Moments in time in the life of LB

After crying our tears for Pannayiotis and Georgos on the ferry from Crete to Brindisi, Katrine and I still had to make our way back to France with not much money left in the piggy bank. We were young, penniless and always ready for adventure!!

Just outside the Port area of Brindisi we were picked up in a combi with 3 gorgeous olive skinned dark greasy haired Italian studs; those kind that wind the windows down, stick tanned elbows out rested on the window sill of the car and half the face hanging outside to allow the wind to blow their hair back in the breeze!! We needed a lift out of Brindisi to the main highway on the road aimed for the north. It was already late afternoon and we didn’t have money to stay in the centre of town. These hunks drove us around stopping every now and then to chat and definitely some wheeler dealing was taking place. As it got darker we started getting a little nervous and eventually in our scarred voices we insisted that they drop us off with our bags. We were not into nonsense you know!! They drove around a while longer and dropped us on a large grassy patch with our bags. Headlights blazing all around and lots of traffic noise!! Ohh for a quiet sleep on a beach with only the sound of waves!!

We took out the ground sheet, slept in our sleeping bags and woke up in the morning in the middle of six highways and pantechnicon trucks going every which direction!! We jumped up very quickly and had our thumbs out in no time. Chewing gum as teeth cleaning facilities were non existent!! A big truck stopped and this time a kindly gentleman did take us 100 km’s out of town and put us on the right highway headed up north!!

In no time our thumbs out, a zooty black Alfa Romeo skidded to a halt to offer us a lift. He was going to Monza way up north and was happy to give us a lift. This Italian was afflicted with short shit syndrome in a flashy car and drove us 900km’s in half as many hours. If that car exists today you will definitely still find teeth marks on the dash board and finger nail marks on either side of the leather seats on the front passenger side. Unbeknown to us it was the weekend of the Monza grand prix and this young man did not want to miss out on any action. In fact I think he thought at times along that road that he was practising for his debut ride!! We did get there in one piece and alive to tell the tale. I don’t remember how we got in without paying. Maybe our Italian stallion had something to do with it!! We watched some rounds being raced on the race track, scored a checkered flag and late afternoon after an African wash in the basin in the toilet we decided that it was time to move on and continue with our journey to France. This time we kept our thumbs to ourselves and used the checkered flag to grab the attention we sought and a lift out of town.

You would have thought we had learned our lesson by this time. Once again we got into a car with a few young Italians and asked to be dropped on the road to France. Once again these young men drove around and around gesticulating as only Italians know how and talking loudly amongst themselves and even stopping a few times in the streets talking to different people. In times like these I often wondered if I disappeared at that point would there be any one who would recognise a picture of me and be able to tell someone where and when they last saw me alive!!

Katrine and I obviously had a talent in those days and it was to sound convincing enough to get these drivers to drop us off with our bags unharmed.

This time they drove around and eventually dropped us off in a dark secluded place with no lights or buildings in sight and dirt roads. We walked a little way feeling in the dark but decided it was just no use. Out came our ground sheets and sleeping bags and that little pen knife to ward off the attackers later!! We heard cars come and go in the night and really thought that our car load of Italians would come back to do us harm. Maybe they couldn’t find us in that maize. In the morning we woke with the first suns rays and realised we were in a quarry type come rubbish dump area literally in the middle of nowhere and no idea which way to start walking out!!

Once again the good always comes after the bad and an old man driving a tip truck picked us up. He took us to a garage stop and bought us a coffee and croissant before dropping us on the highway headed for France.

We got a lift to a border town and after an hours haggling at the border post between Torino and Grenoble the French Gendarme finally let me through. My Visa for France had expired and I had to convince the good looking French officer without sexual favours I might add that my Irish passport was waiting for me at the Irish Embassy in Paris and that once obtained I would not have to worry about the visa in the South African passport I did not have!! He finally believed me and let us through!! In Grenoble Kathryn phoned her mom who organised a train ticket for us back to Paris where we arrived after our 2 month summer ordeal? Tanned, worn out and lucky to be safe and sound back home!!

I want a Shirley Valentine Holiday to Greece

My relationship with Shirley Valentine started long before they even realised they were going to do a movie!! It all started many many…many years ago in Paris early one morning. Armed with backpack and train ticket I made my way down to ‘le pressing’ to fetch my friend Katrine Boutillier ( she has apparently since married into the Manoukian fashion family!!). I knocked on her door and that woke her…she was not ready to leave!! I saw a packed bag and a few things on the floor and she asked whether I could fit them into my bag? You can imagine my response…
“Absolutely no ways, if you can’t fit in your bag you just leave it behind!!!”

We had an exciting train ride to Brindisi. Katrine fell madly in love twice at first sight with Italians she could not understand and cried buckets each time at her loss when they left the train!! I had to ask always for “toilette” and cigarette” for her because she couldn’t say it in English. These are the French words written on the page just for your info!!! Of course by the end of my train ride my French had improved by double after spending a year ‘au pairing’ in France. I had the joy of translating every conversation that we had in English into French so Katrine could understand!!

We had much fun on our island-hopping-on-a-shoe-string-holiday. We slept mainly on beaches with a little knife down the side of the sleeping bag just in case!!! We fell asleep to the sounds of the small waves hitting the sand and sometimes that sound on pebbled beaches. We took a donkey ride up Santorini and enjoyed the night life on Ios. We laughed at the English girls who were always bright pink at the end of their first day in the sun and laughed at the Irishmen who wore socks on the beach. Those were the good old days when you woke up in the morning, went for a beautiful swim, changed into something light, left the back pack leaning against a lone tree or bush somewhere and you wondered into town for the morning to find breakfast and shop and returned to find your back pack just as you left it!!

We finally made it to Crete, the large island to the South of all others!! We found Panayiotis and Georgos very quickly or they found us!! This time we both fell in love madly – sun, sea and sex were the order of the day in that order I might add!!!

Sometimes Panayiotis and Georgos would have a day off work and Katrine and I would jump on the back of their 125cc’s and be driven to exciting places around the island. Sometimes we hitched ourselves around the island and that did leave us once in a compromising position – on a beach who knows where down a long windy lane with an old man!!! We no speak Greek and he no speak English but a common understanding of “take off your clothes and come swim with me” – had he been a Greek Adonis – who knows but he was just a dirty old man. Katrine and I looked at each other – absolutely no ways – we shook our heads vehemently and he promptly dropped our bags out his car - thank you very much for your thoughtfulness - and left us standing there with a long walk back to civilisation!!!

We finally had to leave Panayiotis and Georgos and make our way back to France. Buckets were cried of course from both of us this time as we caught the ferry back to Brindisi with absolutely no more cash and promises to return soonest!!!

I did return to Greece the following year much to the horror of the now ex boyf who had taken me 24 months earlier to Mykonos restaurant in Durban to break plates before I left!!! I of course had to go back and find Georgos who was now spending a little time in Northern Greece just after my Christmas trip home. I went to Khalkidhiki and skied in Mount Athos. I think it took me three hours to ski down my first slope without a lesson and no clue what I was supposed to do. I spent most of that time with bum in the snow and legs in the air – now I know what you are thinking but it wasn’t that at all. The only way to zigzag down the mountain and turn that corner was plop down in the snow and swivel me legs in the air to the right direction before getting back on my skis till the next turn.

We returned to Crete at the start of the summer and I found a job on a tour bus accompanying tourists from French and English speaking countries and a few Italians on a 5 day tour round the island of Crete each week. I loved that job and the people I met. I worked with Georgos the bus driver. I partied hard and worked hard but by the end of the summer I realised that lots of other girls had also come back to find their Georgos. Sometimes he was my not so dark Georgos and sometimes he was another Georgos but yearly visits from European and Scandinavian girls leaving husbands and boyfriends behind to find their Georgos seemed to me the norm. I laughed when I heard young foreign girls stop Greeks in the street and they would plead.

“I’m looking for Georgos. He has black hair and a moustache. I met him last night!!!! Half the males on the Island were called Georgos, they had black hair and a moustache!!!

This time when I do my Shirley Valentine trip to Greece I will most definitely not be looking for Georgos but hey what about Yannis… Dimitri…

For the sanity of us neighbours – just legalise it

I’m not talking good or bad, right or wrong or whether you should or you shouldn’t. It’s illegal – In this country it IS illegal!!!

People say it’s the oldest profession in society but that doesn’t make it right. But hey, people do it and they will not stop doing it!! - Paying for SEX

There were 3 girls at work in the house next door. I never saw them often. They came out to put the washing on the line in the morning and sometimes would get in or out of a car for a function outside of these 4 walls. I laughed at the one visitor as the girl would have to come out to meet him at the door of his car and then walk into the house in front of him. Sometimes he would come baring gifts – a box of donuts perhaps.

In the last 2 weeks before they finally moved out there were 4 raids on the establishment. Some policemen spoke to the ADT guards in our road and apparently some dagga, some pills and a person with expired papers were found. Duck tape was also found which usually points to packets taped up and placed in a garden. If they are tending a garden it is only for show and the place were illegal substances are kept! All these aspects were denied during the course of the next week. The pills were Chinese medicine apparently – maybe to help that lift that was needed coming from their loins!! One policeman admitted he didn’t want to arrest the Taiwanese pimp because he was such a sweet man and couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong!!!

All raids followed the same procedures. Loud banging on the door, a few grumpy shouts – I thought for my attention just to say ‘we are here’ – a walk round the garden where the vegetable patch was overlooked and what then looked like a search which I could only see happening in the kitchen. The rest of the house windows covered in thick red drapes was impossible to see. This then followed a fair long time of talking and laughter and then finally the police would leave with no one in hand cuffs. The neighbours finally left just over a week ago. I thanked the police profusely as I have finally got my life back and can sleep at night without being woken by cars and talking all day and all hours of the night! I did however express concern that not having been arrested they would just move the operation somewhere else and some other poor unsuspecting neighbour has just started their nightmare living!!

“Well as long as it’s not in our jurisdiction, we are happy and it becomes someone else’s problem”. Yes you heard right and that’s the policemen’s answer to the situation!!

These policemen are playing cat and mouse getting these establishments out of their areas into other areas and of course the same problems start again. What a waste of police money, time and energy raiding brothels for show with no arrests but to appease the public that someone IS doing something to protect us! No wonder there is little room for descent salaries after all that!!
Oh I almost forgot! They are shown appreciation for there brave raid actions by also being allowed to lurk down those very same passageways where the public were too!!

I have lists of number plates and pictures of number plates all handed to the police, the brigadier and my lawyers. No one really cares about these illegal acts and no one does anything about those visiting!

I would break up with my man if I found out he was visiting a prostitute and I knew about it. I would prefer my man to have an affair! For me the lesser of 2 choices I would not want to make but if I had to…I know that an affair means he might give up some part of his heart and soul but living next door to a brothel gave me a totally different perspective!!

No matter how far I think I’ve come since my Catholic school upbringing and no matter how broadminded I think I have become I obviously just don’t get it!!!

These men were fat, skinny, dirty sweaty, clean, rich, poor, bald, greasy haired, Christian, Jewish, Hindi, Moslem and probably some atheists thrown in too!! They arrive in the latest 4 by 4 models, BMW’s and the real old ‘skadonks’ that you can hear a mile down the road and you just know that noise is going to get louder and louder until it stops with a rattle and a shudder in the driveway next door. They arrive 1 to 4 men in a car 3 to 4 cars parked outside at some given moments (remember only 3 girls inside) and they go inside to poke it into the same limited space one after the other maybe even together – who the hell knows.

Some men stay for 15 minutes and would be called premature ejaculators – but in the brothel who cares!! Some men stay for close on an hour and you can just imagine all that grunting and snorting and sweating and then the next man walks in!! What’s a little bit of shared sweat between strangers huh!!!

At this point the clean or unclean methods respected in different cultures and religions are thrown out the window. No one seems to care whether those before eat beef or pork or mixed meat and milk in the same saucer, whether they are alcoholics or smokers! The desire for illicit sex is obviously so strong that they don’t care about what ever it is they are anti in the real world and are just happy to go lurking in passageways that hold proteins of all food types and behaviours - There’s definitely no time for cleaning in between each act !! They don’t care!! They paid for it and their wives and religious leaders just don’t know!!! The Catholics would leave and say a Hail Mary or 10, I would think - but the others I’m not so sure what their religion would require!!

It’s quite funny actually but it’s the only time when all people of different religions, races, creed, cultures and colour all meet in the same place and are happy to share!! The real rainbow nation!!

If I was a prostitute – I’d make them pay big, I mean real big! As much as I find the above conduct unbecoming of any man I think we should all fight for it to be legal. That way the police would not waste time and energy on farce raids. They could move into a red light district and leave us neighbourhoods alone where we the women and children hang out!! The brothels can be taxed for all the cash they get paid and help pay toward this economy. The prostitutes could get regular AIDS tests and like America if they have AIDS they are out!! I don’t care much for the men getting Aids but I do care about those poor unsuspecting wives they go home to and those children that would be left behind!!

For the sanity of us neighbours – just legalise it!!!

So Paul or no Paul – Well done to the Sharks!!!

I wonder what Paul the Octopus would have predicted on the big shark WP game yesterday. Had he lived in his natural habitat and seen Sharks in action maybe he would have gone for the clam under the less offensive blue WP colours. Quite frankly I never did understand this whole Paul the octopus thing and before I even got to understanding – it’s dead. My fascination is with those people who would want to fly it as an esteemed guest from Germany to Spain to honour the fact that he ate a clam under a flag and in so doing predicted a match win.

What would have happened to dear Paul after the match had he chosen the clam under the German flag before that fateful semi final when they lost to Spain!!

An Octopus has a fairly short lifespan of 2 and a half to 5 years depending on the species and in this time females can lay up to 100 000 eggs. The octopus is considered by some to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates!!!

The octopus Paul, who lived in the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen Germany, was born in Weymouth, England in 2008. He was called a traitor to England when he apparently ate the clam under the German flag predicting that Germany would beat England during the Soccer World Cup!!

For the prediction, two boxes were lowered into the salty soothsayer's tank, each containing a mussel and the flags of the two opposing teams. Astonishingly watched by a myriad of reporters, Paul would head to one box, wrench open the lid and gobble the tasty morsel and that country represented by the flag under which the box was placed was predicted the winner!! This two-year-old octopus that had been likened to having possible psychic powers turned into a worldwide celebrity for accurately predicting the winner of Germany's five World Cup wins as well as their two defeats. Paul also tipped Spain to beat Netherlands in the final!! Some of his predictions were hence carried live on rolling news channels in Germany. He was even given a replica of the World Cup after the final as a reward for his perfect eight-for-eight record in picking matches as camera crews watched!!

And it’s actually been said - "There's no rational reason why he always got it right!!!" Are we even questioning that he got it right or that he happened to eat a morsel!!

Can you believe that even bettors from around the world made small fortunes based on Paul's uncanny picks, said Graham Sharpe, media relations director at William Hill in London, one of Britain's largest bookmakers? Sharpe said he had at first been sceptical about the oracle octopus. But he soon became a believer.

"I suspect that Paul's predictions could have made about a half a million pounds," Sharpe said, adding he estimated William Hill paid out £100 000 pounds on his picks at its 2 300 outlets.

"We had people coming in asking who Paul had picked before they placed their bets," Sharpe said. "I'm sure there were a lot more people too who were too embarrassed to tell you they made their bet based on what the octopus said." But he kept getting it right," said Sharpe.
"I've seen a lot of things in my lifetime but this is the first time in 30 years I've ever seen people making their picks based on what an octopus tells them – a non-human tipster," Sharpe said that anyone who had placed a £10 accumulator bet on Paul's picks from the start of the World Cup would have won £3 000 by the end of the tournament.

Sharpe said he, unfortunately, did not follow Paul's advice. He deemed it too embarrassing and said he was going on holiday soon to the seaside where he intended to eat as much octopus as he could possibly cram down as revenge!!

Some Germans where upset at the treachery of their octopus Paul predicting Spain would win and with people threatening to eat him, Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero called for octopus bodyguards. – I ask any sane person out there to relook at this statement!!! And on top of that Spanish Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian called for the creature to be given an "immediate" free transfer to Spain to "ensure his protection." A businessman from Spain also offered €30,000 ($40,000) to buy Paul, but Sea Life declined. I bet they are kicking themselves now. They would have €30,000 in the bank and that business man would own a dead Octopus!!

The madness didn’t end there - the world's most famous octopus had also joined several other prominent English stars David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand, Lewis Hamilton, Noel Gallagher and Sting in supporting the English 2018 World Cup bid because he was born in England. Are we supposed to take these people and this bid seriously!!

Paul’s fame was short lived when management and staff at the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre found he had passed away overnight of natural causes. The high life and fame definitely did not prolong his life!! Within an hour of his death, more than 150 messages of condolence were posted on Paul's "official" Facebook page.

In Argentina they tried similar predictions by using Sayco the dolphin. A psychic parakeet in Malaysia picking Spain and penguins picking Durban July winners!! They even tried to get a shark in the aquarium in Cape Town to predict a WP win over our men in Black. I ask you, using a shark to eat the food from a man in either WP or Natal colours!! Tempted fate they did by using a Shark!! They didn’t tell you did they that he nearly gobbled the WP man and the food all up!! – If only they had used another sea creature then maybe WP might have won!!!

So Paul or no Paul – Well done to the Sharks!!!

I just love the colours of Africa - Don't you?

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt!!

A really good overseas holiday has a checklist, some more important than others. Its about what you saw, what you did and what you experienced so that you can wear that ‘been there, done that got the T-shirt’ phrase on a nice new Top!! Better than ‘all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ because that would mean you actually hadn’t even been there!!! One of the most important aspects is experiencing a different culture! I’ve been to The Yangtzee river, Xian and the Great wall in China, The Tran Siberia train ride from Moscow to Beijing and even seen Santa Claus in Lapland so I should know am little about these things.

Today I’m going to take you through a virtual tour of that experience in the Eastern Cape.

Most people like to shop till they drop. They even take an extra suitcase. A family I knew literally went with the clothes they were wearing and overnight bag and bought a whole new wardrobe to bring home!!

While the women are out shopping with Mr’s credit card the men are sitting in the pub having a few ales, drowning their sorrows before they get those statements, some even wondering how lucky they might get from the guilt of her spending!!!

Eventually the women get tired and need a good chin wag over a cup of coffee! They have to convince themselves that all ‘that’ spent on ‘this’ was absolutely worth it!!

No holiday would be complete without visiting a few old churches. I was upset to hear that when one now pays to light a candle they go on electrically. No more good old fashioned wicker candles!!

A few cultural places are always on the map although some people like to just look at it from the outside and then brag about what they did!! I met an American traveller once and all he did in each place he visited was to go the American Embassy in that area and take a picture!! Quite a collection he must have!! But back to the Eastern Cape and a little bit of culture!!

Of course the old buildings are always my best. I just love to wonder the streets and look at the architecture!! I could spend all day just walking, snapping and experiencing.


One has to experience the night life, drinks and a disco maybe!! Even at 75 they like a good party and a few drinks. I took a trip to Russia once, average age 75 years!!! There were amongst the crowd 5 single ladies and one single gent!! All the ladies wanted favour with Sir and Sir was happy to wine the ladies!!! There’s hope for us all!! He was buying the drinks and the ladies were drinking!!

These days you can’t go anywhere without looking at real estate and imagining the life if you could just buy a house or some property there!! A place with a view – position is everything!!!

And in the end I am always fascinated by how others live and what it would really be like to actually make that move!!

If that is intolerance and I am intolerant…I don’t mind!!

To wear or not to wear the headscarf is a question being asked in many non Muslim countries of the world today. With the banning of the burqa (full head cover) in public places in some countries France, Belgium, Turkey and Kosovo and the headscarf banned in schools in France and about to go the same way in some other European countries I had to ask myself the big Question – How tolerant of others am I??

I was walking through the mall the other day and a woman (I think) in full black outfit and burqa with slightly dark reading glasses on through the slit in the eyes, came walking towards me and I looked really hard trying to understand what this was all about. I have not read the passages in the Koran that insists on this practice so am fairly ignorant on those matters on this subject. My understanding is from my perspective of freedom!! I am not being rude when I say ‘I think’ but in full honesty it could have been anyone under that garment!!

Anyway back to this idea of looking…and I remembered a brilliant 2 part series TV show I watched fairly recently when the first picture was of a young suicide bomber blowing himself up in London and then followed the whole story on how he got to that moment in time and in the mind. His sister who was a devout Muslim did not wear the burqa and was ostracised by those who did and the men who wanted her to do so. One day she tried it after a friend explained to her that when wearing a burqa people treated you really badly…like a ‘non person’. She then got similar ‘non person’ treatment!!

I do apologise in advance for my feelings but when looking at a person who is choosing or maybe forced into choosing to cover up the whole body with a flowing rob just like Denis Roussos did when trying to hide his large size, I got to thinking of others who do the same for different reasons!! Our nuns in Catholicism wear full dresses and cover their hair. Practical philosophy followers wear flowing ankle skirts and not so tight tops. The Amish wear simple outfits with long sleeves and long skirts. The fundamentalist Mormons also have their thick course dress material and the ‘we all buy from the same catalogue one choice style’ look and awful long thick stockings that must be worn. I am sure there are many other instances of dress code which make you conform to belong through religion, customs and beliefs. We have the total opposite here In SA with the Zulu maiden who is allowed to let it all hang out!!

I do not even mind the head scarf that covers up the hair. It is the face and the eyes that matter to me!!!! It’s the covering of the face and the mouth and the eyes with the burqa that make me think ‘non person’. If your personality shines through your face and eyes and expression which to me it does and I can’t see you, you become ‘non person’!! And I can only think that out of choice or husband’s choice that person wants to be a non person. Intolerant - yes absolutely but my intolerance goes deeper than that!!

Gheerah is the driving emotion that is supposed to protect and safeguard a man’s own woman and children from the leering look of strangers. Hijab the terminology for covering yourself fulfils this action. A real man would thus want this for all women so he can’t leer at others and others can’t leer at his possessions. If people choose to really wear these full outfits because of their own relationship with God and the humility they feel in face of him. I understand; but when it is a male that dominates the world and is doing this to curb the lust he might feel. I freak out.

Especially when living next door to a brothel! The police have checked the number plates and the car owners are a large percent Muslim! They even arrive from Mosque still dressed in their white robe and turban. I know this is a small percentage of men and men from all religions do visit (trying very hard not to generalise) But when you walk in a mall and the man is dressed in jeans and normal clothes and the woman is covered from head to toe…I just don’t get it!! My intolerance level heightens!!

I realise that my tolerance is ruled by do unto others as you would do to yourself.

In calcutta in India (a largely Hindu society) a devout Muslim teacher who does not wear Hijab with full face burqa was told by her students that they would not come to class unless she wore it. In some places in France and Norway statistics show rape has increased in certain areas where hijab is not practised!! Even in Australia a Muslim cleric condoned the rape because the girl was ‘asking for it’.

If their was absolute freedom world wide and only those women who really wanted to wear it, did and I was free to visit Iran, Iraq and a few other Muslim countries without conforming to Hijab I think I would be more tolerant and advocate to not ban the burqa – full face cover. But in its symbol of suppression for so many people in worlds where freedom of women is non existent in mans insistence to keep her as a non person because of what he feels and his non ability to fight these feelings with reasoning instead of succumbing to it – I say – Ban the burqa!!

If that is intolerance and I am intolerant…I don’t mind!!

P.S. – thought left in a Muslim internet chat room!!

‘What kind of dignity a non-believer has by the way; they conduct their life and expose themselves. They have removed the shield of protection, that modesty of Hijab and left themselves unprotected and that is the cause for the assault, which takes place once every ten seconds in rape and murder around the world. But those true Muslims who observe proper Hijab are protected from such assaults and not one [case of] this type is ever heard of.’

Afrikaans - To speak or not to speak!!

I was very upset the other day when I read the following in an article in news24 the other day.

"Cosas condemns any racial tendencies that seeks to close doors of learning for the black African students, who are indigenous people of this country and Africa at large by having foreign, unoriginal Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in some racist schools, more especially in the West Rand region under racist Afrikaners management," a statement from Gauteng provincial secretary Oagile Louw said.

I was left wondering if all Afrikaans schools are racist or only those on the west rand!! And furthermore why are some people still intimidated by Afrikaans 16 years into our democracy. It was the language of the oppressor but in Africa so was French, Portuguese and English and that hasn’t stopped the people in those countries from expressing themselves in these European tongues!!

Afrikaans is an interesting language and it is a relatively new language in History but that does not make it a language that should thus be ignored. If you asked me where Afrikaans came from I would always say that the Dutch bought it out in 1652 when they established a colony in Cape Town. A couple of years later the Huguenots, mainly French protestants who had moved to Holland fleeing catholic persecution came to South Africa on ships to settle in distant lands. There were German, French and Dutch Protestants in this group so although never mentioned I am sure that German and French did have an influence as well as the Malay, Portuguese and some African languages in its development.

According to Wikipedia and South African statistics Afrikaans is the 3rd most spoken language and it has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all official languages. It is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language. When I go to my sister’s farm in Bloemfontein we have to communicate to her staff in Afrikaans. We don’t force them to speak Afrikaans - it’s just that they don’t know any English!!

So why am I making all this fuss!!

I love languages. I speak a few myself!! I never learnt Zulu unfortunately because in those days we learnt English, Afrikaans and maybe French or German!! I did not live on a farm like Eddie from Ficksburg or my friend Debbie and so have an extremely limited knowledge of the Zulu language and I can’t even call it Fanagolo. I also hated Afrikaans until the travel bug hit me and then I realised how fortunate we were!!

I was sitting alone but not by myself in a hot spring in Iceland, surrounded by snow, northern lights haphazard movement across the sky, bottle of Irish Baileys in hand and I was contemplating life. Those of you who spend time alone will know that other people’s conversations can be quite interesting during these times. I was listening to a foreign language spoken by an elderly couple and after understanding the just of the conversation I asked them what they were speaking. It was Old Norse a language spoken by the older generation of Norwegians and I could understand a bit – I am sure that was because of Afrikaans. 4 Months later I found myself in Akureyri watching the sun come down to the horizon on 21st June before bouncing off to start its next daily cycle. There we were a few in the back packers all come to see the midnight sun and once again conversation flowed in many languages and Afrikaans.

When I studied my Travel and tourism diploma in France; paid for by my fish cutting antiques in Iceland I had to choose a 3rd language. I had French with difficulty but essential, English as my 2nd language and I chose German. The girls in my class and I think one male student, had all done German for matric in France. Verbal comprehensions were my best. I understood a lot more than anyone else in my class – That was because of Afrikaans!!

My favourite sport is snow skiing. If you want to woo me, offer me a snow ski holiday somewhere in the world!! My most frequent destination is France but ski resorts are multilingual places in this modern world. I laugh now but my children definitely don’t laugh at their sergeant major mom who got them up before dawn, fed them breakfast and made sure they were standing at the ski lift as it started working in the morning. First up the slope and first to come down!! That powder some mornings was to die for!! Many a time on my own, I took my food and drink in a backpack, eating it sitting on the lift so as not to waste a single moment. The only time I took off those skis was to go into the powder room (but definitely nothing powder about a ladies toilet on a ski slope). Thank goodness I’ve mellowed and now will stop for lunch when others have gone back to the slopes after theirs!! The joy about the long ski lift rides was again those overheard conversations. I spoke Afrikaans and a few German words to people from Holland, Luxembourg, Germany and even spent a day following a man from Belgium slope to slope kamikaze style which never would have happened if I did not have Afrikaans. He could not speak English and would definitely not have wanted muted ski lift conversation that day!!

I remember in those early days of my travels, travelling in a combi called the DOOS from Nice, France to Bad Durkheim a place in Southern Germany. We stopped at a contact simply known as Jan, a big German wine maker. We had never met him before. We mentioned a few names and we were sleeping in the DOOS behind the garage in no time picking grapes during the day and drinking ‘neue’ wine by night, eating Kotelett, Bratwurst, Leberwurst, Sauerkraut and Apfelschnitz. Jan used to send his daughter Dagmar for translating purposes to the delight of my 4 male travel companions but he treated us special because we made an effort with him communicating in Afrikaans and 3 or 4 German words!! Before long we were all sleeping in the spare room of his house!! Incidentally I had the most fun as 21 polish men were also picking grapes at that time and minding my own business the vines were parted every now and then with a flurry of polish words being spoken and sung and raucous laughter from all other poles in earshot. Afrikaans definitely did not help me with that language but we had a good laugh!!

I went to Egypt once. Rode a smelly camel into the desert and bartered in the souks using the name Bafana Bafana which delighted the local ‘mad about soccer’ Egyptians. I thought I was buying bargains but I’m sure they made the most out of the deals we finally agreed too. I visited the pyramids just on the outskirts of Cairo. I had finished reading ‘The Orion Mystery’ and in days had booked my trip and here I was making my way down the narrow passage into the bowels of the pyramid. I thought I was the only one there until I noticed 2 people and a familiar language being spoken. All the way to Egypt sharing an ancient chamber visit with one other couple and they were speaking Afrikaans!!! We laughed all he way back to Cairo centre.