QMusings

A trip to South Africa wouldn’t be complete without going on safari, right? I was perfectly willing to skip a trip to a game park thinking that Animal Planet might be a better value: close-ups without the danger or the dust.

Luckily, Laverne and Shirley weren’t so close-minded and I was once again squished into an SUV and heading towards Buffelsfontein, a nearby game reserve. We were in our usual configuration: Laverne driving, her mother, M next to her, Linda in the back with A on her lap, Shirley to her right and yours truly on the left.

If you want to learn commonly used words in a foreign country, be a passenger in a car. All you have to do is sit back, wait and listen. Listen to the driver. Depending on the time of day, you may not have to wait that long. You will learn lots of great words and maybe some interesting hand gestures.

I hadn’t been paying any attention until I heard Linda say, “Not in front of A!” which was really a joke since at 9 months of age A didn’t have much of a grasp of language.

Another driver had cut Laverne off and her response was, “KAK!”

Doesn’t take that much effort to guess what it means, especially based on the context. You’ll find out that many Afrikaans swear words sound close enough to English that you can guess what they mean. Take “Kak.”

Kak sounds like the babyish “ka-ka” as well as the adult “crap.” You immediately know that the driver isn’t saying, “Oh, poo!” and must be saying something stronger, like, “SHIT!”

You’d be correct.

Kak = Shit

In a future post, I’ll list some choice Afrikaans words and phrases. With a guide to pronunciation, Ms. Q style.

It had rained in the early morning hours and we were hoping that the weather would remain clear. According to Laverne, Buffelsfontein is a bit of a work-in-progress – the property had been decimated by fire and the owners were slowly rebuilding. I saw signs of new construction – poured foundations, the concrete skeletons of buildings.

The main building is lovely – large and airy with a high thatched roof. We’d be having lunch before touring the grounds. Small birds are darting around the dining room, entering in the gap between the roof and the glass windows circling the room. Seeing them gave the illusion that we would be dining al fresco.

We had a leisurely lunch followed by coffee and in M’s case, rooibos tea. Rooibos is Afrikaans for “red bush.” Rooibos is an herb unique to the South African Cederberg Mountains. The tea is red and tastes a bit woody to me, slightly sweet, and while I don’t taste it, it makes me think of cinnamon. Two coffee and pudding breaks (pudding being a generic name for any type of dessert) a day seemed to be the rule. That was one rule I had to break unless I wanted to be four-foot-ten-and-three-quarter-inches-short by three-feet-wide.

We had to wait for another group to join us on the tour and we walked around the grounds a bit. I was able to take two stock photos:

A Lion At Rest

The naked limbs of a sun-seared tree, stark against the backdrop of brilliant African sky.

The lion was caged. He’ll be moved to an open area later, but for now he was fenced in. No running around with baboons and tigers for him.

That was pretty much the closest I got to any really wild animals.

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