Introduction of the Doubling Di

The Introduction of the Doubling Di

Peter In
Well, it looks like my time in Africa is coming to a close. For the past two weeks we’ve been staying with Marianne’s family in Somerset West near Capetown, South Africa. It’s Autumn here and the weather is beautiful. Somerset West has perched itself right next to both the mountains and the sea, as well as in the middle of wine country. I imagine that in North America this property would be thoroughly developed with house lots selling for millions of dollars. As it is, there are still farms everywhere with unspoiled beauty and wilderness everywhere. We’ve been kept fairly busy these two weeks with various projects that have been both challenging and rewarding. The main challenge has been trying to get any sort of construction accomplished with the relaxed African mindset. Capetown is even poked fun at by other South African cities for its “paced” mentality towards working. Apparently in Jo’Burg they say the Capetown is called “the mother city” because it takes 9 months to get anything accomplished. Case in point, our main project while we were here was to help finish building a house for a black lady that does a lot of volunteer work in the township of Lwandle near Somerset West (Lwandle was traditionally the ghetto for black people who worked at Somerset West). WARNING THE FOLLOWING STORY APPEARS TO CONTAIN A LOT OF WHINING – PLEASE AVOID IF ADVERSE TO EXCESS WHINING Our contact here, Andy Hawkins – a missionary from the UK, showed us a few things that we could work on when we first got here, and the first thing that we decided to do was work on this house. It seemed nearly done – just needed some paint and some doors hung, maybe hire a plumber to install the bathroom fixtures, and we’d be finished. We didn’t think it would take more than two days. On the first day the girls did some painting, and I chiseled the hinges into the door frames but couldn’t do any more because the doors weren’t delivered on time. We also noticed that the tiling hadn’t been finished yet, and none of it had been grouted. Also, the trim around the ceiling hadn’t quite been finished. Also the windows hadn’t quite been completely been installed. It was a mystery to us why someone would have gotten so close to finishing so many things and then left a tiny bit of work on everything, however we decided to help as much as we could. Since I was waiting for doors, I went to buy some kitchen cabinets which we assembled near the end of the day. I unpacked the hardware to discover that most of it was missing. I took it back to the store where they gladly refunded my money and went looking for cabinet packages without missing pieces. Eventually they succeed. I take them and we start to assemble them only to realize that they have a faulty design. The assemply mimmicks Ikea’s design, except without the vital feature that keeps the assembled pieces from falling apart. It’s clear that we will have to buy additional screws to ram jam them solid. On the next day the girls finished painting, and I worked on the doors. On the third day the girls painted the doors and started to tile. I was having some trouble with the doors due to skew frames, but things were moving along. Suddenly the tiler shows up and chastises Krista for “stealing” his job. She apologizes and stops finishing his job immediately, and I ask if he’s going to finish now. He says, “oh no, I’ll come back tomorrow maybe.” I manage to convince him to work on it just then, since it only looks like a few hours worth of work left, but he continually complains about the mess I’ve made hanging the doors (we later find out that he disappeared over a week before and had kept promising to come back right away but never had). He takes off without finishing and promises to come back the next day. Meanwhile the girls discover that their paint work has been maimed by what could only have been some sort of violent sporting event in one of the rooms they had painted. There are marks all over the walls that scrape the paint off right down to the concrete. Very odd, but the girls patiently sand and repaint the room. Looking for something else to do, and not wanting to steal the tiller’s job again, they ask about varnishing the door and window frames. They are told, “oh no, someone will do that later.” Okay. Meanwhile I realize that one too few doors were ordered. The girls go to another project and I try to grab another door. I take one of the family members with me, William, and the trip goes as follows: 1. we go to the nearby hardware store and William says we need a waterproof door for the bathroom. 2. They say they don’t have any of those doors. 3. We go to the building superstore, some distance away and they inform us that waterproof bathroom doors don’t exist. William must’ve been thinking of shower doors. 4. We go back to the close –by store so that we can transport the door home by ourselves. 5. The store has just sold out of the style of door we need. 6. I call our friend nick to see if he can hot-shot the door in his bakkie (bucky) (truck) for us. 7. He says sure, but we should go to a nearby cheap place that might have them. 8. We find the cheap store and they don’t have the style we need. 8. We go to the building superstore again, buy the door, and Nic hotshots it for us. 9. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that took so long it’s time to go home for the day now.
This is getting monotonous but further adventures include grabbing the tiler who does only half of the remaining work again, finding plumbers who don’t have all the tools or parts that they need. Asking us to start varnishing the door and window frames despite the girls being told not to previously, and on and on. Two weeks down we’re finally finished though. Very nice.
Our other projects include: organizing and running games for a children’s choir camp, painting a large bathroom, helping to run a soccer coaches training day, teaching a health sciences grade 8, and other little things.

Peter out, Gil in.

Before I begin let me tell you about my best joke ever. Being sent to ‘cut a disk’ of Incubus songs for Chris, my South-African, bathroom-painting team-mate I headed to i-tunes. Created a burn folder. Entitled it ‘incubus.’ Paused. Erased the title. Renamed folder ‘incupiss.’ Chuckled for a long time. Burned the CD. Erased the folder. Continued to chuckle.

Thanks for listening…..

Excellent outline Pete. To add on behalf of Krista and myself, hours of sitting on a dirt pile in the township, wondering where Peter has gone and when he will be back? What will happen when night comes and we are still here, waiting on the dirt pile, sweeping the floor for the 9th time?

Krista’s gotten sick and developed a blister on the inside of her nose (seriously). The cold seems to have taken all her facial expressions, leaving only one wobegon face and a few sad sentences to tide us over for the rest of the trip. I quote “Peeterrrr didn’t write my part of the post like he saaaaiddd he was going toooo….” One of my favorite things is when Krista gets exaggeratingly disappointed and she is good enough to make sure I get as much laughs possible. We’ve been going to some burger-burger joints where Krista has to order the ‘vegetarian health boxes’ which turn out to be some sort of mockery of all the name seems to promise. Full of fatty mayonnaise, slathered in something strange, greasy and boiled lettuce. So sad. So sad. (I just reminded her. Now she is barfing. You would barf as well if you were here. I am also barfing) I’ve never met anyone so good at being disappointed in a way that makes everything so humorous for us all.

However, the cold/blister was causing us worry – thankfully some antiquing liquid and never-ending bathroom walls seem to have cheered up our dear Krista, bearer of all our illnesses and infirmity and we are back to our singing glory.

Pete’s friend Andy organized for us to take a class at a highschool in one of the nearby townships and it was certainly one of my favorite experiences. The first day Pete and I went for ‘life-skills’ class (Krista was home attempting to rest her spirit back from her cold’s tenacious grasp) where we learned about the 5 food groups and how to be healthy, etc. On the next day we returned, expecting to teach the same class for an hour. Of course, it wasn’t the same kids and so our food group games didn’t go over so well at first. We had to explain the food groups and teach our game – version of ‘horse-knight-rider’ with the additional twist whereby the kids were attached to a food group. Anyway, imagine us –
“okay, you’re a protein. And you – you’re a fruit, no, a vegetable, oh wait – doesn’t matter, same group”
“you, fats, no, a fat – like butter… or something”
Anyway, after explaining over and over that ‘you’re out’ means ‘you can’t play anymore’ and realizing it didn’t seem to matter if half the class wandered off we got off to a great round. The kids left loved it – spinning around with their eyes closed like happy squirrels. It was lovely. For a final ‘teaching session’ we got them into groups and had them decide on a well-balanced meal including elements from all the food groups. This was a task that turned out to be far more difficult than I could have imagined. Fortunately I was able to impart an excellent piece of knowledge before leaving – standing at the front, trying to say something I blurted out to the boys’ group “now, this is important because if you have children one day you need to make sure they get the proper nutrients, a well-balanced diet to help their brains grow properly.” They all nodded and it seemed I’d left a fantastic pearl of wisdom behind. It must be weird to be a teacher – the most retarded things come out of your mouth and somehow the whole class is nodding…

If anyone wants to come and be a teacher I’d advise dropping by Somerset West for a year or so and taking up a few classes in the Township schools. I’ll be readily convinced to accompany you.

We’ve also gotten to know some lovely people here. Exhibit A has left his own blog portion following mine. He is a very big soul, Christopher is. My love language (sorry Nick) is to tease and be teased. These South African’s are filling me up completely in that regard and I’m often beside myself with giddiness so thank you to this new niceness.

Am learning again about God being remarkably large. Habbukuk. Boldness.

Gill out, Chrees in.

Hello, my mother named me Christopher, I’m not happy about how Canadians pronounce apricots. AAH-pricots? What is that? I’ve furnished these lovely souls with the correct pronunciation, along with a few bits of local slang.

I’m trying to decide if I should burn Peter’s passport, I know Candice might not approve but a South African wedding couldn’t be that bad. Obviously the lions and the witchdoctors make for tricky obstacles but we South Africans could teach you northern folk the subtleties of life in the wild.
And if we invited our currently ex-vice-president, maybe he could stab a cow like he did at his last wedding, I think his second or third wife- polygamy gets so confusing, how do the Mormons do it? But yeah, these are my current musings, to burn or not to burn.
On a less serious note, please send me some fuzz free girls next time- Chewbacca here is getting a bit much.
Peter has cleaned up nicely, Candice I take my hat off to the magnificent contribution you’ve made to Peter’s appearance.
Right, that’s it we’re off to save some more orphans and spread truth and shit.

Chrees out, Khreestah in.

I don’t have very much to say. Peter said that he was going to post for me, but apparently he’s lied. I was preparing myself for his worst description of Krista possible, quite excited really, but nooooo.
I’m sad that Pete’s leaving us. He’s taking the Backgammon game, and he’s real special of course. I like autumn in South Africa. I’ve spent the last two days sponging a bathroom with antiquing liquid. I love sponging antiquing liquid. I have a really weird head cold. My nose is a monster. It’s my birthday in four months. I’ve become extremely reserved, and shy, or scared, or fearful. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. We’re watching Edward Scissor Hands, it’s a nice movie, Edward has the same hair as Gil. I’ve started having weird dreams again lately, so maybe it wasn’t the malaria pills after all. I think I’ve developed a weird accent. My favourite game is when Gil and I sing, or when I complain about something dumb that makes Gil laugh. I have hope for the future. I am a new creation.
Love, Khreestah