My newfound patience and other last-minute farm remnants

All the time I've been on the farm, I've been complaining that I haven't been seeing enough birds. Our yard, the former grounds for a cattle-dip against ticks, has only one small paw-paw (papaya) tree and the shell of a long-dead tree, providing very few branches for the birds of our territory. However, this week, amongst my marking of 400 term papers (including a grim 200 essays), I had many wistful moments staring out the windows at the cold morning beyond. The procrastination achieved from avoiding marking gave birth to the fiercest of bird-watching patience. A patience, I might add, that would have saved all my complaints from the start had I really given their winged flight the time of day. My old, telephoto lens in hand, I managed a number of identifications of some of the birds hopping about our yard. Since Johannes and I have spent our days at work, I almost missed out on these early morning sightings entirely.

There has been one other very important photographic capture: that of the warthogs. They march, they chomp, they rustle, they grunt, they crunch, they scurry, they bury, they grovel, they trot, they meander, they scamper. They are so quick to scatter at the slightest noise and so, I have never managed a photo. While far from brilliant, I have some evidence that they have been trimming the outside hedges of our yard quite sweetly.

Several months ago I found a felled giraffe on my road off the farm en route to school. It was devastating to see the great beast in stiff rigor mortise, as though it had been frozen in time and simply knocked over. Later I found out it had walked into an electric wire and toppled from electrocution. The body was removed and the wires have since been raised. Meanwhile, the giraffes stayed far from our quadrant of the farm but in the last months have begun to return. Now, we have a family of 5 that frequently visits with a loud munching on the branches just beyond our fence. We have even seen the male-head visiting the burial sight of the dead giraffe. Incidentally, Johannes and I happened upon part of that particular giraffe's lower jaw and now have in our possession 12 miraculously huge and well-formed tree-munching molars.



A few other notes for this section of photos:
** Some alarmed female nyala visited Johannes and I on our braai yesterday and actually grunted us!





** Kingfishers are some of the loveliest birds I've come across in South Africa. They mate for life and always travel in pairs. The Woodland Kingfisher male in this instance is blue and the female, as usual, brown and dull -- although she's quite sweet and yellow!





** Warthog males travel together while the females travel with the babes, as do most of the animal families. Warthogs live in dens, usually dug conveniently into the roads which create some interesting texture to the driving surfaces of the farm. When they run they scatter to the winds in a flurry, but always with what we call their "aerials" (aka tails) in upright position. An aerial here is what is known in the USA as an antenna.





**I've always noticed yellow birds visiting our fences and just mistook them for the very common weaver birds throughout the country. I was amazed to notice them right outside my window in the grass and could finally identify them as Yellow-fronted Canaries. Now I know why it always sounds so lekker (nice) outside our house!

Shannon Kelly has an ellie in her belly

Firstly, I have to give credit to my mother for the title of this blog!

Secondly, an explanation. What?! An ellie in my belly? Yes, it is true. How do I even begin to explain? Did I not become a vegetarian 5 years ago from a story I read about elephants?! MY WORD. I was vegetarian for 2 years, only to give it up upon coming to South Africa and henceforth bought/ate as little meat as I could get away with. Until I came to this farm. Now, almost all I eat is venison (and thanks to Mozambique, prawns).

Two nights ago we became the recipients of a 20kg bag of elephant meat. Some foreign hunter came to the next door farm to hunt an elephant for approx a million rand -- and no, he didn't want to take the meat home with him. Thus, it appears the meat is being healthily distributed amongst the community.

So last night, in celebration of my last day at school Wednesday and watching the Opening Ceremonies for the World Cup, Johannes and I supped on rice, elephant stew & J.C. Le Roux bubbly to the sounds of cheering & Vusi Mahlasela (one of the South African treasures who sang at the opening last night).

I have to share, that in preparation of making elephant stew, I decided to peruse the internet for recipes. Ha, ha, ha! All I could find, on multiple sites:

******
Ingredients:
1 Elephant, 10 Warthog, 100 kilogram tomatoes, half ton potatoes, 100 kilogram salt, 1 wheelbarrow onions (heaped), 10 liter vinegar, 20 liter chutney, 4 Guineafowl

Method:
Hunt the elephant, warthog and guineafowl. Hang guineafowl to ripen. Cut elephant into edible chunks, (will take about a month). Boil the warthog with other ingredients (except guineafowl) till nice and juicy. Now boil elephant chunks over high flames till tender. (will take about 4 weeks) and add everything together. Boil for another 5 to 7 days.

Produces about 3,500 helpings.
Note: If the above isn't enough, add the guineafowl as well.
******

Although I would never buy elephant meat or kill an elephant or want to watch one die, because we were given meat that would have been a sin to throw away, we had to do SOMETHING productive with it. I ended up adapting a Jamie Oliver recipe and thought I should be the first to produce a legitimate Elephant Stew Recipe, for the masses that might be interested. It was incredibly tasty, actually, though the meat was still a might bit tough.

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Hearty Elephant Stew Recipe

ingredients
• 4 tablespoons plain flour
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 800g stewing elephant (or any other type of venison), cut into 2cm chunks
• olive oil
• 2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
• 3 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 sticks of fennel, trimmed and roughly chopped
• 2 sprigs of rosemary, leaves picked and chopped
• 4 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked and chopped
• a knob of butter
• 6 sprigs of fresh parsley
• 2 vegetable stock cubes
• 1 steak bone
• 600g quartered potatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

First, make a broth with the stock cubes + any leftover bones if you have them handy. Since I didn't have any beef stock cubes as Jamie suggested, I used a left-over beef-chop bone to make a broth. Boil in 3 cups of water, along with 2 veggie stock cubes for approx 2 hours. Set aside.

Dust a chopping board with 2 tablespoons of flour and a good pinch of salt and pepper, and toss your chunks of meat through this mixture until well coated. Heat a large pan on a high heat, add a few lugs of olive oil and fry your meat for 5 minutes to brown it. Add your chopped onions, carrots, fennel, rosemary, thyme and the knob of butter. Add a few tablespoons of the broth, give everything a good stir, then pop the lid on the pan and let everything steam for 4 to 5 minutes so the flavours really mingle together.

Take the lid off so your meat and veg start to fry, and stir every so often for 5 to 10 minutes. Chop your parsley stalks finely, and once the onions start to caramelize, add them to the pan with your remaining 2 tablespoons of flour. Stir, and pour in enough broth to cover the mixture by a couple of inches. Put the parsley leaves aside for later.

Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down to medium low so that the stew is just simmering. Add your potatoes and slow cook for at least 2 hours with the lid slightly askew, or until the meat falls apart easily. Keep an eye on it as it cooks, and add splashes of water if you think it looks too dry.

Put your chopped garlic in the middle of a chopping board. Add most of your parsley leaves with a teaspoon of sea salt and ½ a teaspoon of black pepper. Chop everything together so you get a kinda chunky paste. Add this to the stew and stir through. Chop the last of your parsley leaves and sprinkle over before serving.

Adapted from http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/venison-recipes/venison-aamp-juniper-stew
*******

Moz, Part 4: Driving from North to South

The road from Pebane back to Kwa-Zulu Natal is long. The roads are poorly maintained with enough pot-holes to kill a normal rim in an hour. Lucky for us, in our big-manned Land Cruiser (vehicle of Africa) we only had rattled bellies and brains, but the vehicle was fine! We traveled from Pebane to Inchope the first night. From there we drove solidly to Vilankulos and then on to Praia de Tofo (near Inhambane). Our last long drive was to Maputo and from there back to Pongola. All in all, 5.5 days of driving, sleeping, and swimming.

We saw stacks of people all the way down -- there is nothing such as the "wilderness" in Africa, truly there are people everywhere. My photos are poor because of the road conditions & my difficulty to focus through the windscreen. However, take them for what they're worth! The last two photos I co-opted from another website, as I ran out of camera battery 1/2 way down!







I took notes on the drive down. They are as follows:

Pebane to Inchope:
* crippled man with a rock tied to his write to keep spasms in his hand still; big smile on his face; always walks up and down the road, the happiest guy, Johannes says

* kids selling live chickens - holding legs, flapping wings, struggling for freedom whilst being held out over the road.

* bikes laden, used as modern day wheelbarrows with racks full of: pineapples, sacks of charcoal, sides flanked with wooden planks

* African women walking an extra head tall with the following atop: sticks, sacks of maizemeal, bundles of mandioca/cassava - wrapped in patterned cloth, bundles of firewood, plastic jugs of water, plastic bins with fresh laundry (washed in the river)

* bikes with 2 or 3 passengers, often a mamma with child side-saddled on the back.



* streets littered with rows of children, girls in dresses -- no uniforms here, too poor, tattered school books carried in one hand; can see that there aren't enough schools in rural areas by the #s of children you see during the school day.

driving to Maputo from Praia de Tofo:
* baobab groves, magical; planted fields where they've left the large trees to stand in the middle; towns that have grown up around the baobabs, much like in that new film Avatar

* goats & rooster tied to wood-laden trick, cowering as nestled close to wood, bodies quivering/trapped.

* old school buses over-loaded, sometimes almost twice as tall with loads of luggage & coconuts mounted in bundles on top. major safety hazard!



* Johannes speaking Portuguese, feels like a remarkably familiar language because of my French/Spanish: mar, por favor, senora, etc.

* for sale on the sides of the roads, north to south: reed mats, baskets all shapes and sizes, charcoal, honey, diesel, coconuts + scraper tools, fabric, clay pots + urns + bowls, guavas, traditional beer, maize mortar & pestles made from large wood pieces, cashew nuts being flown from trees in clear plastic bags, charcoal burners, chickens live, exotic birds, thatch chicken houses -cute, wooden planks, reed bundles, hats, wooden sculpted fish, doors, chairs, stick bundles for building, live goats, metal buckets, concrete tiles with holes to be used as windows, second-hand clothes



* Maputo - throngs of people; markets, ladies sitting with spreads of lemons & tomatoes on blankets and what looks like collard greens -- me sitting on the back of bakkie to protect our worldly goods from quick-handed theft

* mosques up north; old-style Portuguese churches in south

* prawns, prawns, prawns

* women becoming more modern as we drive south, some with jeans and fancy hairstyles & contemporary fashions; compared to north where they wear traditional patterned cloth, often 3 pieces, one wrap for skirt, one wrap for torso, one wrap for head.

* fabric traditional women wear changes as we go south, too -- less of the blue/green/white/black patterns from Malawi; more 2-toned plaids


Images from Vilankulos & Praia de Tofo will be removed at the request of the owners:
http://mocambique3.blogs.sapo.pt/arquivo/VILANKULOS%20-%20vista%203_resize.jpg
http://macua.blogs.com/photos/turismo/tofo1.jpg

Moz, Part 3: Pebane, Moçambique

While Pebane (peh-bah-nee) is a speck on the map, like most African towns, it is still full of people. Its position by the sea makes it a lucky town, with its free share in fish-capture, however there aren't many other reasons to mark Pebane from the other small towns I saw with Johannes.

We went to market on a Saturday, though there's always a market everyday when a town lacks a grocery store! The market consists partly of 3-walled stalls with thatch roofs where people daily stock their goods; partly of floor mats and chairs lining the streets; and partly of small, free-standing wooden rooms, such as you see in my photo of the man folding my fabric, for vendors with pricier stock. In such rooms (also called tuck shops) you can also buy various sundries, like long-life milk, cooking oil, beer, cigarettes, soap, and airtime for cell phones. There's not much refrigeration in Pebane, obviously due to the recent electricity installation, so there are few things you can buy cold: coke, fanta and beer. No butter, no yogurt, no fresh milk, and certainly no ice cream!















The hustle and bustle in town was lively, music playing on tin-ey sounding radios, clunky steel bikes bobbing over the bumpy roads, and a mixture of Portuguese and the local Bantu-dialect being spoken loudly. Items for sale included: peanuts, cassava root, eggs, live chickens, green beans, patterned fabric, potato chips, knock-off American brand clothes and lumps of second-hand clothes. Also, a common site, amongst many of the towns we saw, were small bicycle stalls under grass roofs, where men congregated over fixing a motley crew of bikes.

In this town, transport is limited to foot and bike. Occasionally a large truck passing through will fill its back to the brim with people as a way of mass transport from town to town. Otherwise, the people stick to their local regions and I doubt they ever travel more than 60 kms from their homes, ever. When your main priorities consist of carrying water from the closest bore hole to providing food for your family, there is very little time left over to dedicate to travel. It makes rush-hour traffic lines in Chicago, New York and Johannesburg seem like light-years away. Life is slow-paced and only the necessary projects are accomplished. This gives way to the slow hips of the women who walk with 40-litre water containers on their heads, deliberately placing each footstep in a rhythm known only to these. It gives way to the long, patient minutes devoted to eating pap (maize-meal) and cassava with fingertips, slowly soaking up the fruits of a day's labour and the juices of the day's meal.

Other than the normal hum-drum of daily life, we were witness to a rare spectacle passing through Pebane. The Moçambiquan president was coming to visit! As such, the day we arrived, we saw rows of people with pangas (machetes) and hoes in hand, hacking at the grass surrounding the sand roads & ensuring the road would provide a smooth ride (ha, ha!). Children were let out of school early to help in the effort and you can see this as well in one of my photos posted here. One day, while driving along the beach, we came across the procession of the president coming to visit a local celebration in his honour. Note, we were not invited and not wanted & we left quickly! But, for a millisecond, I heard the flavor of the local music; very African in it's rhythm, with something of Europe mixed in with the Portuguese language.





After driving from north to south in Moçambique, I must say that Pebane was special in that white people are a rarity, ie they know little about white people and that they stand for money "only," as is often the impression on this continent. Therefore, the local black population seemed to stare and gawk, rather than flock and hassle. They kept a respectful distance, maybe calling out "whitey" in the local tongue. When Johannes jovially broke out in Portuguese, however, they were all shocked to silence!





Some people remembered Johannes in town, but more so along the coconut-shell paved roads (the coconut shells provide a buffer from the difficult sand) where stacks of children ran out of their houses calling, "Ta-Ta (hello)! Johanne-see! Johanne-see!" All the children along the road to the lodge remember Johannes with affirming affection from the days when he lived there and handed out sweeties daily. It was quite endearing to hear! You can see in one of my photos the clean, sand yard of a clay-brick house -- all the houses are kept as such, nary a hair out of place, hours given to sweeping the yard free of debris. Makes a grass yard a horse of a very different colour!

Moz, Part 2: Pebane Fishing Lodge

I had said 3 parts, but now there's destined to be 4. The following series includes photos taken of & from Pebane Fishing Lodge, where Johannes worked all of last year building furniture and where we resided for the week there. It's a private residence only used twice a year and is a phenomenal space consisting of raised platforms & walkways above the sand. All in all there are 4 huts -- 2 for living quarters with 4 bedrooms and 4 baths, plus 1 common hut with massive kitchen/lounge/dining areas, and 1 storeroom (which Johannes actually built).

It's a beautifully built and designed lodge, using almost all local building techniques and materials. The roofs are made of woven mats of grass and the walls are made with carefully bundled reeds, 2 layers thick. Meanwhile, all the other fittings and furnishing are Grade A compared to anything the locals would enjoy, including 5 refrigerators, luxury showers, flushing toilets, satellite television, and an ice machine. The area of Pebane only received electricity 2 years ago, so most local housing still has yet to catch onto the 20th century way of life.

The local economy is barely driven by money. Fair trade is the word of the day as most local people live a life of subsistence. Chickens and goats, as in South Africa, are the insurance policy against drought and famine (I think the rooster call is the national anthem of Africa, by the way). The Portuguese left stacks of coconut palm farms and from that the people of Pebane derive much of their diet and building materials. The Portuguese also left behind some killer bread recipes, which seem a staple, although the flour is obviously purchased and not grown in sandy, dry Pebane. Cassava root, regionally known as Mandioca, provides starch. Peanuts and some type of green bean add protein, but the main stay of protein comes from fishing. Men fell large trees and from that they hack-out primitive canoes, which they row into sea every day for their catch. While I barely tasted any fish, I got windfall of loads of prawns, for which Mozambique is well known. Tiger prawns, peri-peri (chili) spiced prawns, cooked with the head on and all, prawns with chips, prawns with rice, prawns with coconut...am I beginning to sound like Bubba Gump of N'leans?





More photos to come in Part 3 of Pebane, the town.