Marie-wind! Take Twelve

Fun, Facts, and Follies from the Last Few Days...

• South Africans call their high school seniors "matrics". And their high school diplomas, their "matric". Their prom? "Matric dance".

• It is very common for Blacks to have names that describe feelings or are adjectives. As I understand it, it is tradition for mothers to name their baby according to how they were feeling in the moment of birth. I've met an Honestly, Remembering, Obvious, Thursday, Likely (because the mother felt it was "likely" that the baby would have a responsible father in their life), Marvelous... and many named Precious or Innocent (a very popular boy name!). 

• Dids and I have been visiting the local Humane Society every month to drop off bags of food. It's important to support them. With so many human charities needing financial aid, oftentimes animal-based programs fall by the wayside and don't qualify for government subsidies. We most recently brought them a stack of woolen blankets. The dogs and puppies are kept outside in kennels during the winter and some don't have proper bedding.
  
  I was shocked to see the amount of purebreds waiting to be adopted. Personally, I have seen Jack Russels, Poodles, German Shepards, Maltese, and Bull Terriers! Back home, our Humane Society is pretty much flooded with large breed mixed dogs. Not so much here -- most are small breeds. And still they wait to find a good home. If only they could be shipped over to Canada... they'd all be scooped up in a hot minute.  

Outside the Randburg SPCA

• You can buy pawpaws and prickly pears here at the grocery stores! At least now I fully understand what Baloo was talking about all those years back in The Jungle Book... 

• A single issue of Vanity Fair magazine sells for $17CAN here! 

• To the dismay of all, SA is home to "load shedding" in the winter. This is when the city runs out of electricity and can't service the whole population. So what do they do? They implement rolling blackouts! For certain hours of the day each week (for example: 5pm-8pm every Tues, Thurs, and Sat) your home will not have power. Think about this! You can't charge your cellphone, use your stove or microwave, turn on the lights, your freezer begins to defrost... what a nightmare! You pretty much just hope and pray that your suburb gets a good load shedding time... like 2am-6am, instead of peak meal/evening hours. 

• They still use old fashioned keys! I call them "castle keys" because they look so medieval. The only modern key commonly used are the ones supplied for vehicles. The type they use for their homes and sheds and the like are all castle keys. 

A 'castle key' 

• You can get cell phones here for so cheap! Mine cost a whole $20CAN. Sure, it can't browse the internet or send photos, but it's color screen and works just fine. I should stock up on these babies and sell them for twice the price back home! 

• Got the flu last Sunday to Wednesday and was completely bedridden. Ugh. It was brutal. I haven't been that sick in a long time. Thankfully it had mostly passed by the time my birthday festivities rolled around. The cough is still acting up but at least I can say I survived an African flu!!

• Dids, Ian, and I went to an air show a couple weeks ago. It was so busy that by 11am they had to close the gates because the venue was filled to capacity! The commercial jet was my favorite, but the most impressive display came from the military. They did a  full scale military simulation of SA versus Russia that included helicopters, fighter jets, smoke grenades, a medical evacuation via heli, tanks (they even fired the tank's cannons! It nearly blew my eardrum out and made my heart stop!), a rope-drop of soldiers out of a heli... it spanned over half an hour! Definitely one of the most intense air show demos I've ever seen.  

SA has mounted police officers just like Canada! Who knew??

Not surprisingly, this fighter jet is called a Cheetah

Medi-vac

Boer is the Dutch/Afrikaans word for farmer but it has come to denote "white settler". The flag on this shirt is that of the old SA during Apartheid.
With said, you can imagine how offensive and racist this garment is. I was shocked to see it on sale at the airshow!!