90) The rest of our holiday

The Wild Coast

The morning after our arrival at Port St. John we went in search of some groceries. We were rather shocked at the lack of food stores. Our tourist brochure had stated that there were a number of places where we could buy supplies but we had already established that our brochure was very out of date. There was only one food store. It was a small corner shop with not a very large stock of foods. The assistants told us that they were waiting for the delivery truck to come from the capital, Umtata. The heavy rain had delayed the supply truck. Besides a small stock of tinned food they said they could sell us some “nice hot pies”. The said pies were in a pie warmer, they looked as if they had been there quite some time along with the flies that were sitting happily on them. The meat in the fridges looked as if it had been there longer than the pies and I did not think we should risk it. We managed to buy a couple of cartons of cereals and some bacon that was in vacuum packs and looked good. I thought that an egg was a safe food but that was before I had heard of the salmonella out break in the United Kingdom that many people blamed on infected eggs. We bought eggs and fortunately we did not get sick. There was a bakery so we bought bread and ate sandwiches of sardines and tinned meat for a few days.

The shop assistants told us that the wet weather had stopped the petrol tanker coming to the village so the petrol station had no petrol. This was rather a shock as we did not have enough petrol to get back to the main road and had intended filling up there. We also realised that if the tanker could not get in we probably could not get out so just had to wait for the petrol to arrive anyway. If the weather had been good it would have been wonderful to be marooned in a lovely place like Port St. John but it was pretty cold and rained on and off most of the time. Jonny did manage to do a little fishing and we did a little sight seeing but we had to be careful with the little bit of petrol that we had in the tank. At the end of the week the petrol tanker rolled into town. The word went round quickly that petrol was once again available and that the rivers had gone down and the road was now passable. Looking at the large black clouds that still filled the sky we thought that it would be best for us to get back to civilization as soon as possible so we packed up and headed out.

Fishing at Port St. John

Our next port of call was to visit Veronica Campbell Howard and her family who were living in Margate. Jonny had worked with Veronica at Puzey and Payne Car Sales in Salisbury and we had kept in touch. Craig and Lorna MacGiles with whom Jonny had worked when we were in the Vumba were living somewhere close to Veronica and we saw them too. From there we went on to Durban and stayed a few days with Pat and Ken Thompson and also some time with Doug and Anne Marshall. One thing I remember about our time in Durban was that we ran out of cash and although we had a bankcard with us we did not know how to use it. For some reason we was reluctant to try it and so we went into a bank to cash a cheque. We were in a strange town, in a bank where no one knew us and so changing the cheque was a long and complicated process. The teller had to phone through to Witbank to verify that there was money in the account and they even asked the young gentleman who was attending to us to describe me. He was having a bit of a problem with that so they asked him if I was a short lady, who was starting to go grey. He smiled and said “Yes” and they told him to cash the cheque for us. The young man obviously knew the ways of women as I had put a colour shampoo on my hair before I went on holiday and did not have a single grey hair on my head.

All the people in the bank were kind and helpful but the whole transaction took so long we thought we would not like to have to do that again so the next time we needed money we decided to use our brand new bank card. We stood in the queue to use the ATM and when our turn came put the card into the machine. It just spat it straight out; we tried once again and got the same reaction from the unfriendly machine. Watching the queue getting longer behind us we decided to try just once more before giving up. There had been so much publicity about people being robbed of all their savings at the ATM we were reluctant to ask anyone for assistance. What we decided to do was to try the card once again after hours when all the shops were closed and there would be no queue waiting to use the machine. That evening after we had had supper we went to a large block of apartments and shops called The Windermere Centre that had an ATM in the foyer. We once again put the card into the machine and it was once again rejected. I thought that there must be something wrong with the card and though that we would have to take it back to our bank when we got home again. Jonny thought that we must be doing something wrong and had a better look at the machine. There was, as clear as could be a picture of which way the card should be inserted into the slot and I had been putting it in up side down, no wonder it kept spitting it out. Jonny tried once more putting it in the correct way and “hay presto” it worked and we were able to draw money. We were very pleased with ourselves, it is hard to believe, now that bankcards are so much a part of everyone’s lives that we could have been so silly but this was all new technology to us.

Talking of The Windermere Centre reminds me of Jonny’s Uncle Bill who worked there as the building manager. Uncle Bill was the brother of Jonny’s step-dad so when we were in Durban we visited him and his wife. He told us many stories of life as a building manager but the one I remember was how he dealt with tenants who made a nuisance of themselves. He said that a lot of people expected him to drop whatever he was working on and rush to help them with whatever was wrong with their apartment as soon as they called him. A light bulb that had not been working for three days suddenly became very important at 9 o’clock at night and he was expected to go and fix it. So often the faulty tap or door catch that they had put up for a week suddenly late at night was important and they wanted Bill to fix it. Obviously there were things that had to be seen to immediately but if a tenant called him out unnecessarily after hours he would go and fix it but then would wait until the very early hours of the morning and ring them up and say “I just wanted to know if your light/tap/lock is working alright now” He said that he would not be called out twice by the same unreasonable tenant.

We visited Pat and Ken Thompson at their home in the village of Hillcrest not far from Durban. Their house was on a large piece of land and they were growing bananas commercially in a small way. They also owned two hardware shops one in Hillcrest village and the other out of town in small African shopping centre overlooking the beautiful Valley of a Thousand Hills. It was good to see them again and to see how their boys had grown up and were working. Kevin was working for Pat and Ken in the hardware business and Buddy was a diver with the navy. They had a dog that liked to skate board. He would pick up the skateboard in his mouth walk with it to the top of the slope just outside the house and then he would put his front feet on the board and push it down the slope. When he got to the bottom he would pick it up again and repeat the whole performance.

It was good to see so many old friends and we had a good holiday, but then it was time to head home again to our boys and our new puppy.