Southern Africa social group gathering
 

Gerald,

You have been missed but you deserve time off.



We are eager to see pictures and hear about the good times you had.

Mountain Zebra (or "Kwagga") - note prominent hindquarter markings compared to finer forward markings. (Cradock)

Our guesthouse (Franshoek Lodge - Ficksburg)

Our guesthouse (Franshoek Lodge - Ficksburg)

Gerald…. These seens are just… words are missing…., breathe taking & amazing :eek:
My emotion are racing & bouncing of jealousy knowing I can’t be/go there…
Man, thanks a million. Please give us more detail about these.
Merci, Robert

Wow!

Gerald,

Beautiful pictures and Country. I have got to get there.

Love the craftmanship on the wooden gate :)

wow Gerald Nice Place to go, thank's for pictures

Welcome back Gerald......Beautiful pics.

What a beautiful place. I hope y'all had a great time. I've got lots of questions about the stuff in the pictures but I'll wait until you've had time to finish catching up on all of your reading.

Go for the questions Doug (and others) - my mind is still in holiday mode :)

Have started inserting some captions above.....

Gerald,

I've been a fan of the Cape Dutch architectural style since my wife brought home a travel brochure for a SA vineyard. Is that a regional style? I didn't see any examples unless that tan and white building qualifies (3 pictures above the cow and calf in the road.)

Your guest house at Franshoek Lodge - Ficksburg is beautiful. What type of roofing material is that on it? It appears to be thatch.

At the risk of sounding like a redneck from Arkansas, would you have been permitted to shoot those mountain zebra if you had happened to have a rifle in your vehicle? Do they belong to someone or are they just running wild? I realize that your wife probably wouldn't have wanted to finish the trip with a dead zebra strapped to the roof of your car :D so I was wondering about the laws.

While I'm on the subject, what are your gun laws like? Can you carry a pistol while traveling or on a daily basis around your home town?

In the picture above the Chinese Surgery photo, what language is that on the sign? Afrikaan?

South Africa is REALLY beautiful and I'm even more determined to visit one day.

Doug, some very interesting questions! It will be my pleasure to answer them bit by bit . . . .

That building is, believe it or not, a stable block for thoroughbred horses built in 1895. (Not quite "Cape Dutch", which is mostly near Cape Town). Here is the rest of the Greenfields story: http://www.greenfieldsmanor.co.za/manorhouse.php (the "home" page doesn't work - use this link as the home)

The main area of our holiday was the poorest, most mountaineous, part of the country, away from the hordes of tourists that flock to the coast in this our peak holiday season. The mainstream tourists don't visit most of the places in the photos.

I conceived and built the skate and gave the concept to this forum. Everytime someone grinds their rails using the skate, I feel good. Everytime someone talks about how we can modify the skate to make it better, I feel good. Everytime I see the thumbnail of my skate appear in the upper righthand corner of this forum, I feel good.

I said something in my first post I would like to say again "Thanks in advance for all the help. I see it passed out everyday on this forum, thanks".

My 2008 new years wish is, everytime someone contributes to the good of another, I hope it makes them feel good.

Gerald I hope you get these same good feelings (on a grand scale) everytime someone builds a MechMate, everytime someone wants to try to make it better, everytime someone posts a picture.

Welcome home, it's good to have you back. It's also good to be back. J.R.

ps ........ great pictures

Gerald

It is nice to have you back. Things have been slow on the board without you. It is nice to see so much chatter.

I map quested you today. I didn't realize you were so close to the end down there. The country side is very rugged and much like our Western states. The Greensfield Manor is some fancy place stuck in the wild.

Though I have not started, I am grateful to generous spirit and the others that contribute to the knowledge base of this forum. I am eager to build.

Well said J.R.!

Doug, that is thatch on that roof, but the layered style is not typical of our common thatch roofs. (Franshoek info here - no, I don't play polo)

This is a well-respected thatching company: http://www.lqt.co.za/index.html - nice photo gallery

That language is supposed to be Sesotho, to be read by the Basotho people living in Lesotho. (Note prefixes Se- Ba- and Le- to the word sotho). But, it is shop sign stuff and very far from pure Sesotho.
"Jo Burg" is the common nickname for Johannesburg, an exotic city to them. "Ha" I think is "of". But the "t'sehla" seems to be "yellow man" or "lion cub" - my wild guess is that it is for "chinaman". My guess is that the store's name is "The Chinaman from Johannesburg".
LIKOBO is blanket (Sotho blankets are famous in their own right)
LICOMFOTER is probably a misspelling for comforter (duvet), a foreign concept.
LINIGHT FRILL for the foreign (to their culture) "night frill" which you guys may call something else. (pleated linen around the perimeter of a bed - only has a decorative function)

You asked about "Afrikaan(s)". The language Afrikaans (my late mother's language) is something completely different. This is derived from Dutch/German/English and the slaves imported into South Africa. (South Africa was the only country to import slaves into Africa - mainly for their skills as artisans - from Batavia, Malaysia, etc.)

Our gun law: http://www.info.gov.za/gazette/bills/2000/b34-00.pdf

Certainly wouldn't have been permitted to shoot the zebra - not even if they didn't taste like horse. Those zebra happened to be in a national park. All larger "game" are in national parks, or private reserve areas, there are no lions in our streets. We do get baboons around this corner of Cape Town, but you are definitely not allowed to shoot them. (Also, discharging a firearm in a public place is an automatic offence)

People can carry firearms as they move around, but they must be completely covered. Generally you see very little evidence of guns here - except at the casualty department of the hospital. In my social circle I guess that less than 10% own guns. My in-laws are mostly from the northern parts and there I would guess the ownership is nearer to 80%.

Many of landscapes above and shrubs and bushes are alike Rajasthan,
Oh yes these both were parts of ones Gondvanaland.
Even cow/calf sitting in the middle of road looks very familier :)
Nice photos Gerald, Water, mountains, Zebra in wild attracts me.

Do you have part interest in a travel agency?:)

Very interesting. I'd love a thatched roof on my future Cape Dutch house but I can only imagine what the insurance rates would be.

Thanks for the info on the Zebras. After I posted my questions last night, I Googled SA safaris. They are a little out of my price range so I guess I'll have to keep buying lottery tickets and dreaming.

I also started reading about all of the languages spoken in SA. Do you speak any languages in addition to English and Afrikaans? How about the language that consists of clicks and whistles? I don't remember which one that was.

I've always been fascinated with South Africa. In the early 80s, I rented the movie Breaker Morant so many times that when I would announce my intention to rent a video for the evening, my wife would always shout, as I walked out the door, "Get anything but Breaker Morant."

One last question. Did you travel by car or bakkie?

Hey, where did you learn about bakkies? :)
Travelled in a VW Touran 2-wheel (front) drive.

My two languages are only English & Afrikaans. To my regret I know more German than any of the other "official" languages of SA. (We have eleven(!) official languages). The click language is Xhosa.

Oddly enough, but I have never seen the Breaker Morant movie - will have to look for it some time!

Gerald,
Welcome back. Wow your pictures are incredible. :) I really have to come visit sometime. Thanks for sharing your trip with us.

Gerald,

I found the term bakkies on a list of SA lingo. Breaker Morant is about some Brit soldiers on trial during the Boer war. Our legal instructor at the infantry school used parts of the movie to teach about the Law of Warfare. I think it was made by Australian moviemakers.

Gerald, Welcome Back where are the Pictures!
 

Moved from elsewhere

Gerald,
No problems, Dankie vir die moeite. (Did I get that right?) :)

Heath you got it 100%, but I doubt if you will produce a recognisable pronounciation of "moeite". I can't think of a common english word that comes even close.

How about

mow ehh tay ?

I don't think that is even close, and I am racking my dusty brain for a similar sound in common english . . . . .

The "oei" part is vaguely similar to the center part of Louis, cooey, shoeing....a quick change from oo to ee in one syllable.

The "te" is the same as the "te" in butter

The way you are describing it, it sounds like an O with umlaut in German. Usually transliterated into oe in written language.

Dit was baie vriendelik van jou.

Probeer dit. :)

http://www.freedict.com/onldict/afr.html

Heath, the title of that web site is "English to African Dictionary" which is a huge mistake! The language is Afrikaans, not "African".

Gerald,
Oops, it does translate a lot of the words seemingly correctly though. I wonder if they just messed up the title? What would the difference be for African and Afrikaans? Are they at all similar? This is more complicated than I thought. :) If you input some tough Afrikaans words does it give you the proper english equivalent?

Heath, the phrases you have produced up to now have been 100%, so I don't have to go and test it.

There is some political tension between African and Afrikaans. African is a word claimed by ethnic (black) Africans and often they don't accept Afrikaans-speakers as being African. (Curiously, Egyptians and other Arabic country folk are often also excluded from identifying as African - probably similar to Mexicans and Canadians not being considered as Americans). Afrikaans is mostly (but incorrectly) considered to be a white language spoken by pioneering settlers out here, and "Africans" rebelled against Afrikaans being taught to them. But there is a huge non-white group also with Afrikaans as its home language, even in our neighbouring country Namibia. Some Afrikaans speakers would vehemently deny that they are Africans, others would vehemently insist. Afrikaans is primarily a language, and also a definition of a culture to some extent. There is no language called African. The two words do not sit comfortably side-by-side and it is a big mistake to use them interchageably as that web site does.

Some recommended reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaner

For people wanting to get a broad feeling of the politics out here, try reading The Covenant by James A Michener which is a fiction novel. Of course he builds more drama into the book than what we see in everyday life, but that is what sells books.

Fascinating article Gerald. Something I found particularly interesting was the following quote:

"While some conservative trekker and frontier descended Afrikaners still cherish the nametag 'Boer', others view it as an obsolete and even pejorative term when used in an ethnic context.

Would you South African forum members agree with this statement? In south Louisiana, the term "coon ass" is like that. Friends can use that term but an outsider using it would be in trouble. "Redneck" is another one. Lots of people would probably consider me a redneck but I would only allow my buddies to call me that.

Yes Doug, I broadly agree with the article and its observations. I am not a "pure" Afrikaner and have also been called a rooinek (redneck) by afrikaners because I have an English surname. But the meaning is totally different to yours - our rooinek goes back to the Anglo-Boer War, which today is called the South African War because of political correctness. Rooinek is a fairly harmless handle here today. There are a handful of names that are very contentious because of their ethnic connotations. The most well-known abroad is the "K....." word. The origin of that word is interesting - it was used/coined by the first slave traders in Africa, the Arabs who operated on the east side of the continent. Which sort of explains why Africans don't see Arab-Africans as Africans. It gets very complicated!

Gerald, this is very interesting. I clicked on the "k" link and learned more. Rename this thread and keep it. I know that you have sparked a lot of interest in learning more about your bit of the world. That is good. Thanks.

I agree with Marc. I've learned a lot about SA on this forum. Thanks. I'm coming over there for a visit one day.

Have joined last few posts to an earlier thread.

Hi Doug when you come to visit I will have a room available in Brakpan to use as base when you want to explore the Johannesburg area. Now is this not called an incentive. We can talk Afrikaans all the time