Julien’s Journal

 

Time to get to work…

 Hi all, time for an update, eh? I’ve got a few hours to write as its about 6:30 in the morning – I’ve got to get over this jetlag! I’ve just seen off the group of students as they’re off to Krueger National Park for the weekend. I’ve kinda tagged along with them for the last couple of days and have come up to Bushbuckridge with them. If anyone is wondering where these places are, Hectorspruit (where I was staying the last two nights) is about 400 km East of Johannesburg, near a town called Malelane and about 60 km East of Nelspruit, the Province’s capital. Bushbuckridge, where I will now be based is North of Nelspruit – a couple of hours drive so probably around 180 – 200 km North. Its near towns called Acornhoek and Hoedspruit.

 

Yesterday was an amazing day. We came up here and went out to a rural school that I visited as part of the group last year. Anyone reading this who was on the trip will be pretty amazed as the school was a totally different place to last year when there were only a handful of students around and it was in many ways a pretty despairing occasion. Last year we sent off a package of things for the students and when the school heard that we were coming back it organised a ceremony of dancing and singing. There are 600 hundred children attending this school and here must have been at least 300 there yesterday. The dancing was amazing, performed by the mothers of the students and also a group of students who are a dance class. The leader of the student dancers must have been about 4 foot tall and was throwing his body all over the place – very cool!

 

As far as the project goes, I’m on my own now with my supervisor in this country back in Hectorspruit and the students off on their adventure. I don’t feel alone though in the least. The people here are incredibly friendly and I have a contact nearby (Derick) who is able to help me heaps. I’ll spend the rest of the day making calls around to people who I intend to talk to. I can’t really get a feel for how its coming along until I have my initial discussions but hopefully by early next week I’ll have become comfortable and started to gather information. I haven’t even said what the project is! I’m going to explore indigenous climate knowledge in the area. Get an idea as to how the locals understand and interpret the weather and then apply that to agriculture. There are some pockets of subsistence farmers out here and those are the people I’d eventually like to talk to.

 

I should probably mention the party that was had last night. We had a barbecue here at Bushbuckridge and someone lent us his stereo, a mean looking beast with huge speakers and sub-woofer. I relayed my computer to the speakers via the stereo and cranked up the music. There’s nothing in the world that a bit of heavy bass and fast beats can’t fix and that was wicked. I’ve brought well over 2000 songs up here on my computer so there’s very little chance of repeating a tune! Not like last year – god, how many times a night would I play Crowded House or James eh?

 

I’ll get going for now and hopefully speak to y’all soon. I’ll try and answer some e-mails also. See yous

 

Julien