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...

First Border Crossing

As we drove the 400km North to Botswana and crossed the border, several things became apparent to us right away. First, we noticed that there were animals everywhere. I wish that I would have been able to photograph some, but I was too busy driving around them and trying my best not to create any fresh roadkill, and Reenie was too busy telling me to stop!-slow down!-watch out! Other than the Baboons, these are not exotic animals generally. They are Brahma bulls, horses, donkeys, and large herds of goats and cows. They were just everywhere. Another stark contrast to South Africa was the total absence of street hawkers and beggers in the towns and cities. They are on every corner in ZA, but not to be found at all in Botswana. The towns and city we visited were very poor, but also were very clean.

The temperature was another big difference. Once we left the high elevation (almost 6,000ft) of Johannesburg and drove North but down in elevation, the temperature rose significantly. Gaberone and Lobatsi are on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. It is very dry and very hot..Phoenix kind of hot...like putting your head in an oven type of hot.

White Egrets enjoying the bugs in the trees...

Games of chance are not unique to the US of A. There are many Casinos in ZA and this is the one in Botswana. What are we doing at this one?...well, this is where we are recommended to stay when we travel to other countries. We avoid the Casinos themselves of course, but the hotels on the grounds of the Casinos are considered the safest places to stay, with lots of security, clean rooms and good prices. Our room here cost 377 Pula/ night, which is less than $50, and the room was clean, very small, but it had AC! Whew!!

Here is the Lobatsi Branch building. The church bought property here that was a residential home, where they could use the existing house for Primary, other classrooms and offices and it had a kitchen and a bathroom, and then they brought in a portable building for having Sacrament Mtg.


Here are the members going to their classes in the house after Sacrament meeting. Thank goodness for the two big trees on the property that really helped to shield out the sun.

These are the first two students to have the opportunity to receive PEF loans for schooling in the Lobatsi, Botswana area. It was our visit there last week that launched the program in this area and as you can see, they are really happy. Cedric, who just returned from a mission in Kenya, will study construction and Lucy is going to become a nurse's assistant (like an LPN in America, I believe). They are looking forward to beginning school in March.



As I mentioned, this area is on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, so water is a premium. There are no lakes or ponds in the area, and the few creeks that exist dry up except for a short rainy season each year. Here you see a large agricultural water barrel that will catch water from any available rainstorms and store it for when they have baptisms...which are held.....(see below)


Here! This is another rain barrel, but this one has had the top removed to be used as their font. They bring two desks from inside the building, climb onto one while placing the other into the font, then hand the desk that is in the font, to someone outside the font while they perform the baptism, then someone hands them the desk back into the font and they climb out from the desk in the font onto the desk that is outside the font! Seeing this really made me feel like quite an ingrate when I remember how we used to complain about the temperature in our building being a bit too hot or too cold back in the US. It was 41 C degrees here on Sunday(about 103F) and the buildings are not cooled at all. These folks were happy to walk to church in their only set of church clothes and then sing the hymns accapella.

'After church' with the two Elders who serve this area. One from Zambia and the other from ZA.

...the future...

Incidentally, we are told that many of the clothes that are given to DI or Good Will in the US, end up coming to countries in Africa and other similar developing nations, so I have a hunch that this is where many of these children here get their clothing. These two just loved having their pictures taken and wanted to see the pics again and again, and I of course, complied. More on Botswana after our next trip there.



Below are some more of the South African nature shots that were not included in the prior post. Hope you enjoy.

Mom and the kids

Stay out of this grassland!

Reenie's favorite

African White Stork, standing about 5' tall.

Family of Blue Wildebeests

"I don't get it! I have wings...I should be able to fly!"

Angry dog!

...just because you can't see me, doesn't mean I'm not here...

...oh I know you're there! (male Blesbuck)

"I am only one,

But still I am one.

I cannot do everthing,

But still I can do something;

And because I cannot do everything

I will not refuse to do the something

that I can do."

Edward E. Hale (1822-1909)

Stay well