22 Nov 2011
Fresh trees are shrugging off raindrops when I wake up. Delightfully cool, with the whole world wet from a steady overnight drizzle. Oh, what a beautiful mooorning, oh, what a beeeaautiful daaaaay..
Is problem, says Man Friday when he pokes his rain-spattered head into the tent where I’ve been writing since daybreak. Fokol umzilo; fokol lo coffee.
Yes, if you cook on an outside fire you’re stoveless when it rains.
OK, so it’s plan B then for making a cuppa to celebrate the winter feeling: Simply rob the fridge’s gas to fire up the greasy old gas stove.
When I get to the kitchen hut however, I see is problem. It has rained almost as much inside as out. And the satellite dish’s perforated brain box, the very nerve centre of my link with the world, sits right under the devil’s cataract that’s pouring down the rafters. Thankfully I haven’t switched it on. Thirty-three litres of rainwater pour out of its one-litre bulk when I tilt it.
Sigh.. fokol lo comms.
Ag, forget the coffee. I go and check the rain gauge that clings to a mopane pole out in the yard. Fifty mil already, which means the black mudpits in the roads have had their fill. Which means fokol lo travel.
At seven o’ clock there’s fokol lo sign of the guys I recruited from Makandazul to come and work on the landing strip, which is just as well because with all this rain there can be fokol lo job.
Which is fokol lo problem really, because there’s always tomorrow.
Oh, what a beautiful mooooorning..