I started the day still feeling lousy with my cold while Alison was feeling much better. We had a lazy morning in the apartment. At noon we picked up Sybil Jali from her flat in Havelock Street, PE, and drove back to the beachfront to have lunch at Café Dolce at the Boardwalk. We had an outside table as it was a sunny (but windy) day. Our connection with Sybil goes back 
many years to when she was still in high school, and came to work for us as a relief when our permanent nanny/housemaid, Patricia, had her annual holiday, usually over Christmas and New Year. Sybil’s own family weren’t interested in her continuing her education, and we supported her to the extent that she was able to attend Fort Hare University through grants we helped her obtain, and a bit of our own money. After student unrest at Fort Hare, we helped Sybil get transferred to the University of Cape Town, where she completed her studies and obtained a Social Studies degree to enable her to become a social worker. We’d already moved to Los Angeles 
when Sybil was at UCT, but with fundraising from members of the United Methodist Women group at our church, her last couple of years there were financed, and it was indeed a wonderful sight to see Sybil in her cap and gown upon graduation! Sybil married soon after she started work as a social worker in King Williams Town, not too far from her home village. However, the marriage ended after a few years, and Sybil has since lived and worked in PE. She’s at present working at the Retiree Help Desk at the General Motors plant in PE. Over the years she’s considered us to be her “parents” and calls us Ma and Pa. Not many people know we have a black African “daughter” aged 47! It appears, however, that Sybil was mixed up with an older sister when it became necessary for them to have birth certificates, because the paperwork reflects her older sister having been born in 1963, and Sybil in 1960. So it’s quite likely she’s only 44. Whatever her age, it’s been great to have stayed in touch over the years, and to see her whenever we are in PE.After we had taken Sybil home, I had volunteered to see if I could help Christian with the music on his PC. He had a huge library of music on Musicmatch Jukebox software, but support for that software was recently discontinued and “turned off”. In the USA, we were able to automatically move it to Yahoo Jukebox. Apparently, this move was not supported in SA and so Christian could no longer play his “playlists” of music that is piped all over the house. I was able to find Windows Media Player in his “programs” and moved all his tracks into the library and he was back in business. We opened a bottle of champagne and Alison joined us in the celebration!
On Saturday night we went to Vic’s beachfront flat to watch the first semi-final of the World Cup Rugby, England v France. France were huge favorites and nobody expected England to win – but they did!
Sunday was another slow start to the day and I was still feeling lousy from my cold. At 11:15 we met Tandi Moni and her two sons, Paul and Wilson, at the Swartkops Police Station (just a well known landmark known to both parties!) and then we drove back to their home in Motherwell, another PE “suburb”. Tandi was married to John Moni whom we knew from the early 1970s when he was still a schoolboy and came to our house every weekend to help me in the garden and then ultimately helped me to build the house next door. Sadly, John passed away at 50 from the complications of diabetes. We have kept in touch with Tandi and are helping her to ensure that 
Wilson, with one more year in high school, gets a good education.Sunday afternoon we had a reunion braai of the “ZOBO” club (Zwartkops Old Boys Organization), which is a name we gave ourselves for those “retired” members of Swartkops Round Table 195 who reached the age of 40 and thus had to retire as active members of Round Table. It was a fun afternoon and our host 
Arthur Ahlschlager had a detailed scrap book of all the various dinners, meetings, fund raising events, community service activities, etc., that we had been involved in over our active years. We were all laughing as we recalled different events from way back when!Sunday night we had planned to join Vic & Carol at Chippie & Pam Henderson’s to watch the second semi-final of World Cup Rugby – South Africa v. Argentina, but we were too tired and just watched it at the apartment. As expected, South Africa won fairly easily and will be playing England in the final next Saturday night. If you have followed earlier posts, you will have seen that South Africa has already played England because they were in the same “pool” of teams in the qualifying rounds (where all the teams in one pool play each other, and only the top two go through to the knockout section of the competition). South Africa annihilated England in this qualifying round, so England will have to play miraculously if they are going to stand a chance next weekend
Arthur Ahlschlager had a detailed scrap book of all the various dinners, meetings, fund raising events, community service activities, etc., that we had been involved in over our active years. We were all laughing as we recalled different events from way back when!Sunday night we had planned to join Vic & Carol at Chippie & Pam Henderson’s to watch the second semi-final of World Cup Rugby – South Africa v. Argentina, but we were too tired and just watched it at the apartment. As expected, South Africa won fairly easily and will be playing England in the final next Saturday night. If you have followed earlier posts, you will have seen that South Africa has already played England because they were in the same “pool” of teams in the qualifying rounds (where all the teams in one pool play each other, and only the top two go through to the knockout section of the competition). South Africa annihilated England in this qualifying round, so England will have to play miraculously if they are going to stand a chance next weekend
No comments:
Post a Comment