Day 8

Firstly, apologies to those following our blog every day for the lack of update over the last few days. We do try to update every day, but sometimes, what with one thing and another, we just don't get chance to write it all up as immediately as we'd like. Read on to find out what those things and anothers were....

Rush! Rush! Rush!

That's usually how our day begins, while one of Kuzuko's rangers waits so very patiently for us while we get ready to leave for another hard working day at the Barn. Dad however, is always ready to go at 8:30 on the dot, and has to wait while the rest of the family frantically get their stuff together. (That is SO not true!! -the rest of the family) In this case it was two very patient rangers, in the shape of the lovely Tammy and Romeo. They took us down to Hopewell, where as usual we first went down to the waterhole to see how it's coming along. And now we have two puddles!

Two puddles? Two puddles!

Back up to the barn, and Ines and Kira began the long job of sealing the previously-scraped ceiling struts, dressed as if they were about to go off to a halloween party. Max carried on with his forever improving cementing skills while I attacked the side door, but only after a bit of fight with getting the generator going to power the belt sander. A belt sander that seems determined to chew up it's own power cable every 15 minutes. How I didn't manage electrocute myself each time it did, I'm not entirely sure.

Ines doing her Statue of Liberty impression

By the time lunchtime arrived we were all so hungry, even the wilderbeast stayed a good distance away, probably sensing that we would give chase and eat them if they came anywhere near. While lunchtime arrived however, our staff lunches didn't. As we began to prepare for the 4km walk back, which was no easy decision with a rhino loose somewhere in the area! fortunately Adolph, and Gerhard and Catharina's youngest daughter, the bubbly Angelique, came bouncing down the road with our chips and cheese and ham toasties on board. A very pleasant 30 minutes or so was spent enjoying the food and watching the Kuzuko wildlife passing by and doing it's thing, and talking about the project.

Only 10 metres of grassland between us, and lunch

We talked in depth about the enormity of what we had taken on, and whether we could actually achieve anywhere close to what we wanted in the time that we have, what with so many tasks yet to complete. At this stage, where we had hoped to be already starting to put into place our ideas for the educational side, we were still only at the point of just weatherproofing the Barn. There are still holes in the roof, windows still needing to be fixed and panes to be replaced, steps to the entrance to be built, wooden frames to be wire-brushed and sanded and varnished and/or painted, rubbish to be cleared, walls and ceiling struts to sealed, the pit/hole to be cemented, the mahoosive crack in the front wall to be somehow sorted, guttering to be fixed, trees to be cleared, main doors to be fixed, to name abut a few. And, as always, more cracks to be cemented. If a professional builder had originally come to estimate what needed doing, he would been either on the floor laughing uncontrollably at our naivety, or thinking this could probably be his last job before he could happily retire on the proceeds!

But, with our bellies full, a renewed hope, and a flat out refusal to accept defeat, it was back to work with a gritty determination again. More treating of wood, more fixing of things, more sanding of doors and inevitably, more cementing of cracks.

Not content with making Romeo and Tammy wait for us in the morning, we made our evening pickup, Johnathon, who we have only met once very briefly so far, wait an extra 40 minutes while we used up the last of the cement of the day. This time though, there was some urgency, as he told us that we had been kindly invited up to the Lodge by Gerhard and Catharina to have dinner with their friends, the people who were currently running a regular team building weekend for the Kuzuko team, in less than an hour's time.

We got home, had a mad rush getting cleaned up, ready to be picked by Adolph at 6:30, who is also Kuzuko's youngest. A giddy mix of youthful exuberance and an ostritch-like character. He arrived a little early with Angelique, and to kill the time, sang songs so raucously we were surprised that there was only the two of them waiting and not a whole car full!

On the drive up to the lodge we were lucky to see another porcupine, or perhaps the same one we saw on our first day, running in front of us for some distance, until he eventually worked out that running along a road with a Land Cruiser behind you wasn't the best of ideas, and turned off into the safety of the bushes.

Until we could go for dinner with Alan, Tanya and Bernie, we spent half an hour or so watching South African rugby on the tv, with Gerhard and Catharina's oldest daughter, Anneka, giving us an informed excited run down of all the players of both the Blue Bulls and the Stormers teams. To say that she loves rugby with a passion would be somewhat of an understatement! We learnt that apparently Morné Steyn is very good (a cheetah on legs it seems!) and that Zane Kirchner kicks too much.

Time for dinner, where the kids; Max and Kira, Anneka and Angelique, and Alan and Tanya's two boys, Ethan and Aaron sat and chatted together, while we had a lovely steak in the excellent company of Alan and his partner, Tanya, and their friend Bernie. Alan is a psychologist running the team building and is a thoroughly engaging chap, while Tanya among many other creative things, runs a carpeting business that pioneered the idea of stencilled carpetting, down in Port Elizabeth Bernie works over in Australia, in Melbourne in the insurance industry. All were fantastic and very interesting company, and it was our deepest pleasure to have spent an entirely too short evening with them.

It wasn't until we finally wrapped up the evening that we realised we had kept Frankie, Kuzuko's restaurant manager and very decent chap waiting for ages for us to finish before he could close everything up and go home. We invited him around for a Braai (the equivalent of a British BBQ, but without the bad weather) at our house the next evening to make for it, and promised him that this time he could sit back and chill while we waited on him hand and foot instead. We did however warn him that we probably wouldn't be quite as professional as he had been for us.

A short but chilly drive home, courtesy of Adolph again, where we went to bed tired, but happy, and also very determined that tomorrow would be different, and come 8:30 we would definitely all be ready to go!

Sunday and Monday's blog coming soon, I promise!