Absurdity Of Bureaucracy

How crazy is this?...

Tiny Bubbles Créche was set up in CNP about 2 years ago in the containers, so they have electricity but no water or sanitation facilities. The municipality agreed to provide these services for the créche but to date has failed to do so.

So late last week the municipality sent a health inspector to Tiny Bubbles to assess the situation. The conclusion being that the créche may have to close if they don't get water and sanitation sorted out.

Answer To Prayer

For the last three years I've tried many times to help Peter get an ID document but without success. Peter was born many moons ago on a farm back in the days when such births were not registered. For most of his life, Peter's got away without needing an ID, but now that he's sick he needs one to enable him to access the social grant. Peter and I have been to Home Affairs, the police, the magistrates court, the local social services office and a few other places in our attempts to get him an ID. Recently we sent him off to Caledon to stay with family so they could help him, but he returned after two very frustrating weeks with no joy.

Helderberg In Cloud

The weather has dramatically turned here today, having gone from 35°C yesterday to about 28°C raining and thundery today. Needless to say this creates some spectacular views locally.

Look what We Can Buy...

This is bizzare! Paula was in a local shop (bearing in mind we're over 6000miles from Blighty) and came across a variety of tins from Tesco of all places. Just to prove she did buy them here, look closely at the label on the top and you'll see it's priced at R3, which is about 20p in UK money.

Quite why anyone in South Africa would want to import oranges from the UK is a bit lost on me. It's a bit like shipping coals to Newcastle or ice to Iceland!

Just to top it off, the oranges were produced in Swaziland which is a tiny land-locked nation within the borders of South Africa.

The world is truly a strange place.

Weekend

We've had a lot of fun this weekend mostly chillin' out at home. Dean went riding on Saturday morning so Paula took the boys to the gym for an hour and then onto the Nature Reserve so they could watch the emergency helicopter loading up with water before heading onto the fire on the Helderberg again. The helicopter filled up every 7 or 8 minutes so the boys were in paradise watching it coming in so closely. Sadly Dean had the camera with him so no photos of that.

Sign Of The Times

Saw this sign in a shop window in Gordon's Bay and have been left wondering just what 'circumstance' led to the closure of the shop.

We'll leave the spelling mistake for you to spot.

See more of this kind of silliness at Signs Of The Times.

Mountain Biking

It's now just over a year since I made the commitment to ride my mountain bike three times a week regardless of the weather or whether or not I had anyone else to ride with. Early on in my new endeavour I would end up riding quite a bit on my own, but I soon found a good crowd to ride with and ride regularly with Paul (on the left in the photo) who has become a good friend and cycling buddy.

A Typical Week?

This week has been a 'classic Chris Nissen week' for Paula. It started with confirmation of the bad news of drinking starting again amongst our church members - a none too auspicious start! I then had the great privilege of buying monthly food again for the very needy thanks to 2 wonderful gifts we received in the UK for this purpose. Thanks to these, we can continue the feeding programme for another 10 months - praise God! This month it was hard to decide who should receive the food as so many folk are struggling, but we had to make the difficult decisions. It was also a privilege to deliver quite a stack of dry food goods to the CNP créche.

Caracal

Early on Monday morning I was riding with a friend along jeep track on Sir Lowry's Pass when we saw what looked like some kind of strange dog. As we approached slowly the creature stopped and stared at us for a few seconds before sprinting off into the bush. We couldn't believe what we'd just seen, it was a wild Caracal cat with a rabbit in its mouth. He was obviously off for a hearty breakfast.

What an awesome privilege!

Bible Study

This morning we had the first meeting of our revamped Men's Bible Study in Chris Nissen. After the disappointment of the group falling apart last year I was really encouraged in the last couple of weeks by the number of men who said they would be coming to the group. Well today I was even more encouraged as seven men rocked-up and two others wanted to but were unable to (one was at the clinic and the other is in Caledon with family).

Weekend

We've generally been at home and chillin' out this weekend although we did pop to the aquarium for the morning on Saturday when we renewed our membership (this is our fourth year of membership) and had a great time wandering around. Joel was particularly excited as he'd taken his Shark puppet to "help" with the puppet show, which he did by attacking Nemo! Joel was also pleased to note that his shark and octopus puppets are exactly the same as the ones used by the aquarium. They've revamped quite a lot of the aquarium and it's looking very good. They're also changing a few of the exhibits so we look forward to some more changes there.

Simpsonized!

I've been Simpsonized!
















Join the fun at: Simpsonize Me

Gossip & Nonsense

Until recently CNP was exposed to the world, but as the builders get closer and closer to the land immediately surrounding the community so the developers see a need to build a wall around CNP. Initially the wall was just to be at the front but now it has been decided that it will completely enclose the community. The residents of CNP seem happy with this but we're not so sure that they've really given any thought to the long term implications of the wall and the inconvenience of no longer being able to duck out from their own back yards.

"Personal Touch"

I saw this logo for the accountancy firm on my way home a few nights ago and was left wondering just what kind of "touch" one might get from a chartered accountant.

Any suggestions should be submitted via the comments link below ;-)

See more of this kind of nonsense at The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.














Enough said.

Bits & Bobs

This week is our first week of back to normal routine since the beginning of December. The summer holiday really changed things and disrupted the usual flow so it's good to get back into a routine that works. Things are a bit different this year as Eli is in nursery five mornings a week and Joel now finishes at 1pm and has some extra mural activities so sometimes doesn't get home until 2pm. On those days we enjoy a quiet lunch together as Eli is in bed, it's great occasionally not to have the usual noise levels that accompany boys!

It's good to be back in Chris Nissen, catching up with friends and starting to visit folk again. By all accounts Christmas and New Year were unusually quiet in the community. Sadly this doesn't seem to have extended to the usual infighting between certain characters.

We arrived back to glorious sunshine, the temperature was about 30°C with only a light breeze so we had a very pleasant welcome home. HUGE thanks to Richard & Sal who took the boys off our hands for an hour on Friday morning, without their help packing would have been a nightmare!

Time To Pack - Again!

Our Christmas break with family has just about finished, we fly home to Somerset West tonight. We're looking forward to being home and in our own space again but we'll miss family and friends who've been really good to us during our visit. The boys have coped brilliantly, especially as it's not always easy to smile and be happy when you get dragged here, there & everywhere and so many strangers want to spend time with you. When you've invaded other people's space and invariably cluttered it up or at the least increased the decibel level for a few hours/days then it's probably a relief to see the back of us. We've been blessed in our time back in Blighty and hope we were a blessing to all we met up with and spent time with. As ever we're really grateful to Susan in Wimbledon for allowing us to invade her wonderful home for two days of sanity and relaxation! Thanks too to Rhoda & Ethan for a lovely afternoon, Ethan was a star putting up with our invasion.

Natural History Museum

Today we decided to make the most of a lovely gift and have a family day out in London. We had a lot of fun visiting the Natural History Museum. Joel was especially thrilled with the train journey to London followed by two different tube trains. We managed to see quite a lot but the dinosaurs and the creepy crawlies were the biggest hits of the day! Joel was especially taken by a giant scorpion which moved, we must have spent almost half an hour watching it. We arrived home tired but having had a fantastic day full of memories for the future. It's so great when we can do this kind of thing. Thank you!

Family Fun

We had a fantastic day today with John and Diane, Eli's godparents. The boys loved being able to totally mess up the living room with toys (these are people with 3 relatively young grandchildren!!) and Eli enjoyed John's impromptu running races around the kitchen while he prepared dinner for us! It was great to catch up and to share in a bit more depth about our work. Dean even showed Diane where we live and work on Google earth, which is very impressive by the way. We had a great hour in the afternoon at the newly refurbished childrens play area, which even features a pirate ship - Joel was incredibly impressed! After an amazing tea - because we always need more food! - we went home tired and relaxed ready for the boys' bedtime. Thank you John and Diane.

Today was a proud day for me as I took Joel to watch Palace at home. Grandad was chauffer for the afternoon and we had a great time. Joel coped brilliantly and really enjoyed himself, he even got the hang of the fact that we were shouting for the Eagles & Palace. Enjoy the photos below...