1 July: First time we have paid for “four walls and a roof accommodation” since hitting the road in 2019 (correction – we did pay for one night in Malawi when attending a birthday party). Have taken an Airbnb in Tania old home town (Warner beach) for the next month, for the same cost as a month’s camping. Feels strange to move out of Mr Jones and a bit of a hassle as everything has “its place” in him.
2 July: Got the bad news that Nicole has Covid, so really hoping she doesn’t get too sick and that we don’t either as we have had close contact when staying over a couple of days ago.
10 July: Feeling very disconnected from the world & “Mother Earth” (as hippy as that sounds) living in between four walls. It’s so easy to come inside, close the doors, pull the curtains and live in your little bubble whereas when living out of Mr J we are in tune with the elements and connected with those around us. Very hard to describe the feeling but definitely missing Mr J and the simple life.
12 July: Chatting on the beach this morning with a local resident Stuart had met while surfing we learnt that many places were closed due to protest action and the workers not being able to get to work. This is sadly a relatively regular occurrence in SA and so we didn’t think much more of it until we got back to the Airbnb and started to see on our phones the chaos the province had descended into.
13 July: Lying in bed tonight and hearing gunshots not too far from us is not lekker. We even put a “go bag” together, never thought we would have to do that! Very grateful for the local community crime watch who have setup barricades and roadblocks into all suburbs and are via a show of force keeping the looters out and us safe.
15 July: Shell shocked, horrified, saddened, angry, full of despair, scared plus many more emotions running through us the last few days as we have watched on news outlets and social media the total destruction of shops, malls, factories and warehouses. It is almost impossible to believe that our fellow South Africans can act in this manner. For sure there are deep social issues but nothing can excuse this kind of destruction in the name of protest! And to think it was encouraged (perhaps even deliberately instigated) by an ex-president and his elite cohorts who have done nothing but steal and contribute to the deep social issues existing!!!!
16 July: And just like that South Africa starts to bounce back. Parts of Kwa-Zulu Natal have been literally destroyed and yesterday it looked like an apocalypse, today the communities come out on the streets cleaning up and trying to restore some normality. This afternoon people who had access to farms and fresh produce were on social media offering their produce for sale at perfectly normal prices when they could so easily sell it for a bit more. We joined the queue at Baggies Kiosk (normally they sell chips and ice creams on the beach) to get what we could and Stuart received a hole education on how important eggs are too many people.
30 July: Last day in Warner Beach, overall it’s been a good month, now time to move up to the farm and get stuck into a whole lot of maintenance jobs. Some mechanical and some just simple preventative maintenance like painting pieces of equipment which are exposed to the elements and showing signs of rust.