of old (and not working) nick knacks spread all throughout the office (including behind the lounge chair). Well, the office is looking tidy again and we can start to get the administration side of Willow Park in order.
Another border crossing
On Thursday, a friend and I had to cross the border to collect a few items. As it was only going to be a day trip, we decided to go over to Francistown (in Botswana) which is only a 2 hour journey (not including waiting at the border). Our day began at 4:30am; we started this early so that we would miss the bus loads of people that get to the border on or a little before opening time (6am); this plan failed … we got there at about 5:45 and there was already 3 buses and numerous cars already waiting for the gate to open. As we are both thinkers (and we had a 4wd) we explored in our minds the possibilities of trying out the other border crossing about 90klms away (we had been told about this crossing but had been advised not to go unless you are in possession of a 4wd). We made a quick U turn and started our adventure to the “other side”.
It all began smoothly, the road was nicely tarred and was incredibly smooth; at 30 klms the road turned to gravel, but it wasn’t too bad. It only took another 10 klms and we started to see the reason for possibly needing a 4wd. At the 60 klm mark it was obvious that nothing less than a 4wd was mandatory for this trip as we were venturing into large (but dried) sandy river beds and manoeuvring our way through thick red dirt. With the petrol tank running only on the remaining fumes and both of us feeling incredibly lost (as we were driving through rural villages and guessing our way though various cross roads) we did eventually find ourselves at the border post about 4 hours after our departure from Bulawayo.
I have to admit, our previous crossings (at the more heavily used border) has been very ordinary, with very few smiles and not a huge amount of help given and then the Botswana side is even worse (incredible rude and EXTREMELY impolite) but this crossing was totally different. The guys on the Zim side were so friendly and we spent a small amount of time chatting with them mulling over news and current affairs. As we ventured over the dried river bed to the Botswana border post, I was wondering if they also would be different … and they were … it was GREAT; the guys at the Bots border post were so helpful and also enjoyed a good chat. I think the thing that made this all worthwhile was the fact that on both sides there was absolutely no queues and we didn’t have to wait 5 hours just waiting in a line (like our last South African trip).
