VOLUNTEERS: SPRING TO SUMMER

There have been lots of friendly and hardworking volunteers over this time.

South African drama student Chante Geary, composed a song for Fynbos (see video clip bottom of page).
New Zealander James Templeton helped label wine and serve at bar.  Ronja Mienert from Germany got wedding organisation perfected for us and loved being in the garden too.  Marie Schreiber, also from Germany, gardened and worked like the devil at weddings.  Dido Voorma from Amsterdam volunteered while doing her Masters on Swartland Independent Producers (SIP), and she poured all of her considerable passion into discovering and drinking wine and cooking delicious food. For a while Dido’s boyfriend Jurian joined her and did the mammoth task of clearing our Zimbabwe creeper as well as doing a fine job at the bar.  We are delighted that Dido and Jurian are returning for 3 months on the farm to help with harvest and wine marketing.

Clockwise from top left: 1) Dido grows basil. 2) After the party with Chante, Marne, Dido and Johan. 3) Dido and Jurian. 4)  Chante and Dido labelling wine.

And then we had a short but wonderful visit from Sven Walther and Geraldine Blatter, who volunteered the year before last for many months becoming really part of the Fynbos community. They brought their friends from Ethiopia - Alexandra Huber, Rami Ahmed and baby Ilai.  Best of all they are hoping to return here for a year or more.

To you all we are very grateful for your help.  Much thanks.

Clockwise from top left: 1) James washing Sweetpi. 2) Sven & Gerri. 3) Marie on a painting job. 4)  Sven,Gerri, their friends & Ronja. 5) Spring volunteers with part of the wedding team.

Clockwise from top left: 1) James labels wine. 2) Gail and Johan with Chante, Dido and James. 3) Ronja at a wedding. 4)  Jurian and Stephan do bar.

Comments

Dear Diana and Johan,

Thank you very much for everything!

I loved my stay here, sleeping (the art hut, Farmhouse, Fynbos house, the Restaurant), eating and working at your farm.

I will miss you, the team and the animals.

I am looking forward to seeing you again! 

Ronja

Dear Diana and Johan

I can’t begin to describe my time here. It was more than I ever hoped for. You made me feel so at home. Fynbos is a magical place, where I could think a lot about my life. Of course I will be back in only weeks time, and I know will miss Fynbos and you a lot.

Thank you so much for letting me in your life, I enjoyed every minute of it

See you soon,

Lots of love

Dido

Dear Diana and Johan,

The last three weeks have just been amazing. I'm really glad I decided to do Woofing in South Africa and decided to do it on your farm because otherwise I would have missed out a lot! I would have missed out the wonderful peaceful time, when the Buddhists were there. It opened my heart and mind, because I can't take it for granted to meet people so incredibly kind and inclusively. It was the perfect start in year 2015. I also would have missed out the biggest wedding you've had so far! It showed me how strong the whole Fynbos family is, and what you are capable of without going mad! Chapeau! And I would have missed out all the lovely people and animals I met. Your place is filled with love in every corner. That made my stay really special. I found paradise on earth. 

Thank you Johan and Diana, Gail, Miggie, all the amazing Zimbabs!! the donkeys, cats, dogs!

I will not forget you and promise I come back for harvest - one day!

Wish you all the best!!

Marie  

My people

I think about you guys all the time and I love the photos.  Is Dido and her love still there? And the workers, my little Natasha.

From sleeping on a mattress at the floor of the mountain at Sonkop to sleeping in the chapel in the windy night air. I learnt a lot about people, nature and working hard. Taking afternoon strolls after working in the garden and moving chairs for the wedding on the plaasbakkie. What a cool experience on the most beautiful farm.

Hope u guys are smiling.

Good energies

Chante

Marabi Nights: A Gem of a read (and a listen) for Jazz lovers

In Durban last week, Christopher Ballantine, Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal,  and internationally acclaimed music sociologist, launched the second edition of his book Marabi Nights – Jazz, ‘race’ and society in early apartheid South Africa. He also happens to be our friend which makes us especially proud of him.

 The book is described as  

“...an updated and substantially expanded edition of (his) classic study of the triumphs and tragedies of South Africa’s marabi-jazz tradition. New chapters extend the book’s in-depth account of the birth and development of urban-black popular music. They include a powerful story about gender relations and music in the context of forced migrant labour in the 1950s, a critical study of the legendary Manhattan Brothers that uniquely positions their music and words in relation to the apartheid system, and an account of the musical, political and commercial strategies of the local record industry. A new afterword looks critically at the place of jazz and popular music in South Africa since the end of apartheid, and argues for the continued relevance of the robust, questioning spirit of the Marabí tradition.

The book includes an illustrative CD of historic sound recordings that the author has unearthed and saved from oblivion.

PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION

‘Written by the most distinguished figure of South African musicology, [it] aims at nothing less than a complete revision of some of the most entrenched myths about South African music.’

Veit Erlmann, Freie Universität, Berlin

‘Ballantine has written an important book which goes far beyond its subject matter, jazz. It is a gem of scholarship.’

Z.B. Molefe, 

'There are not many books like this, to which you can dance.'

John Lonsdale, Trinity College, Cambridge

‘There is no doubt that Marabi Nights is one of a few seminal works in South African jazz history. It made a very significant contribution to mapping South African proletarian history when it first appeared and remains an important work of cultural historiography.’

Gwen Ansell, author of Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music & Politics in South Africa

 The launch last week in Durban 

For more information  and photos go to

http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151548976122564.597651.325054557563&type=1

Loni exhibits at Grande Provence

Reading a poem by Rudyard Kipling outside Clarke’s Bookshop in Long Street

A young man picks up the pulse of the rhyming and strides with it.

"Poetry is lekker-deep"

Everyone, but

everyone, on the pavement affirms this comment: "Ja, man! Die wêreld is lekker-deep!"

[Lekker-deep: Sweet-deep. Nice-deep. New South African English. Expressly used for poetry and chance moments of beauty in everyday life]

The recall Rudyard Kipling I am the land of their fathers, In me the virtue stays. I will bring back my children, After certain days.
Under their feet in the grasses My clinging magic runs. They shall return as strangers. They shall remain as sons.
Over their heads in the branches Of their new-bought, ancient trees, I weave an incantation And draw them to my knees.
Scent of smoke in the evening, Smell of rain in the night – The hours, the days and the seasons, Order their souls aright,
Till I make plain the meaning Of all my thousand years – Till I fill their hearts with knowledge, While I fill their eyes with tears.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is one of 149 poets included in the amazing definitive anthology, Africa! My Africa! He was an English poet, novelist, short story writer and children’s author who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.

Photos by Don Pinnock
Africa! My Africa! An anthology of poems selected by Patricia Schonstein ISBN978-1-874915-20-1 African Sun Press afpress@iafrica.com 1 November 2012: http://patriciaschonstein.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/11/01/reading-a-poem-by-rudyard-kipling-outside-clarke%E2%80%99s-bookshop-in-long-street/

Stonework to astound

Alice Cohen sent us this link to some extraordinary stone work.

For more see

http://designtaxi.com/news/354377/Japanese-Artist-Creates-Amazing-Sculptures-Out-Of-Stone/

Open Studio

Gaelen Pinnock's exhibition

This is a very exciting exhibition by our friend Gaelen and well worth viewing...

In Gaelen’s own words: “I've paired two uneasy worlds. Half of the photos are from the island of Príncipe in West Africa, the other half are of neglected or abandoned modernist structures. Both groups represent the decline of utopian dreams.”
More info: http://www.gaelenpinnock.com/dystopias/

Reading a poem by Ethelwyn Rebelo in the garden of Deerpark Café.



Photo by Don Pinnock



The poem was read aloud. Children were everywhere, with balloons and puppies and birthday cake. It was the end of the afternoon and there was lots of sugar-rush and some end-of-the-party tears. All the sounds mingled among the words of the poem and then floated off with balloons across the city.

Away from the party, and not involved with it at all, sat a young woman writing in her moleskine. Her posture told of passion and longing. Down in Longmarket Street, a man thought he saw love in the air and stopped to gaze at clouds.

Who

Ethelwyn Rebelo

watches you dress, laughing

at you standing before the mirror

in clean socks, crazy underpants

and ironed shirt;

adores you putting on shined shoes;

smooths your shampooed hair;

kisses your face, feeling

its shaved softness even softer

against her lips;

and then the smooth scent of your neck

ahead of her cheek against your chest?

Who makes your scrubbed flesh her fingers’

playground as up and down groin and thigh they slide,

tracking the grooves beside?

Who holds you at night in soap-smelling sheets,

and the following day prays you safely home?

Who greets you with interesting or funny tales?

Who hungrily inhales

your day’s perspiration?

Ethelwyn Rebelo is one of the formidable poets featured in the anthology Africa! My Africa! She works as a psychologist at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital. Who was first published in Carapace 61.

To order a copy of Africa! My Africa! please email afpress@iafrica.com

☺The owners of Deerpark Café, Karin Louw & Roger van Wyk bought two copies, one for a school library and one for themselves.

Loni Dräger exhibits at Ground Xero

Loni will be exhibiting at an exhibition entitled 'Ground Xero' being held at Art in the Forest near Constantia Nek from 27 October to 20 December 2012.

Poetry for passers by

Jane Fox poem being read outside Atlas Trading.

Go to  http://patriciaschonstein.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/09/22/reading-a-poem-by-jane-fox-outside-atlas-trading/ to read more.

Diana writes from Toronto

What a friendly city this is, and it’s great to have a patch of summer in the middle of formidable S.A. cold. Europeans are also complaining about the cold, and more and more people are muttering about climate change. Not of course the powers that be here in Canada, who last year pulled out of the Kyoto protocol. But I'm trying to put such worries, whether global or more parochial, aside for a few weeks, and have a holiday.  To this end I have entered urban life with gusto - zooming up and down on the efficient Canadian subways system, taking in a Picasso exhibition and doing a Buffy Sainte-Marie free concert. I love the multiculturalism especially among the young. My god daughter Sophie, at 17, has friends from everywhere, and says even the Chinese `mix it up'. Not to say of course that it isn't the immigrant population, who keep capitalism on track with cheap labour, but it, is good to be away for a bit from the in-your-face hard realities of SA. I'm off now to swim and bird watch on Lake Ontario. Thereafter I meet up with Johan and we visit Greece for awhile before coming home. If Greece is functioning that is...
Will catch you all later.
 

Hindu Festival on Dunda Square

Henry Moore Sculpture

Henry Moore Sculpture

Lydia and I at the Henry Moore Sculpture

Weird fruit in Chinatown

Weird fruit in Chinatown

Piano at the harbour front

Dancing

Pianos have been placed all around Toronto, which say PLAY ME - I'M YOURS, and people do just this. I’ve listened to Beethoven on the corner of Yonge and Eglington and dance music on the harbour front. Lovely things happen around the pianos, like these dancing couples show. None of the dancers knew each other previously.

Sarah Jane leaves us with beautiful sketches

Our South African volunteer from Nelspruit, Sarah Jane, left us with these beautiful sketches. As is so often the problem, I couldn't decide which ones to post so I'm going to put them all up.

Terri Milne sends us new illustrations

We have featured Terry Milne’s work a few times before on the blog. She immigrated to the UK some years ago, and has painted a series which she describes as:

Loosely based on a theme of ’A sense of Place' which as an immigrant was fun to play with (displacement / misplacement etc.)

As always her work has a poignancy and magic. To contact Terry you can reach her on devilliers.milne@ntlworld.com

Cotswold Wild Life



Alexandra Road



Broad Street

Cape of Good Hope

The most photographed cat in the Swartland

We have had quite a few cats in our time, but none quite like the feral named Fitz. With the walk of a leopard and the markings to rival a tiger, he doubtless has delusions of grandeur, and every cat lover cannot but marvel at both his attitude and his beauty. This of course he considers his due, but if they are drawn to stroke his delectable fluffy white belly or tickle his fine ears, they instantly wish they hadn’t. A paw comes out quick as lightning to thwap the admirer. He is playing, but it matters not. He is lethal and can carve bloody lines on your hand in seconds. At night should you venture out of bed to pee in the dark, he will spring out at you, wrap his paws around your ankle and rake some fine markings on you. Hence he has been renamed – as is wont to happen with cats - Osama ben kitty.  Or for short `The Terrorist’.  

Born of lineage comprising African wild cat mixed over the decades with the domestic cat, the Terrorist was found alone in the hollow of a tree one Christmas, and brought down to the house. His mother might have been out hunting, his sibs long dead, but his fate was now sealed. His eyes were barely open so he was bottle fed, and the fact that there was a bevy of small girls visiting who swaddled him like an infant, we think accounts at least in part, for his refusal to be handled.



Photo by Jon Riorden



As he grew he revealed the talents with which genetic selection has endowed him.  He can for example fly up and down a 150 year oak in minutes, and his reflexes are so good he can get the best of any rodent (including the fearsome mole rat), not to mention whisking the food off your dinner plate before you even notice. He jumps to a formidable height, drinks milk from a jug using his paw as a spoon, and is afraid of no one - whether human, canine, or equine.

Terri Broll

But for all his prowess, and this is the contradiction of it all, Fitz is undoubtedly a family cat. Unlike our other cat Bounce, who prowls the farm, Fitz is always close to us, preferring the mohair bed rug to the straw of an outhouse, and our company to being alone. He trots around with us when we show guests the farm, sits in on workshops and retreats, participates in wedding ceremonies, and hikes with us to the very top of the mountain.

And so it is no small wonder that he catches the eye of anyone with a camera or pen - which means he has been drawn by artists, and photographed by countless professional photographers, who just cannot resist.

Pics of Osama drawn or photographed by some of his many admirers.

Donks immortalized

Doreen Dauberman, an established South African painter, visited the farm and immortalized our dinky donks in oil.  As you can see from the photograph, they were very intrigued by her and posed most helpfully (apart from a few distracted forays into nearby grassy spots). We think Doreen has captured each of them wonderfully. And she has very generously gifted the painting us.

To find out more about Doreen and her painting, Google her name for pics. Or email her on doreenjoan.d@gmail.com

Our Loni exhibits in Grahamstown

Loni who works part time at the farm is exhibiting her beautiful wood sculptures at Grahamstown Festival. We know lots of you are going, so look out for her work. And if you want to check out her studio in the Riebeek Valley, you can contact her on

loni.drager@gmail.com

http://www.lonidrager.co.za

Unusual Artwork from Wood

Estelle sent us this, and since we have featured wood sculpture from Loni Drager and sculpted animals from Eugene Brock, we thought this might be of interest.

53-year-old Sergei Bobkov, a Russian resident has patented a unique technique of creating amazing sculptures out of Siberian cedar wood-chips.

After creating about 100-150 chips, from 2-3 inch long cedar stick, he puts them in water for several days. Then, making use of his surgical precision, he carves the chips into any shape he needs. It is incredibly time consuming - just one of these incredible artworks takes around six months to complete, at a work rate of 10 to 12 hours a day... Sergei Bobkov focuses on wildlife creatures, and he studies their anatomy for months, before starting work.

http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-unique-wood-chip-sculptures-of-segei-bobkov.htm