Tree Fellers (and Fellas)

This week things have slowed down! Having got so much done in a very short space of time over the first half of April, we now have hardly anything to put away, but things are still lying around.

Part of the reason for this is the distraction of my visa. It runs out on 8th May! We had imagined that we could leave South Africa and head to Zimbabwe or Lesotho for a week or so and then come back in for another 3 months, by which time I’d have a new passport (mine expires in November) and we’d apply for a resident visa then. However, two weeks ago, we thought it might be an idea to check. Horror of horrors - I have to go back to Hong Kong or the UK, and even then, a 90 day new visa wouldn’t be guaranteed!

So a week of running around for paperwork to apply for the residents visa has resulted in me applying to extend my visitor visa for another 90 days, from here. My appointment is 7th May!?!!

Another distraction was that Kurt found a tree nursery which was closing down and offering trees for 50 rands each! So of course we had to go and see!

There is something about people who deal with plants and gardens. I remember one of the gardeners at KGV, who actually looked like a sunflower. His face was round, and his hat framed it like the petals, and his smile glowed. He seemed so content with life and the world and his face beamed when we greeted. The guy at the tree place was the same. A Malawian called Herman, who was just so lovely and calm, kind and knowledgeable. He carried a very well-thumbed book of Southern African trees, and would show us what each tree we were thinking of taking would look like when fully grown, or in flower. Nothing was too much trouble and he patiently talked us through and showed us and suggested and chose for us. By the time we had finished we had enough to make a forest.

What followed was a testament to ‘plant people.

Herman agreed to get a guy to deliver the trees the next day, and Kurt agreed to make payment for the trees and delivery as soon as we got home.

Of course, when we arrived home, we got waylaid, and by the time Kurt was ready to pay Herman, there were two invoices in his inbox, each for a different figure. We couldn’t get hold of Herman to see what was happening, so resigned ourselves to the possible loss of our trees.

The next day, Herman called to say he was on his way, with his guy to deliver! He would take payment when he arrived, and was bringing two additional jacarandas that we’d wanted but which had been reserved by someone else. That was the reason for the different invoices, and he’d actually knocked down the jacaranda price to boot! The trees having been safely delivered, Kurt offered to pay there and then, but ‘No! No need – I know you’ll pay me.’ was the response!

This is the opposite of most business transactions in South Africa, where you have to pay a fortune before someone will even begin to do anything for you, and then it’ll probably be badly done, with extra expenses needed for fixing! The South Africans have an expression ‘Eish!’ which is basically used in a similar way to Ayaaah in Hong Kong. You hear it often!

Funnily enough we had a contrast in demeanour three days after our nursery adventure. This time we needed tree-cutters, not tree-growers. Sadly, the trees outside the front of the house were pushing the wall down, and potentially going to affect the actual house walls. And there were a couple of other trees which were too big and possibly unsafe if we had lightning or high winds, so they had to come down too.

The tree-fellers came and were super-competent, working quickly and efficiently. Their health and safety measures reminded me of Hong Kong, which was quite unnerving, but nobody got cut in half with the chain-saws they were wielding whilst balancing precariously in the tops of the trees, and no windows were broken as the branches swung down on the ropes they were attached to before being cut. What was interesting, though, was how glum these guys were. It was a day’s work to get a hello, let alone a smile from any of them, which is unusual in South Africa. I really wonder whether being in a role where you are destroying life isn’t a cause for the destruction of the soul.

Which boosts my enthusiasm for the garden and growing things!

This was going to be ‘it’ for this blog, but yesterday, Joseph finished work early and so came to do a few jobs for Kurt. Before he left, he called us down to show us what he’d done with my herb garden! When we left South Africa last time, it was a nicely laid out space with separated beds, built by our then gardener, Abel (more on Abel later!), and I had mint, lavender, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, dill and tarragon all thriving, sometimes too well.

By the time we came back five years later, the mint, rosemary and lavender were fine, but the other herbs had pretty much gone and the garden was looking quite neglected. The planks Abel had used to separate the beds were broken or rotten, the rosemary was an unkempt bush, and the soil hadn’t been turned.

Joseph basically pulled everything out and started again. He sorted the beds and took down a fence at the back where a tree had stood before the visit of the tree-cutters. He has now given Kurt detailed instructions for what materials he needs to buy him to finish the job to his own, personal satisfaction. I think Joseph is the only person I know whose job is likely to be good enough for Kurt not to find a fault with it! He was a man on a mission, with a gleam in his eye when I left them discussing!

I have to return to Abel. He was a gardener, and in any other life and any other country, would have been much more than a gardener. Like Joseph, and other workers I have met over the times I have been here, so many people are doing jobs which they are too good to do. Abel was super-competent. He built us walls and paths, looked after the chickens, and I’m sure lots of other things we didn’t even notice. However he was also a bit of an entrepreneur. At one time, our chickens suspiciously ‘stopped’ laying eggs, and another time someone came to rent out our lawnmower, which was, apparently, for hire. Unfortunately they met Kurt, not Abel, at the gate when they came to collect it! He ended up getting married and leaving us for, hopefully, more-lucrative pastures!