After the coffee we moved to the “parade ground” for roll call. We stood around in what could be called a “loose formation squad”. Some guys wore shorts, some longs; some wore shirts, some T-shirts. All the boots were different. The only thing the clothes had in common was that they were either cammo or green-coloured. The camp by day was very different to an SADF one. Nothing – but nothing – was “squared away”. The tents were in no real layout and not put up straight or even particularly well. The beds were unmade or semi-made and all sorts of civvy shit was just lying around. The parade ground was the road we drove through the skitwal on.
Reima strode forward and shouted: ‘Aandag!’ but only he and the four new chaps came to attention. As for the rest, all they did was stand up if they had been sitting or lying on the ground and face vaguely forward. If they had been smoking, some put the cigarettes out, some didn’t. Then another chap came ambling up looking bored; Reima saluted him and yelled something unintelligible. They said a few words and Reima about-turned and screamed: ‘At ease!’ The four rookies went to “at ease”. The rest couldn’t get more at ease unless they lay down again. A roll call of sorts was taken and when it was my turn I earned my first nickname; my earring was still in. After being called a girl and a queer all at the same time, Reima calmed down and never called me anything but oorbel after that. Later on you will realize how pathetic all this posturing of the sergeant major really was. The CO welcomed us new chaps and explained this was definitely not the SADF and how we were not to act as if it was. He had very little else to say. These amazing roll calls happened in a similar fashion the whole time I was with Executive Outcomes. The only real purpose these parades served was to make sure no one had disappeared in the night, which I found out later was quite feasible in this crazy place.
As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
As explained in the link above, I will post, a series of what would be my OLD MAN’s CV.
So. The main beds are done and planted, water at this stage was a bit of a problem. That was solved by the owner buying 4 huge Jojo tanks, the catchment of the Foundries roof was huge, filled up the tanks much faster than I expected. Fresh rain water, who could ask for more?
I started making … things. More kiln pots, with succulents in them, found some wire cages and started making plant holders with that. And. That rock wall. It looks nice, I think, but never again! As I said, I did this whole mission all by myself, rocks are heavy ….
The first tomato from the French seeds and a snake that was in the garden. Found some old fencing and put up a trellis. At that point was not sure which climbing veggie I would plant. The above ground boxes were coming along nicely too.
As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
As explained in the link above, I will post, a series of what would be my OLD MAN’s CV.
This is a garden I started from scratch at an Artist’s Studio, Zwavelpoort, Pretoria East. As you see it was just a piece of Veld. As usual I did not have anyone help me, each spade of sand, each rock I carried myself. The photos in the ensuing series…
Not visible from my first tent was the Rio Longa. Noticing the reeds, I took a walk and was surprised at the sheer size of this river. On the map it is marked as a smallish river; in real life it is wider than the Vaal in full flood, by far. It is a muddy brown colour and seems to be moving at a sluggish pace. This is, however, deceptive; a few months later we saw a whole island the size of two Mack trucks rush past us at about 20-30 km an hour!
Re-education
The day started off with a few more shocks, one of the first being roll call. Before that, though, we needed to get coffee and rusks. In true “in the bush” army style, only two meals were scheduled each day: one at 11 o’clock and then a supper.
The mess consisted of a few tables and chairs under some beautiful palm trees; the kitchen was a series of cookers and gas fridges under a tarpaulin with wire and sail “walls”. The floor was plain sod and the pantry was some shelves at the rear, which eventually grew to a small shipping container. It had very little in it, but at this stage there were only about 30 of us at Longa, so having only few supplies was not so worrying. The other startling thing was that in front of the tables and chairs was a top-of-the-range TV and video setup. In time to come we would all watch those ridiculous Vietnam movies and almost die laughing, trying to find look-alikes amongst ourselves. For some reason, the people “back at the house” were of the impression that all we would want to watch would be war movies. This was not true; we were living in those conditions all day, every day, and most of us would have preferred movies about absolutely anything else.
The mess had a roof of sorts made of canvas, rope and wire, to protect the equipment against the rain. Again we were met with unfriendly stares from the other men in the camp, with little or no conversation going on. We actually got issued with a mug! No spoon. The sugar was in a big plate and had hundreds of bees swarming around it. In the deep shade the mossies were still active. This early in the morning the flies were still sleeping; we would meet them at brunch time. One day later on an Angolan chap arrived. He showed us that if we took a dead, dried-out piece of cactus and lit one end of it, it would smoulder all day and the smoke would drive both the mosquitoes and the bees away. The flies didn’t give a shit.
The back wall I decided to play with, built in all sorts of patterns, made ventilation above the kitchen area and some fixed windows. What I REALLY did not like was the back wall by the sink. It was f-ugly and made me more determined to find a solution for this. The Bottle Brick experiments were still going but not what I wanted …. Yet. I also made some coasters with a mix of crushed glass and thick Polyxylene. Poured that into a jam bottles lid, bottle most likely was crushed ha ha. Then added a bottle top in the middle. I liked them.
I will post, a series of what would be my OLD MAN’s CV.As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
One day at the glass place there was this huge wooden frame, man I had to take it “home” with me. Did not have any idea of what EXACTLY I would use it for but the crushed glass and broken window panes in the pallets was in my head it seems. Decided to use this on the wall most visible to people visiting and, with great difficulty, got it into position and secured it. Working alone is sometime a damn pain, ideally it would have been best to work with it flat and make the crushed glass pane on a flat surface. No way once all the glass and whatnot was done that I would have been able to move the frame even an inch by myself. Nevermind. I made each pane, let it dry for a couple of days, then set it into the frame in the frame. While doing this glass crushing noticed a lot of fine poweder glass in the container I smashed the coloured glass in. Now with the Polyxylene I had an idea. The place’s name was VeloGecko, we needed a Crushed Glass Gecko! To this end I got a kitchen flour sieve and started collecting the fine powder. Mainly green and brown beer bottles. I am not very good at drawing but made my best attempt at drawing a Gecko on a piece of glass, then painted my thick Polyxylene within the outline. Lastly I wanted some eyes and they just had to be black. Now black glass bottles are not found so easily! Savanah had a drink that came in a black bottle and slowly collected those for the eyes.
I will post, a series of what would be my OLD MAN’s CV.As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
The first Angolan roadblock we saw was a joke: a few policemen with machine guns, and they were all sleeping. Later we learned that the police and soldiers were mortal enemies. We arrived at a camp in the dark, could not see much.
We were shown to a tent without lights. We collected a kas, a bed frame and a mattress, all of which we had been sitting on top of in the truck. All this was done in the dark; one could only make out the vague shapes of bush and tents at this stage. One guy was already set up in the tent. Tall and skinny, he was the friendliest person we had met thus far. As we had been told not to bring anything with us, we had no torch, and not even a candle. “Skinny” told us to set up our mossie nets before anything else. He was quite right; the mossies at Longa are the worst I have ever seen. Clouds of them, early in the morning and all night. If you slapped your leg, your hand came away black. They drank Mylon for starters and our blood as a chaser! Before a month was out most of us at camp had malaria and symptoms of other strange diseases which I’m sure the mossies carried as spare ammunition to try and kill us off. We dubbed them “the Angolan Air Force”; eventually I had two mossie nets although they were suffocating in the extreme heat. I was one of the few that did not fall ill right at the beginning.
Once I had the beds I wanted dug into the ground, I stated making planting boxes, yes, with pallets. My small “greenhouse” box was for planting seeds pallet and shade clothe. Then a big shade clothe box I planned, and did, plant Strawberries in, with the rock wall for the fruit to lie on. You know why they are called STRAWberries don’t you? If the fruit lies on the ground it goes vrot, so the traditional way is to put straw down under the fruit. Rock wall worked just as well!
My first tomatoes came up while I was busy with all this and had one lonely chilli . The tomato seed were from France, the artist here have a commune that side, and one brought seeds. Then for fun, grew purple cauliflowers.
As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
As explained in the link above, I will post, a series of what would be my OLD MAN’s CV.
This is a garden I started from scratch at an Artist’s Studio, Zwavelpoort, Pretoria East. As you see it was just a piece of Veld. As usual I did not have anyone help me, each spade of sand, each rock I carried myself. The photos in the ensuing series…
As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
As explained in the link above, I will post, a series of what would be my OLD MAN’s CV.As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
The Kitchen area of the Bottle Cottage.
Never even tried to do tiling before this. But. Had a whole lot of broken tiles and a cast away metal cupboard. While the two row of bottles was drying I attempted to make a work surface and table for the little gas stove. Was a bit messy in the beginning but got it right I think? At this time I was also growing vegetables with great difficulty as here in the foothills of Uitkyk one has a cm of top soil, if you are lucky. There were a few horse ranches near and that made it possible to make some topsoil. Oh. And Cucumbers? Can grow then in pure horse manure.
Back to the building. At this stage I had an idea of making Bottle Bricks. I had the size worked out for easy building, one man size. Thing was I had only a few ideas that needed to me tested. The first attempts were not good as you see in the photo. To make a mould strong enough to hold poured concrete was a problem. Then that the necks of the bottles stuck out was no good. My internet research is easier now, back then I did not use it at all. Trail and Error. As we go along you shall see what the final result was. And I shall attempt at giving a “building plans for Bottle Bricks” . The other problem was balancing the bottles on their necks, as this was the best results.
The beginning of the drive was amazing. The feeling of riding to war, not knowing where we were or what to expect, and the strange scenery, all added to the feeling of surrealism.
The road north was a single, semi-tarred affair with trucks cannibalised where they had broken down. Outside of Caba Ledo was a huge base of special ops soldiers. They had red berets with a baltjie of a leopard’s face. They looked exceptionally tough and mean; a mixture of blacks and coloureds and not a white face to be seen. There was another African market with plenty of dried fish and meat hanging in the hot sun; the smell of a fishing village’s market is unique — thank goodness. Past the village the semi-desert vegetation was as strange as it was beautiful. The tallest cacti I have ever seen before or since grow along this coastal belt, interspersed with huge baobab trees. It was an almost alien landscape. The grass was sparse and, in between, the sand I remembered so well from my Border trips. So, on we drove. At the time we did not know it, but we were to travel about 200 km north towards Luanda, the capital. At one point we came to a bridge that had been blown up. The road had been rebuilt in the then-dry gully. That road would not survive the first rains. The first white people we saw were the road builders that seemed to be Portuguese descendants. Right then my plan for escape and evasion, if necessary, materialised. A deaf-mute Porra road workman should do nicely! It got dark very quickly and we didn’t see any other traffic, again for obvious reasons: not much movement after dark in operational areas.
As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
As explained in the link above, I will post, a series of what would be my OLD MAN’s CV.
This is a garden I started from scratch at an Artist’s Studio, Zwavelpoort, Pretoria East. As you see it was just a piece of Veld. As usual I did not have anyone help me, each spade of sand, each rock I carried myself. The photos in the ensuing series…
After getting a few beds well prepped I start planting a few things. Radish are the best for a quick crop. Then depending on the season a few other veggies that are “in season” Usually I plant from seed that I get out… the dustbin of where I am. People throw away a lot of food and even more seeds. My next mission is to get the kitchen staff to trow all veggie cuttings and peels in a container. Potato peels I found to be no good. Too much starch .. I think.
And as I said a Veggie Garden does not have to be ugly, or even untidy. Those pots with succulents? Waste from the Artist Bronze Foundry, crucibles for melting metal that are burned out. Heavy and durable. Then I am always glad to see little animals like Geckos in my gardens. They also eat Goggas, as I do not use ANY poisons , insects are a concern. But there are ways to deal with that, and the wild animals that raided her, monkey and Duiker were the problem with larger animals. The biggest problem was with Blowfly and any Squash type veggies. I found out , years later, that the Blowfly are invader species mainly, spoke to a conservation guy in St Lucia, he was hanging up traps, similar to one that a Gardening Club sent me here! Did not work! But. As we go along I will tell you what I did and how my crop was just too much for the place. I was eventually swapping veggies for biltong with a neighbor. Now that was a good trade!!!!
The Mexican Horse Thief 