We’re back in Harare, although between shorter visits to the folks and a recent holiday with them our happy little cottage has spent the last few weeks with an oscillating occupancy rate 🙂 We have some bits and bobs to share in terms of updates, but first, let me tell you about that recent trip!

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We were planning a getaway, but our first choice was 9+ hours and impossible to book. Looking closer to home, we decided to try a place called Antelope Park. What a lovely place! We had a massive lodge a few kms into the park, meaning a game drive every time we went to the restaurant etc and a bit of solitude – a major plus for us 🙂

The bush was very dry and hot – we did activities from 6:30am and then retired to our cool comfy accommodation for the heat of the day. The birding was excellent – a different set of species to those we get near home. 130+ species on the list 🙂

Using David and Richards cameras has me hooked – I’ve been wanting one for myself for ages and this trip was the tipping point – a fancy new one is on it’s way as we speak, acquired in the normal Zimbo fashion – via an overseas relative with luggage space to spare 😀

In other news, Ellie has a job as an art teacher next year, which is amazing! Right next door to us as well. And borders are opening, so we might get to see family at some point (fingers crossed). And we have a new vehicle, which means we can finally get off the beaten track and start visiting some more of my favorite bush places. Aaaaand I think that’s the news for now – everything else continues blissfully along, and of course Zimbabwe remains totally crazy which we somehow work around.

Love to all ❤

J

A few weeks have flown by! This is just a quick update as I sit by a fire. Let’s go through the news via pictures:

Weekends are wonderful. We had a lie in this morning (although I confess I did do some coding from bed) followed by a cooked breakfast and a walk. I’ve figured out that I can shake a bush over a tray and catch all kinds of spiders as they fall out 🙂 A walk in the morning justified an afternoon of blobbing and we ended with a family zoom, a tasty stew and an evening watching ‘MasterChef’ by the fire.

Garden golf continues despite the chilly mornings, and we continue to be aggressively amateur in our play! Being with family is so wonderful, and I’m so happy we have an excuse to be here with them for a bit. Cheers for now ❤

Scarcely had I finished writing the last post about how we left Chegutu and returned to Harare when we were presented with an excuse to head back to the parents’ house! I won’t go into the story, but we had all our devices stolen from our house (we slept through it). I start teaching an online course on Monday, so we have hastened to Chegutu where we can borrow laptops and be surrounded by a loving family in a safe place.

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Chegutu is still the same paradise. The lawn is green thanks to tireless watering and we were welcomed by homemade lemon juice, tea, a roaring fire and a tasty meal. We’ve already been for a walk, played scrabble, had a round of garden golf and begun a potjie! And of course I’m excited to be back with my arachnid friends 🙂

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Just wanted to share this small update. Thanks to everyone concerned for us – it’s been such a blessing seeing how everyone offered help and made our last few days so bright.
PS: Here are a few pics of our socially distant lunch with Scott and Clare, complete with a foraged salad from their wonderful garden. Hooray for friends like this 🙂

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The world has been a little crazy lately! I’m sorry we didn’t keep up the posting, but in this post I’ll try to skim through the last three or four months as quickly as possible, then pretend we’ve caught up and share the happy news of the day.

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In March a quick visit to the family turned into a looong stay, as the lockdown started just after we arrived at my parents house in Chegutu. We couldn’t have come up with a better plan if we tried. A little bubble of calm in the bush, isolated from the outside world, surrounded by loving family. I got really into spiders – check out my list: https://lockdownlist.wordpress.com/blog-2/. Work got really busy, and will continue to be busy until the end of August – I took on too much, and am really looking forward to some down time later in the year.

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In due course we returned to our cosy little cottage, where we have remained. I did spend a week doing some research in the field in a remote area called Chivi. Seeing the lived reality of rural Zimbabweans, fighting for a life in the harsh dry landscape, living without so many of the conveniences we take for granted… it’s always shocking, saddening and somehow motivating – I really hope our little project helps lift even a few of these folks in some small way. I don’t want to try to describe Zim as a whole here, but the fact that I’m hearing ‘pakaipa’ (lit. ‘it is bad’) as a greeting and informal Zimbabwean motto gives you an idea.

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So – there’s out catchup. Now on to the happy circumstances that reminded me that this blog existed! It’s a Sunday, and wow am I happy to have a break day. This week featured about 3x the hours logged in my work timer compared to last year’s average, and it was followed by me hosting a hackathon on Saturday. Waking up this morning with tea and a book in bed, watching our sermon from under our cosy blankets and wandering the garden with a podcast and my macro lens had me feeling suuuuper happy 🙂 And then: a new species of jumping spider! (New to me, and maybe to science). All that to set the scene – wondering how my day could get better, I remembered that 1) I hadn’t done any ‘making’ in a while and 2) Ellie had stalled on a big painting for lack of an easy way to hold the ‘canvas’ (aka a big hunk of plywood). In a delightful 2-for-1 deal I made a quick stand for the painting, and look how happy my beloved is 😀 😀 😀

It was a Friday, and a public holiday, so Johno and I and ten friends piled into three cars and headed out of town to go see the Chinhoyi caves. (Gotta save petrol, since it’s so hard to get right now.) We drove for an hour and finally reached the caves.

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After first convincing the people at the entrance that we were not tourists (tourists pay a hefty USD fee), we headed straight to the main cave.

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There were bat squeaks, and vivid blue water full of happy fish. After standing around admiring the lake for a while, we climbed back through the very steep tunnel, and headed to the Dark Cave.

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Now after all that, my favourite part of the day was still to come. We headed around the corner to some massive polo fields, where we picnicked and played frisbee for the rest of the afternoon. It made me so happy to have such a lovely group of friends to spend time with.

Our friends are almost all heavy tea drinkers, so we closed off the day with tea from the flasks that everyone seemed to have brought, then headed home. The caves were beautiful, but what really made the day were the people. People being entertaining on the drives, playing spooky pranks in the caves, sharing their food, and tea, and time. We even all shared the pain of sunburns the next week! But then, that’s what friends are for.

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It’s about time for another blog! We’re having a lovely lazy valentines at home, and I’ve run out of excuses to write up some recent activities 🙂 In no particular order:

Chegutu/Kadoma visit

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Two weeks ago, we spent the weekend with my parents and brother in Chegutu. As with our visit earlier in the year, it was a lovely change of scenery and a luxury to spend time with those happy humans. But unlike the earlier trip, this one was almost busy!! We went birding at a nearby farm, visited a friends church, went round to the pastors house for a massive (seriously, massive, they’re used to 6 teenagers, I ate enough to feel sick) lunch and some amusing discussions. This is the family of our friend Elsa, who has moved back to Kadoma while looking for job options. It was lovely to catch up and meet her hospitable family 🙂

Home Improvement Projects

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We’ve done a few home-improvement projects recently. Partly powered by my new, battery-powered jigsaw! It’s such fun 🙂 See Ellie’s cool stained paint board (I have a matching yellow tool rack) and the cool window seat Ellie made in the pics above!! Our art room is also nice and organised, and my 3D printer is set up and running (if there’s sunshine or electricity!). And I have a mostly complete fridge box, which was a fun group project with Simba and Masimba.

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Lake Manyame trip

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We spent a night with a friend in a cottage in Lake Manyame Recreational Park. It’s a small park, but has lovely woodland to explore and some fun birds for our year list. It was also great to somewhat spontaneously make plans and head off with Scott, who we haven’t seen in ages. The cottage was simple but sufficient, and at least one of us was excited by how many cool spiders it contained!!

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That’s about it for now 🙂 Much love, J&E

This week I both started and completed a satisfying little home improvement project. I had been thinking for a while that our art room/study needed some splashes of colour. My solution? Yellow curtains!

I decided to use the pieces of white cotton which were currently hung over strings as curtains, and dye them myself. But not with boring old fabric dye: with turmeric! Most of my info on the how-tos of the process I found here, if you’re interested in giving it a whack.

After first tie dying a fun little scarf as a tester, I got to work.

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On top of being hugely satisfying, the simmering turmeric made the whole house smell delicious!

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After dying that first one, I was committed (and enthusiastic). Over the course of the next week I dyed all of the rest of the fabric, and then today I sewed them into proper curtains and hung them up.

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I’m very happy with how these turned out. I know they’ll eventually fade in the sun, but they still add such a beautiful pop of colour to that room. It’s going to make me happy every time I see them.

Happy New Year! Can you believe that our first post was shared here back in 2018? Crazy 🙂
We’re back in Zim after a happy holiday, and this post will skim over the weeks since our last post. Here we go!

Christmas in Cape Town

After our hike, we stayed with family in Muizenberg over Christmas. Beach walks, Christmas cookies, visits with friends, good food, good family time, lots of rest!

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Chegutu

We flew back to Zim on the 1st of Jan, and the next day traveled to Chegutu – a small town a few hours outside Harare where my folks have just moved. This is a big change for them, and it was great for us to see them in their new place and help set things up.

Chegutu is going to be an interesting place for them to live. The school is surrounded by bush, but that quickly gives way to the outskirts of Chegutu town. Electricity is tricky – the school turns on a generator at set times, and there is sometimes municipal power at night. But we helped set up solar, and the generator makes it possible to plan things like laundry and ironing.

Mom and Ellie have been busily sewing away, making curtains and mattress covers such. David braved the heat up in the ceiling to run wires while I hopped about on the roof pushing them through, so that we can use the solar panel to charge a battery and keep the WiFi on. Dad has been frantically getting into his new headmastership job as everyone gears up for the start of term. But mostly we’ve all been swimming – the pool next door is a life-saver in this heat 🙂

The areas is full of friendly people, but you can see that it’s a tough life here. Fields along the road sport drooping maize plants – the rain finally arrived this week, but it’s sporadic timing will mean bad harvests here (and in the rest of Zim). The town is full of hustle and bustle, as people try to make a living off whatever resources can be found. There is a ‘bendover’ market where second hand clothes can be found and haggled for, and a few shopping markets with the basics. But for anything fancy, I suspect my folks will end up heading into Harare to shop (and visit us!).

We visited a church on Sunday, increasing the size of the congregation substantially. I’m looking forward to seeing how my good parents integrate into the community here, and where the find places to serve.

Bugs and Such

Enough non-animal content. We’re on >100 birds already for the year, thanks to the surrounding forest. And I have a renewed interest in bugs! Here are some pictures to make you happy 🙂

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Tomorrow we head back to our little cottage. And I should probably get back to work. So, for now, adieu 🙂

For years, I’ve been intending to do one of the multi-day hikes along the coast of South Africa. This year, plans finally came together thanks to our wonderful friend Claire, who organised for four of us to hike a part of the Tsitsikama trail – a gorgeous hike through the fynbos and afromontane forests of Knysna. Here’s how it went.

Preparations and Arrival

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We had a day in Cape Town before embarking on our 7 hour road trip. This gave just enough time to complete several vital preparation steps: buying food, packing bags and, most important of all, picking the music for the drive. Claire did a stellar job at the latter, finding all the songs from our pasts that would maximize nostalgia and encourage sing-alongs.

After a smooth drive, we stopped by the reception to get our map and sign some indemnity forms, and then it was time for our first bit of hiking. It turns out that the first leg is easier than anticipated, with a choice of the 20 minute direct route or the slightly longer scenic route to the first hut we’d be staying in. We chose the scenic option, and were at our destination by 2pm. This worked out great – we’d had an hour of hiking to get used to our packs, and were left with some free time to explore our surroundings and swim in the lagoon 🙂

The huts are shared, and we had about 12 people total each night. Food was shared, marshmallows were toasted and copious amounts of tea/coffee were consumed thanks to Andumai’s nifty little gas stove. We turned in early (I don’t think we managed a late night the whole trip), looking forward to a full day 2.

Day 2 – the Long One

Day 2’s hike was 16km. It began with a steep ascent up to the top of a ridge, an early signal that this wouldn’t be as easy as the previous day’s stroll. But the effort was well worth it, as each step took us higher and revealed more and more stunning views of the sea and mountains around us.

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The day stayed overcast, but we only got rained on as we neared our destination. It felt so good to breach the final hill, settle into the hut, change into warm clothes, loose the hiking shoes to free our aching feet, get a fire going and relax with some tea. As with the previous day, we had reached the hut with lots of time left in the day. Unlike the previous day, we mostly spent it napping and relaxing indoors since it was still grey and rainy, and we were pretty tired from a long trek 🙂

Day 3: The Return

The plan for day 3 was to hike the 7kms to a forest station where we’d meet a shuttle to take us back to the start and our parked car. To our delight, the entire hike was downhill along a shaded jeep track, and with our packs light and the favorable gradient we made excellent time, and could afford to chill and enjoy the forest whenever the mood took us, knowing this was our last chance to breathe in that rich sylvan air. I’ve been saying ‘forest’ like it was one thing, but this was no homogeneous woodland. In some places, creepers and thin trees crowded round and we waled through a tunnel of green. In others, the canopy would lift, giant Ironwoods pillars holding up the roof o a green cathedral, with the orange-red of the Cape Saffron trees colorful accents amid the browns and greys of the other trees. There were Eucalyptus stands, and Pine plantations, and fynbos mixed in the forest edges. Paradise, is what I’m getting at 🙂

So far, I’ve resisted talking about the birds. But there were birds!! And new ones for me, since this was a habitat I hadn’t explored before. Victorin’s Warblers called from the bushes (found them!) and Chorister Robin-Chats sang in the forest (didn’t find them). We got 15 new ones for the year list, 5 of which were lifers for me. But most exciting was… well, first some back-story. In 2014 began my search for this bird in earnest, looking desperately for it Mana Pools. I listened hopefully for it in the mountains of Makado. I heard it in the distance when hunting it in Hluhluwe-Impholozi park. I tracked its call to a birder with a cellphone in Unfurudzi Forest Area. Always it eluded me – the super-sneaky Narina Trogon.

Anyway, the Tsitsikama forest is known to be a good place to find them, but I had tried not to get my hopes too high for this trip. On day 2, I thought I heard one calling in the distance, too far away to find. Then, half-way through our hike on day 3, something (a bird of prey of some kind) flew into a tree near the road. As I searched for it, I noticed a silhouette in the middle of a bunch of leaves. There it was! A trogon, its camouflaged back to us, sitting there and pretending to be a bunch of foliage. Joyful celebration ensued 🙂

Day 3.2 – Santa?

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Instead of driving all the way back to Cape Town, we (Claire) had come up with a brilliant idea – to stay one night in an AirBnB in Wilderness. Thence we headed by way of Spur, to relax into the comforts of civilization. It was nice, but the owner had something about Santa. And Monroe. And the colors red and white in general. See pictures for more.

Home

And that concludes our adventure. It was wonderful getting to spend so much time with some good friends, chatting or hiking in companionable silence, enjoying the wonders of creation together and taking some time out from the rest of the world. Now that we know what the trail holds, I suspect we’ll be back one day to explore it further. For now, it’s Christmas time at the Ker home, and we’ll be happily family-timing it for the rest of the year.

Thanks for coming along on our adventures! 2019 has been a blast 🙂 Love to you all, and see you in the new year!

My camera roll has reached a critical mass. It’s time for my next dump of taxi photos. This has been a delightful quest, and it’s gotten to the point where my friends here are starting to send me the best ones they see in their day to day lives. Apologies for the quality: most of these were taken from a moving car.

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I asked a taxi driver why they choose the things they do, and he said that mostly it’s important for them to be memorable and stand out from their competition.

A list of amazing ones that I didn’t manage to get pictures of:

• Burning Decaf
• Real Situation
• Misunderstood Destruction Boys
• Touch Screen – Soft Touch
• Mr Perfect
• Madam’s Boss
• Manager by Birth
• Wanted Suspect
• Theatre of Dreams
• Club Member
• Pass the chalice dry mouth
• Syndicate Hobbit
• Ceylon good morning

And with that, I’ll wrap up this post.