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!!!!
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.
The Bottle Cottage
Thought we could take a look at the PALLETS part of this building today.
When collection bottles in Nelspruit I saw at the Glass place, they had pallets for free. Then big bins of glass off cuts. I can use this!
Long ago I met a chap that made Damp Proofing with Polystyrene, as you may well know that stuff is terrible for the ecology, just does NOT break down and go away. Recycling for something to become yet another piece of junk to be tossed in a landfill is…. Moronic. By dissolving Polystyrene into a chemical called Xylene until is get you get a thick liquid, that you then “paint” onto your problem wall. The , I called it Polyxylene here, is basically liquid plastic, when applied it soaks into the wall and sets in a very thin plastic … sheet? Inside the wall. Ok. I would need that but thought about what I had on hand. Pallets, glass and Polyxylene.
Now if I dissolved enough Polystyrene I could make a thick glue. Then use the big off cuts to put in the gaps of the pallets. Used silicone to attach the glass, coated that with thick Polyxylene, cruche different coloured glass into small pieces and glued them on. The thick Polyxylene takes a long time to dry, two days even in the hot Bushveld. But. Had other ideas for the Pallet Panels.
In the shed at VeloGecko was a lot of Roof Waterproofing cans of paint and those strips of clothe one puts down then paints over. This would protect the rather poor wood pallets are made of. As you see by the photos I did a few variations of these ideas, and the end result…….
Any donations to keep the wolf at bay till I find work will be appreciated GREATLY!
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.
The Bottle Cottage.
I arrived at VeloGecko campsite in order to make.. Veggie Gardens. But. On the property was the , basically, frame of a BOTTLE COTTAGE! The owners had put the floor, the stonework and the roof up, then half of the front wall and two rows of bottles all round. Then got tired of it. One look at thiis and my Recycling Maniac brain went crazy! Here we had no electricity, one small generator and some solar panels. I had my own small solar set up in the caravan I stayed in.
Again I worked mainly by myself, now and then the lady of the place would come…. help. There was a mountain of bottles that had been collected and we collected at the bars, sports clubs etc. on Mondays. The river sand I collected from the run off of the sand road, you see the pic of the dog jumping? That was the sand supply. I build with bottles, one by one, but saw there were a few problems with this. One could build two rows at a time only or the wall would collapse, I started experimenting with what became my Bottle Brick (photos and how to make later.) At the same time I started using all sorts of “rubbish” like pallets, re-invented my Polyxylene to make think glue and all sorts of things.
The Mexican Horse Thief 