4/4/2008 – Friday

Check out the size of this squirrel I spotted on the roof of the kitchen this morning. Oh, it’s an ape.

The youth in my Sunday School Class said that I was getting too serious. So I’ll show you some pictures of the wild life and folks I met in Limpopo. Limpopo is the province of South Africa just south of Zimbabwe, were they had elections on the 29^th of March and they are still counting ballots today. It seems as if Mogabe the President will not be in power. They are predicting a run off election for President.

In Limpopo and other parts of South Africa, the youth have three weeks off from school for Easter break. The youth around the Farisani’s seemed to do a lot of work and play simultaneously. For the boys, there was grass to cut-to feed the goats, there were pigs to be fed-then slaughtered, fence posts to be loaded and then unloaded. For the girls there was food to be cooked Pap [pronounced Bop] a corn meal staple, there were chickens to kill and pluck and cut and cook, there were clothes to wash and then sun dry. It brought back memories of my childhood. Yuck.

There are animals domestic and wild. Besides the pigs and chickens, there were goats, cows [please don’t hit either with your car] as they walk free on the road and graze beside the road. There were springbok, they are the ones with the curlicue horns; and zebra, they were too far from the road to get a good picture and then there were the elephants, they usually only gave you a picture of their best side.

Magodonga, Limpopo is beautiful. If you stand and face west to your left the land looks like a dry lake bed, flatter than a pancake. To your right are mountains, where at one resort/farm, they featured Rock Climbing, like you would do at Devils Tower or in the Southwest or like the commercial for the Marines.

T. Simon Farisani, an older brother of the LTI principal, is the Speaker of the Provincial Legislature of Limpopo, he took us for a view of a development project that is based on a dam that created a 14 kilometer lake that is 60 feet deep and has crocodiles, hippo, and fish. The displaced villagers who had round huts were compensated by the government building them a house. If they had two huts, they got a two room house. If they had three huts, they got a three room house. You might get the message from the pictures. Enjoy.