Tag Archives: South Coast Herald

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: The Bike and the Buck

Sneaking up to a buck on a bicycle shouldn’t be this easy.

An example of a reedbuck common to the region. PHOTO WIKIPEDIA

 

May 10, 2025

It was very loud and quite startling. I was alone on a bike and quite near the edge of the gorge. I had come to find a few vultures but the thermals weren’t playing ball so early yet and I didn’t want to linger, just explore a bit. I like taking detours every now and then and I know the neighbours don’t mind too much if I leave only bike tracks behind.

I had just flicked off a tick trying to crawl up my leg because the grass can be wild here. Sometimes, when you explore, you have to bundu bash a bit. I don’t like cycling on grass that isn’t actually a dirt road, but there isn’t always a choice if you’re going off the beaten track.

The main reason I like to see dirt under the tyres is for visibility. Bike wheels aren’t very high if it’s a mamba you’re meeting all of a sudden. I only imagine this, of course, because I haven’t had that terrifying experience yet and hope never to find out how fast I can ride if one ever sticks its head up out of the grass in front of me!

Anyway, this sound I heard almost made me fall off my bike. I happened to be cycling up a grassy sugar cane contour and making hardly any noise. The large reedbuck in front of me hadn’t noticed me yet. It was casually walking up the same contour in front of me and I think if I was a hunter, it would have been dead already.

I got to about 10m from it. Suddenly, it realized I was coming. Just then, I was concentrating on seeing how fast I could go towards it, so hearing a very loud shriek was an absolute shock. I thought the buck was also scared, as it had bounded further ahead. Then, I heard it again as the buck looked at me, screamed, and started running again.

Did you know that reedbucks make that high-pitched whistling, shrieking sound? I do now. I feel quite bad for sneaking up on it, but I guess both of us benefited from a little adrenaline rush to keep us on our toes. Hopefully, it’ll be wiser now so that I can see it again sometime.

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Families Who Fish Together

There’s never a dull moment raising a family in Oribi Gorge.

PHOTO BY PIXABAYMay 1, 2025

There’s been a new thing starting. The tiny boys are growing up into little boys and starting to explore a few aspects of farm life.
Of course, I had some preconceived ideas about it because, when I was a little girl, my daddy took care of a lot of the ‘dirty’ side.

I didn’t like scales and blood on my hands. As an adult, I forgot that part. It felt surprising that this particular pastime involved such a lot of chicken hearts, sticky whiskery practical jokes from my sons, and wading to unhook lines from the reeds. The smell of the clothes afterwards is also quite a sensory challenge.

Still, it’s all part of the smiles that fishing brings to our little sons (and their parents). What I did correctly remember about fishing was the time outside in the sunshine, the quiet, and the birds. There’s something beautiful about glassy dams reflecting the clouds.

The Dam With the Fish Eagles

Our neighbours have a spectacular setting just like this, complete with a pair of fish eagles, a shady spot to sit, and wide open views. I’m aware that this is a bit more luxurious than tramping through muddy, cutting reeds and keeping a beady eye out for slithery things. I can also take the baby to play safely by the water’s edge and even jump into the shallow places if he feels brave enough. It might just be one of my favourite spots in the world, actually. Many happy family memories already and more to come. I think families need those special spots.

I know that this particular fishing spot will be forever seared into my sons’ memories. When they’re all grown up and taking the hooks out for their daughters who don’t want to get their hands bloody, they’ll remember these lazy weekend afternoons. They’ll remember their parents buying rolls and hotdogs and spreading out a picnic blanket, swimming, fish eagle cries, and the cool breeze as we wait for the barbel to bite. We even caught a tiny tilapia, which we threw back, as we do with all the others.

It’s a lesson in patience for energetic little boys, too, which is always good. May they always remember and smile. We’ll have to get one of those ‘Gon’ Fishing’ signs soon.

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

The “Oribi Mom” Column

Newspaper Column Regularly Featured in the South Coast Herald

Since 2020, this little newspaper column has become a standard feature in the Lind household. It’s an actual newspaper – the kind that rubs off black onto your fingers – publishing our comings and goings here in Oribi Gorge.

Part of the motivation behind it was to give the Lind children something in black and white one day after we get old and don’t remember all the details. The local community here also seems to have enjoyed the offering, which tries to share our story 400 words at a time. A few neighbours and friends have appreciated some of the humour, relatability, family drama, and close encounters with nature. International readers just gasp, wondering why we choose to live in a place where Black Mambas do.

Why Oribi Mom Started

Ambitions to be a journalist in the teen years were short-lived. If you’d asked then whether we’d like to just blog for a local newspaper whenever inspiration hit, it would have seemed inferior to “real” journalism. What a crazy idea.

Fast-forward to about a month before the entire world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to share our experiences felt overwhelming. At eight months pregnant, South Africa’s hard lockdown had cancelled just about everything. Things got complicated, including the smooth, quick route needed to reach the hospital three hours away.

Instead of calming soundtracks and earphones, we had to remember to pack our eldest child’s birth certificate in the hospital bag — just in case. What if the police stopped us on the highway to ask why we were out of our home when the government had expressly told everyone to stay put. We’d even rehearsed the speech to say in between contractions. “Yes, he’s our son. Yes, we had to bring him with us. No, there’s nobody to look after him at home. No, we couldn’t go to another hospital because the doctor is at the one three hours away (another long story).”

We hadn’t found much online about going through a late-stage pregnancy during a global pandemic. Nobody else crazy enough to try it? So, we wrote one. And we’ve never looked back.

Thanks for reading!

Oribi Mom

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

Oribi Mom: Yellowed Collars, Old Photos and Time Passing

“Ordering school photos might not be a thing in a few more years. I think I’ll miss it.”

PHOTO BY PIXABAY

May 16, 2024

How do you get sun-cream stains out of white school shirt collars? Tell me you’re a mother without telling me you’re one.

Apparently, a combo of baking soda, vinegar and fairy dust works. Other suggestions that have come up on searches included toothpaste, lemon juice, sunshine and a paste of Vanish. The collars are still yellow.

Maybe it’s the hard water on the farm here. Maybe it’s my woefully lacking knowledge of the types of material and what each needs to stay sparkling white.

Don’t bleach it, say the eco-conscious and the health nuts. (Also, this fades out the school badge!)

So, on photo day, it’s the least yellow collar that went on, alongside a hope and a prayer that Photoshop includes whitening collars in annual photo shoots. Say cheese, but don’t spill any of the yellow onto the collar, please.

These school photos really are something. It’s one day a year, but from my own school career, it was often the only photo.

I came from the era before digital photos. That time when mommies who could attend sports or other events had to bring a tripod or a steady hand and an extra spool to capture one or two good images of us precious darlings. Sports photos? Hopeless.

I have vivid memories of walking into Clicks to collect that little packet of developed photos. It smelled funny. Mom would flip through the photos and laugh or snort at the blurs, missed shots, and fingers in front of the lens. She’d take the good ones and put them into real-life albums with sticky plastic things you lift up.

When they get old, the photos don’t stay behind them anymore and get all mixed up when you take the photo album off the dusty bookshelf. But the images are still there. Immortal, for a while. That eighties hair on my friends’ moms was something else, I tell you. Perms, beehives, and bright colours stand out, even in faraway group photos.

It jogs the memory, even if you have to flip back a few pages to slip the lost photo into its correct place. In the history of things, photos feel like treasure to me. A silent glimpse into what’s come and gone that speaks far louder than many of the stories people tell.

Ordering school photos might not be a thing in a few more years. I think I’ll miss it.

Oh, and the answer is that green sunlight soap bar, of course. That’s the cure for yellow stains and everything else you want to sparkle.

Publish here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: The Beach Never Gets Old

“Where did those twenty-something years go in the blink of an eye?”

Heather and Robin Lind.

April 23, 2024

An old friend’s son has just turned 18. He was 11 just last week. A certain Oribi Dad’s big midlife birthday is also fast approaching. I can still remember the moment our eyes met for the first time like it was five minutes ago. Toes in beach sand, but wearing a jersey because it was the middle of July. South Coast living is very kind in that way. You can grab a jacket but still get away with shorts and slops most days of the year.

My 15-year-old self was a little different from now. Bolder, and much cheekier, with a smaller waist and an even narrower worldview. All of the people there teased us about a summer fling that was sure to end once we all got back to school. We didn’t even live in the same town. Twenty-three years later, our fling is a ring, three sweet sons, two dogs, and many memories of other beautiful beaches we’ve explored together. What are the chances?

Also, where did those twenty-something years go in the blink of an eye? We’ve already moved past so much life and so many changes. I still like Turkish Delight, but it sits on the hips a little easier these days. He still likes Greenday and jokes about it near the end of every September. The Lion King still makes both of us gulp back the tears. It’s 30 years old. Thirty! That’s as old as the new South Africa!

What was I doing thirty years ago? Grade 2, I think, with Mrs Bentley, who loved tennis and dyeing her hair strange colours. She was certainly younger then than I am right now. There’s a thought. She loved tennis, as I did, which is probably why I remember her hair and mini skirts. That was what we wore to play tennis then. Little skirts with ball holders clipped on the back of them, so we could serve with only one ball in our hands and not throw it up skew. We must have been so cute! We thought we were the bee’s knees.

In another thirty years, I’m sure I’ll have a more mature perspective on my life right now. What will it look like from over there, to look back in this chaotic and exhausting mother-of-three-little-boys phase? Why did I use to think it was so hard? Who knows?

That’s why we do it as best we can in each moment. Isn’t each of those moments life itself?

Published here.

Oribi Mom

Oribi Mom: Rose Bush Is Free of Triumphant Vine

“The vine branches are the same colour and thickness as the rose branches, minus the spiny thorns that go right into tender fingers or arms.”

PHOTO BY PIXABAY

March 2, 2024 

That vine has come up again. The one with big leaves that grow right over my rambling rose. It twists and clings, dropping new roots as it goes. If I leave it any longer, it’s going to get those seed pods again, which is the reason it came up again this year, I’m sure.

Today, when I looked out of the kitchen window for the umpteenth time to admire my little pink roses, I couldn’t even see the bush! The vine looked triumphant. So, I left the housework, the children, the paid work, and the tea and marched outside to collect my boots, slasher and gloves. I’d had enough of that old vine.

Don the Gloves and Go For It

The gloves are an essential feature for me in this thorny, hand-slicing garden of mine. There are all sorts of stinging things, too. One day I felt something tickle my leg and swiped a bit. As I looked down there was just blood. I thought I’d squashed the fly, but it was my own blood that the nasty fly was apparently having for lunch [insert horrified emoji here]. The scar stuck around for two weeks.

The boots look ridiculous, but they’re for the night adders. Rather, I like to think of them for the night adders and not think about all the other, much worse, slithery things my feet might step on while I’m knee-deep in grass or blackjacks.

Watch Out For the Spikes and Fangs

Careful of what you grab onto. Vine snakes look like branches, and so do female boomslangs. Actually, a lot of snakes look just like branches, or leaves, or the pesky weeds that grow long tendrils over everything and push my poor plants flat down on the ground. I’m constantly pulling those out. They get little white flowers with a purple centre that are actually quite pretty, but don’t let them fool you; they take over in a matter of weeks.

With my trusty boots and gloves on, I dealt with the vine. My rose is free, though it didn’t thank me. The vine branches are the same colour and thickness as the rose branches, minus the spiny thorns that go right into tender fingers or arms. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. At least I can see the pink blooms again.

Summer is almost over already, and the green beauty will soon disappear for a few months. Next season, hopefully, I’ll be a little more proactive about that vine earlier in the season so that I don’t have to spend an hour in the rain getting eaten by horseflies. Or maybe I’ll just have tea on the porch instead.

Published here.