Two cheetahs expressing their affection at the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria, South Africa.
Tag: South Africa
A prayer for Youth Day
Bless the Children of Earth
may they have the blessings of food and health
may their homes be peaceful, their world safe
may we adults, work to make these blessings real
by our actions, attention, and giving, we make it so.
Bless the Children of the earth
with the abundance of a happy, secure life
may they have a life with education and opportunity
each child deserves no less, each child is precious
they are the future, the living legacy of our ancestors.
Bless the Children of the Earth.
(Abby Willowroot)
Tires and avos
When you’re travelling, not everything always goes according to plan. So we had a flat tire, and what we do best in such a case is look helpless…
Luckily, we were in an area with many plantations and farms.
The workers and manager of one of these farms helped us a lot, providing us with a jack, filling up the spare tire and fitting it on our car. Unfortunately, the spare tire did not fit our car (don’t know how that is even possible…). In a complex switch, the manager gave us two of his tires to fit on our car, so that we could continue our travels. So good to meet kind strangers!
The farm was an avocado plantation.
We were invited to visit the harvest.
The avocados are harvested once a week, from February to November. This day the manager had hired about 100 extra workers to help out.
When we arrived they had just finished. The workers were heading off. They walked to the office, where they would receive their pay.
And the boxes with avocados were lifted into a waiting truck. According to the manager, the avocados are then sorted according to size – large, medium and small. Apparently, people in Germany only want large avocados, in the UK they prefer medium, and in China small is popular. Spain takes any size. Learnt some great new things, and we were given some avocados to take home with us – what an experience!
On the road again
Driving through the beautiful, changing scenery of southern Africa feels extraordinary – I still, after more than five years feel I need to pinch myself to check that I’m not dreaming, that it’s really me driving here…