Letter from Africa
Peta Jones
No news from you recently – although it’s
entirely possible I’ve lost it, or Outlook has. Are
you still OK ? From time to time I’m aware of your
presence in correspondence with J.G., but I’ve been woefully neglectful of all
the lines of enquiry I still want to pursue with regard to donkeys, especially
regarding their history. I cling to the belief that I still have time for that.
The last update I can find on my files is
dated 2017, suggesting that I’m already three years late. But actually it is
only about 18 months since the end of 2018, so perhaps I don’t need to feel TOO
bad that many of my friends will probably have assumed my demise or dementia. As
I am ever more frequently reminded, I am somewhat overdue for both. My teeth
continue steadily to crumble away, and I can no longer summon a bite. A bark,
though, is another matter, especially given that the main reason dogs bark (and
donkey bray) is a feeling of some kind of frustration. No shortage of that in
my life, as will become clear. So I just cling to the thought of the longevity
of my maternal forebears, as I am far from ready to stop, even though irksomely
I have had to slow down.
Especially now. The
current midwinter days are far too short, and discomfort intrudes into almost
everything I do. So I have finally had to acknowledge that it is REALLY no
longer possible for me to be 30 years old, and that I must accept or pay for
help in almost all things physical, including driving a car and looking after
my donkeys. It came slowly over years, I now realize, but the crunch manifested
itself about six months ago, when I suffered what was in fact quite a minor
fall: toppling sideways off my bathroom stool. Nothing broken or dislocated,
but almost every muscle & tendon bruised and strained. All except one or two are now fully recovered, but the really
devastating loss has been my sense of balance. Not only dare I not move without
a handy prop, but every movement needs to be carefully considered in advance
and very slowly executed. No sudden turning of a head or even a foot,
although luckily my reactions are still fast. I had already taken to walking
with a stick out of doors and over rough ground, but this is something
altogether different, and seemingly not something that doctors can deal with.
Vertigo now constant
and not just afflicting me in high places. I ascribe it to the
lazy eye that always required effort for three-dimensional vision and
proprioception. Even as a teenager, ballgames were beyond me… although I admit
to not trying very hard. Now I’m paying the price, although also resentful that
my leg muscles are so prone to stiffness after all those years of dedicated
walking. Because I am now obliged to move so slowly, and days are currently so
short, I’ve not been able to get anything like my normal amount of exercise,
especially not out of doors. My main exercise consists of strenuous mental and
physical routines to keep incontinence at bay, which is hardly compensation for
not being able to explore the bush.
I suppose blood pressure could play a role in
the balance thing, as dizziness is also felt, although nothing really alarming
shows up when mine is measured. Frustration probably doesn’t help, and of
course the enforced slowdown and easy exhaustion are constant sources. After
some glitches and expensive replacements, household power and pump have been
working fairly well for a while, but frustrations lurk there as well, Climate
change has duly brought increased heat and drought, but too often these have
been bizarrely accompanied by heavy cloud cover, not good news for
photovoltaics. Even when there is no heavy cloud, there seems to be a constant
high-altitude haze which has a slight dimming effect on the sunlight that
reaches us. Although the bronze glow in which we now seem to live is certainly
very beautiful, it is probably not a very good sign.
I’ve been observing – and, when I could,
recording – the changing effects on the vegetation, and some of it is
surprising. There are species that respond very well to heat and drought. Even
in my garden, although growth seemed to halt when temperatures rose above 40ºC
– which was a lot of the time – thanks to adequate water from the borehole (and
despite the water-using community current lodged just the other side of my
stable), from my little permaculture garden I can now rely on fresh greens most
evenings, although dandelion is still champion. Beans are doing OK, but
tomatoes still have to prove their worth. In my tiny orchard, the brave old
lemon tree brought from the mountain finally gave up the ghost, but other
citrus is coming along, as are pomegranates, and the guavas seem unstoppable. Now
if only mangoes and avocadoes can establish, I’d be happy. Water may still
become a problem, however, as my pump is solar powered, and strange new climate
habits bring sometimes quite heavy cloud but more often a high, obscuring haze
that limits the input of power to my household batteries as well as to the
pump. My rain tanks are currently empty,
being badly in need of cleaning and repair.
Completed, and now waiting for rain which may never come.
When power is
available, by little fridge takes precedence over my computer. But if
anything is increasing my blood pressure, it is probably my frequent yelling at
Microsoft. Apoplexy guaranteed. Can they
hear my screeches in Seattle ? A few years back I
signed up for the subscription package that supposedly not only keeps one
updated, but covers more than one ‘device’ (in my case, laptop and PC) and will
keep one’s data automatically backed up on a cloud called OneDrive. I won’t
even go into the frustrations presented by the new Canon printer-scanner I had
to buy because Windows wouldn’t accept the old and perfectly satisfactory
Lexmark. Then in the last year Microsoft had difficulty with my new debit card,
just about everything offered in Office undergoes unannounced changes from time
to time, requiring hours of trial and error to make it work again, if it ever
does. And if you ask for help, you simply get offered a number of things for
which you have to pay. Apparently what was the Office suite is now a series of
‘apps’. I noticed that even my bank has been having similar problems, sending
me apologies from time to time for not being able to do
something that was easy before. I realize that part of the difficulty is
that systems are now having to fit themselves to those
evil smart phones as well as all sorts of things besides laptops and PCs, but
there seems to be no attempt to achieve simplicity. All those very clever
youngsters in Silicon Valley etc. dreaming up further elaborations (and charges
for them) without a thought to people who need the software for work and
keeping records, not gaming their way through virtual reality and ‘social
media’.
Having initially failed to rid myself of
Facebook, I still find it a major pain, cluttering up my webmail inbox, and
seemingly implementing new rules and procedures every time I try (and generally
fail) to use it. All the same, I do regard it as potentially useful, not only
for exercises like this because too many of my friends have dropped or changed
their email addresses, but also because of the growing number of ‘groups’ that
purport to be interested in donkeys. Only it seems that confining themselves to
donkeys is largely impossible. I tried myself to establish one for World Donkey
Day (8 May), but was largely defeated. Or at least I think I was. I’ve used
LinkedIn largely for sustainable agriculture, because that seemed a little more
workable, but even now it is becoming more like Facebook. I get Twitter
messages, but have no idea how Twitter has to be handled - let alone the other
things that keep getting mentioned on the podcasts to which I am certainly
utterly devoted. For my money, especially because they are mostly free, it is
podcasts that are the biggest thing since printing was invented. Battles with
insomnia are now thankfully in my past.
My younger great-nephew, in his last year of
high school, is aiming at IT and being like Elon Musk, so I’m hoping that some
day he will find the time to help me understand some of these things and use
them more effectively for my purposes. But he’ll probably be too busy and given
to complications. I know that somewhere on social media there must be an easy
way for me to sell the final updated edition of “Donkeys for Development”, as
well as the small booklet “Comfortable Donkeys” on how to make the simple
equipment on which my Powersets are based. Both books are in electronic form,
and of course would not have a very big market. I would look for a print
publisher for the more general animal-memoir things I am writing at the moment,
also on being a vegan in remote rural Africa, and I suppose the first thing I
should look for is an agent. Any suggestions ?
I have still failed to sell my mother’s property
(search Limpopo / Makhado / Freshwoods-farm). The
trouble is that it is not suitable for anything but poultry farming, but would
be ideal for someone running a business from home but needing close and easy to
three neighbouring countries, but also to be separated from town and instead
provided with wonderful rural views and walks along with some excellent
communications. Steep mountain slopes,
major trunk road, not at all suitable or donkeys or for me, which is why I
moved. while I still had some savings.. So now I am in
urgent need of other sources of income. Not
much editing work is coming in, I think because I am increasingly up against
people who can work quicker and more cheaply than I can. Not as thoroughly, of
course! But there are not many readers left who would notice.
The plan to find someone to help me set up
some donkey tourism along the Sand River has so far come to nothing, mostly
because people wholly fail to see what I am trying to achieve – cannot
understand why I expect people to walk instead of ride in a cart, etc. Maybe I
AM too far behind the times, although I persist in thinking myself ahead. I
launched the construction of the ‘Annexe’ designed to accommodate such an
assistant, but ran into difficulties with the person who undertook to help me
build it. Not only did he pay no attention to my plans, but arbitrarily changed
them, obliging me to buy heaps more expensive timber, and still leaving
mistakes that it took me and my workers a lot of time and difficulty to
correct. There is actually not much more to be done, and I have most of the
materials still needed, but now I need some specialist help, or at least help
that can understand what I want. A willing neighbour has offered, but will not
be available until her husband has finished HIS home improvements, and they are
rather vast. Still, without an occupant for my Annexe, I am in no particular
hurry, especially as I still have to think of buying a fridge, solar batteries
and an inverter to make the place habitable.
It has been a great relief to have those
neighbours (4 km away) moving in, replacing their son with whom I had become
friendly, but who found work over the mountain and is now living there instead.
Mostly I am surrounded by weekenders practising weird and inappropriate methods
of farming, so although I hear their traffic at weekends, and smell the
pollution they generate, I hardly ever see them. The other neighbours with whom
I made friends when I first came, have all sold up and moved away entirely –
except for one teaching at the school (20 km away), due to retire in a couple
of years. After her brother sold up and she took lodgings at the school, she
left a lot of her things in storage with me, the idea being that the Annexe
will eventually be hers. However, she’s trying to get her son through
university first and her pension may not be enough, so she has ambitions to go
and work in the Middle East for a while, where another brother teaches in a
school for pilots.
So
impatient as I am, I just have to wait, and comfort myself with the beauties of
the environment – which are very real, climate change or no. This winter seems
unusually cold, but is probably not. I am just feeling it more because I have
fewer opportunities for movement. Most mornings the sun on the veranda gets my
hands and feet warm enough to function before 9 am. My big old duvet is still
doing a splendid job; getting out from under it is the main problem, and then
getting washed and dressed with animals shouting for release and for food. After that, sunlight and/or a cocoon of furry blankets. And
my doctor tells me that our dry weather is what is keeping the pandemic at bay,
even in winter.
Because as a matter of economy I try not to
make journeys to town more than once a month, lockdown has hardly affected me
at all. Enforcement around here has been very minimal anyway, and I was lucky
enough to be on crutches when I had to queue outside supermarkets, so was
kindly ushered to the head of queues! I worry a bit about my staff, who seem to
be stuffing their accommodation with a growing number of friends and relatives
– women, children, the lot – so ‘social distancing’ is clearly not being
practised and my water supply is under strain. I wonder how long it will last,
but I know that schools are gradually reopening, as are liquor stores and the
like. This thing is predicted to have a profound effect on future societies,
but I get the feeling it is not going to make much difference here. On the
other hand, climate change will accelerate urbanisation, and pandemics hit
hardest in cities. The only members of my family who seem committedly urban are
my younger niece and her partner, both media people, and their newly adopted
toddler son who naturally has yet to express a choice. But even media people,
as well as IT characters, can make a niche for themselves away from cities. (The
older great nephew wants to be a rural vet, so no worry about him.) It all
depends on transport, and we are told that will change. However, as yet no sign
around here of any change in the volume of traffic, pandemic notwithstanding,
even though where I live is seriously damaging to cars. I am looking forward to
shopping-by-drone. If nothing else, it will be no more disturbing than and also
make a change from hunting-by-helicopter which seems to have become a favourite
among the game farms around here. The plans for a high-pollutin’
industrial zone, including a coking plant and other mineral processing, astride
the big national road about 30 km from here did seem to be fading away, we assumed because it had become apparent that there will
be no water for it, Kariba Dam being too far. However we now learn that treaties
have been signed with Zimbabwe to get water from their dams, although there’s
no reason to suppose that the water they have already lost will ever return. So
what we can expect is a white elephant of non-functional industries surrounded
by a slum of desperate people attracted by the promise of jobs but having to
resort to violence and crime, the first settlement that visitors will see when
coming south on the Cape-to-Cairo road. A wonderful advertisement for a new kind of elephant. A
white one, to replace those being poached
Being equipped to apply an archaeological if
not an outright geological perspective to planetary changes, and also knowing
that I shan’t be around to suffer the worst adaptations, does make it all less
stressful for me. And I have done what I could not to waste anything, to
recycle as much as I can, and to use the minimum of water and energy in my
daily living, making my footprint lighter than most. I try to convince people
that there is nothing difficult or uncomfortable about it, and can even be done
in cities, but being regarded as an eccentric doesn’t help. I saw my
camping-with-donkeys tourism plan as an opportunity for doling out some
environmental education, but without that coming to fruition, not much
planet-saving is possible for me. Of course the planet will survive well
enough as long as the sun does; it is humanity in its present form which will probably
not, along with a number of other species. All part of a
Greater Plan? Not for us to know. But I’ll be around a while longer,
observing! Here’s wishing the same for you.
Cheers, P.
[My signature carries the spoor as greetings
from the animals I live with – chickens, cats, dogs, donkeys – but does not
include the many others that live in my walls and ceiling, such as bats,
rodents, lizards, spiders and a monitor lizard.
The python was eventually caught and taken to a wildlife sanctuary when I
was away undergoing radiotherapy, but we don’t know if it left any young
behind. If so, perhaps the monitor lizard
has dealt with them, or perhaps my two new cats.]
__________
The author adds the following
note:
Meanwhile I am trying to fathom how to
sell online the pdf version of my 'Donkeys for Development' (≈200 pp), now fully updated, especially
written for remote and resource-poor people who rely on their donkeys, as well
as a small workshop manual (≈35 pp) for making proper low-cost
hitching and harnessing best suited for donkeys. All fully edited and
laid out, with plenty of illustrations. I'd appreciate suggestions.
She can be contacted at