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Julien’s Journal

 

Weekly routine.

 

I hate routines. Especially this one. Friday is the pub night and everyone comes together, Sunday you revel in not being able to do anything at all, The middle of the week you’re hard at work but NOW! Monday and in this case, Tuesday as well I spend my time trying to get hold of people and arrange things, spending most of my time waiting for call backs. I want to get so stuck into this week. I’ve edited my interview questions as best as I think I can get them, I have set out my places where I want to speak to farmers, I’ve got 8 farmer interviews under my belt and could easily get another 12 done by next Tuesday (the day I plan to leave Wits). But here I am, with no plans for the week and taking my frustrations out on my keyboard. If I had my guitar here I’d take it out on everyone else by writing a song with only two chords and repeating it all day. I’ve decided that if I can’t get anything sorted by tomorrow I’m going to call up my interpreter and say “let’s just go out to these places and find people”. This is my last full week here and I want it to be a good one.

 

If all goes well from now the plan will be that I get all my farmer interviews (and one more extension worker interview) done by Tuesday, check out on Tuesday morning and after my final interview will head straight down to Nelspruit. Stay there until Thursday and go to Johannesburg where I’ll stay courtesy of Monash University, South Africa. The only thing I’ve arranged is an interview with someone from the South African Weather Service on Friday the 21st Feb. Then spend the Weekend in Jo’burg and bugger off back to Australia. All that needs to happen now is for people to start calling me back.

 

There’s the most stupid thing here where you’ll have an intersection between two roads. Nothing fancy, just a cross-like intersection but they’ve put stop signs on all 4 roads so if several cars pull up to the intersection at the same time (as often happens) no-one knows who has right of way and we all seem to be on the same wavelength when we al edge forward into the intersection. Also, in one of the towns I drive through the stop signs are on the main road and on the rare occasions I have to stop for oncoming traffic it will stop as well. My defensive driving strategy from now on will therefore be to disregard stop signs.

 

It’s been cooler here the last couple of days which comes as a huge relief. This morning I woke up for the first time in ages without lying in a pool of sweat. Still can’t get rid of those damn monkeys in the morning though. They are such a damn nuisance – I swear that the next person who tells me they’re cute is going to have me steal their lunch, squeak at them for 5 minutes while playing with my knackers and then threaten to scratch them (the person, not the knackers) before running up a tree.

 

I can’t think of anything else to write at the moment which is a bugger cos it means I’ll have to get back to being annoyed. We shall not be moved.

 

Cheers,

       Julien