Weekend Fun

I’m happy to report that I accomplished a lot more this weekend than I did the last; not being cooped up in bed with a fever certainly helped. I had a nice sleep-in on Saturday morning and after lunch went over to Jaco’s house to watch some rugby. Jaco is the main technician at the mine and is about 30 years old. He stays with his wife Ann Marie and their two pit bulls Spotty and Roxy. He invited me over for some Currie Cup rugby action, and I can’t say no to sports so I went.

The Currie Cup is the South African club rugby league and October is the last month, so matches are pretty tense these days. The Blue Bulls of Pretoria seem to be the Yankees or Manchester United of Currie Cup rugby, with rampant bandwagon supporters from all across the country. The trademark of the diehard Blue Bulls fans is to hang a massive pair of blue plastic testicles from the back of presumably your truck or car. I can’t tell you how many of these things I’ve seen on the main roads, lovely to follow behind. Many of the staff here support the Blue Bulls, with their main rivals these days being the Sharks from Durban and the Free State Cheetahs. Don’t root for Leopards, they suck this year.

I enjoyed watching the Blue Bulls narrowly beat Western Province with Jaco and Ann Marie, and soon realised that they had quite the satellite TV package. There are four separate channels dedicated to soccer here, and they even had the American ESPN! That got me pretty excited, but what really impressed was when Jaco showed me his custom sound system he has accumulated. Okay, I honestly am not a huge fan or aficionado of enormous stereo systems, but Jaco seemed excited to show me (he’s dedicated an entire room to it) so let him show me.

I soon realised, as my ears began to bleed from the ridiculous volume levels, that this was a great opportunity to get a taste of the Afrikaans music culture. So, taking from Jaco and bit of other music I’ve heard people listening to, it seems that they are very into their mash-up, rave-y, dance music here. 80’s music is big, classic rock, and country. And if you’re looking for a new pop sensation, look no further than Kurt Darren. YouTube him, he’s a stud. His song “Kaptein” is kind of like an Afrikaans youth anthem. While he was on the computer he also showed me pictures of his totalled truck from an accident they were in. Drunk driving is a pretty big problem in general in South Africa, and Jaco admitted that both he and his wife were drunk and that’s what caused the accident. It’s strange how nonchalantly drunk driving treated over here compared to the US or the UK.

After the afternoon of getting to know Jaco and Ann Marie, we headed across the road to Thys’ house for what else, an enormous braai. This time on the menu were t-bone steaks and of course, bourevors, the ubiquitous South African sausage. It was my first time in Thys’ house, which was filled with model cars that seemed to take up every horizontal surface in the place, as well as a big sound system (not quite as impressive as Jaco’s). Thys showed me his concertina accordions and played along to a few songs he had on CD, turns out he’s pretty good!

For the third night in a row I stuffed myself with red meat and potato salad. It’s incredible how much food they eat here, with the braai being the centrepiece of almost every evening gathering. Anyway, with a fully belly we talked around the fire for a few hours, mostly attempting to teach me more Afrikaans, before we all retired after the firewood ran out. Jaco, being the generous guy he is, offered for me to crash at his place. This turned out to be very fruitful, for Stanford football was playing Oregon on ESPN, which Jaco had on satellite. The game started at 2 am and I stayed up to watch the entire thing; unfortunately Stanford lost and I couldn’t find any of the family in the stands on TV. I walked home at 5:30 in the morning as the sun was rising, slightly disappointed by Stanford’s loss, but enjoying the peacefulness and stillness of early Sunday morning at Klipwal.

After a much needed sleep, I got a call from Nick in the early afternoon wondering if I wanted to take the old Land Rover out for a spin. I jumped all over this and we took it out first to the slimes dam, which is a large, dusty expanse of perfectly flat land made up of the waste material from the mine. I drove around for a while in circles there, getting used to the clutch and the handling of the big 4x4. Soon I was ready to take it down the steep hill to the 6 level entrance, and I have to say it was a lot of fun. Not a bad way to learn how to drive a stick-shift. As I drove the Rover back up the hill to the house, a thunderstorm began which I am currently enjoying watching from my front porch as I type this up.