The Middle 4

On Sunday morning,at the start of our third week in Canada,we went to Sears, one of the many get-everything department stores, to buy track suit pants for Cilliers. Cilliers came out of the fitting rooms with his mind made up about which pair of pants he wanted and then we just strolled through the shop gawking at all the merchandise and having mini heart attacks when seeing the price tags. After about 10 minutes Cilliers made a choking sound and yelped that he had left his wallet and Blackberry in the fitting rooms. I wasn’t worried, this is Canada after all and not SA, so I just sent him at a run to fetch them.  Unfortunately a thief had already gotten his grubby little fingers on the loot. Cilliers’ phone and wallet with about $400(!!), was gone. We didn’t yet have any insurance in Canada so it was a dead loss.

We were really angry at Cilliers for being so absent minded but also felt bad for him as he was still whatsapping with a lot of his friends in SA and now that means of communication was gone. He was also very angry at himself and for months would grumble every time we had to go to Sears. Sometimes the best lessons have to be learnt the hard way and hopefully he’ll be a bit more responsible with his stuff in future.

While still in SA I joined an internet forum for South Africans living in, or wanting to move to Canada. One of the families from the forum contacted us and invited us for a visit. Charles and Catherine live in Erin, about a 30 minute drive from Guelph. They have 2 boys, aged 9 and 11, and have been in Canada for 9 years. Off we went to go visit complete strangers we met on the internet....... exactly what we warn our kids about!

In the forest of our new friends

What a wonderful visit we had on this lovely warm spring day. The boys biked, we had a stroll in the forest and our new friends treated us to a wonderful braai on their deck. After this lovely day sitting outside, braaiing and enjoying the sunshine, the next day dawned cold and grey and it started snowing! The kids were quite excited, it being their first snow, ever. If you like the weather here just wait a minute.....

The boys all bundled up while its snowing

 

This is the deck where we sat in warm sunshine the previous day
 

This week the boys had their first school field trips. Cilliers went to a conservation area with his class. He got confused and kept calling it a conversation area, which of course had us dissolve in fits of laughter. I joined Loest’s  class on a visit to a retirement home. They treated the residents to songs and poems and played games with them. This was a good opportunity for me to connect with some of the parents. The school has a volunteer program and parents are obligated to fulfil 30 hours of volunteer work at the school per year. This is a great way to get to know fellow parents.

Loest’s class was incubating some chicken eggs and on Friday Kobus, being in the poultry business and all, presented a talk to the class about chickens. This was such a big event for Loest and he was so very proud to have his dad there.

The eggs eventually hatched and the boys loved the little chicks

 

During this week Cilliers had a test about the countries of Europe. None of us had any idea that there were so many countries in Europe and we had loads of fun trying to figure out which country goes where on an interactive map exercise we found on the internet. The well known countries were easy but there’s a myriad of smaller ones with names I can hardly pronounce, let alone pinpoint their positions on a map. Two weeks later Asia proved to be even more difficult!!

On Friday evening we went to Pizza Hut, remember when we still had those on every corner in SA? The pizzas were great but, once again, gigantic in size. We were learning that Canadian portions are much bigger than what we’re used to. A medium pizza in SA is as big as a small one here and a large pizza here.....well, it is unfinishable. Our entire family of four could have dined on one large pizza and we ordered 4!!  At least we had some pizza leftovers to enjoy for the next week.

Just before annihilation by pizza

 

Milkshakes are not readily available in all restaurants and chocolate milk is the preferred kiddies drink in restaurants. I have yet to find a restaurant that knows what a rock shandy is and a mojito is nowhere to be found. Cappuccinos I have only found in a few places but a cafe latte still eludes me.

Something more needs to be said of the glorious mojito, this favourite of Ernest Hemingway. Although I liked this refreshing Cuban libation before it really became my favourite whilst visiting Cancun, Mexico, in August 2011. Ever since then the sweet taste would conjure up images of dancing the Macarena on the beach with a mariachi band, scuba diving in the azure Caribbean, palm trees swaying in the wind and being in a far away exotic place. It is just nowhere to be found in Canada’s restaurants. Is it just too much effort to make with its myriad of ingredients? The excuse most often given is the lack of mint. Perhaps I should grow my own mint and take it with to a restaurant. Imagine the waitress’s face when I yank out my own supply of mint from my big handbag! No more excuses signorita and bring me my mojito, pronto!!

Television and radio ads are really funny. There is no law prohibiting competitive advertising so rival product bashing is common. Sometimes a company would only allude to its competition but often the competitor would be named outright and its product slammed in no uncertain terms. Nandos would have an absolute field day here! I’ve never heard so many ads promoting products to enhance male performance, from the “total testosterone male enhancement system”, to the product hailed as so effective that one guy bought the entire company after trying it once! Wonder with which brain he was thinking..... Viagra is offered at rock bottom prices with online ordering promising to be discreet......

 In SA we speak an African British English while in Canada it’s more American English, so quickly we learnt that terms here are somewhat different. A robot is a traffic light, tissues are Kleenex and a shopping centre is a mall. Toilet paper is advertised as bath tissue and chips are french fries. Potato wedges are called fat potatoes and Tippex is white-out. There are no suburbs but sub-divisions and sellotape is scotch tape. Eight thirty is the correct term and not half past eight. Some people call a slowcooker a crockpot and I elicited many giggles when explaining that a crockpot in SA means someone who’s gone nuts. One lady said she would never think of her crockpot in quite the same way again.

The Middle 3: The Second Week

On Sunday evening, just 7 days after we arrived, we bid Kobus goodbye. He was off to France for the week. There we were, me and the 2 boys, just barely off the boat and left to our own devices. Fortunately my lovely husband knows that I’m iron woman and can handle anything...right?!?!

On Monday I started to work again. I was fortunate enough that I could keep my SA job (doing it over the internet) and reckoned this was a good week to get that ball rolling again. It would keep me occupied while the kids are at school and the income was needed to cover some expenses we still had in SA. The hotel room had a comfortable desk, I requested an office chair from reception and the office of Daleen Inc. was up and running again. It got a bit quiet all alone in the room so I would switch on the TV and A&E channel would have all these reruns of Criminal Minds and CSI Miami, some of my favourite shows. So it was that my economic productivity commenced against the background of blood, mayhem and evil serial killers being hunted by perfect looking people.

On Tuesday I went to test drive a Ford Explorer, this later proved to be the beginning of a painful and frustrating process of acquiring wheels that’s at least attached to some form of an engine. The process of buying a car warrants a whole blog post of its own so more about this later...

During this week I had a meeting with the school principal, Mr Moore, and with both of the boys’ teachers, Mr Wylie for Cilliers and Ms Pennings for Loest. Cilliers was adjusting well and his standard of work was satisfactory. Even French was OK, with a bit of extra help of course.

Every child at school needs to play a musical instrument. Cilliers got quite panicky when he heard about this as he has never had any exposure to any musical anything, of course entirely our fault. The only wind instrument that has ever touched his lips was a vuvuzela, which, I must admit, he is quite proficient at.  He eventually decided on a flute from the variety of instruments available at school and after a couple of days of practise managed to coax at least some sound out of the very complicated and shiny object. Eventually he would give up on the flute, it was just too difficult, and instead came home with a saxophone. A much sexier instrument and it wasn’t long before he started to enjoy playing it.

The flute did not work out so well

Much better with the sax

Loest was having some trouble with reading and writing in English. He only started grade 1 in January in SA and now was in grade 2 in Canada (this decision was made based upon his age). It seemed that the kids here learn to read much earlier than in SA and he was struggling. I got quite a fright when he came home with spelling words such as “nutrients” and “centimetre” and this while the poor little boy still had trouble with basic words like “dog”, “cat” and “ball”. He didn’t even know what the word nutrients meant, let alone spell, write and read it!

Fortunately the boys’ school is just absolutely fantastic and all the help we could possibly need was offered. I met with Ms Pennings and it was decided that I would work with Loest in the afternoons with a computer programme, she would do some phonics in class with him and he will receive extra help when needed. We had 2 months before school closed for the summer to see if we could get him up to scratch.

The boys actually settled in and adapted very well. They both made friends very quickly and seemed to have no trouble with the huge transition. I kept waiting for big emotional meltdowns to happen, which just never did, thank goodness. I stood in wonderment at their ability to take everything in their stride and the ease with which they coped and just rolled with everything.

During this week we decided, with Kobus being away and all that, that we would go rent some DVD’s. After making some enquiries at reception as to where to go we set off to the nearest Rogers store. In we walked and at the counter I asked what the procedure was to rent some DVD’s. The young man informed me that my timing really sucked, they had ceased to rent out DVD’s the previous week!! Seems that DVD rental stores were a dying breed in Canada with so many on-line places to watch and rent movies from. I wonder how long it would be before this would also happen in SA. Dstv’s Box Office service is probably the beginning of the end of the corner DVD store. It was with some sadness that I thought of our local DVD store in SA that we have been faithful patrons of for so many years.

On Thursday I met Martie for coffee at Juki’s house, another woman from SA. We spent an enjoyable morning together and it was great getting the insider scoop about living in Canada from a South African perspective.

We were discussing the dandelions that seemed to be everywhere in Guelph. When we first arrived they were all in full bloom and lawns and sidewalks everywhere were covered in carpets of yellow. We thought it was quite pretty, all these wildflowers flowering in such abundance.  We soon realised that these ubiquitous weeds were a headache for one and all. The pretty flowers were short-lived and pretty soon they were just ugly weeds standing everywhere and blowing their seeds all over the place. The war on dandelions was a one sided affair, with the dandelions winning, as weed killers are outlawed in Canada. No Roundup you will find here. Apparently you can still buy weed killers in Canada but then you have to sign a form stating that you won’t use it. So, I’m just gonna buy the weed killer because I love the bottle and would like to have it as an ornament on my mantelpiece.

The shops are filled with a stunning array of dandelion removing gadgets and television commercials of eco-friendly products to kill dandelions abound. We have heard from anonymous sources that some people would cross the border into the USA, buy weed killer and surreptitiously spray their lawns late at night in clandestine anti-dandelion operations. A nice weed free lawn thus equals a poison smuggler.

Some Canadian geese on a carpet of flowering dandelions, when we still thought they were pretty

Dagga (marijuana, pot, weed) is legal in Canada for medicinal purposes (yeah, right!) and it is strictly controlled. There’s a couple of shops in Guelph, like “Wacky Tabacky” (seriously J), where you can buy all the interesting paraphernalia needed to administer and utilise weed in all its forms. We saw a couple of characters hanging around this shop that I’m pretty sure was not acquiring things in order to administer weed to control the excruciating pain they’re experiencing from some or other terrible disease. You have to love the irony. Don’t kill the weeds, just smoke it.

On Friday Kobus returned and Cilliers had a friend, Eric, over for a visit after school. The boys swam in the hotel pool and played Xbox and computer games. There's not much else to do while cooped up in a hotel room.

Cilliers and Eric hanging out

Loest watching a movie on my laptop

On Saturday we went to the movies for the first time. Me and Cilliers watched Hunger Games and Kobus and Loest watched The Lorax. It took a while to figure out the automated ticket kiosk but soon we could just stock up on popcorn, sit back and relax. Movie tickets are really expensive and the popcorn servings are colossal. I ordered a large popcorn, as I used to do in SA, and was presented with a titanic paper bag filled to the brim. Not even my huge popcorn consumption ability could finish off that much. I must confess though that the popcorn’s really, really nice. All buttered up, moist and flavourful.

The MIddle 2: The rest of the first week

Tuesday was the boys’ first day in school. We were all up early getting ready for the big day. It was strange seeing the boys dressed in civvies for school and not in school uniforms. They had to take 2 pairs of shoes to school, the one pair is for outdoor use and the other pair, which stay at the school, is for indoor use. I packed lunchboxes with ham and cheese samies, yoghurt, Dunkaroos (a snack consisting of small cookies that you dunk in chocolate icing sugar), apples and juice. The school day in Canada is quite long with school starting at 8:35 and coming out at 3:20.

Mr Wylie, Cilliers and Eric

The teachers were waiting for us with warm, friendly smiles. Loest’s teacher, Miss Pennings, took him into the class, showed him where his desk was, already marked with his name and packed with his stationary (all school issued). Loest promptly disappeared into the small reading tent in the class with a book and a soft toy. Cilliers’s teacher, Mr Wylie, quickly had Eric, another grade 7 boy, take Cilliers on an orientation tour. Eric soon became Cilliers’ first friend in Canada.

Loest and Ms Pennings

We had some administrative things to take care of and met up with the HR lady from Ceva Canada who took us to the government offices to get our SIN numbers (Canadian ID Numbers). Efficiency is an understatement. The offices were quiet, and clean with no queues and after spending 5 minutes each with a friendly lady behind a computer we were issued our SIN numbers. We now officially existed in Canada.

Then we were off to the licensing centre. Our SA and international driving licenses were only valid for 3 months so getting driving licenses were a priority. We thought we were just first going to find out what the procedure is but the lady promptly pulled out some learner’s tests. Our hearts did a flip and all I could think of was the driving test booklets we had bought the previous day and had not yet read through. We decided, what the heck, just do it, if we fail we come back, if we pass it’s done. Ever gone into a test knowing you haven’t studied one little bit for it? Here I was, 41 years old, filled with terror about a stupid learner driver’s test. I couldn’t even steal my answers from Kobus as we got different tests! The angels were with us and we both passed, thanks to great guessing skills!! Once you pass the learner’s test you have to make an appointment to take a driver test, which can take anything from 2 -4 weeks. The official asked us if we wanted to take our driving tests that very day as they were having a slow day and could probably fit us in.

 Okey-dokey, by this time my adrenal glands looked like raisins and all stress hormone stores have been completely depleted. Keep in mind that I have only driven on the right hand side of the road twice, when taking my car from the rental place to the hotel and one late afternoon I drove around on my own to practise some. Now they wanted me to take a driving test...I would rather have a bikini wax without general anesthesia.

Anyway, a very friendly lady took each of us driving around town and asked so many questions about SA that I quickly forgot my panic. Years of driving experience proved to be deeply ingrained and both of us passed. By early afternoon we were in possession of brand new Ontario Driver’s licenses.

Now being in possession of all manner of official documents and numbers we could now get our phones connected. We went to Telus, another of the cell phone providers in Canada. Not going back to Bell was just a question of pride, they did not want to help us the previous day without all the required official documents so now they would not get our business, childish adults that we are.  Kobus got a new handset and I got SIM cards for my phone, my ipad and Cilliers’s phone. The connection fees were exorbitant but at least we once again felt part of the 21^st century.

At 3:20pm we fetched the kids from school, both were quite happy and said that they had had a great day.

On Wednesday was Kobus’s first full day at the office. The kids were off to their second day of school all bright eyed and bushy tailed. Loest informed me in no uncertain terms that I don’t have to walk with them to the classrooms. I felt so not needed but also happy that he felt confident enough that he didn’t need, or want, my hovering.

I decided that I had to go in search of my long forgotten domestic side and do some laundry. The hotel has a laundry for guests to use free of charge so I filled my humungous neon orange Samsonite suitcase with dirty clothes, many of which were still dirty from SA as I didn’t do any laundry in our last week in SA, and lugged it down to the hotel’s laundry room. It’s so much easier dragging a wheeled suitcase than trying to carry a heavy laundry basket. Now you have to understand that being the pampered SA wife that I am (was) I have never ever had to do laundry myself, ever, not even while growing up. But hey, I’m an MD so how difficult can it be?

I knew that you have to separate the whites from the dark colors but what the hell do you do with all the in between yellows, reds and greens!! The washing machine was labelled “whites”, “colors”, “bright colors”, “permanent press” , “woollens” and “knits and delicates”. Now “whites”, “colors” and “bright colors” are pretty much self explanatory (although I can’t think for the life of me why there’s a distinction between colors and bright colors, will bright colors fade into obscurity if you wash it at only the color cycle?), but what on earth does permanent press mean? There in the laundry room I googled it, but I still don’t really understand what on earth it is and, frankly, don’t care much. I just pressed any one of the buttons and felt quite satisfied when the machine came alive and made washing type noises. Come drying time, the dryer was also labelled with the same ridiculous assortment of buttons, there were, alas, not one labelled “no ironing needed”......I selected a different drying cycle on all three machines to do a scientific comparative study on the effects of different drying cycles on different fabrics. The outcome:  after 40 minutes all the clothes were dry, proving the preposterousness of having so many buttons. Just an on/off button would have sufficed.

 Right next to the laundry there’s a gym and initially I thought it would be a good idea to get in some exercise while waiting for the machines to work their magic. Alas, I couldn’t stand the sight of my domesticated self in the mirrored walls. What’s with all the mirrors in gyms? Do people who gym have an obsessive narcissistic urge to watch themselves sweat and dribble and turn all red in the face? I rather opted for the much more intellectually stimulating activity of sitting outside, freeze my butt off, surf the net, troll facebook, have a coffee and a cigarette.  

Upon taking out clothes from the dryer, and doing some hand ironing, I noticed a chappie in one of Cilliers’s pant pockets. The chewed piece of saliva dripping goo had now melted in the dryer and has fused with the fabric. Why he put a chewed piece of gum into his pocket goes beyond any level of maternal understanding. Google to the rescue, again, and I found a tip of using peanut butter to remove it. After begging some peanut butter from the hotel kitchen I rubbed it into the affected areas, scraped it off and washed the pair of pants again. It worked like a charm, every trace of the gum was removed. I felt quite accomplished.

Upon fetching the boys from school Cilliers had a list of some stationary he needed. “Staples” was the shop to go to so off we went. We enjoyed strolling up and down the aisles and seeing what they have to offer. Everything’s pretty much the same as in SA except that the stuff’s called something different. Upon asking for Prestik I was met with a blank uncomprehending stare. Upon explaining I wanted grey sticky stuff that can be re-used to stick almost anything to everything I was presented with UHU tac. OK, another thing learned.

While still in SA one of the anaesthesiologists I worked with said that her sister has been living in Canada for many years. I started corresponding with Martie while still in SA and it turns out that they live in Conestogo, about 20-30km from Guelph. On Thursday Martie picked me up and took me to St Jacob’s market. This market is run by Mennonites, a sect not much different from the better known Amish people. They wear old fashioned clothes, drive around in horse buggies and disapprove of anything that’s modern. Their market is really something to behold and the variety of homemade stuff astonishing. All manner of meats, baked goods, canned goods, leather goods, wooden furniture, quilts (which they are famous for), candles, handbags, shoes, tea (even different flavours  rooibos tea), candy, maple syrup (the real stuff), honey, chocolates, condiments, etc.

It turns out that Martie’s husband, who is also a doctor, worked in the same practise in Pretoria that I did, with the same partner that I did, albeit a few years before I was there. Later it transpired that we also went to the same high school...talk about the world being small!!

On Friday I went to Food Basics, the local grocery store. The trolleys were all locked with chains and I couldn’t figure out how to get one. Someone came to the rescue and showed me that you have to insert a quarter (25c) in the slot which unlocks the trolley and when you return it your quarter’s returned. I strolled through the aisles fascinated by the different products and variety. Some brands were familiar like Sunlight (although here its not green but pink, yellow or orange) and Nestle but most were strange and new. I had to laugh at the vegan chicken nuggets (!!!) and fake crab meat. How strange it that, you don’t want to eat meat but like veggies disguised as meat???

Overall the groceries are more expensive than in SA with red meat topping it all. There are lots of lovely readymade things available so I wouldn’t miss Woolies too much. The fruit was disappointing though, not that a big variety and the quality not all that good, Woolies fruit I’m going to miss!! The fruit is all imported (this time of year anyhow) with grapes from Chile, oranges from Spain and California and apples from Mexico. I found a dragon fruit, this strange looking fruit we had in Mexico last year and I loved it. It tastes like a mixture between a kiwi and a pear and I bought one just to show the boys.

On Saturday we all went to the market at St Jacob’s, I had seen lovely furniture that I wanted to show Kobus. We ended up ordering a beautiful handmade bedroom suite in solid wood from the Mennonites. Back in Guelph we bought the boys an Xbox, so that they had something to keep themselves occupied when cooped up in the hotel suite.

We Skyped with our parents and family in SA. Isn’t technology just amazing?? I can’t imagine what it must have been like years ago if you had loved ones far away. Columbus’s wife had to wait for years for any news and by the time a letter arrived the news was already old, for all she knew he could already have died. Even just 20 years ago all you had was an expensive landline telephone and handwritten letters. Now there’s Facebook, blogs, Skype, Facetime, e-mail and Whatsapp. Instant communication at the speed of light. I love the age we live in!

On Sunday Kobus left for France for a week so a tough second week was waiting without my best friend by my side........

The Middle 1 The first two days

Day 1: Sunday, 8 April 2012:

Wakefulness came with the realisation that we still don’t have our bags and that the clothes we’ve been wearing for the past two days will have to suffice for another day. In SA Kobus joked that a pair of underpants can be worn for 4 days, right side round, wrong side round, then turn it inside out and repeat days 1 and 2. He didn’t know that he was going to have to put this theory to the test so soon. The same laundry sparing procedure posed some peculiar difficulties with my G-string.....

Retail therapy was a no-go as everything was closed, it being Easter Sunday.

My grey Ford

At least we could pick up our two rental Ford Escapes, so at least had some wheels. Driving from the car rental place back to the hotel was my first taste of driving on the right hand side of the road. Sheer unadulterated terror. I kept chanting “keep right, keep right”, and then my semi-dyslexic brain would summarily forget which side was right and I had to check where my watch was to get my bearings. Any type of crossing became a Rubicon with cars coming at me from unexpected directions. The reflex to glance up and to the left to check the rear view mirror now suddenly had me staring through the side window. The mirror was now up and to the right!

Kobus's red Ford

We left my car at the hotel and took to the streets with Kobus’s. The rest of the day was spent driving around the city, having supper at a restaurant and an early collapse into bed.

Day 2: Monday, 9 April 2012:

This day was our 18^th wedding anniversary. Who would have thought that 18 years after promising to love and to hold that we would find ourselves in a new country in the midst of so much change.

And what better way to celebrate than to finally get our bags!! Oh the simple joy to have your own stuff again, clean clothes, clean underwear, pajamas, games for the kids, your own toothbrush, hair brush, face cream and shampoo. Whoever said that material things don't matter has never spent 2 days in a new country in a hotel room with 2 boys without anything of their own.

The bags have arrived!!!

We went to Bell, one of the big cell phone providers, to get connected. The sales lady’s excitement at making a deal on this blustery cold Monday morning quickly disappeared when she realized that we did not yet officially exist in Canada and she could therefore not sell us any SIM cards. Ghosts we were without social insurance numbers, OHIP cards and/or driver’s licenses. Buying a starter pack at a supermarket, loading it with airtime and getting onto the airwaves is not possible in Canada. Canadian pre-paid and SA pre-paid is not the same thing! She gave us her business card and told us to call her as soon as our existence have been confirmed by the powers that be. I wonder with what I was supposed to call her and informed her that we will be sending smoke signals..... In the modern world of today to not have a cell phone is like dying. You feel disjointed and not completely whole. Stupid I know, but there it is.

We went to Wal-Mart to stock up on some groceries. The variety was overwhelming and very few brands were recognisable. Long life milk does not exist, the cream soda is pink and doesn’t taste like the smooth green stuff from home, salami tastes like bad polonie (ughh!) and my kids took one taste of the mayonnaise and collapsed in fits of disgust. I eventually bought 3 different brands of mayonnaise before we found one that they liked.

The brand new Canadian housewife in me knew that I was going to have to do laundry and washing powder and fabric softener was on the list. There I stood, mile long shelves stacked from top to bottom with what I hoped was laundry products in unfamiliar packaging with strange color schemes and unrecognisable names. Each one promised to demolish any stain, be it from this world or not, in cold water, warm water, hand wash, machine wash, front loader or top loader. I eventually chose Tide Pods, based purely on the fact that I saw it advertised on TV the previous night. Viva marketing!! The fabric softener was chosen as the bottle’s shape and color scheme resembled Sta Soft, our trusted SA brand, and to this day I couldn’t tell you the product’s name.

Our house hunting also commenced. Rentals in Guelph are a dime a dozen, if you are a student. It being a student town there are loads of apartments, townhouses, basements and other student friendly adobes available. But good luck in finding a nice big family house. After scouring kijiji (a website where you can buy or look for anything) we found 2 houses that piqued our interest. The first was a typical middle class Canadian house. It was nice and had the required amount of bedrooms but it was just way too small. There was no way my dining room table was going to fit in anywhere, except maybe in the garage.

from the front

The second house took our breath away. It was a huge two storey house situated in 100 acres (about 40ha) of woodland. The rooms were big with huge windows framing the most gorgeous views of the surrounding woods. There was room for all our furniture and it was only 2km out of town. Ideal!! It does have ghastly 1980's psychodelic carpets in pink and blue (imagine what our Nguni skins were gonna look like on these...) and Biggie Bestesque flowery wallpaper in the bedrooms. But they say you can't have it all....

from the back

These flowers are just not me

We also visited our new banker at the Royal Bank of Canada. Kobus had opened a bank account when he was in Canada during February and we just went to meet her, a lovely, friendly and very helpful lady. Canada’s banking system is overall very progressive but some things are still positively archaic. The favourite mode of payment is still cheques, those strange old world strips of paper that we haven’t used in years!! Electronic funds transfers seem to be regarded with some strange deep seated suspicion and is not widely used at all. We needed lessons from the bank on how to fill out a cheque!! I even heard of faxing cheques and e-mailing money but haven't yet figured these modes of payment out. If you pay at any store with a debit or credit card you swipe the card yourself and enter the required pin. The card never leaves your hand, which seems to be a pretty secure system, and the drive through ATM's are just brilliant!

The Beginning 6 Leaving

As I struggled up from the depths of sleep on the morning of Friday the 6^th of April the realisation hit me that it was leaving day. I had just slept my last night in SA.

Last night we had a wonderful dinner with Andre and Lizel. They treated us to a real South African braai and we will always remember it as our last braai while still living in SA. This morning though we were all a bit quiet and subdued............

We were to meet the family, except for my brother and his family who were on holiday, for a last breakfast together. I really did not feel up to it and wished that we didn't have to.  This is not because I didn't want to see all of them but I dreaded the inevitable emotions and sadness........... The trouble with saying goodbye is that everyone says goodbye to only us but we have to say goodbye to so many people that we know and love.

In the end though it was great spending the time together and we really appreciated everybody’s well wishes and blessings. Luckily there were no emotional breakdowns and everybody was very brave. I know I sound callous and hard but its just a question of not being able to cope with it at that particular point in time as I was in pure, unrefined survival mode.

During the last weeks and days before leaving people would constantly ask me how I was feeling. Although I pretended that I was all excited and scared, there was in actual fact just a big empty space of emotional nothing, and that last day was no exception. I was feeling disconnected, going walkabout in a desert devoid of any emotion.

 I had to get the house cleaned and ready for the tenants, so could not think of all the things we still wanted to do and see in SA.

 I had to sort  the house keys into two sets, one for the letting agent and one for the tenants, so could not worry about whether our workers would be cared for by their new employers.

 I had to pack our hand luggage, so could not think about all the wonderful family we were leaving behind.

 I had to get the kids ready for the long flight, so could not afford to think about this beloved Africa of my blood.

 I had to remember all the passports and check-in papers, so could not worry about our house that we were entrusting to strangers.

I had to remember to get some cash from the ATM to pay the airport shuttle, so could not think about all our wonderful friends that we were going to miss so much.

I had to see to it that all 6 big suitcases were packed and within the specified weight limits, so I could not think about the wonderful school that we were no longer a part of.

 I had to remember to give the kids Avomine for motion sickness before the flight, so could not think about all the good people that we did not get to see before our departure.

Leaving day was so jam-packed with stuff to do, remember, finalise and arrange that there was just simply no time for an emotional hurricane to make landfall.

All our suitcases

 At 7:15 pm the shuttle arrived to pick us up, of course with a mini bus as there was no way all our luggage was going to fit in a car. We arrived at the airport nice and early-Kobus likes to be in first. We were first in the queue and full of bravado we strolled to the counter thinking we can quickly  book in our bags and then spend some time relaxing in the shops and restaurants before boarding the plane. Of course Murphy had other plans. When the guy behind the counter swiped Kobus' en Cilliers' passports the computer system pulled a fast one and blocked their passports.

At first I thought that maybe there was something wrong with the passports but Kobus used his without any problems 4 weeks previously. Nightmarish scenarios of us spending weeks at the Department of Home Affairs trying to sort out passport problems reared their ugly heads. What if it was a problem with the Canadian visas, would we have to camp out there on the embassy's sidewalk too?? We didn't even have any camping equipment left!!

 It transpired that KLM and Air France had rolled out a new boarding computer system 3 days previously and we were the lucky winners of the first major glitch. When the first guy realised he could not fix the problem he called the next in line, and so it went with one person after the other unable to make any sense of the big red warning flags on the computer screen.

 Eventually Dudu arrived and apparently the buck stops with her. By this time we have been standing, sitting and slouching in the check-in hall for well over 90 minutes. All our hopes were on the very intelligent and capable looking woman who quickly took charge in such an efficient and friendly way.

 However, even Dudu was dumbfounded by the system's idiocy. Eventually she phoned the system designers in Amsterdam. But, after spending 2 and a half hours on the phione with them, even they just shrugged and said they have no idea how to fix it. How can even the guys who designed the system not know how to fix it...duh!!!!

By this time we have spent 4 hours in the check-inn hall and the plane was warming up its engines and straining at the chocks. Dudu made an executive decision, wrote out our boarding passess by hand and dispatched a runner to escort us through passport control, through security and onto the plane.

I wondered why this decision to go all old school and do things manually could not have been made at a much much earlier time.......

The shops and restaurants that we wanted to spend some time in were just blurry images flitting by in our mad dash to get on the plane. Huffing and puffing (we are definitely not the world's fittest forty somethings) we stumbled  onto the plane and tried valiantly to disappear into our seats. The plane was delayed by 20 minutes, waiting for us, and the deep displeasure of the other passengers was curling in the air. I wanted to stand up and shout that it was not our fault, that we were the hapless victims of an evil computer system, that we were hungry and thirsty and irritated and tired and frustrated and annoyed and upset and...and.....and......

At last we were on the plane on our way to Canada. The 11 hour flight went smoothly and all of us slept most of the way, arriving safely at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. We had to wait 6 hours for our flight to Toronto but fortunately Schiphol is probably one of the nicest airports to spend time in. We browsed the shops, found a great restaurant, sampled most of their menu and slept on the very comfortable benches.

The boys at Sciphol

Having travelled for 26 hours we eventually landed  in Toronto at 7:30pm, Saturday night local time. Getting through immigration was a breeze but our elation soon disappeared when we stood next to the baggage carousel and as it went round and round and round none of the bags coming out even closely resembled ours. Our bags, al 6 of them, were not there!!  It seems that although we made it onto the plane our bags did not. They only left Johannesburg 24 hours after we did

I wanted to cry, I was so tired, felt so dirty and wanted nothing more than to get to our hotel, have  a bath, get into clean pj's and sleep.

The shuttle deposited us at Staybridge Hotel in Guelph, about a 45 minute drive from the airport, we checked in, had a bath, dressed in our dirty shirts and surrendered to Morpheus.

We have arrived.......................

The Beginning 5 Packing

The morning of Monday 2 April 2012 the men from Elliott arrived. Within 10 minutes they off loaded big rolls of bubble wrap, stacks and stacks of carton to be made into boxes, rolls of packing tape and lots of newsprint. Each of the four man team started in a room and the speed with which they worked was mindboggling. Like a whirlwind stuff was being wrapped in paper or bubble wrap, packed in a box and the sound of packing tape sealing the boxes became the new rhythm. So it continued without pause for the next 3 days, from 9am to 4pm. Apart from a very short lunch break these guys worked continuously in absolute silence with a single minded focus. The team even custom built wooden crates for the 2 television sets, our grandfather clock and a priceless art piece of mine.

 I’m glad we sorted out the house well in advance. This made the packing task much easier as we put everything that was to go in our suitcases in one cupboard and the rest could be Elliotised and containerised for the long sea voyage.

 During these packing days we felt completely redundant and  Kobus warned that if we dared to stay in one place long enough we too would be wrapped, packed and tagged.

We mostly lived on take aways and spent the nights at my brother's house. They were away on holiday and it was great to be able to at least relax in a comfortable place, watch some television, unwind and sleep in a comfy bed. It is these gestures from friends and family that makes one feel really special.

On Thursday, at 9.30 in the morning a big rig with a ginormous steel container pulled up in front of the house. Suddenly everyone shifted into 6^th gear and furniture and boxes were carried out and loaded with fortune 500 efficiency. At 12 o’clock sharp the packing job was done. The container was sealed, the truck engine rumbled to life and with a last goodbye the big yellow steel box with MSC emblazoned on the side disappeared around the bend with Kobus singing “There goes my only possessions...” 

 It’s uncanny to think that it’s travelling all the way to Durban, gets loaded on a ship, that’s first making a stop in Mauritius to load some more cargo, and travels around the Cape of Storms and up across the length and breadth of the Atlantic Ocean. We can only hope that we see it again in front of our new house in Guelph in two month’s time. May it encounter no hurricanes, leviathans, pirates or icebergs...........

The Beginning 4 Pets

We are, or I should now say were, the proud owners of 3 beautiful dogs. Rex is a shorthaired pointer, Lulu a tiny little psychotic dachshund and Luka a live teddy bear of a basset hound.

At first we thought we were going to take the dogs with us. They are, after all, part of our family and Canada doesn’t have any quarantine laws. The dogs need a vet certificate and some rabies shots and on the plane they go, easy. Then the problems started to present themselves one by one. We soon realised that finding a rental house in Guelph that would allow pets is almost impossible. Most of the rentals, of which there are not all that many to begin with, specify no pets. I find this strange as the city is full of trails and parks where you can take your dogs to and every second person on the street is leashed to a canine of some sort or other. The houses there are not fenced in and I had visions of us trudging through the snow in the middle of the night with storm lanterns in hand calling out forlornly through the mist to our missing dogs. The fact that we were going to stay in a hotel for 2 months until our container arrives posed yet another problem. This meant that the dogs would have had to stay here with someone until we have a house on that side and then arrangements would have had to be made with agents to collect them and put them on a plane. We also came to the realisation that dogs running in and out through the doggy door would trudge in snow, mud and all kinds of dirt foreign to SA which would have to be cleaned by....me!!

We then decided that in an effort to keep our already soaring stress levels at below meltdown proportions we would look for loving homes for our 3 four legged children and leave them in SA. To break this news to our two legged children was a story of a different colour. You see, Lulu belongs to Cilliers and Luka belongs to Loest and the bonds of steel are strong.  For days we struggled with the how, where and when to tell them. I was absolutely convinced that they would be emotionally scarred for life and someday would tell their children the sad tale of “do you know what our parents did to us when we were young.” How on earth could we snatch them from everything that is known and comfortable and expect them to leave their pets behind!!

It had to be done though and one evening we sat them down and told them of our decision. After we outlined our reasons in our typical left-brained manner, with bullet points and all, a silence descended and then their right-brained reactions kicked in. Loest burst out in tears yelling Luka, Luka!! Cilliers just sat silently with his head bowed, stood up and walked out the room. In the short silences in between Loest gasping for air you could hear both our hearts shatter.

After days of talking, cajoling, explaining, hugging, drying off tears, talking through it and us sticking to our guns acceptance slowly began to emerge. I dared to think that they would survive it and maybe still think of us as loving parents.

Before I continue with my sad story of love and loss let me first introduce you to our 3 canine family members.

Rex was Kobus’s hunting dog, although they couldn’t hunt as often as both of them would have liked, and he has been a part of our family for 9 years. Pointers have an innate desire to bring you stuff, it is this singular trait that makes them such successful retrievers when working in the veld. When he was a puppy he would drag absolutely everything into the house and proudly present it to us. These gifts included big palm leaves that fell from the trees, sticks, stones and of course the obligatory shoes, which incidentally he never chewed. One day he, very proudly, gently deposited a dead rat on my lap and sat tail waggingly waiting for his profuse praise. It was only with great self-control that I refrained from showing my shrewish side....

Knowing that he was going to be a working dog we could never admonish him for this behaviour, it is after all what he was supposed to do. This trait came in handy at times. When Loest was a baby I would send Rex to go fetch me nappies from Loest’s room whenever I needed one, which he would then very obligingly do. Rex even dragged that big old doughnut cushion all around the house wherever I went so I could put Loest down when I needed to. I tried to teach him to change nappies but this, alas, was not successful. I think Rex, being his regal self, drew the line at that expectation. Rex’s biggest joy would be when the kids were playing in the swimming pool. They would throw in an empty bottle, stick or piece of a pool noodle and Rex would do an Olympic style dive, retrieve the object and bring it to them. This could keep them all busy for hours on end accompanied by the boys’s shrieks of laughter and Rex’s high-pitched yelps signifying his utter and complete ecstacy.

Lulu, the dainty little lady dachshund was Cilliers’ 5^th birthday present. This little lady is a force to be reckoned with and possess the characteristic stubbornness of the dachshund breed in droves. She is at heart a hunter and would not desist from hunting down a lizard on the stoep or trying to get her tiny little teeth into one of the gecko’s that kept our home spider free. She had a high pitched voice that would resonate throughout the neighbourhood whenever we returned home, be it after an absence of 5 minutes or 3 weeks. I’m relatively certain this was not because of overwhelming joy at seeing us again but instead a very loud admonishment to us for leaving her behind.

She is a fun loving little girl and her favourite game is chasing down the little red dot of a laser pointer. She would pester Cilliers with sharp little yelps and jumping up and down until he takes the laser pointer and plays with her. On cold winter nights she likes nothing more than cuddling up under a blanket on Cilliers’ lap and would growl menacingly if he dared to move. Despite being the smallest one in the house she was the undisputed matriarg and the big dogs never dared mess with her. She would very quickly assert her authority that would reduce the other dogs to quivering bags of jello.

In October 2009 Loest, then 4 years old, suddenly came to the realisation that Dad and Cilliers both have dogs and in no uncertain terms informed us that he needs one too. At this point in time we already had 3 dogs (we had another little dachshund which later died, but that’s a story for another day). There was no way that we could say no to this little strong willed boy and plans were set in motion for dog number four. Without actually knowing anything about the breed we decided on a basset hound. In one of Loest’s books was a picture of a brown, white and black puppy basset hound and we told him that he would get such a dog. What we didn’t realise is that bassets are usually only brown and white but if they also have black in their colouring they’re called tricoloured and are double the price of a bicoloured one. We started to look for a puppy and quickly realised that Loest was adamant that the puppy should look exactly like the one in the picture, i.e. a tricoloured one. Every bicoloured basset we saw he rejected as they didn’t match the picture in his book. Eventually we found one that met with Loest’s approval and Luka became family member number 8 at 6 weeks old. Right from the start Loest and Luka were inseparable and we stood amazed at the bond between them. They would play together, sleep together, eat together and very soon the flop-flop sound of Luka’s big feet and floppy ears became part of the symphony of our home. Luka is the naughtiest dog that we have ever owned. Don’t let those big ears fool you, they are only useless skin appendages with no connection to his brain whatsoever. Obedience was not his strong suit and quickly he became known as Luka the destroyer. He figured out how to open my cupboard and helped himself to a smorgasbord of my shoes. One pair he destroyed was a very expensive pair of shoes I received as a birthday present from one of my closest friends, whose love of shoes are legendary. On the particular day in question he opened my cupboard and zoned in on this specific pair. It was winter at the time so all my winter shoes were at the front but Luka bypassed all these wonderful leathery boots and sheepskin slippers and dragged out both of the fancy jewel encrusted heels and proceeded to destroy them with a tenacity not even the best pentathlon athlete possesses. It took me two weeks to gather the courage to tell my friend that her loving effort to drag me into the stylish 21^st century disappeared in a maelstrom of slobber.

Despite his destroyer mentality Luka stole all of our hearts, he is cuddly and loveable and liked nothing more than to snuggle. He would sleep on Loest’s bed, where else, but as soon as he heard our alarm clocks he would run into our room, jump on our bed with boundless exuberance, lie down between us and demanded his early morning dose of love. I would get another basset hound without even having to think twice about it, I’ll just make sure my cupboard can be locked securely.

After our decision to look for adoptive parents for these 3 monsters I utilised the power of SMSe and FB and soon we had reaction.

 Good friends on a hunting farm outside of Kimberley offered to take Rex. He was the first to go and our friends kept us updated with his progress. From the very first night Rex slept on the bed with their 8 year old son, who informed them the next morning that they now have to buy him a double bed as a single bed does not have enough space for the both of them. He has settled in nicely and we know he is with loving and caring people.

Lulu posed a bit of a problem. At first my sister-in-law took her but a week later returned her. She was fighting with their other dogs and their cats and just wouldn’t settle down. Kobus then took her to a farmer near Delmas and there she soon became a little farm dog who followed her new owner all around the farm.

One of Cilliers’ friends from school adopted Luka. They too live on a farm and Luka also settled in quickly. He was of course quickly up to his usual tricks and would help himself to whole loaves of bread from their farm shop and would kidnap all the bacon from the breakfast table.

To entrust our dear furry friends to others was no easy task but at least we know they are well looked after and loved.