We had yet another spooky experience last week. In my last post I mentioned the voices which woke me on Wednesday morning. On Friday night as Norm and I were going to bed Norm came into the bedroom and looked at me a bit oddly when I walked in from the ensuite and said ‘were you just on the balcony’? I said that I had been in the bathroom taking off my makeup and asked him why did he ask. He said ‘are you serious?’ and I said ‘of course, why would I lie about being on the balcony?’

I said jokingly ‘Maybe you saw our ghost.’

He looked a bit spooked and said he had seen a woman with long dark hair wearing a white gown standing on the balcony.

What?!

When we first moved into our house we had a few odd occurrences with spirits and we did a few energy cleansing sessions before we could get the main spirit to move on. I never saw the spirit manifest, I was aware of her energy but I did not see the spirit. Caitlin however did, she saw her standing on the landing walking into the bathroom. Caitlin got the feeling that the woman had drowned.

She had long dark hair and was dressed in a long white gown.

Is this our previous spirit back in our house? If so why is she back? What message does she have and is she attached to the house, or to me or to someone else in the family? Did she blow back in with the crazy winds? Caitlin has a theory it is because we have done renovations and put the house on the market as that often upsets spirits who are attached to a home. I did ask the ancestors of the land to release us from our contract with this house and allow us to move on. Maybe that alone disturbed things.

I will do a spirit cleansing with some sage this weekend. If she has a message for me I hope she makes it crystal clear as I am not too great at interpreting without the message being very clear. Even then I can be a bit obtuse.

After that bit of excitement we had a very lazy weekend. I spent it doing a great deal of not much at all. It was still warm outside and so we stayed inside, well out of the heat. The walls of our house are thick. concrete and keep the house cool in summer.

I played games on my iPad or watched my current series Grace and Frankie. I’m currently obsessed with an online puzzle app. It’s crazily addictive.

I made a simple salad for our lunch on Saturday. I boiled eggs, added rolls of sliced ham and maasdam cheese. Maasdam is a swiss cheese made of cow’s milk. It is my personal fave. I just added lettuce, avocado, sliced a raw zucchini and some tomatoes and sprinkled it all over with chopped red cabbage and carrots.

Norm and I had toyed with the idea of going out on Saturday night but we were quite happy in and Josh had come home from the track so we thought we would just get a take away. We went to The Kitchen Takeaway and I was naughty and ordered a free range chicken burger and chips. Every time I do so I always wonder why as I struggle to swallow the bread. It gets ‘stuck’ in my esophagus, almost like my body is rejecting it’s arrival. So why do I do it to myself? The next day my digestive system complains terribly, but still I do it over and over again.

Silly Kitten.

On Sunday I decided to try out another of the items I purchased from Banting to Go. I baked the muffin mix. The mix costs R49 but it made 12 muffins. You add either milk or yogurt, I used 2 tablespoons of full fat greek yogurt. You then add 100grams of fat/oil, I used butter. You then beat these together with 5 eggs and once all are mixed together you add the powder and blend.

These were a hit! I will try out a few variations on these, maybe add cheese and bacon to make a savoury version or chopped nuts and cinnamon to make a ‘sweeter’ type of muffin. It won’t be any sweeter in reality, but if the mouth tastes cinnamon and nuts maybe I can convince myself it’s a Cinnabon. No?

I topped mine with a ton of butter, a tiny drizzle of honey and sliced cheese. I took one to work today and just had it with a tiny bit of sugar free peanut butter. They would be nice as a base for a poached egg too. These are so handy to have in the cupboard.

The weather has been rather mad. After weeks of heat we woke yesterday to an overcast day which promised us rain but did not deliver.

We had the same overcast weather today, it’s very cool but still there is none of the much needed rain.

Recently we have had major winds which of course will blow away a large amount of water from the dams. You may scoff at this idea, but that would only be if you have never a) experienced Cape Town winds or b) owned a pool in Cape Town. We really saw this for ourselves when the water restrictions meant that we had to stop the weekly pool top ups from our pool service company. When the restrictions came into place we had to buy a pool cover, it was one of the first items the CoCT (City of Cape Town) publicised as a requirement to adhere to their new policies.

As mentioned on my last blog, the proposed levy based on the value of your home has been scrapped. 55,300 people lodged a complaint about this proposed levy on the CoCT Public Participation page which allows residents to have their say on various campaigns. The City listens to some, but some of the proposals are going to go ahead regardless of what the residents have to say. I know this to be the truth as we had our complaints ignored in the implementation of the TRAs in Hout Bay near the cemetery. A TRA is a ‘Temporary Relocation Area’ and just means a site where evictees are intended to be accommodated on a temporary basis after some sort of emergency. In Hout Bay the fires in the townships were the emergency situations which triggered the crisis and the need for relocation.

The fact that the City has not managed to successfully implement anything in the last few years to mitigate the risk of the province running out of water boggles my mind. I will try to give a bit of background in order to help you understand why I am so frustrated.

Water in Cape Town is supplied from a number of dams in mountainous areas close to the city. The dams are recharged by rain falling in their catchment areas, largely during the cooler winter months of May to August, and decline during the warm, dry summer months of December to February during which urban and agricultural water use increases. In fact a huge amount of our water goes to agricultural use.

Since 1995, Cape Town’s population has grown from 2.4 million residents to an estimated current figure of 4.3 million, representing a 79% population increase in 23 years whilst dam water storage only increased by 15% in the same period. The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry predicted that the growing demand from the city would exceed supply by 2013 without water conservation and demand management measures by the city, and that further water sources would be required by 2019.

The government ignored this warning and instead has alternately blamed residents for the shortfalls, they have blamed the weather, climate change and pretty much everything they can, when in actuality the blame lies solely on their own dry, dusty doorstep.

They have been aware of the risk that our population would exceed the amount of water which the city has available as well as the issue of the drought and have been harping on about water conservation since 2015, but what have they actually done?

It took until October 2017 for the City of Cape Town to issue an emergency water plan to be rolled-out in multiple phases depending on the severity of the water shortage. The stricter monitoring of consumption identified many leaks in our ancient infrastructure, some of which took months for the city to identify and rectify. Those should have been identified and resolved more quickly.

Last week the CoCT drilled its first test borehole into the Cape Flats aquifer, hoping that the earth’s natural underground reservoirs would provide an extra 80 million litres of water per day.

The City has also decided it is time that they focused their attention to the roll out of the plans to distribute water once Day Zero arrives and they turn off the taps. This projected date has now moved forward to April 11. I do not think the city can cope with this scenario.

So far they are planning to issue each person who queues at one of the designated water distribution centres 25 liters of water each day. Have you ever tried to carry a 25 liter container full of water? What if you do not own a car? What if you are infirm? How will the indigent or disabled access their water? How will they avoid people double dipping into the supply process and taking more than their share? How will they stop people with wells from selling their water? How will they police people selling water as safe to drink when it’s from a source deemed unsafe for consumption? How will businesses function with the toilets not working? Hairdressers or salons, car washes, so many businesses need water to function.

Turning off the taps will be catastrophic and will lead to even more unemployment when companies have to shut their doors if they cannot function with no water.

How will people manage to perform a job if they have to spend hours queuing for water every single day?

What about Schools or Hospitals? How will they function without water?

The health risks associated to lack of clean water do not bear thinking about.

How has our beautiful Cape Town come to this level of crisis?

How has our beautiful Mother Earth been the victim of such abuse?

Those who have a duty of care to look after both are only looking after their own self interests.

I pray for protection over Mother Earth and I try to practice Ho’oponopono as often as I can.  I give my apologies for the harm we have done to her. I pray for forgiveness of the violations and abuse that humans have done to her body. I give thanks to her and I tell her I love her.

I pray to the Cloud Nation and Water Spirits to release the waters onto Cape Town and the other areas on Mother Earth which are suffering from drought. I pray for the blessing of rain.

As much as I love a bit of steampunk, I pray that the day does not come when we have to live like post apocalyptic survivors.

Kisses from the Kitten xoxoxoxox