June 10, 2012
Yesterday was a fantastic
day. Truly. No sarcasm for once. We started off the day visiting the nearest
neighbors, half an hour on sand roads away.
These lovely people let us watch the Ireland vs. New Zealand rugby match
and the Wales vs. Australia rugby match.
In and around the games was loads of marvelously delicious food. From waffles to warthog (yes, Pumba) sausage,
everything was absolutely divine and our hostess joked about being a domestic
goddess in her retirement. Man, I hope
when I retire I can do the same!
I discovered I may not care much
for most sports, but rugby, rugby I enjoy.
It might help to sit with a New Zealander and an Irishwoman, or maybe it
was the company in general. Regardless,
it was a ton of fun.
One more rugby match went on
yesterday, South Africa vs. England.
Privately, I cheered for England (gotta respect my roots!) but everyone
here cheered for South Africa. They won. We watched that rugby match at the only pub I’ve
ever been to with a ten minute drive down a single lane dirt road and a gate to
go through.
But the highlight of the day, far
and away, was driving out to pub. Jane
was chatting with us when she slammed on the brakes and yelled, “That’s a
fucking cheetah!”
She was right, there were two
cheetah cubs standing on the road. They
watched us for a minute before crossing and fading into the veld. Here I was expecting not to see a cheetah the
whole time I was here and there were two of them, completely unexpectedly. You’ll have to take me at my word when I say
they were gorgeous, because I left my camera here at camp. So no pictures except in my head.
Well, with a sighting like that,
the night could only get better. We
watched the last rugby match of the day at the pub and I got to sample gemsbok
(sustainably harvested from the game farm that owns the pub). Also, very tasty. Ran into some American students there, too,
from University of Texas.
After that, Jane, Caoilfhionn and
I headed for the Afrikaans Winter Dance.
Now, it is winter here and it’s freaking cold at night. (And today, the wind is just vicious.) It was a fairly laid back party, a lot of
chatting, a fair bit of alcohol flowing, and a bit of dancing. The Afrikaans here do this marvelous
semi-formal two step called sokkie sokkie.
It looks amazing and the speed at which some of the couples could do
this was insane. I watched and was
amazed at how well they did.
Anyway, we stayed for hours and I
met some of the loveliest people. They
were very polite and very friendly. Most
of the Afrikaans in Ghanzi are cattle ranchers or manage game farms so CCB
works with them on that. For all that
predators cause huge problems for ranchers, they didn’t give us a lick of grief
for working to help cheetahs. Actually, Caoilfhionn
and I spent the night assuring them that no, really, we did not need another
drink. Thank you, but really no. The farmers up here can be quite persuasive
when they try, let me tell you.
Everyone wants to see Ireland, so
Caoilfhionn was quite a hit, but apparently California and Las Vegas are also
equally popular so we both got asked lots and lots of questions. Caoilfhionn traded Gaelic phrases for
Afrikaans phrases. I can say a few
things now. My favorites: Hallo, Baai,
Dankie. Hello, Bye, and Thanks. Oh yeah, words I can handle! But I can also manage “Hoe gaan dit met jou?”
which is "how are you".
Honestly, I think I might learn Afrikaans just because I think it’d be
fairly easy to pick up. (Really, I should
finally learn Spanish, but…)
Anyway, marvelous day, perfect
cheetah sighting, superb company, interesting sports, and so very, very much
fun.
*Note: I’m not giving out any of
the names beyond the CCB folks just as a sort of cautionary thing. I don’t intend to say anything inflammatory,
but I don’t want any issues coming up because of me. But I want to reassure you that I did meet
real people and I remember their names ;-)
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