Holiday Bliss!

We are living in a really beautiful country! We had a great opportunity to see some more of our country when we recently traveled into the Eastern Cape and across the Great Kei River to spend a week in Butterworth with our precious friends, the Addisons.

The road trip was very stretching for us as a family – we aren’t used to traveling for long periods of time. For the past 5 and a half years whenever we traveled around in Cyprus, we never spent more than an hour and half in the car getting to the next stop. We cancelled our trip to Pretoria because Dieter didn’t feel he could cope with the long drive or have the energy necessary to cope with 4 busy children in the car.

I came up with a practical action plan for our trip: Dieter did all the driving. I sat in the middle row of the car with Ethan and Aimee, reading to them and playing games with them. Ryan and Jed took turns alternating between the front passenger seat and the very rear seat in the back. It worked like a charm!

We were to leave on Monday 23^rd of July but had to postpone because SEDA hadn’t finalised our marketing project. We eventually left just after lunch on Tuesday 24^th, having met with the designer at Jetline and giving him all the specs he needed. Ouma and Jed had put together a packed lunch for us and we stopped off in Wildernis to enjoy it before heading along the Garden Route towards Jeffery’s Bay.

We arrived in Jeffery’s Bay just before 5pm and met with Tersia and Daleen for a cuppa at the Mall. Tersia and Daleen are friends of ours from Dubai/Sharjah and it was lovely to see them again after many years! There’s just something so wonderful about relaxing with people who really know you. We spent a quick hour together and then headed to Oom Chris’s house where we had arranged to stay overnight in the holiday flat he has built above his garage. We spent a very comfortable night in the 2-bedroom flat and were up early the next morning to continue on our journey after a breakfast of boiled eggs, fruit and fresh milk.

We left Jeffery’s Bay just after 8am and only stopped twice on our way to Butterworth. We stopped at Colchester to fill up with petrol and get some snacks and took the coastal road towards East London. We stopped very briefly in Port Alfred to pick up some rolls and fillings for lunch and to meet Michelle, an old colleague from our Butterworth teaching days, at Port Alfred Primary. We met up with her in the same spot 6 years ago when we last traveled through Port Alfred and she hasn’t changed a bit! It was great for her to meet Ethan and Aimee too and she was flabbergasted at how much Ryan and Jed have grown. We literally had five minutes together and took a quick photo to have proof of the moment before heading on towards Butterworth. We didn’t stop at all after that and only arrived in Butteworth just after 4pm, it was a loooooong day on the road and we were all so glad to get out the car and not have to drive anywhere for a whole week!

It was absolutely heartwarming to be home with the Addisons again. Tony and Naomi are like a 3^rd set of parents to Dieter and I and have been special friends since we taught in Butterworth 17 years ago. They have 5 adult children who are also very special to us, 4 of  whom have visited either in Sharjah or Cyprus. Anthea is enjoying the northern hemisphere Summer Holidays and is back in SA for 2 months, so we planned our visit to coincide with her leave and it was very special to be together again. It is also wonderful that M-A is home for a season and we got to spend time with him too. It really was like going home and having a family reunion! Our time together was incredibly relaxing and rejuvenating and every day was a memory making moment spent together.

We really were able to just relax and make ourselves at home, which was wonderful! We were also thoroughly spoiled, thoroughly!

We got to see firsthand how Tony and Naomi run the primary school that operates from the house next door. They were up early every morning and busy till late each day administering an amazing school! Ethan and Aimee particularly enjoyed the company of the many little children at break times and Ryan even played football with a small group on the last day we were there. Fortunately, our children only felt comfortable enough to spend their money at the daily tuckshop on the last day we were in Butterworth or we might have been bankrupted!

I am very grateful for the experience our children have had in the process: Butterworth is a very small little town with very few of the city landmarks and brands we have come to recognise. The streets are crowded with people and cars alike and one really has to have your eyes and ears open at all times to be able to get around safely. We even gave the children a new outlook on street crossings as we dodged traffic despite having right of way to walk! On the Monday morning we ventured down town with Anthea to browse the products of the various street vendors and pop into Spargs, a family-owned store which has been in the town for as long as anyone can remember. It was an amazing experience! Spargs has been revamped numerous times as fashions have changed, but the current revamp makes for a comfortable shopping experience. I remember a time when the isles were so narrow I didn’t even think of shopping with a trolley! Ryan, in particular LOVED our 3-hour shopping experience during which we bought some 2^nd hand winter jackets for Ethan and Jed, a warm top for Ryan, some soccer socks for the soccer dudes in our house and some denim material to make aprons for Dieter and I. It was great fun.

There are very, very few white people living in the area and the obviously don’t walk around town much. As people walked past us they made loud, and obviously surprised, remarks about seeing white people in town. We couldn’t understand them as they spoke in their native Xhosa but were fortunate that Anthea speaks the lingo and could translate. We aren’t a family who likes the limelight much but it was a laughing matter for us too!

Anthea treated us to the most amazing cuisine, some of which was very foreign to us. It was the first time we ate ‘samp and beans’, a corn and speckled bean staple for many of the indigenous people of our country – and it was delicious! Another first were the gourmet ‘bunny chows’ she made us: a half-loaf of hollowed bread filled with beef curry and topped with grated carrots and slivers of onion which we ate as a picnic meal down at the Butterworth Dam one lunch time with Mark Anthony. She also cooked us a deliciously spicy curry and the rest of the family was shocked to see how much our children enjoy spicy food. Tony cooked sheep’s liver on the fire for us, covered in intestinal membrane and insisted we ate it hot-off-the-fire with our fingers and it was so yummy! Our meal times together were festive occasions, continual celebrations of our friendship and special times together.

We also got to share in worship together with the Addisons on Sunday morning. It was a bitterly cold morning and the congregation bravely wrapped up warm as they met together in a panel beater’s workshop (that is meticulously cleaned out before each meeting!) Tony and Naomi are part of the team that leads the church and they asked us to share with the congregation. Dieter preached through the life of Joseph and encouraged the church to continue to be led by God as they fulfil the purpose for which He has placed them in Butterworth as they continue to lead many to Christ and disciple them. It was a special time together and a real privilege to be together with them.

There are so many highlights of our time together with the Addisons, catch phrases and jokes that will remind us of this time together. One last highlight I’d like to mention here is the opening of the London Olympic Games, which we watched together. It started just after 10.30pm and we didn’t get to bed before 2am. For the most part the opening games were very entertaining and well done. The British are well know for the ‘pomp and ceremony’ with which they celebrate life, but the opening of these games was very honouring. Honouring of the history of the nation, honouring of its authors, musicians, inventors and honouring of its previous Olympians. We also noticed that they made a point of including everyone in their ceremony regardless of race, age, shape or ability. It was incredibly refreshing!

Leaving the Addisons was very hard. Even as I type this (almost 10 days later!), I feel heartsore that our time together is over. I couldn’t hold back the tears as we hugged one another and gave our heartfelt greetings. These are incredibly special people, more than friends, family! Thank God for the gift He gave us in the Addison family and that our friendship has grown over the years. We love and appreciate you all so very much!