Things Africa...

The weather in Johannesburg is absolutey great. It is now Summer, and because we are at about 6000 ft above sea level, we have mainly dry and 80 degrees everyday. However, this is Summer, and this is also the time of year for this area to gather its rainfall, for once April arrives, it will stop raining, and no rain will fall for six months. The GauTeng Province (Johannesburg and Pretoria) is famous worldwide for their vivid and dramatic thunderstorms. These are not regular thunderstorms. These are meteorological wonders! Two factors come into play in this part of Africa. One is the effect in the upper atmosphere where the hot, hot winds coming down out of the Kalahari Desert mixing it up with the moist air aloft from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans which surround South Africa, and the other factor is that the earth is loaded with minerals here. Gold, Silver, Copper, Platinum and Iron are what this area consists of under its outerskin, and as a result the lightning strikes are incredible. The charges from the earth to the heavens are really something to witness. The thunder does not just clap or rumble a bit like it does back in PA, but instead is an enormous roar that crescendos to 3 times the volume I have ever heard and will last for minutes with out stopping. It will rain inches at a time and then the storm will be gone in 30 minutes. I do hope we can get to see one of these whoppers when we are out of the city, so I can capture this incredible display of nature on 'film'.

Here is a storm that charged in the other day. It went from beautiful to scary in less than 20 minutes and just exploded with fury...

...and then was gone, but not before flooding out most major streets and intersections, causing power outages that knock out the robots (stop-lights) and scaring men, women, children and pets. No one here complains though, because they know that they will need the water next winter when it does not rain at all.

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When it comes to recycling, no one can compete with the Africans. They use every part of every living thing. They make art out of every available piece of wood, they make clothing out of plants and skins. They make jewelry out of teeth, bones, skeletons, toys and purses are made out of recycled cans, nick-naks out of discarded wire and telephone line that Telcom has junked, decorations out of horns, antlers, leaves and eggs. They really waste nothing. Wood is most prevalent for carving and making things for the home, but anything else that can be used...is.

We yankees could really learn a lot from these people's ingenuity and creativity.

Here are a very few examples:

This is a necklace that Reenie bought at the market,



...upon closer inspection you will see that it is an entire skeleton of a snake that has been strung on a string. Every vertabrae connected together as it was on the snake. Simply amazing and quite a conversation piece at the office.



The carvers in Zimbabwe are masterful. Here is a mother elephant with her newborn, carved completely out of one piece of ironwood. The tusks are carved out of cow bone. The piece is 13" high, 17" long and the detail is superb. (click to enlarge and view the detail) It took the carver (artist) about two weeks to do, he got about $25, for his work, then someone brought it down to ZA, sold it to the folks at the African Market who sold it to me for $65. If a carver in the US did this, the piece would easily sell for $1000.



Not a great photo, but here are a pair of earings made out of coconut shell and silver wire. All hand made of course. They sold for $2



The background, houses, and all detail in this art are made from the leaves of the banana tree.




These decorative balls are each about the size of a major league baseball. They are formed by Kenyans, who heat the horns from animals such as the Springbuck, Blesbuck or Gemsbok and reshape them into these balls, which they then carve with a detail knife.



These baskets come in all sizes from about 4" to 24" in diameter. They are woven using discarded telephone line. They have become so popular that Telcom (the ZA phone company) now sells the wire in large spools to the women who make these baskets.

An example of African scrimshaw, using the jawbone of a wildebeest.

It is marvelous to see the skill and determination of these people to use anything they can find to create a way to express their art and support themselves. It is a shame however, that their talents will not bring more revenue than the current pricing, but I guess it just is what it is.

"A vision without a task is but a dream,

A task without a vision is drudgery,

A vision and a task is the hope of the world"

English proverb

Stay well...