Letter to Swee'eap: Your First (Well, Second?) Birthday

Dear Swee’pea,

Today you are one year old. As I type this, you are playing with empty plastic containers in the playpen at Grandpa Cape Town’s. You turn the container in your hand, inspecting it from all angles, then try to fit it into another larger container. Then you take it out and move on to another container. Since we arrived here on the other side of the earth from where you were born, we have discovered that the most absorbing toys for you are tupperware containers, measuring spoons and other kitchen utensils. Whisks are particularly fascinating, and you bend the wires as you try to chew them.

I am sad to say that you look like you’ve been through the wars, peppered with mozzie bites and self-inflicted scratches from trying to relieve the itching. That said, you look a lot better than you did a few days after we arrived in this country, before we started closing the windows at night and turning on a fan to keep us cool. You’ve also had a few knocks to your noggin as you gain confidence on your feet. You still pretty much always hold onto or lean against something for balance, but you’ve been moving faster and faster, leaving you more vulnerable to trips and falls.

The other day you experienced the cold Atlantic ocean washing over your feet, and felt the cold wet sand squeeze between your toes. This trip has shown us how much you enjoy water now, and you squeal and kick your feet in excitement whenever we take you near Grandpa Cape Town’s pool. Once in the pool, you splash your face full of water, but it never seems to bother you. You just blink the water from your eyes and splash again. Tomorrow, I’m hoping we can take you to Boulders Beach, where it’s warm enough to swim in the ocean and sheltered from the wind. It’s so nice that many penguins have made it their home, so maybe you’ll even get to swim with a penguin or two.

You continue to charm the pants off strangers. Just yesterday, when we stopped at the San cultural centre on the way back to Cape Town, we were sitting at a table on the wide covered porch, waiting for our orders to come and looking at the beautiful hilltop view of the ocean and the seaside village of Yzerfontein in the distance.

A group of people carrying small suitcases came onto the lawn and sat at several tables with umbrellas. I tried to work out what they were doing, if they were tourists, or somehow involved with the centre. They were all black, and many of them wore t-shirts with caring messages on them like “Do the Right Thing Pay Your Child Support” and “HIV POSITIVE” and “Stop Poverty.” Grandpa Cape Town thinks they were part of an NGO, touring the centre.

You raised your open hand to the ones who were in waving distance, and made your sort of grunting noises in welcome. You smiled and waved again when they reciprocated, and continued even after they looked away. After a while, a young woman came up and asked if she could take you. I tried to pretend that I was all cool and hip with this, just letting strangers take my baby away. Your daddy asked, “Where?” Anyways, you didn’t protest when she picked you up, and you mildly concerned when she took you away, but seemed more comfortable when you saw me hovering behind with my camera. They took some pictures of you and laughed at your noises and smiles, and then I took you back when your noises took on a note of protest. It seemed strange to me, but especially because you’ve made strange when just about any of your family tries to hold you.

At the beach house, Grandpa Cape Town worked on a campaign to woo you, and eventually was successful when he picked you up just after the gentle colours of the sunset had darkened to indigo, and he pointed out the stars to you that were coming out over the ocean.

Again last night, when we ate our deliciously spicy thai meals, strangers, mostly young women with their own babies at home, seemed to never tire of picking up the toys you dropped over and over in one of your favourite games. At one point, a group of four or five young woman, fairly well dressed up came in the door and immediately caught your eye. You started smiling and flirting with them before they’d even closed the door and turned around. Your smiles were successful, as the one in a striking black and white striped dress was dazzled and stopped to chat with you. I suspect this could be the beginning of a long future of flirtation.

Recently, I think you have discovered the hilarity of doing things that your daddy and I don’t want you to. At the beach house, your daddy fed you dinner and you discovered that if you timed the raspberry just right, you could send rice cereal and pureed butternut squash all over daddy, the table and your high chair. Daddy’s reaction was especially pleasing to you, I think, and your giggles got louder and more hearty with each (would-be) mouthful. He tried to discourage you, but we are slaves to your laughter, so it wasn’t long before we were laughing along with you, covered in rice cereal and butternut.

Staying with five dogs as we have been, you have enjoyed dropping food from your high chair and watching them quickly pounce on it. At the beach house without the dogs, you continued to drop morsels, although I think you knew there weren’t any dogs to eat them. It dawned on me that perhaps you are really learning about gravity. That if you drop things from your high chair, they fall to the ground, every single time.

Exactly a year ago from the moment I write this (even allowing for the time difference), I was in labour at the hospital, with the two monitors strapped around me. The contractions were still not too bad. It was about this time, I think, that the midwives transferred care, and the OB recommended that we proceed with labour instead of doing the c-section then. All kinds of emotions were riding through me then, but the biggest one was fear: fear that you wouldn’t survive and fear that you would. It was only at this time, when your birth was imminent, that I realized that I really had no idea how to care for a baby. This past year has been a revelation in so many ways, but mostly that we have been able to muddle through our uncertainty in a way that has allowed you to thrive.

It seems to me that your birth exploded my universe like the Big Bang. Since then, my love just keeps expanding outward as you get bigger and stronger and older. Every new milestone, every hug and kiss are the markers of the outer reaches of this ever-expanding love, and I never tire of exclaiming over the wondrousness that is you.

So I wish you Happy Birthday, and thank you for bringing such wonder and beauty and more love than I thought possible into our lives.

Love Mum

wrong turns

Ok. So not only did we take a wrong turn on the way to Granny’s, but we got a bit lost trying to find the right turn, AND we took a wrong turn on the way home. With all due respect to Grandpa Cape Town, I think I know where Sugar Daddy got his HORRIBLE sense of direction from.

We had a nice visit with Granny, this time just for tea, so we actually got time to talk, along with consuming a great lemon meringue pie. Uncle R smoked in the house, even though it was considerably cooler than last time, but whatever. Not much we can do about it, and given that Granny will celebrate her 90th birthday in June, we wanted to see her again before we left.

Uncle R is rather a character. He told me about a trip he took around about 1992 with a mate. They took a boat, pulled behind their dune buggy, up to Mozambique to travel to some island off the coast, and things were still pretty violent. He said they must have been held up six or seven times on the way, so casually that I figured he must have meant they were delayed six or seven times, which I didn’t think made for an interesting story. Then he started talking about people pointing AK47s in their faces, and I realized that he actually meant held up, like at gunpoint. But they made the trip and the island was beautiful.

I asked him if he was scared getting held up, and he paused, then said, “Aww, they were mostly looking for smokes and booze; just fooling around.” But he went on to say that when they got into Maputo around 2 in the morning, some soldiers stopped them, “And they weren’t fooling around; they were all agro’d.” They stuck their AK47s in their faces, and angrily questioned them. Apparently, they were driving near some important place, I can’t remember who, but some statesperson or something. Eventually, the soldiers just told them to get outta there.

He also told me that Granny saw the only fatal shark attack at Clifton (a beach, which never has shark attacks), thinking it was her husband who was attacked. Apparently sometime just after the war, she went to call her husband for lunch. She saw someone swimming, then saw the shark come up, saw the swimmer’s legs up in the air, and then never saw the swimmer again. Thankfully, her husband came walking up the beach shortly thereafter, but she still had quite a fright. Her husband, Sugar Daddy’s Grandpa T, was an Olympic cyclist and swam nearly every day in the freezing cold Atlantic waters. Uncle R told me that Grandpa T often took him out as a baby, arms wrapped around his neck. He said the water’s quite refreshing. I have dipped my toes in those waters, just up the coast at Yzerfontein, and I can tell you even at the height of summer, the water is mind numbingly, screamingly cold.

Just before we left, Granny ladened us with small gifts, and Uncle R presented us with a pencil drawing he did of the shacks in Khayelitsha, one of the townships here. He really is very talented, even if he does smoke around babies, and I really like the drawing. I took some pictures of him in front of his paintings, and the light was actually quite nice, and showed off his eyes, which are icy cold and the colour of the sea.

This afternoon, we go up the coast, and we’ve decided to stay for two nights and just chill. Maybe we’ll take a few walks, maybe we’ll just sit around and chase Swee’pea around the house. But we’ve been keeping up quite a pace of visiting and sightseeing, and could use a bit of a break. I’ve started a new book, which I found on Grandpa Cape Town’s large, overflowing bookshelves. This is by a South African travel writer and photographer, about his trip around Mozambique in 1999 or so. The going sounds terribly rough, with lousy roads, sometimes even no roads, and the risk of many nasty illnesses. He’s not funny, but it’s not a bad read, and I feel better reading about somewhere that shares a border with where we are.

So I guess it will be a few days before I post again. I’m really feeling quite disconnected, not being able to read everyone’s blogs. When I get home, I will have a lot of catching up to do, with blogs and tv. Hopefully, my friend Banana has taped House and Grey’s Anatomy for me…

my cup runneth over

The other day, after we got home from our township tour, I discovered rusks. I’d seen them before, because Sugar Daddy goes giddy whenever he sees them since they’re such a rare find in Canada. But I’d never actually tasted one before. They’re sort of shorter, thicker, more rustic versions of biscotti, I think, and you have to dip them in your tea for a good long soak before you can even try to sink your teeth into them. Since I don’t like biscotti or breaking my teeth, I’d kept my distance. But the other day it had been a long, hot, dusty time since lunch, and I couldn’t find anything else to eat with my tea. So I tried a rusk. And it was really quite nice, so I had another one. It proved my undoing the next morning.

I was hungry again when we got up, so decided to have another rusk with my first generously proportioned cuppa of the day. And I, ever the multi-tasker, even on vacation, couldn’t just eat my rusk and drink my tea. No, I had to also read my book, Bill Bryson’s Down Under, which I’ve become addicted to; and because there was no useful surface in front of me to put my tea while I picked up my book and dipped my rusk, I put the nearly overflowing cup of fresh, boiling hot tea on my lap. With my rusk in one hand and the Bryson book in my other, my cup runnethed over. It was one of those slow-motion helpless moments when you see what is going to happen but can’t move fast enough to stop it. The very hot tea burned my c-section scar and surrounding areas, but I was totally captive, because my hands were full. I quickly threw my book on the floor to pick up the cup but it was too late. There was a pool of burning liquid in my lap. I stood up to try to save my skin and the pool spilled onto the leather couch and white-tiled floor, making me feel like I’d had a rather nasty accident dribbling out of my pants. At this point, Sugar Daddy noticed the commotion and started to clean up while I went in search of dry clothes and some way to stop the burning.

When I got to our bedroom, I just sat on the bed, naked and overwhelmed. That was my last pair of somewhat clean shorts, so I couldn’t figure out what to put on. And my skin was still burning. Eventually Sugar Daddy came in and gave me a hug, and my mind kicked into gear again. I had a cool shower and put on one of the skirts I bought our first day here when we had no clothes except what we wore on the plane.

I went back to my cup of tea, and tried another rusk. My one question remains answered: what do you do with the last bite? You can’t eat it unsoaked, and you can’t really soak it unless you also soak your fingertips.

We set off for Stellenbosch relatively early. I don’t know much about Stellenbosch except that it has an Afrikaans university and lots of beautiful architecture. Its architecture certainly is beautiful, but I kept getting frustrated photographically. From a distance I’d see a beautiful building with the mountain in view behind it, but when I got close enough for the shot I wanted, the mountain had disappeared behind a tree or something else equally inconvenient. The town itself is a little too clean for my taste, and a little too touristy, like Niagara On The Lake. All the shops and restaurants seemed really upmarket, and I didn’t see a single crumbly wall or milimeter of peeling paint. If you’ve seen any of my photos of Guelph, it’s just really not my cuppa tea.

As far as I could see it was also the whitest place we’ve been yet. The one refreshing sight for me was seeing pick-up trucks with white university students hanging onto the back instead of black workers.

After about an hour of walking around the town, which is considerably hotter than Cape Town, we went for lunch in Somerset West with Uncle J, Auntie L and their daughter Cousin A. We went to a restaurant set in a big old house with a thatched roof, and sat on its patio covered with red coca cola umbrellas. The lunch wasn’t bad, but it was slow, and Swee’pea was getting awfully tired before his lunch arrived. Anyways, it was nice to visit again, and Auntie L endorsed our plan to go a farm nearby called Vergelegen. It’s an Afrikaans word that requires you to gargle lots of saliva at the back of your throat – twice at each g – and my Canadian tongue cannot even attempt to get itself around it. I stopped trying after a while and lots of pitying somewhat blank looks.

When we set out, I’d thought that I’d be more interested in Stellebosch, and less in going to a wine farm, but I thought we should really go to a wine farm for my dad’s sake, since he just started a vineyard. But when we got to Vergelegen around 3-ish, I wished we had more time to explore. I found myself actually wanting to go the winery itself, which is apparently up on a hill with beautiful views, but you have to book a tour in advance to get there, and it was too late. Next time I guess. The grounds are beautiful, the Cape Dutch buildings equally beautiful, and walking around it was even better than a park, with huge agapanthus, the biggest camphor trees I’ve ever seen, giant bamboo, little ponds of water lilies with boardwalks surrounding them.

(Certainly it’s much much better than Zoo Lake in Johannesburg, which was one of Sugar Daddy’s haunts when he was growing up. I wasn’t very keen on walking around the man-made pond on a goose poo littered path, but Sugar Daddy was insistent that we just had to walk all the way around, or it wouldn’t be a visit to Zoo Lake. The one thing that I liked about it was the view of like fifty coloured rowboats jammed together in the foreground, waiting to be hired, fountain spouting like a geyser in the middle of the “lake,” and city skyline of downtown Joburg up in the background.)

I have to interrupt myself here, because I can hear Swee’pea giggling outside my window. Apparently there are bees buzzing around the ornamental grape vine, and he’s laughing at Sugar Daddy saying, “Bees.” Yesterday in the car ride home from Vergelegen, he laughed hysterically every time Sugar Daddy said “Cape Dutch” or “Cape Dutch houses.” I think because it sounds a bit like a sneeze if you say it fast.

Anyways, back to Vergelegen, I had noticed in the pamphlet that you can order a picnic lunch to eat on the grounds. We went walking into a woodsy area under some eucalyptus trees, where the ground was smooth and bare. I laughed when we came upon a sort of a booth with tea and coffee. I giggled to myself even more when we went a bit further and found tables fully set for lunch with table cloths, wine glasses, tea cups and several pieces of silverware. I guess this is the colonial version of a picnic. I think this was seriously the most civilized place I have ever come upon. The estate was built in 1700, a very long time ago, but I think the winemaking part of it only began in 1992, after an American company, Anglo American, bought the property in 1987.

I think during our next visit, I would like to go back and visit its winery, and also visit other, perhaps older, wineries in the area. The landscape is stunning, with farmland in the flat green valleys surrounded by huge brown rocky mountains.

We had tea on the patio of another building on the grounds, and decided we were seriously melting and tired. When we got back to the car, we discovered why: the outdoor temperature was reading 41 degrees – at 4:30 in the afternoon! Cape Town, when we got back, was a refreshing 31 degrees.

* * *

Today has started off much better than yesterday, and we are taking the morning easy. It seems like we’ve been a long time in holiday la la land. Swee’pea has absolutely no routine anymore, and we’ve been doing quite a lot of sightseeing and visiting and travelling. It struck my yesterday, while Swee’pea giggled in the backseat with Sugar Daddy, that he will have to undergo a significant adjustment when we get back home and Sugar Daddy goes back to work, never mind trying to get him into an earlier morning routine and comfortably familiar with his daycar, in preparation for my return to work. Oh well, no point worrying about it now.

This morning has allowed me to finish Bryson’s book. I enjoyed it hugely, although it felt strange to be reading about his travels in Australia while I’m in South Africa – but I don’t think he’s written a book about South Africa yet. There was one mention of Joburg in the book though, where apparently he was robbed in broad daylight by a group of young people.

This afternoon we are off to have tea with Granny, and I wonder if this time we will be able to get there without taking a wrong turn. Apparently their suburb is the safest suburb in the Cape or something like that, because most of its residents don’t have much worth stealing. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if Granny and Uncle R even have an alarm system. Every other house we’ve stayed at here has had an alarm system, and at Auntie J’s house, they even had it monitoring movements within the house at night. If anyone moved in the kitchen or sitting room, the alarm would go off, so we had to make sure to take enough water with us to bed for overnight.

Anyways, tomorrow we’ll head off up the coast to Grandpa Cape Town’s beach house in Yzerfontein, which has no phone, and hence no Internet. We’ll be back either Monday or Tuesday, in time for me to take a stab at baking a cake (thanks for pointing me to a good recipe, Beck) for Swee’pea’s birthday party on Wednesday, which will be held in Noordhoek at Sugar Daddy’s stepsister’s house. I’m a bit nervous about the cakemaking part, but I feel strongly about marking his first birthday with the effort of baking a cake made with love and mostly wholesome ingredients.

Until later...

Langa means sun

edited to add photos, and links to photos already shown in other posts since

Sugar Daddy and I have just returned from a cool after-dinner walk in Grandpa Cape Town’s neighbourhood, and Swee’pea is sleeping peacefully in the stroller. As we set out, the colours over the mountain were spectacular: a brilliant orange fading somehow into purple. By the time we got into a better position to see it, the sky and clouds over the mountain had mostly faded to the same bleached out silver we’ve seen the last couple of nights we’ve gone for a walk to try to get Swee’pea to sleep. Last night, the other side of the sky was bright blue, providing a stunning contrast to the nearly full moon. I can’t believe it’s so full, when it seems like just yesterday it was a tiny sliver of a crescent over the mountain.



While we walked we tried to articulate our thoughts about today’s outing. Today we went on a township tour. It wasn’t quite such an amazing, serendipitous experience as our 2005 tour of Soweto, but it was good, and in some ways more encouraging than the Soweto tour. Today, our guide, Gladstone, began the tour at the District Six Museum, at our request. We didn’t have enough time there to really take in much, but it was a good stop to begin the tour, and many of the exhibits were donated by former residents. The guide book says that most of the staff of the museum are also former residents. As I understand it, District Six used to be a vibrant, multicultural, fairly poor area downtown Cape Town. The first forced removal was in 1901, before formal apartheid, when blacks were removed from the area. Then after apartheid was formalized, it was declared a whites only neighbourhood, and all the coloured people were removed to other townships. (Apparently, police would invoke ‘the pencil test’ to determine whether someone was coloured or black: if a pencil got stuck in their hair, the person was black; if not, they were coloured. As a result, black people started shaving their heads and straightening their hair to pass the test.) Essentially, the area was bulldozed, completely destroyed; except, of course, for the buildings that were white-owned. Those remained untouched. But the area mostly stands empty today, because white people didn’t feel right about the situation, and mostly wouldn’t buy the land. (I wasn’t always listening to Gladstone very carefully, so I may have some of the details wrong.) Apparently, the government is trying to provide some form of restitution, building new houses for the former residents, and 24 families have moved into the new dwellings.

The museum has some great photography, and in most cases the photographer and the donor were listed underneath each photograph. I found myself wondering about the photographers, and what their motives were in make the images. Were they like me, and sort of amateur photographers? Were they professional photographers? Or did they have a notion to try to preserve some of the vitality of the buildings and streets? Sometimes the photographers were also the donors, other times the donor was different but shared the same last name. Rarely (if ever – I can’t remember now) were the photographer and donor completely different.

After a walk around the small museum, which is housed in the “Freedom Church” – so called because most of the people gethered to discuss political matters rather than to worship – we got back into the van and went to Langa Township, the oldest township in the Cape. There was one other older township, where the blacks from District Six were removed to in 1901, but it was demolished to become industrial land. I think Langa came into being sometime around 1929 or 1936 or something like. Many of the houses we drove by were cute little two-room dwellings with doors open and/or people sitting out front. They were mostly painted cheerful colours, and generally well-maintained. Apparently, their inhabitants used to have to pay rent, but after apartheid was abolished, the government just gave them to the residents.

We went to an arts and crafts centre, called Gugu Sthebe or something like that. The outside of the place was decorated with beautiful mosaic murals, with tables and seats, also decorated with mosaics.



After a tour, we sat outside for a few minutes, waiting, and there was a young boy just sitting.



He had kind of a sad expression on his face, likely cultivated for our benefit, but he didn’t talk and wouldn’t respond to questions from a young, black, British social worker whose mother was born in South Africa. She was an interesting woman to have on the tour, vibrant and outgoing, but also clearly having a more emotional response then I was. I don’t think she’d ever seen a township closeup before. Anyways, as we were leaving the boy gestured to her for a drink, with irresistable, pleading eyes. She was drinking a can of coke, and she said, “Oh help. Can I give him the coke?” and then handed it over (the guide had discouraged us from giving sweets and things to the kids, but he was so polite and adorable, I totally would have handed it over too).



Then we went to the hostels, which are in the process of being renovated into single family units. First, we went to an unrenovated hostel, the same as they were for the men forced into close quarters when they came to the city for work and left their families behind in the homelands of apartheid. We entered a common area, with loud lively kwaito music coming from somewhere. The walls and ceiling were very dark, and I wondered why, after so many cheerful colours outside. Gladstone told me it was because of the smoke from the parafin stove they have to cook with. A baby boy was sitting on the concrete floor, and there were no adults around, other than Gladstone and us tourists. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He was big and I figured he must be older than Swee’pea to be able to sit alone in a room. Gladstone was talking about the living conditions, but I wasn’t really listening, so absorbed was I with this little boy, sitting on the floor below a pile of large drums made with animal skins.



Finally, a woman came and picked him and took him out of the room, and I could pay attention to the lesson. After the discussion, we were invited to explore on our own, and talk to the residents.

There are six rooms in the hostel, with a tiny ill-equipped kitchen, and I think a bathroom, though I didn’t see it. Each room has three single beds, essentially a bed per family. In these 18 beds, 54 people sleep. My mind continues to boggle at this number. But people seemed mostly pretty cheerful. Gladstone made friends with Swee’pea, and picked him up and took him into a room where his sister-in-law was with her twin baby boys. They were with a middle-aged woman, who was a healer of some kind.



Once there, Swee’pea started to cry, so I took him back, but I was surprised he let Gladstone hold him at all. He hasn’t really let any family members other than Sugar Daddy and I hold him since we’ve been here. I chatted with the twins’ mother, about the craziness or early motherhood and what it’s like squared. We went into another room, where the first little boy was being held by a woman. She said he wasn’t hers, his mother was…. (pause) elsewhere (vague gesture). Apparently, he’s only 8 months old, and at least as big as Swee’pea is now, and Swee’pea’s big, so obviously, he’s doing pretty well.

Then I went into another room, on the other side of the common room, and I noticed a very pretty young woman, wearing very well-pressed clothes ironing on her bed. I asked to take a picture, but you can’t see the iron in it the way I would have liked. It kind of made me laugh, at myself, that a woman in these conditions dresses so well and owns an iron, when I don’t even own one, and if I did, I seriously wouldn’t know how to use it.



We sat down in the common area for a bit, and I nursed Swee’pea. Another young woman said something, and then explained it was her mother tongue’s word for breastfeeding. It’s a very onomatopeic word, which I won’t even try to spell out here, but she began to talk about how much better breastfeeding is. She said she has a baby boy, up in the Northwest Province with her mother (I think that’s where Pilanesberg is – all the way up past Joburg). I asked if she was working (something like 60 percent of the township’s residents are unemployed) and she said no. I said it must be hard, being away from her son, but she just shrugged after thinking for a minute, and said, “Yeah, but jobs are so hard to come by…”

After a bit, we left and went to an apartment in a renovated hostel. It had a tiny kitchen, which doubled as a living room with a tv, a bedroom and a bathroom. People pay R200 a month for these flats, and after five years of paying rent, they own it. Then we hung out by the tour van, next to a craft vendor, and a store with fruits and veg outside. As we approached the van, a young girl came up to me, gestured at my camera, and started striking poses. She is serious model material. I clicked away, then she insisted on seeing the pictures on the back of the camera (thank goodness I went digital), and then she turned to another tourist for more fashion diva poses.





There were quite a few people, just sitting by the road, or on steps, or standing and chatting. It occurred to me that you would never see people outside their houses like this in my neighbourhood, and certainly not in Grandpa Cape Town’s with all the walls. The children looked well and happy, and it didn’t look like anyone was going hungry. Obviously, there is a great sense of community, and with so many unemployed, people must share a lot. I have to say that I really didn’t feel any pity for these people. They have a lot less than I do, but once again I am struck by the signs of a good quality of life, in spite of having way less material wealth. I don’t want to minimize people’s suffering, or the lingering effects of apartheid, or the painfully slow pace of reformation, but still…

After that, we drove through an informal settlement of homemade shacks, with communal toilets and taps. We didn’t get out of the van again until we got back to Grandpa Cape Town’s house, the silent empty road between the tall walls a striking contrast to the boisterous community we’d just left.

gut feeling

Yesterday afternoon, Auntie M dropped us off at Joburg Airport. Both Sugar Daddy and I were feeling distinctly unwell, a bit dizzy and lightheaded, slightly queasy. I wondered why we were feeling this way. It couldn’t be the altitude because we’d been at that height for six days and hadn’t felt this awful. Maybe it was a low blood sugar moment but we’d just had brunch a couple of hours before. My stomach had been mildly grumpy for the last few days, but that’s not all that unusual. Sugar Daddy suggested it was just the stress of packing up and getting to the plane on time with Swee’pea that was causing our discomfort, but somehow that just didn’t make sense to me. I started to worry that some nasty tropical bug would overtake us on the plane, leaving us both feverish and unconscious in a pool of our own vomit, Swee’pea weeping nearby for human contact. I soothed myself that it was only a two-hour flight, and any bug would be unlikely to make take us down THAT fast; and anyways, if it did, there would be flight attendants who could help us take care of Swee’pea.

We rested after checking our baggage and before going through security, and I took a trip to the loo. Through my queasy fog, I was able to muster a chuckle at the signs for the “Female Toilets” and the “Male Toilets.” I even managed to point them out to Sugar Daddy, who had already noticed and chuckled to himself, and we chuckled together. I couldn’t quite muster the energy to actually take a photo though. We staggered through security and down the stifling hallway lined with wilting passengers-to-be to our gate.

Sugar Daddy got some cheese sandwiches, hoping food would make him feel better (which it did, happily), and because at nearly 3 in the afternoon, Swee’pea still hadn’t had any lunch (he slept through it). I was too tired to traipse to the café with him, so I stayed and nursed Swee’pea between two middle-aged men. The two strangers alternated their contact with Swee’pea, tickling his feet and face, and I felt mildly uncomfortable with their attention. Swee’pea seemed to like it though, reaching out to touch their hands and give them his own version of high fives. Later, a young man, his pregnant partner and their young child of maybe two came up to one of the men, so I guess being a grandpa makes him enjoy other people’s babies when he encounters them. Somehow that made me feel better about the whole interaction.

Our flight was delayed, because the plane hadn’t landed by the time we were supposed to board, and we hung around feeding bits of grilled cheese to Swee’pea, me nibbling here and there too. South Africa has a real cell phone culture; Cousin R recently commented that if you don’t have a cell phone, you just can’t participate in life here, you can’t get by. This became clear when every single person around us immediately pulled out their cell phones and started phoning and texting the people who were supposed to pick them up in Cape Town. We had no cell phone, so no way of notifying Grandpa Cape Town that we would be late. Eventually, the plane landed and was cleaned, and we got on it. The captain said that there were storms a few minutes out so the Fasten Seatbelts sign would stay lit for longer than usual. Yay, I cheered sarcastically. As it turned out, the sign stayed lit for over an hour, and at times the turbulence flung even the experienced flight attendants against the seat backs. Swee’pea fell asleep and I mostly read Bill Bryson, who is funny enough to keep me relatively relaxed through all that turbulence and veering left and right.

It was clear over the Karoo, and Sugar Daddy pointed out the huge expanse of empty brown land, punctuated only by small peaks and valleys and rings of ancient volanoes, like the top of a meringue. Despite my anxiety, I was mostly glad we weren’t on a 24-hour train ride across that – I think. I haven’t landed in Cape Town in daylight before, and the mountains surrounding it are huge and beautiful. We started the descent and Swee’pea woke up and started squirming and pushing into my full bladder. The full bladder combined with my grumbly belly and usual anxiety to begin clenching my bowels. Then I noticed us going up then back down then back up while something on the outside of the plane buzzed back and forth.

"Something's going on. Something's happening," I told Sugar Daddy. He said nothing's happening, we're just landing. But I was certain, to the depths of my gut, that something strange was happening. I figured the wheels weren’t coming down and the pilot was considering aborting the landing. I imagined us flying around Cape Town until we ran out of fuel and we had to land on the steel belly of the plane, likely ending up in a huge ball of fire. I waited for the announcement to go into the brace position that the attendant had schooled me in before takeoff.

Now, with my feet firmly on the ground, I still think I was right, that the wheels weren't coming down, then suddenly did, but it is tinged with a hint of doubt. It WAS the first time I've sat directly over the wing, so perhaps those were normal sounds that I just haven't been close enough to the wing to hear before. But going up and then down and then up again is certainly now something I've experienced before.

Finally we landed, after I nearly broke Sugar Daddy’s hand in my terrified grip, and I nearly cried. As soon as we got to baggage claim I had to go to the loo again. I really never want to do this again. I don’t know why the domestic flights are so much scarier than the long flight over the Atlantic and down the entire length of Africa, but they are. Maybe next time we’ll take a leisurely drive along two-lane roads.

I haven’t written much about Grandpa Cape Town, who was waiting for us, mostly because I consider him to be a sort of public figure, and I haven’t been very careful about anonymity. He’s a novelist, and a recently retired journalist. He’s very reserved; kind, warm, generous and with a dry sense of humour, but very reserved. He was awfully glad to see us, and even caressed Swee’pea’s head and feet. I wonder if he was having visions of us crashing too? He has seemed more demonstrative with Swee’pea since we’ve gotten back to Cape Town, which makes me glad.

Anyways, we’re back in Cape Town, and my stomach continues to grumble in a mildly bad mood. Swee’pea is teething, and the last couple of nights have been a bit rough. One tooth has emerged from his gum (his seventh), and I can see white spots where I believe he is working on his first molars.

My camera battery has run out, and I can’t plug in the recharger. I’ve been phoning around this morning trying to find a way to charge it, and a place on Long Street does it for R30. So we will spend the afternoon in Long Street again while it charges. I’m a bit wary with the state of my stomach, but there are lots of cafes and bathrooms, along with great used book stores, so I’m sure we’ll be fine. I’m also going to have a look for some new sandals that don’t smell. Sugar Daddy found some in Joburg, and he mentioned that he chose the rubber sole thinking that it might absorb less odour than a rubber sole. Last night in bed, I mourned that my sandals smell.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like stinky shoes.”

“Oh… I hadn’t noticed.”

“Good.” (I was worried that I was stinking up cars and rooms, and everyone was noticing.)

I’ve been wanting to write about some of the language here, how South Africans use the words now and just now, but I’m tired, so maybe just now.

Joburg part 2

Finally, we are back in the world of computers. Not that I didn't have a great time away from computers -- I did -- but I think this post will be a long one since it's been so long since I last posted. You may as well grab some refreshment now and settle in for a long read. We are now staying with Auntie M and Uncle C in their gorgeous old house of wood floors, high ceilings and many-paned windows and French doors. It is surrounded by a stunning garden with lots of different levels of decks, patios and lawn, lovely little nooks and crannies, golden stone walls (topped with three electric wires), a dark blue pool complete with a fountain tinkling into it, and a variety of birdsong that I don't even remember hearing at the zoo's aviary. All this is on top of a large koppie with a stunning view of terracotta rooftops, and across the valley I can see the skyscrapers of downtown Joburg. I think the pictures I took this morning across the valley are probably the closest I will get to photographing inner city Joburg, as we leave tomorrow, and I'm not sure people would be willing to accompany me.

Auntie M is a psychologist, and the first time I met her I was intimidated, worried that she was psychoanalyzing me and knew the things that I would prefer to keep private from my first introduction to Sugar Daddy's family. But then I discovered that she loves the same reality tv shows as I do, has a wonderful sense of humour and a lovely wide smile that she unleashes frequently. They have 10 (ten!) cats, most of whom have just arrived and been taken in by the soft hearts of Auntie M and Uncle C. She told me there is one beggar she sees regularly, who is apparently deaf and dumb. She was suspicious at first, thinking that the deaf and dumb thing was just a way to get more money from people. But as she was plotting a way to test his disabilities, she came upon him in the supermarket unexpectedly. When she saw he was buying catfood, and that indeed he was unable to speak to the cashier, she put him in her good books, and always gives him money whenever she sees him now. Because of the catfood. Uncle C is lawyer (I think they call it a barrister here), and a pleasure to converse with. He is a voracious reader, and unlike me, he remembers everything he reads and kindly shares it. He's truly
fascinating to talk to, loves music and film, and good food.

Auntie M's son, Cousin M, is hugely intelligent and perceptive, and is studying at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, so sadly we didn't get to see him this time. Last time, he took us around town to the art gallery, and a dance performance, and really showed us some of the vibrant culture of Joburg. Sugar Daddy's other cousin, Cousin R, one of Auntie J's sons, is also hugely intelligent, and he makes music and edits an online music journal. He was supposed to be in New York doing a month-long film course this month, but he had to cut his study short to come back for a sudden and unexpected funeral here. Since he was around, he decided to join us on the trip to Pilanesberg, to have a much-needed holiday. Although it was under such tragic ircumstances,
it was a real pleasure to get a chance to visit with him again, and he was great with Swee'pea. I think he really enjoyed spending time with Swee'pea, and it was nice to see Swee'pea enjoying his attention.

On Friday morning, Auntie M came to pick us up to take us to Pilanesberg Game Reserve, a couple of hours northwest of Joburg. I didn't really realize last time just how hilly Joburg is. I remember I did a project on South Africa in grade 7, and learned that Joburg is on the highveld, a high plateau about 2000 metres above sea level. At the time, I imagined the country being made up of a series of huge flat steps, but that's not the case at all. In fact, between Joburg and
Pilanesberg, there really isn't any flat land. There may be patches of flat land, but the koppies rise up out of them quite suddenly. The koppies seem to me to be misnamed. Koppie sounds like a cute little sort of miniature hill, but in fact they're huge and steep, sometimes almost the size of mountains, but rounded.

I expected the trip to Pilanesberg to be made on a large highway, but it was all on two-lane roads lined on either side with wide dusty red shoulders. It was quite rural, with occasional outcroppings of craft shops and roadside fruit and craft vendors under small awnings for a
bit of shade, and the parking lots were mostly unpaved, covered with the same beautiful red dirt of the road shoulders. I love the colour of the dirt here. It seems so lively, and well, African I guess. So from the roads I watched the koppies rise up and slope down, and I couldn't stop imagining them as giant animals sleeping under a cloak of grasses and thorny shrubs and small trees. I guess it's called bushveld when it's quite shrubby, and just veld when it's more just grass punctuated by small trees. It seems like nearly all the shrubs and trees have nasty-looking thorns, some of them a couple of inches long and white like teeth, I guess because the foliage is so valuable and hardwon in this arid land. We crossed the Magaliesberg (pronounced Mahaliesberg with a lot of spit and phlegm in your throat on the hal part), an ancient mountain range mostly rounded by time, and Hartebeespoort Dam, with a large almost suburban development on its shores and speedboats on its ripples.

There are still quite a few homemade tin shacks along the road, but there are also many brick and stucco houses, some just being constructed, which I find encouraging. And the shacks are more spaced out than in the townships of the cities. Outside of these homes, I noticed lots of people gathered at picnic tables under trees, or sitting on verandahs with a drink, and it looked peaceful and nice. I would have loved to take pictures of these people relaxing on a Friday
afternoon, but I also didn't want to stop with Swee'pea sleeping.

In the car, we talked about crime, among other things. I think Joburgers tell their crime stories (and I think every Joburger has them), the way new mothers tell their birth stories, except of course that nothing good and precious like a new life comes of them. They can be almost humourous when the person emerges from the experience (relatively) unscathed. But Auntie M has told me some truly horrifying stories. One of her friends was hijacked with her husband and young daughter in KwaZulu-Natal, and closed into the trunk of their car while their hijackers drove around for hours. Eventually, they let the husband out and told him to run, while they raped M's friend. I don't know what was happening to the daughter at this point, whether she was kept in the boot or freed with the husband, or, God forbid, raped with her mother. But Auntie M says her friend is recovering remarkably. Some people are amazingly resilient. She also told me about another friend of hers who was gang raped for hours, I think in the cottage of her own garden, when her husband was out. They have left Joburg, and she hasn't recovered as well as her other friend. As horrible as they are, I think it is good for me to hear these stories, otherwise I suspect I am dangerously naive, wondering if perhaps the walls and alarm systems
aren't just a bit paranoid.

As we got closer to Pilanesberg, I noticed huge reddish rocks scattered across the landscape and up the huge koppies, and when partly hidden by large shrubs, they looked like elephants' backs. After a fairly relaxed two-hour drive, we arrived at the thatch-roofed chalets of Manyane
Resort, just outside the gates of the game park. When we got out of the car, the heat really packed a punch, even hotter than Joburg or Cape Town. Luckily, the chalets are airconditioned and the thatched roofs keep them quite comfortable.

After we unpacked, Cousin R went for a walk, and Auntie M, Sugar Daddy, Swee'pea and I went for a drive in the park. By this time, it was 4 or 5 in the afternoon, so the animals were starting to stir from their siestas. One of the first animals we saw were zebras. Surprisingly, when they're at a distance and among the scrubby bushes, they are remarkably camouflaged. I felt like I was looking at one of those magic eye pictures, and eventually a zebra would coalesce out of the bushveld. But if I looked away, and then back to where I KNEW there was a zebra, I couldn't see it anymore. Later, we saw some right next to the road, and they were impossible to miss. We also saw a couple of rhinos, a mother and child pair, but they were fairly far away. Luckily I had a big fat zoom lens on my camera so I could see them a bit better. At one point, we came upon a clearing with several zebras and a herd of dainty little impala. It was a bit unnerving because every single one of them was staring somewhere behind us. At first we thought it was a truck that was coming up, somehow more interesting than we were, but then Sugar Daddy made out the silhouette of a predator under a tree some distance behind us. I took some pictures, which clearly show the shape of a spotted hyena. We tried to back up to get a closer look, but the hyena ambled away. I think it's quite rare to see a hyena, and I was excited.

When we got back to the chalets, the sun was about to set and it had cooled ever so slightly. We decided to go for a swim in the pool, since Swee'pea is so keen on splashing right now. I took a few pictures of the beautiful pink and purple spreading across the western sky, and the veld behind our chalet lit golden by the sinking sun. Then we got into our cozzies and went to the pool. The water held absolutely no shock as we got in, and felt warmer than the air once we'd been in it for a moment. It was magical to float and watch Swee'pea splash in Sugar Daddy's arm, huge smile across his face, while the African sun sank lower and spread its magenta rays above us. When we got out, the sky was mostly inky blues and greys, the stupendous sunset moment gone except in our memories. I think those moments in the pool will remain a highlight for both Sugar Daddy and I.

When we got back to the chalet, I decided to check out the loft above the living room. There was a bedroom with a large bed that we'd sleep in, but I wondered what was at the top of the steep narrow steps lined with sandpaper for traction. I almost took Swee'pea with me, but decided the stairs would be dangerous. Up above there was an airconditioning unit and two twin beds. I looked for some paper to write about the sunset swim, but didn't find any, so turned around to
go back down the stairs. I guess I lost my footing on the top step, and as I started falling, my life flashed before my eyes and I thought simply, "Oh SHIT!" I tried to keep balance backwards so I would somersault down, and bumped/slid down several steps. Eventually I stopped, my ass and thigh burning and tingling, both my wrists aching and my elbows burning from the ineffectual sandpaper. My first thought was profound gratefulness that I hadn't been holding Swee'pea. My
second was "Ouch, did I break something?" I didn't, but the back of my upper thigh swelled up like a third ass cheek, or so Sugar Daddy told me, and has now turned a very dark purple, almost black, bruise, nearly 5 or 6 inches in diameter. After I walked gingerly down the last few steps, Sugar Daddy gave me a big hug and told me to sit down. I started to cry; I'm not really sure why, fear and relief and pain, I guess, and Sugar Daddy just hugged me. Sometimes, actually most of the time, he knows exactly the right thing to make me feel better. These moments make me very glad to share my life and family with him, and I am grateful for the reminders, however painful they may be.

Auntie M and Uncle C brought some truly delectable nibbles, and we ate VERY well. After dinner and drinks, the three of us were left alone in our chalet. Swee'pea had a field day opening and closing the empty cupboards, and discovered the magic of drawers, although with a few
pinched fingers. At some point, I noticed a very large spider in the middle of the floor. Sugar Daddy got a glass to put over him to remove him in his customary way, but he had to be precisely accurate because the spider was nearly the same diameter as the glass. He was and he
slid some cardboard under the glass, took him outside and released him far away from the chalet. We saw two more smaller spiders that night, which he also removed. At this point, things got a bit silly. Sugar Daddy removed the pillows and duvet from the bed, just to make sure
none were nesting there, and we actually slept with the light on. It kind of freaked me out that Sugar Daddy agreed to all my paranoid ideas. Apart from the spiders, it was actually a really nice place to stay; the bed was big and comfortable, with nice soft sheets; the chalets were private; the pools lovely; monkeys, baboons, ostriches and impala roam freely, continuing the game park experience without the dangerous big game like lions, rhinos, hippos and elephants. I would certainly recommend it to anyone going to Pilanesberg.

The next morning was deliciously lazy and we set out for the park around 2 or so. This time it was all of us, and Uncle C was a real addition, with his knowledge of elephant behaviour, ability to identify birds, and share interesting trivia about the landscape and animals. Apparently Pilanesberg is in a huge ancient volcano. My mind still can't quite wrap around this because the volcano must have been like a hundred kilometers across or something, and so ancient its walls are huge koppies that look like giant dinosaurs in repose. Uncle C says it was the largest or second largest volcano ever on earth. We didn't see a huge variety of animals on this drive, but we had a great elephant encounter. At one point, the breeding group complete with little twin
babies came so close to the car that even Swee'pea pointed at them.

Later we stopped for a picnic on top of a koppie overlooking a dam. The picnic area is fenced from the park so there is no risk of a lion snatching Swee'pea or a hippo charging us. Apparently, hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa, responsible for the most human deaths, because when the fight or flight response is initiated they have absolutely no flight response. Their only predators are humans, so they have evolved to just fight anything that threatens them. We noticed a huge number of cars parked along the road on the other side of the dam. Uncle C got out his binoculars and hypothesized that the people must be looking at a lion. Anything else to attract that many cars, like an elephant, hippo, rhino or buffalo, he would surely be able to see. Uncle C and Auntie M have been to a lot of game reserves, and never seen a lion, which they are ok with but believe that some kind of hex is on them. We figured that by the time we piled back into the car and drove around, the lion would be long gone. Amazingly though, as we drove around we saw many many cars still parked there. And we saw a lion, a female walking through the tall golden grass. A minute or two later, she plopped down for a rest, lazily turning her head here and there occasionally. I actually found the experience a bit anti-climactic because lions are just so lazy. It's not really that interesting to watch a cat resting in the sun, no matter how large and majestic. We drove on, and spotted ANOTHER lion resting in the sun. The gates of the park were going to close in half an hour, and we didn't think they'd do anything until closer to sunset so we left. It was still impressive, and I did get one photo of the
first lion walking in just the right slanting sunlight to accentuate the definition of her muscles.

We had another sunset swim, although this time the sky was cloudy and not really colourful at all, and another al fresco delicious meal, and went to bed. This time we left the living room light on instead of the bedroom light. But as we were settling down, the power went out. The room became that pitch black that makes you think you're blind because your eyes are open and you can't see a thing. I had noticed the two candles and box of matches next to the bed when we first arrived, and thought it was cute that the resort was willing to provide a bit of romantic ambience for those so inclined. Now I realized that the candles served a much more practical purpose.
I opened the curtains a bit to let the moonlight in, and the night air started to flash and roar with lightning and thunder. Thunder sounds different through a thatched roof, more immediate. And the lightning was impressive, providing flashes of daylight over the veld. It rained a bit, and we fell asleep. Eventually, I don't know how long it was, the power came back on and the hum of the air conditioner woke me up. I was relieved that the power came back on, because I felt really uneasy being in an unfamiliar chalet, virtually in the middle of nowhere, with no lights and a pack of large scary spiders somewhere out there just waiting to crawl across our faces. Despite all that, we all slept well, and woke up refreshed.

Driving back to Joburg, we nearly ran out of gas because the gas stations are so few and far between. The first gas station we stopped at, nearly on fumes, was also a bottle store, and lots of peole were sitting under the trees lining the dirt parking lot with large bottles of beer. I noticed lots of people walking around dressed up in suits and dresses, which Auntie M surmised was their Sunday best (since it was Sunday and all). I also noticed quite a few people wearing khaki
uniforms that were mostly too big, which I guess might have been the closest outfits they have to a suit. I find it surprising how many people walk along major roads and highways here, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. In Canada, anyone who lives in the country can also afford a car, so it's really not something I'm used to seeing. We drove passed a couple of modest cemetaries, which made me sad, thinking of all the people who have probably died from AIDS buried there. I also noticed that the really neat and tidy houses had dirt yards, that lovely rich reddish dirt, which I guess they must sweep regularly or something. Other houses, which looked sort of unkempt, were situated in yards with the long grass of the veld.

When we got back into Joburg, we met some of Sugar Daddy's friends for lunch. At one major intersection, we noticed a sign that said "Smash and Grab Hotspot." Apparently, if you leave something valuable on the passenger seat, someone is very likely to smash your window and grab it. Sugar Daddy told me to take a picture, but I didn't think I'd be able to get my camera out on time. Plus, it would be highly ironic if my camera were smashed and grabbed out of my hands as I took a picture of the smash and grab warning sign.

We ate lunch at a nice Italian restaurant in a local mall, and talk was babies babies babies. It struck me as funny that it was the three men who were friends from high school, but it was their wives who did most of the talking. One couple had a two-year-old son who was just a baby last time we got together, and the other couple is expecting a baby any day in the next few weeks. The expectant father published a novel nearly a year ago, and we were able to buy it on our way out of the mall. When we got outside the sky was grey and ominous, and a few raindrops sprinkled on us. We saw distant lightning and Sugar Daddy was hopeful that I would get to see my first Joburg summer storm (it didn't storm the last time either). But the storm passed by us without much excitement; just rain. We could see lightning on the top of the next koppie but nothing here. Sugar Daddy was also hoping that I would get to see a Parktown Prawn, a huge ugly insect that seeks shelter in people's houses from the rain, but I also didn't get to see one of
those. I've seen pictures online, and I don't really feel the need to get too close to one of those.

As I mentioned Uncle C is a voracious reader and I got to inspect his book collection. I noticed he has a lot of Bill Bryson, who I'd heard of but had got mixed up with a concrete poet named bill bissett (I think). He told me that Bryson writes very funny sort of travel memoirs and that he can't read them in public because he laughs out loud a lot. When Swee'pea fell asleep in my arms a bit later, I took advantage of the opportunity to read some of Bryson's Australia book and I'm hooked. Must find some at the library when we get home. I would also like to look up some David Goldblatt, a South African photographer who had some beautiful, arresting images on exhibit at the gallery in Cape Town and who is also a friend of Grandpa Cape Town.

* * *

So it is later today and I still haven't had a chance to post this. Their computer was disconnected for renovations until today so there were some logistical difficulties. This afternoon Auntie J took us around. We went through the edge of Hillbrow, which I guess is the worst neighbourhood in Joburg. I'm quite curious about it, especially since I discovered a book of photographs of it in the 70s at Auntie J's house. Back then it was quite a cosmopolitan place, with modern high rises with penthouses, and a vivid night life of discos and late night street food. It looked like quite the happening place (full of white people of course, because it was still under apartheid, and black people weren't allowed to live in Joburg). In the 80s I think Hillbrow started to degrade, and now is rather slummy, very high density living. The apartment buildings I saw didn't look very nice, like the apartments South of Bloor (SOB) in Oshawa (I don't know Toronto very well, so I'm not familiar with the equivalent areas there).

Auntie J very kindly took us through some areas of urban decay where it was likely safe for me to take pictures. I mostly shot through the moving car though, so I don't know how well the pictures will turn out. All in all though, Sugar Daddy thought the downtown core seemed much
cleaner than before, the result of considerable effort to build housing and bring people back downtown. (As I understand it many businesses just up and left, leaving it a sort of dangerous ghost town.)

So we are nearing the end of our last night in Joburg. Tomorrow morning we will go for a walk with Auntie M, then fly back to Cape Town. I have really enjoyed the company of Sugar Daddy's friendly and intelligent family, and now I am wishing we were staying here longer. Of course,
there is still lots we want to do in Cape Town before we leave, so it's ok. Off to pack, now.

ps - dial-up again, so no photos for a while... sorry.

Joburg

So here's a funny thing: getting conflicting safety advice about flying with a babe in arms from two different airlines.

When we flew from Toronto, the airlines gave me another seatbelt to loop through my seatbelt and around Swee'pea's belly. The attendant told me that the safest position for him was facing forward. I did think that if any force were applied to the strap, Swee'pea would likely suffer internal injuries, but figured if that happened we were all toast anyways. And because Swee'pea is so squirmy, I kind of liked having a bit of insurance.

Today, on a different airline, the attendant said they don't give out those straps anymore because it's not safe. They've tested it. So I just held him in my arms, and because there was no leg room, he couldn't slip down between our legs anyways.

All of this mostly just serves to make me more anxious.

I was so itchy and the new ointment wasn't cutting it so I took a Benadryl just before we flew. It occurs to me now that it was the non-drowsy formulation, so likely had some stimulants in it, and stimulants are probably not the best thing before this nervous flyer is launched into the air. I cried during takeoff, I felt so scared. I think it was the Benadryl. So the flight was mostly fine; Swee'pea fell asleep right after takeoff and didn't wake up until we were safely back on the ground. But there was some turbulence when we encountered some high clouds, and I did feel very very anxious. Nevertheless, I enjoyed having a window seat for once, and found the last few minutes before landing exhilerating.

So... we're here in Joburg, staying with Auntie J. They have a beautiful big old sort of 1920's house, all on one floor, which is great for Swee'pea. He's having a blast. And there are all kinds of authentic art deco light fixtures and door knobs that I just love. It's a really comfortable house, tidy but homey, with just enough clutter to make me feel at home. And Auntie J and Uncle R are suitably keen on Swee'pea.

With all this heat, we've been giving Swee'pea lots of cool baths and dips in pools. He loves it. He's really living up to his astrological sign (Aquarians ARE water babies, right?). After his early months of absolutely hating the bath, it's a real pleasure to watch him splash and smile and giggle.

Oh -- and another plus to staying here is that they work from home and so have TWO computers, both with a high speed connection. Yippee!

So here's the weird guy in the back of the truck:

And a couple of treats from the Bo Kaap... lurid, eh? I LOVED it!

There are more pics on my flickr page, though it's annoying uploading from cd so I may just wait till we're home. Also if I post all my Bo Kaap pictures now, everything else will be a disappointment. So I'm being strategic.

Anyways, today we took Swee'pea to the zoo, which he didn't enjoy as much as the aquarium. I think it was hard for him to see the animals when he didn't really know what he was looking at. It's also hot here, and right now he is taking a nap with Sugar Daddy. Tomorrow we're being 'fetched' in the morning to go to Pilanesberg Game Reserve, which I'm told will be even hotter than Cape Town or Joburg. I hope they have air conditioning. We're still miserable with mosquito bites, and there are still mosquitoes here, which seem to have a nose for us, and leave the rest of the family. I think Swee'pea is also teething, so last night was rough.

I keep thinking about things I want to say on my blog but the heat is melting my brain and I can't remember when I get in front of the computer. Until I remember, I guess that's it...

ps - these are all images from Cape Town. I haven't shot much here yet.

Me so itchy

I am SO itchy. It seems I WAS getting bitten by mosquitoes, I just wasn’t reacting to the bites. Until now. The night before last, the bites suddenly became red swollen itchy welts that I cannot resist scratching. Swee’pea’s bites have also gone from small red dots to large red bumps – ALL OVER. People stop us on the street to ask about his horrible red bumps and to offer advice.

Yesterday morning, Grandpa Cape Town took me to a pharmacy to see what we could do for Swee’pea. But because he’s under a year, we can only use Calamine lotion without seeing a doctor. I have never actually used Calamine lotion before – I’ve never been so unlucky as to need it – but I can tell you now, it is NOT cutting it. I’m pretty sure Swee’pea doesn’t need to see a doctor, but since he’s only a coule of weeks from his first birthday, I think I’m going to get the ointment, at least for myself anyways.

What strikes me as funny about all this mosquito business is that several South Africans have asked me about the horrible nasty Canadian mosquitoes and other insects they’ve heard about. It seems Canada has a reputation for two things: mosquitoes (which are bigger than the ones here but mostly kept out of our houses with those lovely things called screens), and a welfare system so good nobody needs to beg (which I have set people straight on – is there any such thing as a welfare system like that?).

After we went to the pharmacy, Grandpa Cape Town said he wanted a coffee. I wondered if maybe he wanted to talk me alone about something. After ordering, and then going to the loo, he finally broached the subject that I thought he might want to. I won’t go into details, because I’m quite sure both he and Sugar Daddy would be upset by that, but the conversation left me feeling sad for the little boy Sugar Daddy once was. The sadness hung around me like a heavy necklace for hours, and I made sure to give him lots of hugs when we got back.

After lunch, we took Swee’pea to the aquarium down at the waterfront. It was another scorcher, and we figured the air conditioning would be a good thing, plus Swee’pea loves fish in fish tanks. He had a great time, swivelling his head left and right between the various fishes, eels and crabs, and the lights and exit signs. We wandered around the waterfront, which at 4:30 and 5 was still uncomfortably hot, and watched three different bands busking. I figure they must audition with some waterfront tourism organization because they were all so different. There was one kind of jazzy band with an accordion, banjo and saxophone, another playing big wooden xylophones, and a third choral men’s group very like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, with the stepping and kicking and harmonizing.

I have taken something like 7 or 800 photos. We’ve burnt them onto two cds but we have another full cd that for some reason just won’t burn. I’m hoping to get that sorted out before we fly to Joburg this afternoon. I’d like to have clean memory cards for the trip. I’m quite nervous about this flight, because it could be on a small plane, and last time we flew domestically here the flight was very turbulent from all the summer storms around Joburg, and the plane swerved left and right to try to avoid them. Flying here though is incredibly cheap, the cheapest way to travel, as well as the fastest, so it was a no-brainer that I will just have to try to cope with the scary flight.

We are having a good time, but perhaps not as exciting as last time. We’d been planning to come back for the World Cup in 2010 but now, for various reasons, Sugar Daddy and I are on the same page reconsidering those plans. Regardless of what we decide, it’s nice that our thoughts and feelings are pretty much in total agreement about our experiences this time.
I have been meaning to write about the hairy intersections here. You probably know that people drive on the other side of the road here (from Canada – the left side), and I’m still not really used to it. Intersections no longer make any sense to me because the cars never go where I expect them to. We have to be super cautious crossing the street on foot because our instincts of which way to look for traffic are all wrong. Now, as I approach a crossing, I repeat to myself “Look right THEN left, right then left…” I remember last time we got used to this fairly quickly, but when we returned to Canada we had to readjust all over, being supercautious about crossing streets and driving again. The intersections are also full of people on foot trying to sell just about anything, or mothers with their babies on their backs, begging. (Sugar Daddy’s stepmom cynically wondered if perhaps they hire them for a better return.) When the lights turn red, they stream out to the cars stopped hawking their wares or holding up their signs with their sad stories. I’ve seen vendors at intersections selling newspapers, black garbage bags, clear plastic rolls, sunglasses, beaded wire flower sculptures. I admire their entrepeneurial spirit.

So… off to Joburg now, that huge heaving metropolis with crazy traffic and apparently the highest incidence of road rage in the country as the news reported yesterday. Perhaps there I will be able to find a good internet connection and some time to upload some photos, perhaps not. Hope you’re all well and staying warm.

Downtown

Apparently the South Africa-Pakistan cricket match has just ended. Did you know cricket matches last five days?!? Of course, being an English game, they break for lunch and tea, so it’s all very civilized for the players. Thank goodness we can’t find cricket on tv at home. I think it would drive me nuts.

Today, another very very hot one, we went downtown. We got dropped off midmorning in the Bo Kaap, the original muslim area, which is full of colourful architecture. It’s positively lurid. Just wait till you see my photos then you’ll see what I mean. Looking over them on the tiny camera screen, I think there are some great ones, if I do say so myself. I’m dying to go back there because we didn’t spend much time there. Sadly, it’s not very stroller friendly. Most of the streets are still paved with very uneven, bumpy cobblestones, and there are not many sidewalks. What sidewalks there are, stop suddenly, or are interrupted by someone’s front steps, and have very high curbs. Because it’s at the base of Signal Hill, many streets are also very steep. Sugar Daddy was pushing and he overheated navigating all these obstacles, so he insisted we go down to a café for a drink. I could have wandered for hours, although I was a touch wary because in most streets there weren’t many people about.

Nevertheless, I think I got some great shots in only about half an hour or 45 minutes. Swee’pea was also getting a bit fussy, and he enjoyed the break at the little café. After our break, we reapplied his sunscreen and proceeded down Long Street, which is full of backpackers and all manner of businesses catering to young (and not so young) travellers. It was very busy with pedestrians, and not just tourists. I took lots of pictures of people and architecture, both together wherever possible, if someone came onto their balcony to look down. We had lunch at a café there, which took considerably longer than we expected, but it was fine. Swee’pea fell asleep as soon as we set off again, this time in the other direction down Long Street to Greenmarket Square.

I’m so glad I practiced shooting in front of people back in Guelph. Either that or brazenness comes naturally to me. I didn’t feel self-conscious at all, and figured that people could see me holding the camera up to my eye so if they didn't like it, they could move. A few people darted out of the frame as quickly as possible, but I think that was more out of a mistaken sense of courtesy than to avoid being photographed. And lots of peole just don’t even notice the camera, which is a treat. My camera made it obvious we're tourists, but I don't mind being labelled a tourist.

I remember last time walking around Greenmarket Square seeing all kinds of things and people I wanted to photograph, but I was too chicken. I felt like I had ants in my pants. Finally, I screwed up my courage and quickly took one shot, and I felt hugely nervous and silly and uncomfortable. This time I shot fairly indescriminately, although it was so hot in the square that people looked kinda grumpy when the camera was near them. So I tried to be respectful.

We walked through a pedestrian mall, and then down the Company Gardens, and took another break. It seems that the Company Gardens is a coveted spot for an informal siesta. People were sprawled in shady spots all over the place. Of course I took their pictures. Then we met Grandpa Cape Town around 3. We were hot and sticky and tired, but I really enjoyed the day. Wandering around, stopping in outdoor cafes, and snapping pics is really my kind of day. I hope we get at least one more like it before we leave the country.

We have one more day in Cape Town, then we’re going to Joburg for six days with a two-day outing to Pilanesberg Game Reserve, then we’ll be back in Cape Town for the rest of our stay.

more in-laws

This afternoon we went to Sugar Daddy’s maternal Granny’s place for lunch. She lives in a suburb a fair ways from Table Mountain, and like last time, we missed the turnoff to her suburb. She lives with her son, Sugar Daddy’s Uncle R. This family visit in some ways seemed a counterpoint to last night’s fabulous family visit.

It was hot again today, and even hotter at Granny’s. Her front lawn is parched drier than brown with nearly as many bare patches as shrivelled grass. The house was uncomfortably hot, and Granny made our lunch almost entirely in the oven: macaroni and cheese, some other things, and bread pudding for dessert.

Last time we were here, I really liked Uncle R and was slightly intimidated by Granny with her strong voice and constant motion. But things have changed. Granny must be pushing 90, and seems more tired and her hearing is poorer. She made us lunch, but that meant that we didn’t have much chance to visit with her. As for Uncle R, I was not impressed when the first thing we did when we got into the stifling house with Swee’pea was light up a cigarette. Sugar Daddy asked him to smoke outside for Swee’pea’s sake, and Uncle R just laughed sarcastically, “Ya, like I’m gonna smoke outside in this heat!” Granted, he smoked in the room next to the room that Swee’pea was in, but still. I was not impressed.

All I can do in these situations is weigh the options and choose the lowest risk to Swee’pea. In this case, the smoke inside seemed preferable to the burning heat hovering just outside the door and sneaking in through the windows. I felt bad cutting our visit short but after a couple of hours Swee’pea was cranky, sweaty and in need of a nap, preferably in the airconditioned car, and I also needed out of the heat. Which isn’t to say that Grandpa Cape Town’s house isn’t hot, but it isn’t AS hot as Granny’s. I didn’t feel bad for long though, because Uncle R told Grandpa Cape Town that Granny has to take three naps a day. So I’m sure our visit exhausted her. We will visit again before we leave, but only for tea, later in the afternoon, I think.

Coming home, Table Mountain was right in front of us the whole way. I got a chance to study it, with Lion’s Head to the right, and Signal Hill further to the right, and wonder at its size. It really dwarfs the entire city, and its skyscrapers can’t even come close. Last time I was here, I didn’t really understand how Lion’s Head got its name, but today I saw that it looks a bit like a natural, albeit crude, Sphynx somehow. And I love the way a line of trees lines the ride from Lion’s Head to Signal Hill, like the bristles on the back of a hyena’s neck.

Poor little Swee’pea seems much happier but his skin is suffering: he has a heat rash already, and of course all the mosquito bites. Poor guy got my skin and its vulnerability to heat rashes and sunburn, along with Sugar Daddy’s tastiness to mosquitoes, in the roll of the genetic dice. We took him into the pool twice today, to cool him down, and he loved splashing in it.

Amazingly, it cooled right down by about 7 pm. There is a lot of wind in Cape Town, and it seems to make all the difference, cooling down the evenings and nights. We went for a walk around Grandpa Cape Town’s neighbourhood, and it was a treat to stretch our legs. At home we walk almost every day if the weather’s ok, but here, there isn’t much within walking distance, and we’ve been driven everywhere. As we got towards the main road, we could see the mountain, and the clouds moving briskly over it in a pink and blue sky. I took some pictures and we turned around. At one point, the pink intensified over the mountain, and I noticed a tiny little crescent moon shyly peeking out between clouds. I took another picture, but I’m not sure if the moon turned out because the screen on my camera’s too small.

Sugar Daddy and I had a rare chance to talk on this walk, while Swee’pea slept. He doesn’t think he likes South Africa as much as he thought, and I think I would have to say the same. My expectations were higher setting out on this trip, so maybe it’s not a fair comparison, but the mosquitoes, as real as their nasty buzzing and bites are, are also a metaphor for me. I am noticing more of the not-so-great things this time around. Maybe it’s just the complexity of motherhood brought into the mix, I don’t know. I’m having a good time, and am certainly not regretting coming, but I’m not sure my former fantasy of living here for a year or two will withstand this trip.

By the way, I’m totally not able to keep up with your blogs. We just have dialup and apparently it’s quite expensive, so I write while offline then just go on and cut and paste. I’ll catch up when I’m home though I hope. For the same reason, I can't really edit my posts to add in the photos. Flickr just takes way too long to load. But just go check out my flickr page if you're interested.

wind and water

Well, I think we are settling in. Swee’pea is sleeping more and crying less, and seems more like his usual happy friendly self. I am worrying less about the sun, since we went to Kirstenbosch and the sunscreen has proven that it really does work.

Yesterday was really hot. Unpleasantly hot. I felt mildly ill off and on through the day. So we didn’t do much. But I did find a place to upload a few photos for only 8 rands, so I will update my earlier posts with them when I get a chance. We went for dinner at Sugar Daddy’s Uncle J and Auntie L’s house in Somerset West, and on the way stopped at the Strand for Sugar Daddy to take a dip in the ocean. It was still REALLY windy, and people on the beach were getting sandblasted by it. Swee’pea had fallen asleep in the car anyways, so we stayed inside the air conditioned sand-free car. I really want to see Swee’pea on a beach, but I think we will wait to go to Boulders Beach, which is sheltered from the wind.

We took the N2 to get there, which is lined with informal settlements. The homemade shacks are nearly piled on top of one another, but at least they have electricity now. Sugar Daddy pointed out the street lights and wires. It was an interesting drive, and we passed a few roofless abandoned buildings whose white walls were covered with graffiti. There are periodic pedestrian bridges, which look like tunnels snaking over the highway, and we noticed a line of cattle crossing through one of them, single file, which was strange.

Once off the highway, on the way to the Strand, there was a small pickup truck ahead of us with a muscled tan blonde man in the back of it. I don’t know if he noticed my camera, or didn’t notice the husband and baby in the backseat, but he smiled at me, then proceeded to go through a range of stretching exercises, followed by a chat on his cell phone, back to stretching, and so on. Sugar Daddy thought he was showing off. I thought it was pretty silly either way.

Uncle J and Auntie L are still as warm, fun and wonderful as I remember from my last visit. They love to entertain, and are really good at making you feel welcome and special. Uncle J is a potter, and last time we were here we were given wonderful wedding gifts that he had made. This time, he agreed to accept money from us, and we bought two beautiful large bowls that I couldn’t choose between, a couple of large mugs and a couple of small plates for Sugar Daddy’s mom. Their house is full of their daughter’s paintings and Uncle J’s pottery pieces, and is fabulously colourful and comfortable. Outside, it’s painted a golden yellow, and I took some pictures of the late afternoon sun shining on its warm walls.

Since we last visited, Auntie L was diagnosed with a benign brain tumour and had to have brain surgery. Benign is rather a misnomer when dealing with brain tumours, because they can still cause a lot of damage, and so can the surgery to remove them. I’m not sure whether it’s from the surgery or the tumour, but Auntie L lost hearing in one ear, and the right side of her face is paralyzed. She can’t blink her right eye and the right side of her mouth droops uselessly. But it’s amazing how much animation she can fit into the other side of her face. I was worried that her personality had changed, but from what I can see she is still as friendly, interested and just plain lovely as ever.

After our last visit, I sent cards that my brother made to all the family members I met, and Auntie L told me yesterday that she kept it on her fridge for nearly a year. We brought a small painting for them, also by my brother, (although we forgot it at Grandpa Cape Town’s) and she exclaimed that it sounded wonderful and what a special gift to be given. Seriously, it just made me feel SO good, and I feel privileged for having been invited into their home not once but twice. I’m hoping we’ll squeeze another visit in on our way to or from Stellenbosch before we leave the country. We have to bring their painting and pick up our pottery, which Uncle J is packing up in bubble wrap, anyways.

After a fabulous dinner of egg drop soup, ginger stirfried veggies with noodles, and a sort of strawberry mousse with melon, Uncle J pointed out a comet in the sky, which was very visible to the naked eye, and kind of magical. It disappeared before we left; I don’t know where. We drove back in the dark, listening to Johnny Cash sing his own version of other people’s songs. Grandpa Cape Town has much better taste in music than Swee’pea’s other Grandpa.

Dispatch from Cape Town

Being in South Africa again is both strange and familiar. I think this is more disorienting than 100 per cent strange would be. Last time, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if I would like Sugar Daddy’s family, or sharing space with them. Now, I know I like them, and arrived here with expectations. Coming here and discovering that everything is strange again, with little sniffs of familiarity here and there is hard.

I didn’t know that Grandpa Cape Town’s house had its own smell, but it does and it’s the same as the last time we were here. When we got out of the car at his house, around midnight, some night scented flower welcomed us. I noticed it again the next night. It doesn’t release its perfume until 10 or so, but it’s quite lovely when it makes its presence known.

Being here with Swee’pea is difficult. I think he is suffering jet lag. After the first exhausted night of good sleep, he woke up for hours in the middle of the night, screaming when we made any move to try to get him to sleep. Last night, our third night, he moved the screaming and awake part up a few hours, so that he fell asleep around 11:30 and slept soundly (mostly – just a few minor wakings) until morning. I did not, because of the nasty buzz of mosquitoes around our head. They don’t have screens on the windows here and our room gets way too hot if we close the window. Poor little Swee’pea has little red bites all over him, though he doesn’t appear to be too itchy.

I thought the flight would be the hardest part of travelling with a baby, but now I’m not so sure. I think it might be the worry. The sun is harsh, and I worry about it on his new soft skin, even with sunscreen and an extra-large UV canopy on the stroller. It makes it hard to do and see the things I want to do and see. I worry that he could get malaria from one of mosquito bites even though we are not in a malaria area. Yesterday he got sunscreen in his eye and it got all irritated and red, and I worried he was going to go blind. I can handle him having some discomfort, but permanent effects would cause too much guilt for my shoulders to bear.

I also feel like every question people ask about Swee’pea is just an attempt to gather evidence for a judgment on our parenting. I noticed this feeling around my own family too, and I don’t really think it’s accurate. I think it’s me. Mostly. But I feel our parenting is under scrutiny and not measuring up. We’re too indulgent, too protective, too worried. I am happy with our choices most of the time, it’s only around other people that I feel like it’s not acceptable or accepted somehow.

Anyhow… Cape Town is as beautiful as ever. In fact, even more beautiful than I remember. The mountain surprises me every time it comes into sight when we’re driving. It’s HUGE. And it’s right in the middle of the city. And the architecture is fantastic. I think the construction materials that they can use here make for much more interesting homes and buildings than back home. There are all kinds of styles, and they look wonderful all mixed together and multi-coloured. Lots of art deco, lots of sleek modern homes, as well as more traditional, and Cape Dutch, from what I can see over all the walls. It’s kind of a funny contrast, all the cheerful colours – pink, yellow, turquoise, terracotta -- with the walls topped with unfriendly spikes and razor wire. I am trying to take pictures from the moving car as we are driven around, to document just how wonderful and varied the architecture is. I don’t have high expectations of the photos in themselves, but I hope there will be a few worth sharing. Of course, the photos will have to wait, because Grandpa Cape Town only has dial-up.

Also on the list of both strange and familiar… the rhythm of the lovely South African accents is familiar but the words get tangled up in my ears, and my words elicit blank looks. I feel like I SHOULD understand what everyone’s saying since I’ve been here before, but I don’t. And I should know to ask for the loo or the toilet instead of washrooms, but I keep asking for washrooms. Somehow I just can’t bring myself to ask for the toilet; it’s just too vulgar. (I know, funny coming from me for whom nothing really is too vulgar but somehow asking strangers about the toilet is just not polite.)

This afternoon we went to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens at the base of the mountain. We had a nice walk around, in awe of the huge grumpy-looking mountain. Yesterday afternoon we went to the art gallery, which is in a lovely old building whose dark wooden shutters outdoors seduced my camera against the white stucco walls. They were showing a huge photography exhibit by a man called Santu Mofokeng. It was really great, so I picked up a book of his photos. I'm really glad I did. He made photos through the terrible, warlike 80's and has been all over since then. When I went to the loo, I had to take a picture of the dark wood window frame, open wide with a view of the courtyard, tiled roofs and Signal Hill. Because I have a toilet sense of humour, I had to keep the roll of toilet paper in the corner of the image. The light is fantastic here. They keep saying it’s overcast, because there are clouds in the sky or over the mountain, but it sure looks bright and sunny to eyes that have been stuck in short grey winter days.

Today it’s quite windy, so walking at the botanical gardens was pleasant and cool. When we got home, we noticed the smell of woodsmoke on the wind, so there must be a fire on the mountain. Grateful Dead’s song keeps going through my head. There are fires on the mountain every summer, fanned by the strong southerly winds over the dry dry terrain. Sometimes they get out of control and burn people’s homes, and I keep catching occasional glimpses of black charcoal stumps of old trees. It provides another stark contrast: black stumps against lush green giant aloes and birds of paradise, proteas and palm trees.

The house stays fairly cool with many bright airy windows and walls the colour pale sand. Sugar Daddy’s stepmom has great taste in décor (she was also a great advisor when we went clothes shopping the other day) and it’s amazing that the house feels so tranquil when there are five dogs living here. Granted, they’re fairly small King Charles Spaniels that stepmom breeds but still, that’s a lot of dogs! They’re very friendly and great with Swee’pea, endlessly curious about him and always trying to lick his hands and face.

Hopefully this weekend will be spent visiting various family members around the city. I also really want to walk around the Bo Kaap, the original Cape Muslim neighbourhood at the base of Signal Hill. It’s very colourful, from what I saw of it from the gallery, and I’ve seen other photographers make some beautiful images there. Also at the top of my list is a tour of a township. Last time we went on a tour of Soweto near Joburg, but we only saw the townships and informal settlements of Cape Town from the highway.

The other day I got out to take some pictures of a colourful Indian shop boasting things like “Glory Henna” and “Superb Pitted Dates,” and a man who was missing his front teeth came up and asked me to take a picture of him. So I did. He asked why I was taking a picture of the Curry Pot and I said because I liked all the signs and colour. He said, “you’re not from here are you?” and when I told him I’m Canadian he said he was born and raised in Cape Town and not working now. I told him I didn’t have any money and he asked me to take another photo and walked away. Seems strange to me to ask someone to take your photo and not make arrangements to get a copy. Perhaps it’s a way of leaving your mark on the world, a way of being remembered when you’re gone?

Anyhow… I’m moody as hell. Not sure what else to report, so I’ll sign off now.

Cinnamon Gurl from Cape Town

We're Here!

We are here. The journey was both better and worse than I imagined. Travelling with Swee’pea was fine, although he didn’t sleep much so neither did we, and we arrived in Cape Town exhausted and grimy. Worse, because it takes SO LONG! Some highlights:

• At home, we got to the airport in the freezing rain ok, and just in time. The flight boarded at the normal time, but then we had to wait an hour and a half for de-icing. Luckily though, we got a good tailwind over the Atlantic so the flight itself only took 6 hours and we arrived pretty much on time in Amsterdam.
• Shortly after takeoff, when we were still climbing very steeply, a very elderly, very frail man unbuckled and started walking towards the flight attendants’ area. The crew were all still buckled in themselves and told the man to get back in his seatbelt. He was somewhat unsteady on his feet, and his shirt was untucked, so I assumed he was a bit funny in the head. As he walked past me and Swee’pea, my first thought was that he might fall on us and hurt Swee’pea.
• I have discovered I have morbid thoughts on airplanes, and having Swee’pea there makes it worse. Holding Swee’pea strapped onto my seatbelt, I thought, well, at least if we go down, I’ll be holding him.
• Apparently it is like minus 55 degrees Celsius at 30,000 feet up or whatever altitude the plane flies at. It occurred to me that if we crashed, I would be very cold. The Atlantic would be freezing. The air would be freezing, and I imagine I would feel a few minutes of frozenness. But I tried not to dwell on that.
• Shortly after the crew unbuckled themselves, I saw them bringing an oxygen tank to the elderly man and he needed it the whole way to Amsterdam. At one point they asked over the PA, “Is there a doctor on board?” and I worried that he would die. He made it though, and when we landed some ambulance men came on board right away. They struggled quietly against the passengers trying to get off, until an Australian air marshall came behind them and yelled at us to get out of the way. Then, once the medics made it to the old man, he barked “Get off the plane! Go away!” Everyone listened. But we had to wait for people to clear so we could get our bags. Swee’pea was asleep in the sling (he slept through the first takeoff and landing but not in between) and I stood waiting. I noticed the air marshall had a gone, and wanted to get off as soon as possible.
• A woman with a young child, not too much older than Swee’pea (maybe 18 months-ish?) left him on the seat next to me and started fighting her way to the back of the plane. She didn’t give the air marshall the slightest backwards glance and barged past the medics, who as far as I could tell weren’t actually doing anything. The child bawled and sobbed and arched his back and slid off the chair. He started to walk to get off the plane, looking for his mom. I didn’t know what to do, or why she left the child there, but I couldn’t just let him leave, and I couldn’t let him cry alone, so I picked him up too. Some people laughed at me holding these two children, one fair and redheaded, the other black, sobbing, big fat tears rolling down cheeks from frightened eyes. Swee’pea woke up and reached out his hand to this child, and I thought it would have made a nice photo, these two chubby hands intertwined.
• Then I saw the child’s mom coming back, another slightly older child in her arms. I still don’t really understand what was going on, but she was relieved when she saw me holding her youngest, and said thank you when she took the child back. I noticed she was already at least six or seven months pregnant too… wow, what an armful!
• We sat in smoky Schipol airport for a while, where people are still allowed to smoke in designated areas. I used to think Europe was pretty cool for this, but now that I have Swee’pea, it just annoyed me. Not having any choice but to blacken my child’s lungs while I wait for a plane. It didn’t help that it was still dark at nearly 8:30 am local time (apparently Amsterdam is further north than Guelph) and when it finally did lighten, it stayed dim and grey.
• Security on planes is crazy in Amsterdam (maybe all of Europe?). They have all kinds of rules for “liquids and gels,” which they showed on a video before we got off the plane. I didn’t realized that white toothpaste and deoderant counted as gels, but apparently they do. Our brandnew tube of Colgate, purchased specially for the trip, was too big I guess, and it was confiscated. Everything else made it onboard once we put it in clear sealed plastic bags.
• The rest of the journey was comparatively uneventful… we all slept for the first five hours or so. Twelve hours is a very very long time on a plane. But Swee’pea was awesome, and mostly flirted with other passengers, took things out of the pockets of the seats in front of us and put them back in, and played with his toys. He just started to get a bit fussy as we landed, though I suspect it was more from having had enough of the plane than from the descent.
• Once we made it through the long passport line-up, we discovered that our big suitcase, the one that had our gifts, and my and Sugar Daddy’s clothes in it, was left behind in Amsterdam. Apparently it will be delivered to us tomorrow, and in the meantime we have an allowance of 100 Euros each to buy anything we need. So we plan to go shopping this afternoon.
• What’s especially annoying about this is that when I was packing our carry-ons I mentioned to Sugar Daddy that I kept thinking I should put enough stuff in our carry-ons in case our luggage gets lost. But we decided to just stick to what’s essential for the flight. When I laid awake listening to the freezing rain against our window the night before we left, I thought I should pack a spare pair of underwear and a spare t-shirt in case Swee’pea puked on it, but I forgot the next morning.

Oh well… it felt wondeful to walk out of the airport in just our t-shirts into a dark and balmy night. Now we’ve all slept, we’ve showered (and Grandpa Cape Town’s shower is lovely lovely lovely, even if you have to get back into dirty clothes), we’ve eaten, and it’s warm and sunny.

Now I’m off to buys some clothes… and new sandals I think are in order.

ps - thanks for your good wishes and good flight karma vibes...