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Saturday, June 04, 2011THE TOWN IN WHICH I LIVELocation: A dorp (small town) in Limpopo Province, which suffers from an identity crisis.It is known by is original name of Ellisras & also by its all-new-politically-correct-name of Lephalale. I know it as either The Last Khaki Outpost or Schleppalale. It has most definitely earned both of my given nicknames, because the colour 'khaki' has remained in fashion for at least 40yrs & it is worn by people who tend to drive around in khaki coloured vehicles, who live on khaki themed game farms, where many a khaki coloured horned animal - primarily of the antelope family - is killed for fun and/or biltong. You can kill a beast by arrow or bullet, depending on your level of hunting experience, for about the same cost as a good night out in a major city. The alternate nickname of Schleppalale was given due to the towns location in this vast country of ours. Not many people know where it is (unless you're into killing animals for fun) & my given explanation on how to get here is usually along the lines of "head north, turn left & stop about 90km before you hit Botswana." Blank expressions turn into lightbulb moments when the recognition of our whereabouts hits the right brain cell. I really am not exaggerating when I say it's a bloody schlepp to get here. ~*~ My favourite bylaw (Bev) reckons The LKO is tucked away behind The Boerewors Curtain! ~*~  Due to the abundance of game farms in the area, many popular businesses are named after various wildlife species. A favourite watering hole & eating spot for 2 legged mammals (especially mentally challenged local Blue Bulls* supporters) is the KEG & Kudu. The KEG is a franchised pub/restaurant group in SA & we are blessed to have one situated in our neighbourhood suburb of Onverwaght. (For non-Saffies reading this, the pronounciation of Onverwaght is as follows: In SA, a 'v' is pronounced as an 'f' & a 'w' is pronounced as a (hard) 'v'. The 'gh' is easily pronounced, moreso if you happen to have a nice chunky lump of lungbutter at the back of your throat, which (naturally) needs hocking up. Therefore, Onverwaght is said as On-fur-va-ghhhh-ct. Simple innit? Kindly spit or swallow lungbutter after pronounciation, thank you.) Getting back to the KEG & Kudu, I have to admit that the food is extremely good, they serve Kilkennys (which keeps Hubs happy) & apart from afore-mentioned local Blue Bulls supporters, is a nice place in which to unwind, after an especially stressful day at work.  Local knowledge can be appreciated, especially when one does not know where specific places are. There is a well known spot referred to simply as 'Oom Potties'. Every khaki-clad local & his Rottweiler knows where 'Oom Potties' is, which excluded us, when we were invited to go for a ride one Sunday morning. When we said we had no idea where 'Oom Potties' was, the simple directions of "head out of town (towards Botswana) & ride straight for exactly 50kays. Oom Potties is on the right hand side." And sod me, if the directions weren't spot on! Oom Potties is what can only be described as an old fashioned trading store, where you can buy a packet of fags, the local newspaper, a can of pilchards & a bottle of Klippies**. The store is run by a husband & wife couple, who welcome bikers & strangers alike. They have a resident tarantula spider, who appears to be quite happy living amongst the vygie plant boxes. The trading store borders the rather magnificent Fahad Private Game Reserve, which as one can guess, is owned by some particularly rich member of the Sandpit Royal family.  Some 60 odd kilometers from town, one can turn left at Marken & head towards what was known as Potgietersrus & is now known as Makopane. It's a stunning riding road & this is the view at the bottom of a lovely mountain pass. It would be so much better if the fuckwitted historically disadvanted local cattle herder didn't let his cattle roam in the road. There's no fucking grass growing in the middle of the tarmac, so I fail to see the appeal of cattle taking an afternoon stroll. There are some nasty accidents on this particular road, due mainly to idiotic bovines & the more-than-often drunk driver. Gotta admit, it still makes a wicked ride!  Back in town, there are small enclaves of well-known brand shops, of which Edgars is one, where you can buy incredibly over-priced clothing, cosmetics, bedding & a cellphone on credit. What isn't very well known is that there are a few expats in the area, who cling (desperately at times, I have to admit) to their collective sense of humour. Edgars, being terribly politically correct, placed an advertising board outside of their store last Eid. It was the 'green light' moment for myself & 2 other wimmin friends who have lived in the Middle East, to don our abayas & niqabs & hit the town.............woohooo! I have to admit there was many a sloped foreheaded, eyes-way-too-close-together local who quite literally stopped in his/her tracks when they saw us. Being totally anonymous, no one had any idea as to who we were & the facial reactions of the Khaki brigade were truly priceless. I suspect there were a few mutterings in the KEG that evening, along with probable suspicions that Osama bin Laden was quite possibly holed up in a rather upmarket private game reserve nearby Oom Potties.  Thanks to the influx of some 8,000 new inhabitants - here to construct the much needed Medupi power station - Schleppalale has found itself in the midst of a housing boom. New housing compounds & gated communities have sprung up like mushrooms. Building contractors & sub-contractors jumped on the get-rich-quick projects & threw up houses in a hurry. Within 2yrs, many of these houses have serious safety issues & things like ceilings caving in & walls falling over have become common knowledge. Sadly, just because apartheid was abolished 17yrs ago, the forced integration of races of our Rainbow Nation really hasn't gone down very well. Shove mixed races together in small gated communites - after donkeys years of segregation - & man, you've got a recipe for tension. I have historically disadvantaged neighbours on 3 sides & for the most part, have no complaint about them. One family, on the opposite side of the road & a couple of houses down, typifies what many white Saffies dread & dare I say, despise. The 'man of the house' drives a new 5 series Beemer & is probably in his position of employment because he's the 2nd cousin to the brother-in-law of the local ANC appointed mayor. The wimmin of the house sit on milk crates in the garage (doors open) & despite sitting within 2m of each other, shout their conversations. The kids - one little bitch in particular - screams like there is no tomorrow. Adults cannot converse quietly & the spawn do not know how to play happily. Once in a while, a relative pitches up & upon arrival, opens the doors to his smacked up car & turns his sound system up. We cannot complain, because we will be hauled before some disciplinary committee & labelled racist. I don't give a shit what colour your skin is - respect is colour blind! A little bit of respect goes a long way, but sitting on your milk crates, blasting the street with your music & letting your offspring scream incessantly for several hours each day, will simply earn you the much used term of being a 'K***ir With A Barclaycard'. Within a fortnight of arriving in The Last Khaki Outpost - almost 2yrs ago now - Hubs & myself were told by a prominent businesswoman, that 'we' - meaning the newbies to the area - weren't welcome. 'We' brought with us more crime, more traffic, more taxis & more historically disadvantaged inhabitants. No, we were most definitely not welcome. Fast forward almost 2yrs & the towns population has grown by almost 10,000 & there is a dire need for more retail outlets & in particular, well known 'brand' stores. The aforementioned local businesswoman must be shitting herself now, because despite coining it for around 20yrs, she's going to be losing a shitload of trade, thanks to the building of a new shopping mall. It really is Big News in this area. In approximately 18mths time, locals won't have to travel between 200-300km to buy things that are simply unobtainable here. The biggest news is that Woolworths*** is going to have a food store - huzzah! There are expat wives here drooling at the mere mention of Woollies food products & the prospect of being able to buy sed foodstuff locally ranks along the lines of a good shagging. Thankfully, I won't be here to see the opening of the mall. Oh yeah, before I forget, there's allegedly going to be a cinema complex in the New Mall. Oh my gawd, Ellisras really is being dragged into the 21st century!  Now, believe it or not, there are a few positive things I can say about living here. Less than 10mins drive from the town centre, there is a game farm which doesn't have the standard obligatory 'come & kill animals' attraction................no.............this game farm, managed & run by a really nice mid-European couple of old-timers, offers nothing more than a walk through the bush. There are 2 guided walks available - a 'flat' walk & a 'hill' walk. I've done both & can state quite categorically that whoever came up with the description of 'flat' walk is a bloody liar! I traipsed up & down hills, over boulders & through some pretty dense bush & the only 'flat' bit was the couple of hundred metre walk back to the starting point. I'm not shy in admitting I was knackered at the end of the 2hr jaunt, but hell, I enjoyed it - on both occasions. I quite literally took 'time out to smell the roses' - even though there weren't any - but paused on many occasion to look at the simple things that form just a tiny part of what Mother Nature has to offer. Simple things like a spider web stretched between branches, hyaena droppings, a sun-bleached skull & horns of an old kudu & small herds of impala who would stare for a second or two & then scarper in taunting delight. I came across 5 giraffe, quite happily munching on the tastiest leaves at treetop height & marvelled at how they could glide through dense bush with minimal noise. All within a couple of metres from a main road & all for the price of less than a pub lunch. (Spot the giraffe in the photo?) Finally, one other good thing about living here, is the proximity to the Tropic of Capricorn. In real terms, it gets fucking hot in summer, but now, in winter, we have cold mornings & evenings, but lovely, sunny days, with an average temperature in the mid 20C's. We have straight roads - in good condition with the exception of one - ideal for biking. Urban legends are made from stuff like kudu jumping game fences & landing on a car bonnet (hey, 200kg free biltong guys!) & warthog or porcupines coming second in a fight with oncoming headlights ("man, I've got porciupine quills in my radiator!"). We have the most stunning view of unspoilt bushland for as far as the eye can see. If it wasn't for the Medupi project, bringing its influx of workers to the area, the locals of the much clinged to town of Ellisras, could go back to living in their little world, which seemed to have got stuck somewhere around 1973. Unfortunately for them, we came along & fucked it all up. * The Blue Bulls are a prominent South African rugby team. I suspect they may have some talented players, as they frequently win major Southern Hemisphere trophies. Unfortunately, their supporters consist mainly of neanderthals with very small brains. They are obnoxious to say the least. ** Klippies - a fond term for Klipdrift, a well known South African brandy. Drank in vast quantities by Blue Bulls supporters, who are fondly known as "1,2,3's" - 1ltr Klippies, 2ltr Coke & 3ltr 1985 Ford Cortina. *** Woolworths. Trades in the UK as Marks & Spencers. Normally has quality clothing products made by poorly paid Romanians. Food is pukka & is the only shop I know of in SA which sells genuine pork pies & proper crumpets. Retail prices may involve having to negotiate the sale of future children and/or grandchildren. It ain't cheap to do your grocery shopping at Woolies, but bugger, it's worth it! Labels: Blue Bulls Supporters Are Inbred, Ellisras/Schleppalale, Fahad Private Game Reserve, Klippies Brandy, Medupi Power Station, The Boerewors Curtain, Woolworths food  
Wednesday, December 08, 2010DEFINING FRUSTRATIONI admit I've been slack in posting............I'm not trying to make excuses, but I have just been so incredibly frustrated of late, that I could sit down & weep buckets full of self-pitying tears. Somehow, I don't think my weeping or wailing will solve any of the frustrations - in fact, I think I'll probably end up sinking even deeper into the depths of my misery. (Thank you Hubs & fellow blogger Wreckless EuroAfrican for nagging me into action again!) A great deal of my frustration lies with my current town of abode. In the 'old days' it was called Ellisras. In the 'new days' it is called Lephalale. I call it either the Last Khaki Outpost (it must surely take first prize in colour-coded modes of dress - anything you fancy, so long as it's khaki...........it's like living in the Magic Kingdom again, where a woman can have any shade of abaya, so long as it's black!) or Schleppalale, because one finds, most people sommer schlepp through the bloody place. Some are even lucky enough to not have to come back! (I have a sneaking suspicion that the song Hotel California was written with Ellisras in mind). The town has, in a nutshell, a somewhat dubious character of schitzophrenic proportions, because a heap of people don't know what the town is called, or even where it is. It is a town that mirrors small town Alabama, where inbreeders thrive & local kudu tend to have a nervous disposition (that's because they're killed for fun). It is a town that, over the past 18mths, has been inundated with an additional influx of 'outsiders', who have the misfortune to be trapped here, due to the largest construction project on this Dark Continent. Prior to the arrival of us 'outsiders', the town's economy relied primarily on the game hunting industry. People from various parts of SA & indeed, other countries of the world, came here to kill wild animals - for fun. There are more taxidermists than there are fast food outlets. So, due to the influx of 'outsiders', it became very obvious - in a very short space of time - that the town & it's infrastructure couldn't actually cope. Which leads me to one of my biggest frustrations. Unlike other democratic countries (stop laughing!) we have one supplier/installer/provider of landline telephones, called Telkom.  It has, over the years, flogged off tiny bits of itself to other companies, in an a piss-poor attempt to prove that it isn't a monopoly on the telecommunications industry. When it comes to providing landline telephones & ADSL provisions in a town like this, well, I think the often used phrase of "I'll get pregnant before that happens" certainly rings true (pun fully intended). When I first arrived here last August, I discovered that A) there wasn't a Telkom office, B) the Post Office (tied in with Telkom) hadn't had a phone application form for years & C) there was a 12mth list to get onto the actual Waiting List of approximately 2yrs to apply for a landline phone. In other words, new residents were well & truly fucked. Plan B - there's always a Plan B when living in Africa - meant the only other form of connectivity with the Outside World - i.e. anywhere outside the borders of Schleppalale - is to use ones cell phone, which is fine (albeit hellish expensive) but not much use when one needs to use the internet for more than 10mins, without having to auction a kidney to pay for the transaction. Another option for obtaining the internet in this area is a 3G connection gadget, which has limited use & tends to work in a mode offering the speed of a garden snail. It helped - I admit - for a few months, but it became increasingly frustrating when you could be halfway through downloading a particular matter of importance, only to have a little icon pop up, telling you that there was only so many kilobytes left before it required yet another expensive top up. . And then I discovered an internet service provider, who boasted it didn't need a landline for connectivity & who could provide a 24/7 service at a monthly fee which wouldn't require me to sell off certain body parts to the highest bidder. I paid a rather large chunk of money to this ISP & a man came out to the house & fitted all the necessary bits of gadgetry/wires/cables etc in order for us to be connected to the World Wide Web. Huzzah Telkom! Go screw your landline! Initially, the service worked competently enough. I could communicate with the outside world. I could do my banking/blogging/shopping etc etc. Every now & again, the service 'went down' but the down time wasn't too inconvenient. Until............................... A rather nasty thunderstorm. And a particularly nasty bolt of lightening hit The Tower. The Tower is the thing that hosts the Server of our ISP. Telkom owns The Tower & 'leases' out space for other ISP's. And Telkom is in no hurry to fix it's Tower. It has made temporary repairs, but they are in no apparant hurry to fix the problem(s) properly. Which means my internet connection is up & down faster than a whores knickers. Which means I can't download stuff I need. Which means I can't talk to my family on Skype without getting cut off 10 times during a 30minute conversation. Which means I have been half-way through credit card transactions & been left hanging like a Pierrepoint cock-up. It means I'm frustrated. Very fucking frustrated. I'm expected to pay up nearly a thousand bucks a month for a service I'm not provided with. The term 'kak en betaal' (translated = shit & pay) should be this towns motto. So much emphasis is placed on the use of the internet nowadays, but in Schleppalale, you're s'posed to feel fucking priviledged for having an on/off service. . *sigh* . My other frustrations all amount to living here basically. Friends are leaving (I miss you Pam!!!) local supermarkets stock an item & then don't re-stock it again for months on end, the potholes & extremely dangerous road conditions leading into/out of the town to major cities like Pretoria or Joburg, now leave us quite literally with a sense of dread if we have to travel & gawd forbid, if someone needs to actually find our house, well, all I can do is direct them from the Police station, because just about anyone knows where that is! The local municipality has placed much emphasis on the re-marking of parking slots outside of shops, but it can't find it in it's budget to put up street signs - fuck no, that's way too technical! New housing complexes have sprung up like mushrooms, but they don't have visible names or indicators. Hubs & I were the first people to move into the complex where we are, some 16mths ago. There is no street sign & there is no sign on the complex, indicating its actual name. The complex is now full & like us, I'm sure other residents have to go into great detail to explain where they live. But hey, lets demarcate parking slots on the main street! . I'm frustrated because I've had to make an appointment to have a mammogram done whilst we're on holiday. No medical facility in this town has the correct machine to perform such a test. If the roads weren't so bad, I would've gone down to Joburg or Pretoria for the test. The basic infrastructure of this country is falling to bloody pieces but the government insists on sucking ever increasing taxes out of us, yet they don't fix any of the problems. Whoopie for the Gautrain! Whoopie for Medupi! Whoopie for hosting a successful Soccer World Cup! Now how about fixing the fucking roads? How about prosecuting employees who steal from state hospitals & other such insistutions? How about getting rid of all of the corrupt municipality bosses? How about allowing free enterprise instead of expecting us to simply shut-up & put up with the absolute bollocks that we have to contend with on a daily basis? . . . I am so looking forward to getting out of here over the Crimble shut-down period! Labels: Ellisras/Schleppalale, Screamer, Telkom
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