Plans will change. The plan you figured out in the evening will most likely be outdated at breakfast. Planning for the weekend is brave and making plans for the next month is almost insane.
Related to this we learned another thing: Be prepared. Always. For everything. In other words: Carry everything you need with you. Waiting times occur regularly and if you do not want to waste them, you should better have laptop, writing pad and pens with you. Additionally you will probably not necessarily end up where you expected to be (or where you stored your stuff).To be prepared for everything also refers to household matters. Spare candles in the cupboard will safe you from darkness during the next load shedding (scheduled power cut). And as the WiFi is also not working there is no blue technological light destroying the atmosphere.
No power also means no stove. So either be done with cooking before the cut or stick to „Brotzeit“ (roughly translated: time for bread) for dinner. Bread is a big topic: We are always on the lookout for a decent rye bread and as soon as we have the chance to get one, we get it. And after two months we know now where to go.
Talking about going somewhere: Taxis are lava. A distance of at least a kilometer is to be preferred. The drivers try to pick up every single (paying) customer on the side of the road and they do not care whether they are on the left or the right lane and whether there are other cars in the way.
While driving here is little more than an adventure, recycling is a real challenge. First of all most of the times it is not even possible. Everything goes into one bin and straight to the landfill. The challenge with recycling, when it is done, is not about paper, cardboard, cans or glass. It only gets complicated when it comes to plastic: No silver on the packaging, no fruit containers (however some are allowed), only certain types of plastic, … Easy when it is written down on the packaging, almost impossible when you have to guess… But we are slowly getting there. Let us talk about it in two months again.
In two months a lot can change. While we were freaking out about any spider in our cottage in the first days, we now even have „house flatties“ (Flattie is the nickname of a spider which is sitting – surprise – flat on the wall) which are allowed to stay until someone finally bothers to take them out. We are also getting really confident in catching spiders of any kind: By now it is only an inconvenience not a challenge anymore. Maybe in a few months we will start analysing what kind of spider we actually have caught.
This laid-back attitude runs through everything. Here in South Africa you just do not have any other chance but to take things as they are and we really learned to embrace that way of living. Like the meaning of now. Now here is not our now. It is more of a „within the next hours or days“-now. Maybe you can compare it with the „gleich“ (=soon) children (and adults as well) tend to say when they are supposed to come or do something immediately but do not want to.
But even the worst thing to do is better when you have a great team around you. As long as the team is good even dismantling the 30th palette is some kind of fun. Talking about palettes: related to them we learned a whole bunch of new things, skills and words (we could create a whole new list out of it to be honest).
In general our vocabulary has grown a lot, not just with english words but also with Xhosa and a little bit of Shona. Although the clicking sounds of Xhosa are sometimes hard the surprised faces and smiles are the greatest reward for almost knotting your tongue.
A few things more:
Nine animals we saw: whale, dolphins, monkeys, tortoises, owl, bush bucks, snake, antilopes (and a zebra behind a fence)
Nine places we love: Sardinia Bay, Table Mountain, Observatory/CT, our Cottage, Beer Yard, Vovo Telo, Schoenmakerskop, Baakens Valley, Flavaz Café on South Campus
(Almost) nine cars we drove: Rosemary (our first one, a white VW Jetta full of flaws), The Chico (the car for any eventuality), Carl(a) (she almost left us but then came back for a short while) Kens Car (a surrogate when Carl(a) failed us) and Tony (our current partner in crime)