Tag Archives: lifestyle

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Crazy Amount of Growth

The author said it’s crazy how quickly things change from season to season when you think about it.

Everything seems to grow quickly in Oribi Gorge.

April 14, 2025

That’s crazy! I was looking at a picture of when we first moved to this little farm. There was a long drive to the little house, absolutely filled with invasive lantana and triffid weed, not to mention the bugweed, wattles, and various kinds of burrs.

The ‘garden’ wasn’t much different and only had a handful of baby trees in it. No shade. Plenty of snakes, birds, and wildlife, though.

Weeds Galore!

I don’t know the right names for all the burrs, except for black jack. There are flat, half-moon shaped ones we call sweethearts. Then, there are very sticky green balls that are almost impossible to get off you whole; it takes some time.

There are things like devil thorns, which is why our children have always worn gumboots in the garden since they could walk. I might have also had snakes and scorpions in the back of my mind when sending them out onto the rough lawn in boots. I also think gumboots on tiny toddlers are the cutest.

Of course, now they’re way too farm boy-ish and hardy to wear gumboots while they play, run, climb, and dig outside. At least I saved their baby feet a bit from all the scratchy, prickly things we have growing here.

Growth Is Always Happening

The pictures from 2017 seem like a whole other world when I look out over my garden now. There’s still a long, long way to go, to be sure, but the progress is undeniable. There are now actual trees growing, still small, but getting there. There are some flower beds and paths. There are shrubs, hedges, grape vines, and flowers.

When it feels like I’m just not winning against the sweethearts and blackjacks, despite constant weeding, all I need to do is to look back at a photo from a few years ago and see how stark it was before. There’s always growth happening. There’s always progress to see.

It’s crazy how quickly things change from season to season when you think about it – including the growing boys who are fast outgrowing their shoes and their sand pit. Maybe I’ll make that sand pit into another flower bed soon. There’s no rush.

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Dirty Footmarks on White Passage Walls

The author said it feels like time is flying by.

PHOTO BY PIXABAY

April 8, 2025

When we renovated our little cottage to join up the next one, it seemed to fit just what we needed. It’s cosy, but it gives us bedrooms that are big enough and an extra bathroom. We went back and forth a bit on how to maximize the space and landed on a long length of cupboards down a long passage. That’s just how the existing foundations all fit together, but it worked out well, I think.

A few years on, the eldest boy has grown daring. He’s now able to shimmy up the passage wall and touch the ceiling. He uses his arms and legs pressed hard on both sides, like some sort of parkour move. Of course, the middle one tries to do everything in the same way. He’s got it right now but stays in the bottom half and isn’t yet moving up. It’s still quite impressive.

The youngest – the two-year-old boy – has had a few near misses as the boys fall, and he runs underneath them, narrowly escaping being as flat as a pancake (or headless). Sometimes, it’s not an escape, and there are tears. He does it again, though, which I’ve given up trying to understand.

The youngest can’t even touch both walls with his short little arms, so it’ll be a while until he can climb up like his brothers. I say that, but there are only two years between the youngest and the middle child, so I expect to see him up there in 2027 or so. Saying it that way makes it sound further than ‘just two short years’! It feels like time is flying when I look at them wrestling, showering by themselves, and tramping off to school every morning. Where did my little babies go?

Maybe when they’re at school, I’ll try the passage wall out myself. I’m not that old, am I? If I fall and break my ankle, that would be quite a lot of explaining to do if the doctor asks what happened, so maybe not. There’s a time for everything under the sun – and my time for climbing walls might be over. It’s okay. Watching my sons get it right brings the same thrill.

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: One Foot in Front of the Other

The future work landscape is difficult to predict.

The planet Mars. PHOTO WIKIPEDIA 

March 22, 2025

The world of work has been quite the journey for me. I like adventures. It started off right after varsity, newly married, 21, and newly relocated to the big city – Durban. I look back on those four years I spent in retail management and feel a bit shell-shocked. Six bosses, five stores, two provinces, three cities, countless CCMA cases, sleepless nights of alarm call-outs, and many, many tears. Adulting is hard. At a certain point, staying with it and getting the next promotion would have been harder than just jumping ship.

Over the Sea

We decided to play our luck and go teach English overseas instead. Maybe that wouldn’t feel like selling souls to corporations who didn’t see or care. In a way, it didn’t. Then again, there were many moments in those next five years in the classroom that still felt like we were in some rat race we didn’t choose. It was a fantastic experience to go out of South Africa and jump in the deep end of a foreign, non-English speaking culture, earning some real money. The children and co-teachers were sweet a lot of the time. The rice cakes were much sweeter.

We didn’t anticipate being quite so isolated, I think, without our support system. Since it was only meant to be for a short time, it didn’t seem to matter. Maybe we only noticed the difference when we came back again to South Africa and reunited with people who really knew us and loved us.

Back Home

Then, we started working online. It was convenient and seemed like it opened up a whole world of possibilities. We were thinking about kids, being flexible, and not wanting to be in an office or schoolroom that kept us out of the sunshine. Idealistic, maybe. Our dues are being paid currently, but we’re doing it in the sunshine most days.

The journey hasn’t stopped, though. Online work has changed – metamorphosed – since 2014, when I first dabbled in freelancing. Teaching online is now a viable career for many with a better internet connection than I currently possess. Freelancing in anything has become extremely competitive. And then, there’s AI.

I’m not sure what this work thing is going to look like in five to ten years. Working on Mars? On a floating office as icebergs melt? Let’s see, shall we?

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Are You One of the Oldest People in the Room?

“You might be the oldest person in the room if you’re the only one not dancing to the Paw Patrol’s theme song.”

PHOTO BY PIXABAY

June 18, 2024

Apparently, it’s normal to feel a little bit overwhelmed when you have three children (or any amount of children, actually).
They’re quite loud and always hungry. They’re also super emo, whether they’re two and trying to talk, six and discovering that girls and boys look different, or signature teenagers wrestling their natural hair into some crazy modern style.

When you get old, and I’m not saying that I am yet, it seems as though the only time you realise that you are potentially older than you thought is when there’s someone significantly younger around.

You Might Be the Oldest Person Here If You…

You might be the oldest person in the room if you’re the only one not dancing to the Paw Patrol’s theme song.

You might be the oldest person in the car if you’re trying to secretly have a nap and find the people talking like babies for fun quite irritating.

Can’t you just look for birds and buck and tractors and TLBs in silence for a bit? Please?

You might also be old if the thought of a run actually feels exciting. It’s like an adventure or an epic journey you can take because, well, you still can move your bones. Maybe you’ll see someone waving or find a rare bird along the route.

Even more exciting is returning home sweaty, well-exercised, and, more importantly, entirely injury-free. Yes, these legs still work, even though stretching is no longer that thing you remember three days later when you’re feeling a slight hamstring twinge.

If you’re old, stretching isn’t optional. Also, if you don’t want to get old and fat faster because an injury has broken your stride, you should probably start stretching, as well.

But what do I know? I’m not old (yet).

Grey hairs might be making an appearance now, right at the top by the roots. With a 6, 4, and almost 2-year-old that’s probably inevitable, but it feels a little early as a not-yet-40.

Maybe You’re Not That Old (Yet)

I don’t dance to cartoon theme songs much, though that ’90s techno beat still gets the foot tapping a bit, involuntarily.

Lame sprinkler moves and lang-arm sokkies were never my thing. It’s more a side-to-side foot shuffle with elbows bent and swaying. Cool, I know.

Getting old has its moments, but this privilege denied to many is straight-up God-given. I’m grateful.

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Seven Birds a Week Challenge 2024 – Still Twitching

“Seeing a fantastic golden-breasted bunting two weeks in a row on our farm would normally have been amazing, but I can only log it once!”

Little Oribi bird watcher.

June 13, 2024

For about 20 weeks, I’ve been all self-important because my kind brother-in-law invited me into a very exclusive birding challenge. Me?

A committed non-twitcher who doesn’t really have time to devote to such whimsies right now? I said yes without hesitation because, well, I’m a bit competitive.

Enter the Birding Competition

It’s a WhatsApp group. It started with about 29 people from vastly different backgrounds – another mom, PhD students who live in the Kruger, a certain famous ex-weatherman, someone in Holland, stats enthusiasts, and so on.

All of us started together on January 1, united in one goal – find seven new birds every week that you haven’t seen yet this year. That’s one new bird every day. You can’t list the bird a second time in the year. Also, you have to have actually seen the bird in the week that you submit it.

For example, if you happen to see nine cool birds this week, you can only submit seven of them. To use the other two, you’d have to see them again the following week.

Easy, right?

Doesn’t Oribi Gorge have 250+ bird species listed? That’s at least three-quarters of the year I can stay in this challenge.

Wrong.

Stay Alive By Birding, Birding, Birding

The limit of being able to list only seven birds in a week and having no carry-overs makes this a lot harder to do.

Also, January is in South African summer, when there’s an abundance of birds on hand daily. By April or so, those birds have often migrated over to another country.

The group had submitted manually and tried to police themselves with not repeating birds. The integrity has been impressive.

My bird-loving brother-in-law has also committed time to do this admin every week, so he’s keeping things going in spreadsheets and automated bird lists.

Someone also added a stats site so that we can see cool figures, like the number of unique species logged by the group (750+ already).

I like birds. I like stats. I like travellers. I like competing. It’s fun.

But my time is almost up with not being able to travel out to birding sites. I’m too busy at home. Seeing a fantastic golden-breasted bunting two weeks in a row on our farm would normally have been amazing, but I can only log it once!

How long will I last in the 7 Birds a Week group? Stay tuned.

Still, what a way to spend these last five months. I’ve intentionally looked out of my busy life and noticed what’s out there under my nose – daily. It’s rather beautiful.

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Dark-backed Weaver Friends Are Everywhere You Know

“They’ve been right there in front of us the whole time, waiting for the sun.”

Dark-backed weaver. Photo Derek Keats/Wikipedia

June 5, 2024

Have you ever heard the dark-backed weaver sing? That’s not a book title. They really have the most melodic singing you can hear for miles. It might be Oribi Dad’s favourite bird sound. Maybe because it took us a good long while to identify what bird it was coming out of when we first moved to the farm.

They’re tricky from far, especially in Echo Valley. You think it’s one tune, but when the bird flits closer, it sounds a bit different. It rises and falls, and then ends in this buzzing sort of noise, like a phone vibrating on a table. You also hardly see them in the thick bushes they sing from or if their backs are turned to you. Yet from the front and in the sun, they’re the brightest yellow – rivalling orioles and African emerald cuckoos. Against the dry winter brush, it’s really quite stunning.

Isn’t that so like some people we know? We meet them, masked in their dark brown coats with faces turned away from us. We hear their names but don’t remember. We wonder what others see in them at all. Then, one day, we hear their song and it makes us pay attention. Where is that coming from? We want to know more.

Sometimes, it takes us a while to figure out how this brown-coated interesting figure can produce such a clear and beautiful sound in the first place. Did we hear wrong? No, we think, as we hear that melody ring out a few more times. There’s something there worth discovering.

One day, we might even hear that voice and catch the owner turning to face us, just as the sun hits from over the gorge cliffs to the east. The sparkling yellow seems to light up the whole valley as the song rings loud and captivating from that tiny black beak. What a sight! What a talented package this is. How could we have missed that mesmerising beauty for so long?

It feels like that’s how friends are made sometimes. We see each other, really see each other. And we hear a song we can’t ignore any longer. Then, once we’ve seen and heard it, we suddenly start to see that person’s influence and worth everywhere we look. How could we possibly have missed it before? They’ve been right there in front of us the whole time, waiting for the sun.

Published here.

Oribi Mom, Travelinds

Oribi Mom: Shells, Shells, and Shells

“We didn’t take any shells away from our travels in these magical places; that would be against the rules.”

Sunset at the Tip of Borneo. PHOTO BY HEATHER LIND

August 14, 2023

 

There’s something about shells that has always fascinated me. Since I can remember, I’ve felt a calm descend as I walk slowly through the sand. I glance here and there to find the prettiest, most interesting shells the beach has to offer for the day.

Sometimes, you have to look for a tiny point sticking out among grains of sand before sticking your toe in and flipping it out to reveal what’s underneath. Sometimes, it’s just a piece. Other times, it’s an unexpected masterpiece that you can’t stop looking at in your hand.

Beaches Around the World Have Shells For Us To Find

When we were on the north coast in the school holidays, seeing old dried turtle eggs on the dunes was very exciting. It reminded me about the time we arrived at a beach in Kenya for a few days with family. It was raining. We jumped out of the car after a flight and a taxi ride from Nairobi. People were running to the beach to watch tiny hatchling green turtles emerging.

Only God could have timed that for us.

Those little turtles were awe-inspiring. Working with all their might to get out from their deep nest under the sand and poking out their heads into the rainy afternoon. They were absolutely covered in sand and moving their flippers constantly to try and move forward. Slow, awkward moments made their path a long one. but they kept going until they reached the shoreline. They’re so fast once they’re in the water; unbelievably fast after watching them struggle on the beach!

Another Fantastic Beach – The Tip of the Dog’s Ear in Borneo

Two years before that, we’d spent a month in Malaysia Borneo. My Number One favourite memory was diving in to snorkel in the Coral Triangle, the same area as the world-famous dive site Sipadan. The turquoise sea is stunning when you’re on the little speed boat. But once you dip the mask down into the salty water, it’s indescribable.

Incredible.

Paradise.

Colours as you’ve never seen them and moving things everywhere you look. The mantis shrimps shimmered next to blue spotted rays and parrot fish and thousands of other creatures going about their day.

But seeing the turtles was just magical. Huge green turtles you could ride on if you could catch them – you can’t, they’re too fast! – and munching on sea grass or zipping by in the current. Hawksbill turtles, too if we were lucky, big and small.

Thankfully, the military shells around Sipadan weren’t in action while we were in the area, though we did hear shots and explosions every now and then. Apparently, it was just a normal thing and we were told to ignore the sounds and rather focus on remembering to put on sun-cream.

Don’t Take Shells, Just Memories

We didn’t take any shells away from our travels in these magical places; that would be against the rules. But we did take a big cowrie home from our favourite North Coast beach. It was one that my then-boyfriend snorkelled to find deep in the reef so that he could use it as a ring holder. But that story, involving secret sibling setups and too-long walks that almost ruined the proposal, is for another day. And we still have the shell.

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Good Luck Long-Haired Man

I glanced sideways through my trusty sunglasses and ignored the man (obviously).

Fun in the sun, prior to lockdown Level Three and beach restrictions.

January 1, 2021

The week before Cyril closed the beaches was crazy. After a blistering hot morning at the beach, my little farming family stopped at the big city shops – the South Coast Mall – for bread, milk, and Food Lover’s Market droëwors.

Myself, the toddler, and the seven-month-old stayed in the car with hand sanitizer at the ready. My husband donned his mask and queued with the holidaymakers.

The children had fallen asleep and it was sweltering. So, I left the bakkie running, congratulating myself for having children who slept in the air-conditioning for our 45-minute drive home. I was happily rehydrating from my metal, refillable water bottle when I caught sight of a grumpy long-haired man. He looked sweaty in long sleeves and long pants with slops, and happened to be parked next to us. He was looking at my van with intent.

X-ray vision might have revealed that he was muttering as he paced the steaming tar, but suddenly, he started gesticulating and shouting something unintelligible over my diesel engine. I glanced sideways through my trusty sunglasses and ignored him (obviously). Then, he knocked on the window and slid into his (rusty, dented) bakkie, winding down his passenger window and taking off his mask to shout at me again.

I thought maybe I should respond as an intelligent and calm adult, so I lowered the window (a little) and hoped he wouldn’t wake my babies. Clear as day, he was shouting, “Pollution! This is pollution! Turn off the car.” And on he went. I closed the window with a shrug, and slowly processed what had just happened.

Me? Polluting? I wanted Mother Earth to swallow me right there.

Defending Earth Lovers Everywhere

I wanted to shout back at this long-haired man that he was barking at the wrong tree lover. I use cloth nappies. I compost. I drink water from a JoJo rain tank. I replant butternut seeds. I use the dishwater to hydrate pot plants.

My thoughts raced across my Faithful-2-Nature account and fabric shopping bags. I recalled my eco-friendly (generous) relocation of the night adder that bit me last month, and my lack of chemical intervention in the garden where I’ve planted about fifteen trees in the last two years.

Crunchy Oribi Gorge Mom? Killing the earth with fumes at the Southcoast Mall?

I was, though. He was right. It was just an awful delivery of the message. Instead of making me want to change, I wanted to throw (plastic-free) shampoo bars at his sweaty hair.

Where Is the Love Man?

The point is that compassion is a key ingredient – speak the truth, but do it in love. The irate man didn’t know my context and didn’t care, either. I was a responsible parent keeping my babies safe in the midday sun.

For the record, thank you long-haired man for your concern. You might have made a nature-loving friend had you not showered me in shame instead of inviting me to where the grass was greener (and organically fertilised).

May 2021 be a more compassionate year for all (even when we’re hot and “hangry” in the parking lot).

Published here.