Julien’s Journal
Informal business…
Well, I did my first interview today. Rose Jones, the extension officer
for my study area was very helpful and even took me out to Dingleydale, which
is one of the villages I will be working in. Dingleydale is a typical name for
the villages here as they were all established under apartheid when these areas
were declared homelands and given poxy English names. Examples:
Dumfries
London
Edinburgh (pronounced Edinberg)
Cragieburn (this at least has similarities to Craigieburn back home)
Arthurseat
Merry Pebble Stream
Agincourt
Violet Bank
Orinocco
At least there’s no Birmingham, Croydon or Ipswich. Or bloody Surrey
Hills! There’s a Surrey Hills in every other damn city around the world!
I have to wait until Thursday until my next set of fieldwork so I’ll
spend time with the farmers then and until
then I can relax and do some reading. I think I’ve burnt myself out a bit just
trying to work and have to take as given the fact that the pace here is slow.
I saw something horrific yesterday – a fatal car accident. If you can
imagine the great ocean road without the ocean, covered in a light film of rain
and a truck colliding with a baki (Ute) on a tight corner, that sort of thing.
I didn’t actually see the collision occur but would have to had got there only a
few minutes after it happened. There were no police vehicles there at the time and
the mangled car and mangled bodies were just lying there. I won’t give you the
details, don’t worry.
I did have to pass the accident site another three times that day the
police had arrived by the time I had to pass through it again but by the fourth
time there was traffic backed up about a kilometre each way. The accident was
only a few hundred metres outside of town so you can imagine what it did to
traffic in the centre of town.
That’s all my news for now. I’m just hoping to have taken a few good interviews
from this week because I need a start on that and I’m going to Hectorspruit on
Saturday to farewell the other group of students and then on Sunday to Pretoria
to meet with another student who is doing the same work. Hectic!
See you soon,
Julien