Champagne is for idiots

Finally, some time to write the rubbish that happens in my life. I seem to be in a phase where there is to be no significant travelling for a while. And though this is a very sad thing for me, I did recently make it up to Victoria Falls, and I shall be having adventures of a different kind shortly.

I have decided to venture into the world of business. Yes, I know I am crazy. But I figure I have started and run enough businesses for other people that I should be able to do it for myself. Hmmm...  More on that later.

In the mean time, I was reminded when trying to explain to a friend why I don’t have a smart phone anymore, of one of the reasons that I have decided to leave the world of events behind me for a while. I currently work for a company that runs and caters about 25 events a week. We have three event coordinators. Basically, you won’t have an event coordinator at your event unless you are willing to pay extra. Usually we send a waiter supervisor, and a head chef to run the catering side (as there is generally also a bar manager and a venue manager on site).

For this particular wedding, we sent a chef, a manager and a staffing manager. The only person not on site was me, the initial event contact. Why? Because I had booked the day off long before the client had even heard of us, and I was due to be on a party bus, drinking mojitos and celebrating the 2^nd anniversary of my friends 30^th Birthday.

That is exactly what I proceeded to do. About an hour into the bus ride (and three double strength mojito punch glasses down) the manager calls.

Manager: Miss P, the bride is going nuts, we don’t have the right champagne.

Me: Of course you do, I delivered it to the venue myself yesterday afternoon, and put it in the fridge.

Manager: No, you can’t have, because it’s not there.

Me: Look harder.

I then proceeded to have three more mojitos. The bus broke down, so we had an extra shot of rum. Then my phone rang again.

Manager: Miss P, there is no champagne here at all! There is only the cheap stuff, and the bride is furious and almost in tears and the barman doesn’t know what to do!

Me: Yesh, it’sh definitely there. I promish, I delivered it myshelf *hic* and I put it in the frid- frid – uh... fiddidge-y thingy.

Manager: Are you drunk?

Me: YESH! Now go away

The bus got moving again, so we had an extra shot of tequila to celebrate. It took a really long time to get over the mountain pass, so naturally, when it reached the top, we had a a shot of Jaegermeister  to celebrate.

My phone rang again, and as I looked blearily through fuzzy eyes, I spied the name of the bride. I briefly considered answering it, realised I couldn’t actually articulate anything other than a faint gurgle and some woop woop sounds, and simply tossed the phone, still ringing, out the window of the bus.

Two days later, when I had recovered from my hangover, I went back to the venue to see what the hell had happened. There, in the bar, blocking one whole side of the access hatch, was the champagne. The storeman had very helpfully placed the chilled wine in the bar, ready to serve for guest arrival, and the barman had spent the entire wedding carefully stepping over the boxes as he ran to the walk in fridge for the cheap stuff.

Nostalgia

I have, on occassion, entered one or two writing competitions (generally the type that gets you a free trip) and while I know that my writing is not prize-winning, I continue to hope that the judge will have really bad flu, be completely fuzzy and oblivious and just choose mine so that he/she can just go to bed already. But it occurred to me that the article I wrote for the last one predated the existence of this blog, so I am now adding it to the repertoire. For a brief time before I headed into Sudan I lived in Kenya, and did a little travelling there as well. What a gorgeous place....

Amboseli Game Reserve


Having never stayed in a Kenyan National Park before, and the sum of my experiences to that point having been South African National Parks, it hadn’t crossed my mind for a second that finding food and drink would be a problem. Until we arrived at our ‘rest camp’, and discovered how loosely they use the term ‘camp’: Waist high fences are your ‘protection’ from the animals, and long drops and cold showers are the extent of your “convenient and adequate ablutions”. Café or food stalls? Sorry, what?

Luckily our driver, Mariepe, was a Maasai man who lacked the ‘safe’ gene, and, ignoring all signs saying “animals will rip you limb from limb after dark if you leave the camp”, with us in tow he headed out into the bush with his panga and found us the local Masaai tribe. To their obvious hilarity and many repetitions of ‘crazy misungu’ (white person), they finally led us to a goat carcass hanging from a tree, chopped us off a couple of hind legs and added some ‘ugali’ (local version of maize meal) to the package. I am sure the price we paid funded the purchase of at least one herd of goats.

With our rather dubious meal packaged in two-year-old newspaper we headed back rather quickly to the relative safety of our camp and fire. Mariepe volunteered to prepare the ugali, and proceeded to cook it into a state not unlike play-dough. By this point I had diced and braai’d the goat, so Mariepe gave us a brief lesson on how to eat. One must pick up a piece of ugali, flatten it in ones right hand (the left hand should not to be used for eating) and use this as a spoon to scoop up a piece of meat, some meat drippings and some salt, and eat it as a whole parcel. Wish some shyness, and much giggling, my travel partner and I complied with instructions and found ourselves eating a very respectable meal.

There are few things quite as beautiful as watching the sun set behind Mount Kilimanjaro, eating something local and surprisingly delicious, and listening to hyenas call to you from the other side of a one meter fence you pray they can’t get over. ..



Passport Stamps!

One of the most annoying things about my trip to the States being cancelled is that I had ordered a brand new spangly passport, had a lovely new exciting looking visa pasted into it, and gone.... nowhere. It has been many many years since I had a naked passport. I was starting to feel uncomfortable.

Enter my friends. One of the awesome things about staying in one place, is that I have now redeveloped a lot of my friendships that had been left flapping in the breeze. Some of these friends are awesome holiday planners. I have traveled with one friend, I have traveled with a boyfriend, but never before have I traveled with a group.

The journey started with a big 4x4 and an overloaded trailer, and LOTS of booze we thought we might not get through. Heading straight from Cape Town up country for 10 hours we landed our asses in Augrabies falls National Park, whereupon the booze supply was rapidly done away with.

Augrabies National Falls

Having rested, got in the holiday spirit, and begun the inevitable destruction of our livers, we headed out two days later in search of game drives, and predators. A brief stop over at a desert camp gave us our last night in a real bed, and a covered porch from which to watch the thunder storms, before heading to Kgalagadi Transfontier National Park.

What was meant to be desert and barren, turned out to be lush and grass covered. With rains that like of which havent been seen in a decade, the dunes and red earth had turned lush and green, with golden grass fronds reflecting the sun and bringing to mind Sting and his Fields of Gold...

Kgalagadi national Park

The only down side was the complete lack of animal sightings. We saw lions twice, but both times they were doing a very good job of pretending to be rocks, and little else stood out above the grass. Could this deter us? Na-ah! A bottle of Tequila became the shot of choice for ever predator spotted, but its amazing what becomes classified as 'predator' after the first few.

"Hey guys I saw a snake! They eat mice right? Well, actually, it was only a mouse. Don't they eat insects or something?... No?.... You sure?.... then it was DEFINITELY a snake I saw. Yup. DRINK!"

A lack of decent tasting drinking water, along with a generally accepted suspension of road rules (aside from the 50kmh limit) contributed to a rather raucous group of passengers, and eventually we felt for the sake of the park rangers and the carefully hidden animals, it was best to head to our next destination. Namibia!

Having used the border post as a spot to turn the car around once, the actual crossing of the border lacked a little oomph, but we all got our stamps, the search of our vehicle completely missed all the cocaine, herion and sawn off shotguns they were sure we were hiding, and eventually we found ourself in Namibia on a road to... nowhere....

Namibia

Blinding heat and a road that stretched endlessly before us was the most significant thing about the majority of the actual journey. Luckily what lay 6 hours ahead of us was a Spa based at Ai Ais Hot Springs, and the gorgeous views of the Fish River Canyon. Second only in size to the Grand Canyon, the Fish River Canyon was a surpising and giddying rift in the flat land we had driven through. Awesome in size and fascinating in its creation and composition, we would have stayed many long hours at the view point, had the wind not been so cold, and the call of the hot springs so loud.

Fish River Canyon

All good things end, and after 12 days of camping and driving through dusty deserts we were a sad group to head home, but grateful that when we got there we could have a hot shower and sleep in a bed that didn't slowly leak air all night.

Next year: Caprivi Strip and Okovango Delta? Or lying on sandy beaches, eating massive lobster and swimming with Dolphins in Mozambique? I love where I live...

Proposal Number 5

Its a little strange to think that after 5 marriage proposals I remain single and unmarried. Because I am. Single and unmarried, that is. Not strange. Well... maybe that too.

I recently ended a relationship, and although there is a large part of me that is sitting curled up in a corner sniveling to myself, there is also a small part of me that is indignant that I have once again ended an engagement and... wait for it... have no ring to show for it!

At the end of the day, what is a good breakup without a little fight about belongings? It gives you something to focus on, really. I mean, you haven't broken up for no reason. Usually its a culmination of all the little arguments, and 'discussions' and tiffs that you have had, but when breaking up its nice to have something new to fight about. And what better than who gets to keep the ring? I mean, THAT argument can keep you full of anger and and in denial about your grief for years.

Alas, so far I have been robbed of that luxury. Five times. By now I should really have a collection of them. To be fair, the first one was a 17 year old boy who thought that because I was the first girl that liked him he should marry me, so the ring would probably have come from a Christmas cracker. That being said, number two was only 20, but he had already designed the house we were going to live in. Still no ring. He proposed to all his girlfiends though, so I imagine that had he bought a ring for all of us he would be eternally broke. I am sure he thought that a house designed 'just' for me was proof enough of commitment. He proposed to a friend of mine a year or two later, and as far as I know he showed her the plans for the house as well.  She got a ring though.

Proposal #3 was a little offhand really. I said yes to this one though, and we had planned to announce it to family and friends after we finished studying. We had a future planned and it involved traveling and he said, "well yes, I think we had better get married, it will make traveling and visas easier." Aren't you just swooning with the romance? No ring, because that would be the same as announcing it...

Proposal #4 was just before I left on travels of my own. I think the reason I didnt get a ring with this one was that I was leaving the country. Letting that R20k investment out of your sight is quite silly, really. Why spend all that money if she stands a chance of being swept off her feet by some half clad Adonis-like Greek on a white sandy beach somewhere? Good thing really, because I didnt make it back to the area for 4 years.

Proposal #5... well. I really should have had a ring for this one. The plan was to get one once I actually arrived in the country (I am still in South Africa and he is across the pond) but since the continental divide proved as large as always expected, I am single and ring-less. We cant even fight about who gets the frying pans, or who the house warming gift was really for, because neither of us is going to send it across the pond anyway. Handing back the others belongings isn't quite the same when its delivered by postman by necessity, rather than as an indication of vitriole and an unwillingness to deign to be in the others presence.  

I am kinda curios to know if there will be a Proposal #6. And if there will be a ring. Let this be a warning to all future prospects... I want a ring. And if you break up with me after I accept it... I am keeping it. Thanks.