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Fun weekend! Hunni invited us over yesterday ...
March 26, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
Fun weekend! Hunni invited us over yesterday evening for a wonderful dinner, along with Robbie, Seraph, and Isa, and to watch the Oscars. Very fun...
Also a very fun weekend to be a grandparent. We had Jordan overnight on Saturday, and he has to be the most easy kid in the world. Jenny said he would cry only when he's hungry, and she was right.
Took Sam to a railroad show at the fairgrounds. What a goofball!
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Well, how about them Ducks! Now, it's on to t...
March 23, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
Well, how about them Ducks! Now, it's on to the Elite Eight. I think that will probably be the end of them, but it's been a great ride.
Tomorrow I'm going to a luncheon (older ladies have luncheons, not lunch) for the Daughters of the American Colonists. There's nothing to make me feel young like belonging to these organizations with old ladies. I'm a mere youth among those of the League of Women Voters.
The family cold/ flu has finally caught up with me - my third cold sore in as many weeks, a cough straight out of Moulin Rouge, and a jaundiced view of reality.
Got an e-mail today from Sadie in New York. She said she and Luke were visiting Sarah and having lots of fun. I'm getting frustrated with Sadie's never ending stream of sweeties. I still vote for Marshall or Luke. Why don't we just take a poll and present the results to Sadie as a fait accompli - We'd could certainly start marriage negotiations with their respective parents before someone else snaps them up, and Dick and I would even spring for a cow or two, like dowries in Botswana. (Although Uncle Douglas in Botswana is certainly the one we need to have conduct negotiations for a dowry.)
This has been a sad time at work - one of my favorite clients has cancer, and another, a 91 year old woman who has always been so bright and funny, is starting to go senile.
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Abit more travelog - we went south from Victo...
March 22, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
Abit more travelog - we went south from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zim. We stayed at a backpackers' hostel (Don't go anywhere but the bathroom without a Lonely Planet guidebook). We were the only ones there. The young woman running the place fixed us dinner; standard South Africa fare of a maize (Best way to describe it is that it's like a very stiff Cream of Wheat)
with a beef/beef gravy topping. I actually was still feeling a bit shaky, so Sadie and Dick put me to bed and I slept a couple of hours before dinner. Dick and I sat outside on a little patio in the evening. I love summer evenings in the residental parts of big cities, and this
was particularly pleasant. The British influence in Zim is
very pronounced - no pun intended. English is the common language, but it's used in a way that I can best describe as flamboyant... My favorite was a bar named the Linger LOnger Lounge.
Next- on to Harare, feeling a little nervous about spending three days with folks we had never met before.
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Dick and I rented an old movie, Gallipoli, wh...
March 19, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
Dick and I rented an old movie, Gallipoli, which I'd never
seen before. This has been a busy, busy time at work, and I'm not sure why. Heavens knows, people in Oregon are even more poor than ususal.
We had fun over the weekend. We wemt to the annual St. Patrick Day party on Friday evening. The old gang is grayer and grayer. On Sunday afternoon, we took Isa down to the farm to see the horses. She is quite fearless, and patted away with great vigor.
We have been dismayed to see how the Zimbabwe elections turned out, and worried about my cousin and his family there.
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I have to say that this soggy weather has bee...
March 12, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
I have to say that this soggy weather has been tough to keep chugging through.
While we were in Kasane, Dick went on an afternoon game drive while Sadie napped and I sat by the pool. He came back with great stories and photos. While in many places wild animals were not in the wild, but rather on game farms,
Dick and the tour ran into a bunch of elephants on the edge of town.
From the north boundary of Botswana, we went due East to Victoria Falls, in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was the closest I've ever come to a police state, and as close as I ever want to get. Throughout Zim, we were regularly stopped at police roadblocks and asked for identification. The thoroughness with which we were questioned/searched was totally inconsistent. Most of the time, we were stopped because we were driving a rental car - there was a small red sticker on the front bumper, and we assumed that car jackings are common and they wanted to make sure that we were the people who had rented the car. But at least one place, they asked us to open the trunk, and patted it all down, presumably looking for weapons. However, at only one roadblock did we see any conflict - the police questioning someone who was not enthusiastic about being questioned. The police and Army are controlled by Mugabwe, the current President. At least, through the last day of the elections, which are going on as I'm writing this.
There is no way to avoid feeling the tragedy of Africa. If South Africa was bad, Zimbabwe was terrible, because it is such a beautiful, vibrant country. The art, music and something ineffable which I can only describe as "spirit"
were amazing in Zimbabwe. Unlike Botswana, which is dry and desert like, most of Zimbabwe was green and lush. Particularly lovely was Victoria Falls. Sadie and I walked all along the southern edge, which is so misty from all the falling water that it was jungle like. We were seeing it during the rainy summer season, so there was a lot of water in the falls. It was almost a mile from one edge to the other. If I ever go back, I want to go back at full moon -
it's reputed to be beautiful, or I guess, even more beautiful.
We were there at the hottest time of the year -I think we were the closest to the Equator on December 21st, the longest day in the year in the Southern Hemisphere. In fact, this was the only time I didn't feel well - I think I got dehydrated. From Victoria Falls, we went south to Bulawayo, past huge farms and game farms.
As you probably know, at least some of the conflict in Zim
is related to issues over the ownership of the large farms, nearly all white owned. I have to say that I came away from Africa thinking that it was hard to see much of anything good that had happened to Africa and Africans as a result of white people. The life they had developed, over the last 100,000 years was compatible with the environment and the climate.
More sober thoughts later.
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Oh, funny note about Sam
March 05, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
Oh, funny note about Sam. We had him a weekend ago, and went to New Day, sitting so we could look out the window. Sam was wearing blue jeans. A guy with a motorcycle drove up and parked the motorcycle. Sam watched with great interest. Finally he said, "He's wearing blue jeans. " Then he added, rather sadly, "But they're cooler than mine."
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On to our last stop in Botswana, Kasane
March 05, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
On to our last stop in Botswana, Kasane. This was on the river which makes up the northern border of Botswana. As we drove into the lodge, I looked out the window, right into the eyes of a warthog. There were signs all along the dock, "Beware of crocodiles." We had a pretty rondeval, near the river (No crocodiles appeared), with monkeys playing all around the trees near us. Some of them had babies, and it was fun to watch them. We stayed a couple of nights here - it had a wonderful restaurant, overlooking the river. Restaurants nearly always had a breakfast bar with an amazing array of native fruit combined with "British Cooked Breakfast" foods, plus good old German pastries - an unbeatable culinary combination. Ah, stomachs across the sea -much better than hands across the sea.
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By the time we got to the Rhino Sanctuary, I ...
March 04, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
By the time we got to the Rhino Sanctuary, I began to feel as though we were in Africa the way I imagined it, with vast empty spaces, monkeys everywhere, like squirrels are here, and colorful birds.
The next camping spot, Nata Lodge, was even more lovely. We had a huge (maybe 20'x30') tent up on a platform,with a front porch, and permanenet bathroom, shower, and bedroom.
The lodge had a swimming pool, and we all had gin and tonics
by the pool before dinner.
By this time on the trip we were really enjoying ourselves, other than the fact that it got hotter and hotter as we got farther north, toward the Equator. Since it was close to December 21, the longest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere, we expected it to get hot, and understood why all the women, and younger children, carried umbrellas against the sun. Also, nearly everyone we saw wore a hat - not necessarily a straw sun hat, but something to protect them from the sun.
A funny thing happened along in here. One day at lunch time we drove to a restaurant fairly far out in the country for lunch. After lunch, we headed back toward the main road, only to find that our way was blocked by a herd of cows. Sadie got out, and like a professional herder, clapped her hands and said, Shoo, or the equivalent, and they all ambled off. We told her that we felt much more comfortable about her getting a job after graduation.
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When I was a kid, they used to say that trave...
March 02, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
When I was a kid, they used to say that travel was so broadening, and it's true. There is something about being physically in a place which can't be duplicated by the Internet.
Finishing up- the evening game drive was amazing. I've heard descriptions of how night comes in Africa, but I wasn't quite prepared for the fact that night comes like turning out the light. The sun set, and then it was night. There wasn't a moon, and the night was so clear and bright that the stars seemed to cast shadows. We got out, with our guide, and walked down to the water hole, with frogs, who must have weighed about fifty pounds each, to judge by the sound, ribbiting, or whatever Botswanan frogs say. We could hear the wildebeests and water buffalos snuffling around. We slept well that night.
The next morning we had to go into the closest town to change travellers checks, and got a good close look at the sort of manana approach to life in Africa. The bank was supposed to open at 8:30 (everything opens early because of the heat). It opened about 9:30, and there were hordes of people, since it was the day everyone gets their Social Security check. We finally got out about 11. We had left Sadie, and thought she might be worried, she said she knew how things go in the business world.
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More travel - We returned from the village to...
March 01, 2002 by Sue in Wielesek
More travel - We returned from the village to meet with the family in Gabarone with whom Sadie stayed during the latter part of her stay in Botswana. They were a truly international family - they had come from South Africa, and both spoke English with a British accent set to African music.
He had been one of the first radio news announcers in Botswana, and she operated a nursery school. Since schools are operated in English, parents try to help their kids get a head start. One of their sons had gone to the University of Michigan.
The next day we started north, toward our first up county stop, at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary. Sadie had stayed there before. We had a rondeval, or round house (although ours was rectangular), thatched, with nothing around us but trees. Dick managed to generate a meal from beans and corned beef hash. As he headed back to the check in area, he ran in to a gemsbok (not literally, however). We went on an evening game drive. There is nothing quite like watching giraffes out in the wild jumping and playing.
More later.
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