This week I was reading an article about the many women who mother us throughout our lives. I only have a few of these women who come immediately to mind with a maternal influence, other than my mom and my beloved maternal Gran. My Grandmother has been with me through various life incarnations, we were definitely together for the last two lives. However I do have many women in my life who form my sisterhood and I have learned so many things from them. We have deep soul connections. I have a friend who always does the right thing – she is my role model for peace and serenity. I have a friend who is always kind – I know that is a lesson for me. Kindness is not always my first go to reaction.

I now understand that the same souls will often touch our lives in multiple incarnations. Especially when we are on the same path of evolving and learning.

This has been quite an eventful week in SA. 

Tuesday we woke to the sad news of the death of Ahmed Kathrada who was one of the men who fought so that South Africa could be free. He, together with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Andrew Mlangeni, Billy Nair, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Denis Goldberg, spent 26 years in prison, and never relented on the belief that South Africa would one day be free. If you read Mandela’s book ‘The Long Walk To Freedom’ or any other articles on the Rivonia Trial, Mr Kathrada was affectionately known as ‘Kathy’ to many of his friends.

R.I.P. Kathy, you fought a good fight.

Image credit.

I was privileged to meet Denis Goldberg a while back as he lives in my village. The hyperlink will take you to that post. These men sacrificed so much for the sake of making life better for others, these founders of the ANC must despair at the levels of corruption which have become endemic to the party.

Another case of corruption was revealed this week when the IPID (Independent Police Investigative Directorate) raided the home of acting police commissioner Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane who is believed to be taking back-handers.

Then today we awoke to the news of the Rand (our currency in South Africa) crashing after our mad, self-serving president Zuma decided to have a midnight cabinet reshuffle and fire our Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

Zuma and Gordhan have had many issues, I have blogged about this before. Zuma is in the pocket of the Guptas and this week there is a trial between the Guptas and Gordhan. The president is being so obvious in his attempts to protect the Guptas and to act in their best interest rather than his citizens’.

Similar to the issues with Trump and Putin, it is hard to know whether their control of the president is due to being blackmailed or whether it is simply greed. Neither of them put the country’s needs before their own.

One other surprise was the decision in courts to decriminalize the use of marijuana, which is called ‘dagga’ here. The Western Cape High Court has made a landmark ruling, declaring that it is an infringement to ban the use of dagga by adults in private homes. It is not legalized but people will no longer be prosecuted if they possess it or grow it for personal or medicinal use. So many people could benefit from the medical use so I’m pleased that they won’t be prosecuted. SA has a huge Rastafarian community and they can now be free to practice their religion as they wish. Rastafari see cannabis as a sacramental and deeply beneficial plant that is the Tree of Life mentioned in the Bible.

Norm has been in Johannesburg all this week which results in a lot more responsibility falling on me and Caitlin. We worked out a routine where Caitlin feeds the dogs in the mornings. Raw feeding means you sometimes get messy and no one wants to go to work reeking of blood. Blech. I get up too early to deal with it in the morning.

We asked Cordelia to work all week rather than her usual 3 days so that the dogs were not on their own all day and we booked Charles, our fave dog walker, to come every afternoon. I come home earlier than usual and I take Cordelia home and feed the dogs and organise dinner for Caitlin and I.

Luckily my giant pot of beef and bean curry kept us fed on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights. I am now officially over beef curry for a bit. But we had healthy good food and I am grateful for that.

On Wednesday I decided to try the OrderIn delivery service and I downloaded their app. I could not download it on my iPad as it gave me an error message, so it must check that you have more than a data card installed on the device you are downloading to and can send messages. Then once I managed to download it to my phone I placed the order and tried to enter my debit card info to pay but I received a odd message about my name needing to be complete. It was complete and I had input it as per the name on my card, so I tried to use my credit card as I thought maybe it was rejecting the debit card type. However I got the same nonsensical message when I tried to save my credit card info so I rang the customer care line as instructed on the error message. I told them what the problem was and the message I received, the guy on the phone seemed baffled and his suggestion was that I enter someone else’s credit card info. Sure dude let me pop next door and get the neighbour’s credit cards! How unhelpful.

Luckily I am an analyst and I thought logically about what the problem could be. I asked the guy on the phone whether it could be due to having a hyphen in my name. He did not know.

I tried re-entering my info, this time leaving out the hyphen in my surname and it worked!

From that point the service was fabulous! They sent an email notification that the order was received by the restaurant, then an SMS notification of the info on the driver who is delivering the food. You can track his progress, but you do not need to as they SMS to say he has left the restaurant with your food and then another SMS to say that he has arrived outside your house. (Of course my dogs had loudly told me he was at the gate before the SMS did.) My food arrived piping hot and I was very impressed.

Just don’t try to include a hyphen in your name and you will be fine. 🙂

Thursday I got a lift into work with a colleague as we had a team social event planned for the afternoon. We had colleagues both flying down from Johannesburg and driving over from all of our other clients coming to meet at our office and we were all collected by one of the City of Cape Town red double decker open topped red tourist bus.

We had privately hired the bus and the services of the staff for the day and arranged our own itinerary. First we drove around the city

and then through Gardens and we then took De Waal Drive which has a stunning view over the Cape Town harbour.

Then we drove through and parked at Kirstenbosch Gardens. The gardens are ranked as one of the top in the world and is not only a garden but also a 36 hectare nature reserve and conservation area. It is absolutely stunning. We settled down on blankets and benches around the duck pond.

We had ordered individual picnic boxes from Moyo.

We relaxed and chatted and had lunch and a few drinks, the organisers had packed several large cooler boxes with ciders, beers, wine and soft drinks.

After a while of lolling about in the sun we all headed back to board the bus and we drove through Constantia to Hout Bay where I live and circled around the village and then headed along the coast road back to Mouille Point. We stopped at Pepenero for more drinks as it has a stunning view, but our silly bus driver parked opposite so we only had a partial view of the sea and the rest of his bus.

I decided to move over from cider to cocktails. (Drunk Lisa always tends to make very, very bad decisions.) I had a few delicious strawberry daiquiris.

After a few of those bad boys I was feeling no pain. (This morning I feel more pain than I am happy with however.)

The rest of the team all jumped back on the bus and headed back to the pick up point after 5pm, however as I was already half way home there was no point in returning to the CBD. My colleague Owen and I shared a cab from Mouille Point. The clouds rolled in and the horizon over the sea looked amazing, this pic does not do it justice I am afraid. What appears to be clouds is a mist settled in layers over the ocean.

I got home and Caitlin organised fish and chips for our dinner and I pottered about until after midnight. Today I am not so strong. I should have gone to bed earlier.

However, tonight my darling hubby comes home and all will once again be right with my little world.

It’s cooled off lots and today it has rained a lot, our dams badly need it.

Have a great weekend all!