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Welcome to my blog, these are the ramblings and musings of an (upper) middle aged biker and if you enjoy braais, (barbeques) beers and motorbikes then hopefully you will enjoy what Janet and I do; we do lots of braais, we drink lots of beer and we tour South Africa on our motorbike, which at the moment is a BMW R1200RT. Join us, read about what we do and please leave us your comments.



Tuesday, March 27, 2012

It's hell in Africa man!

"It's hell in Africa!" is an old saying, but actually it's not. Africa is a beautiful place, especially South Africa, I know we have our problems like the high crime rate, poor service delivery, corruption and mismanagement in high places but these are exciting times and I believe that we can get it right.
The youth of today are the ones who can make a difference and through initiatives like "Lead SA" all of us can try to make a change, it's going to take time but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
Just look at the iniative and enthusiasm displayed here! Isn't that a wonderful pool table? This sort of thing can be seen all over Africa, where clay is used to model pretty much anything;
This wonderful Landrover I got from a friend in the Transkei, Eastern Cape and it is obviously a tourist vehicle with the surfboards on the roof rack and the dog in the back! Unfortunately it is unbaked clay so it is rather fragile.
This excellent model Landrover comes from Malawi and is made from wood with raffia covering, there is an amazing amount of detail;
like the opening rear door and the bench seats;
the bonnet (hood) also opens to reveal the engine! I have also got quite a large collection of green soapstone carvings of animals from then Rhodesia which are very special to me and which I will show you at a later stage.
Whilst on the subject of Landrovers though, apparently Lions are rather partial to them, or at least to their tyres!
This big male was not like a dog that chases cars and then doesn't know what to do with them, when he caught the landy he knew exactly what to do, he proceeded to eat the tyre!
What the hell do you do? The big guy at the back was even sorting out the spare wheel!
It looks as though they systematically flattened all of the tyres before they were satisfied!
Now what?! If you visit a game reserve carry four extra spare wheels inside the vehicle, but who's going to get out and change them?
"Woman I told you, enough of your bloody chirping! Now get out and change those tyres."

4 comments:

Canajun said...

I expect 4 new tires and wheels are in order because I would have driven out of there on the rims. And quickly!

the rider said...

You're right Canajun, there's no way I would have hung around there! I haven't seen lions attacking tyres before, they have been known to climb up on the front of vehicles and lie down on the bonnet and the roof though.

BeemerGirl said...

Great post. I love the ingenuity of those kids. That is a great looking pool table. Reminds me of when I used to play with clay as a kid. But I was floored at the detail on the landrovers. I would do whatever I could to shore up the jeep/boards/dog to make sure it stays around awhile.

And lion seating tires is something else. I can see maybe one...but all and the spare? Wild.

the rider said...

Hi Lori, thanks. I have the clay landrover on display but we dont handle it at all, I've had it for some 20 years now and I'm very careful with it.
Another very clever craft item which I didn't mention is the model motorcyles and cars made out of wire, plenty of those around here.