Why would I possibly wish time to fly at my age? There are only two reasons: one, the holidaymakers will have left after the weekend, and the animals will return to our garden; two, we’re having lucerne delivered, and more animals than we’ll be able to count will finish off an entire bale in one day.
Sundays are always quieter in the garden except, so far this morning, Norman, Nina, and Noah, several bushbucks, Delilah, and three ground hornbills (the first sighting for us other than when we’re in Kruger) also ran through the garden quickly preventing me from taking good photos other than the few I have posted here today.
Our guests are still in their little cottages after a long flight and two travel days, but as I write this now, Lindsey just arrived and was happy to see a bushbuck in the garden. They missed the morning influx, but hopefully, more will come throughout the day.
Last night during dinner, which turned out well, we only had three huge warthogs in the garden napping at the edge of the veranda. From the size of the tusks, we determined it was Mom and Babies, and they hung around for a few hours. But our guests enjoyed seeing the pigs but weren’t quite able to understand my affection for warthogs. In these next few weeks, I genuinely believe they will understand why.
We are thrilled to have Connie, Jeff, and Lindsey here. We have had a great time commiserating with them since we’ve been friends for over 30 years, have many great memories, and are excited to make new memories. Last night’s dinner was fantastic, and now as I write this after taking many breaks, the three of them are sitting at the table on the veranda.
It’s a beautiful day today, thank goodness not as hot as yesterday’s 98F, 37C. There’s a slight breeze, and the humidity is relatively low at 26%. By dark, it cools down considerably when we’re sitting outdoors enjoying our dinner and watching for wildlife.
Last night’s dinner was a huge success. We were surprised the our three houseguests held up so well after the two travel days, including yesterday’s long drive from Johannesburg to Marloth Park. By 9:00 pm, 2100 hrs., they headed to the two cottages for the night. After a good night’s rest this morning, they are all feeling better and ready to enjoy time in the bush.
This morning Louise dropped off another battery-powered lantern, so each of us has enough to get us through the frequent load shedding that escalated to Stage 6 as last night. This means that for 10 hours a day, we won’t have power for 12 hours. This is too much. Eskom is supposed to have a big press conference today to discuss the 500 billion rands they need to stop load shedding, which translates to about 28.4 billion US dollars.
We doubt that will ever happen, so we don’t see an end to this. There’s no way this country can come up with that sum to alleviate the possibility of a total blackout. I just read an update from Eskom stating that Stage 6 is unavoidable, or there would be a total blackout. This would be a fiasco and certainly impact our desire to continue our desire to stay here much longer.
We can only wait and see what happens. As I’ve been typing this post, our power went out again. It’s been a few hours, and it hasn’t come back on yet. Louise checked on it, and apparently, it’s a municipal fault, not more load shedding. We’ll get more of that starting in a few hours. Oh, good grief.
TIA…This is Africa. This is what happens here. We do everything we can to get through this. Meanwhile, we’re enjoying time with our friends and looking forward to seeing more of our wildlife friends.
Be well.
Photo from one year ago today, September 18, 2021:
