So today I joined the millions of other South Africans who have their names listed in some book in some police station as a victim of crime. Sad, very very sad.
My brother and I decided to take the kids up the coast to look at the Jolly Rubino (look it up) that had beached itself some time ago a few hundred meters from the beach, and had been abandoned there after being stripped of anything of value by the salvage company.
It's common knowledge that there are a lot of criminals living in the bush, and some people, fishermen / tourists have been hijacked / robbed along these isolated locations.
We drove straight there, not a bad access road, although you would need a four wheel drive to get there. We parked in a nice open space, just above the beach line, and stayed within 30 meters of the vehicle at all times, occasionally glancing up to check that there was no one near it.
There was no one around. No footprints to show that anyone had been there before us for
some time, at least since the last rains earlier in the week. Suddenly my brother started shouting, and as I looked up I saw 3 young black kids running from the bakkie, away from us, into the bush. The area is very densely overgrown, with massive dunes covered by many trees and other vegetation.
I took off, did a 3 second assessment of the damage and found that they had used a spark plug to smash the passenger side left front window, and reaching into the bakkie opened the cubby hole, took out my wallet. They opened the center console storage box and took my cell phone and my brothers wallet.
They grabbed his camera bag with second lens (camera was slung around his neck at the time luckily) and a leatherman in its leather pouch. That's about the time he spotted them and shouted. If he hadn't they would have stripped the car!
I ran into the bush, following the first set of tracks. They petered out about 75 meters in, as the carpet of pine needles and leaves left no track. I came back and picked up on the second set. These ran a bit further, but then swung right, and seemed to melt into the bush more or less where the first set did. Looking ahead I couldn't believe that anyone would be able to get through there, with bare feet! But they did. About 10 minutes had passed. I walked
back a way, and followed the third set, but after about 100 meters these prints also faded.
Listening closely I couldn't hear anything, so either they had run damn hard to get well away, or they were lying close, in the thick stuff, holding their breath.
I didn't think I could catch them, but hoped that they would discard the emptied wallets leaving behind credit cards, ID Documents, and drivers licences and stuff. Nothing.
I walked back to the rest of the family, and found my son very close to tears. I had been gone quite a while, not making a sound, and he was worried that maybe they had overwhelmed me and done me in.We cleaned out the glass and stuff and got in, to drive back home very espondent and pissed off.
About 200 meters down the dirt road I spotted my wallet placed neatly in the middle of the track! I shouted to my brother to stop and jumped out and grabbed it. Then I heard someone running away up the hill into the bush. I thought of following, but it would have been no use.
Checking the wallet I saw that all my cards, and my brothers cards and stuff was in it.They had taken about ZAR 700 in notes and a few Rand in coins from my wallet. They had kept his wallet with about ZAR1000 in it, but had taken everything else out of it, and put it into my wallet, and left it where they knew we would find it!!
My brother was so relieved he took to shouting "Thank you, you bastards" about 3 times into the hills! In fact his reaction was right. We lost the money and stuff, but in South Africa trying to replace ID Documents, drivers licences, credit cards and stuff is a nightmare of note. You don't want to go there.....!
Back home we dropped off the kids, drove to town to put a block on my Sim card, bought a new one, drove to the police station to report the incidence.That was not a pleasant experience either. Some cocky, black bad breathed arsehole detective (did I mention he was black) tried to get all smart arsed with my brother, who at 6' 3" and 125kg is not know to take any crap. He
was quickly told what a useless inefficient prick he was, (did I mention he was black) and when he refused to give his name, my brother took his photo with his cellphone camera!
Then he left, and we sat down with a constable who took the details and a statement. The dumb fuck didn't even know if the area where the incident took place fell under his stations juristiction or not, and after some asking around confirmed that it probably didn't and he would have to forward the documents to the other station, which was fine with us. All we were wanting was to
report the incident, so as to get a case number, which then allowed us to submit a claim with the insurance companies! There is no way they will bother to find the culprits anyway.
He said something about getting the prints on file and then if they catch them in future they can link him back to this case, but they haven't even bothered to come and take finger prints! So much for procedure and protocol!
Anyway, we told the wives, but not Mom, who will just stress about it anyway. I have my own view on this.I take it as an involuntary contribution to the welfare of a current / future HIV/AIDS victim. May he rot in hell!
Salagatle!
LIU - Look It Up!
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Friday, July 06, 2007
Quading at the coast
So, a while ago I posted a blog about my brother who bought 3 new quads, got them on special and all. And of how he managed to fall off of his!
Well, the quads were a bit of a bad buy, and he's planning on reselling them asap. They have 250cc motors, but they are in small bodies, and as such are not very stable. The motors are also not very good. We have spent quite a bot of time fixing and getting things going on them.
Anyway, today he went and bought another 250cc quad. A brand new one, from a reputable dealer, and this is much better. It has way more power, is more stable, and is well balanced, and cost ZAR4000 more than the "cheapies" he got first time round. We took the kids, Luckyl on his 125cc Kazuma Cheetah, and my niece on her new quad to ride in the veld next door.They had such a blast! I took the quad for a little spin, and it's really a great bike.
After sitting watching the kids for about 20 minutes, I decided to take the quad for another spin. I rode it well, got to do a couple of doughnuts! Very impressive! I went up the hill about 50 meters, and did another doughnut. No problem. Tried to follow this with a reverse doughnut so as to make a figure of eight, and promptly flipped it! up, I got thrown! Luckily the quad didn't get damaged, but I have a good graze behind the left knee, another on my right, and my right elbow.
My brother nearly wet himself laughing at me!
Anyway, all's well that ends well.
Salagatle!
Well, the quads were a bit of a bad buy, and he's planning on reselling them asap. They have 250cc motors, but they are in small bodies, and as such are not very stable. The motors are also not very good. We have spent quite a bot of time fixing and getting things going on them.
Anyway, today he went and bought another 250cc quad. A brand new one, from a reputable dealer, and this is much better. It has way more power, is more stable, and is well balanced, and cost ZAR4000 more than the "cheapies" he got first time round. We took the kids, Luckyl on his 125cc Kazuma Cheetah, and my niece on her new quad to ride in the veld next door.They had such a blast! I took the quad for a little spin, and it's really a great bike.
After sitting watching the kids for about 20 minutes, I decided to take the quad for another spin. I rode it well, got to do a couple of doughnuts! Very impressive! I went up the hill about 50 meters, and did another doughnut. No problem. Tried to follow this with a reverse doughnut so as to make a figure of eight, and promptly flipped it! up, I got thrown! Luckily the quad didn't get damaged, but I have a good graze behind the left knee, another on my right, and my right elbow.
My brother nearly wet himself laughing at me!
Anyway, all's well that ends well.
Salagatle!
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
SADF VII
A decision was taken that we (the 10 Sappers) had to have some form of leadership who could interact with the leadership of the camp, and so I was appointed as Lance Corporal. This was great, except it lasted all of 4 days. Even before I received the stripe to sew onto my shirt sleeves, I lost the rank, and another guy got the commission. We were travelling back from a sweep, and the driver of one of the trucks wanted to chill a bit, so I offered to drive.
At some point a cow ran into the road, and I swerved, a bit too violently, and managed to roll the damn thing! Anyway, I got a sever reprimand, a slap on the wrist, and my “stripes” taken away! It was crappy, as the Lance Corporal came with a salary increase, and heaven knows that I could have done with one!!
While I was there I started a cactus garden! It was something I didn't plan on, but often when out in the bush I would find different cactus plants I had never seen before. My Mom always had a lovely garden, and kept a large selection of cacti, but many of these I didn't know. So as I found samples I would dig them out, put it into my pack, and when I got back to camp, plant it into the “garden”.
We decided that as we were going to be stuck here for so long, we may as well be comfortable. So, on a weekend when things were “slow”, we booked out some chainsaws, and drove out of camp about 5 kilometres. We found a couple of big palm trees and cut them down. Then we shaped 10 “King chairs” and a massive table out of them. We had some infantry truck drivers go out to collect them, and set them up behind our tent. I must say they were a great success, and attraction to the others in the camp!
Once, we had been on a marathon sweep of the “Kaplyn” (no mans land) area. We had been there for a week, and had covered a vast piece of the country side, clearing land mines, including some very difficult to find anti personnel mines. We had also set up booby traps in some areas known to be common terrorist crossing points. We had used claymores and trip wires in this instance, and not the “pipe bomb” as previously described.
Our final overnight stop was in view of the old border control posts. Here we could see members of the Angolan forces who were guarding their side of the border. The funny part was we would tolerate each other, with the full knowledge that at some time they would come across the border and plant mines or worse. And they knew we could / would cross over to get them. But as long as we could see each other, across this no mans land strip, nothing happened.
On this day however, there had been some firing of mortars, seemingly not in our direction, but the message was clear. They were armed, and wanting to play games. And the fact that they dind't have a good control of the direction their bombs went in didn't make us feel too happy!
That night there was some serious decision making taking place, and at about 3 am 4 of us moved out, carrying claymores and tripwire, detonators, and side arms. R1’s would be too cumbersome, and whilst we swept roads we normally carried side arms anyway.
We crossed over the border under cover of darkness, quite as possible. The rest of the team, with the infantry, would get our backs if required. We managed to get up to the guard house, which served at the sleeping quarters of the opposition guards. Here we planted a claymore directly in front of the door, facing the building. Two more were strategically placed facing the two windows in the building. Trip wires were connected to the door handle, and just off the window sills. Then another two were placed at the foot of the guard lookout tower, with a trip wire across the last step. Four blocks were linked to this setup and placed one on each leg of the tower. There were two guys up on the tower manning a radio and a search light. This had a powerful beam, used to scan the no man’s land area for up to about 300 meters! There were at least 8 guys in the guard house, 6 if 2 were doing rounds up and down the wire, which that night they were not, or they might have run into us, our spoor.
We set off back towards our side of the fence. At some point, probably about 20 meters from safe ground, one of the sleeping guards came out of the hut, probably to take a pee. He stopped in the doorway and shouted at the two in the tower, who shouted back and then laughed. And the guy in the doorway took a step, and disappeared!
The tower suddenly came to life, the search light came on and started to sweep the immediate area around their site, quickly moving out towards where we leopard crawled for safety. Someone came out of the window, and somehow both the other two claymore went off. There must have been a faulty cross over with the trip wires. That blew both windows and a large part of the walls away. One of the guys from the tower then started to scream. They had spotted us moving at lightning speed to get to cover. One shouted something which probably meant “Shoot the bastards” but the other one started off down the stairs. That didn't work, whatever he was planning to do, and I think it involved getting to their mortars or “Bren” style Russian machine gun.
The claymore and the 4 blocks of plastic went off simultaneously. The guard on the bottom stair just disintegrated. The one on top screamed as the tower first seemed to lean over slowly, and then crashed down to the ground, killing both the soldier, and the search light. And then silence.
Salagatle!
At some point a cow ran into the road, and I swerved, a bit too violently, and managed to roll the damn thing! Anyway, I got a sever reprimand, a slap on the wrist, and my “stripes” taken away! It was crappy, as the Lance Corporal came with a salary increase, and heaven knows that I could have done with one!!
While I was there I started a cactus garden! It was something I didn't plan on, but often when out in the bush I would find different cactus plants I had never seen before. My Mom always had a lovely garden, and kept a large selection of cacti, but many of these I didn't know. So as I found samples I would dig them out, put it into my pack, and when I got back to camp, plant it into the “garden”.
We decided that as we were going to be stuck here for so long, we may as well be comfortable. So, on a weekend when things were “slow”, we booked out some chainsaws, and drove out of camp about 5 kilometres. We found a couple of big palm trees and cut them down. Then we shaped 10 “King chairs” and a massive table out of them. We had some infantry truck drivers go out to collect them, and set them up behind our tent. I must say they were a great success, and attraction to the others in the camp!
Once, we had been on a marathon sweep of the “Kaplyn” (no mans land) area. We had been there for a week, and had covered a vast piece of the country side, clearing land mines, including some very difficult to find anti personnel mines. We had also set up booby traps in some areas known to be common terrorist crossing points. We had used claymores and trip wires in this instance, and not the “pipe bomb” as previously described.
Our final overnight stop was in view of the old border control posts. Here we could see members of the Angolan forces who were guarding their side of the border. The funny part was we would tolerate each other, with the full knowledge that at some time they would come across the border and plant mines or worse. And they knew we could / would cross over to get them. But as long as we could see each other, across this no mans land strip, nothing happened.
On this day however, there had been some firing of mortars, seemingly not in our direction, but the message was clear. They were armed, and wanting to play games. And the fact that they dind't have a good control of the direction their bombs went in didn't make us feel too happy!
That night there was some serious decision making taking place, and at about 3 am 4 of us moved out, carrying claymores and tripwire, detonators, and side arms. R1’s would be too cumbersome, and whilst we swept roads we normally carried side arms anyway.
We crossed over the border under cover of darkness, quite as possible. The rest of the team, with the infantry, would get our backs if required. We managed to get up to the guard house, which served at the sleeping quarters of the opposition guards. Here we planted a claymore directly in front of the door, facing the building. Two more were strategically placed facing the two windows in the building. Trip wires were connected to the door handle, and just off the window sills. Then another two were placed at the foot of the guard lookout tower, with a trip wire across the last step. Four blocks were linked to this setup and placed one on each leg of the tower. There were two guys up on the tower manning a radio and a search light. This had a powerful beam, used to scan the no man’s land area for up to about 300 meters! There were at least 8 guys in the guard house, 6 if 2 were doing rounds up and down the wire, which that night they were not, or they might have run into us, our spoor.
We set off back towards our side of the fence. At some point, probably about 20 meters from safe ground, one of the sleeping guards came out of the hut, probably to take a pee. He stopped in the doorway and shouted at the two in the tower, who shouted back and then laughed. And the guy in the doorway took a step, and disappeared!
The tower suddenly came to life, the search light came on and started to sweep the immediate area around their site, quickly moving out towards where we leopard crawled for safety. Someone came out of the window, and somehow both the other two claymore went off. There must have been a faulty cross over with the trip wires. That blew both windows and a large part of the walls away. One of the guys from the tower then started to scream. They had spotted us moving at lightning speed to get to cover. One shouted something which probably meant “Shoot the bastards” but the other one started off down the stairs. That didn't work, whatever he was planning to do, and I think it involved getting to their mortars or “Bren” style Russian machine gun.
The claymore and the 4 blocks of plastic went off simultaneously. The guard on the bottom stair just disintegrated. The one on top screamed as the tower first seemed to lean over slowly, and then crashed down to the ground, killing both the soldier, and the search light. And then silence.
Salagatle!
Update on stuff
In a previous post I referred to "timeshare" which I was going to with the family. A comment left on the blog referred to me sharing time share with my brother. Just to set matters right:-The timeshare I refer to is actually my brother and his family's home at the coast. we have a standing joke between us. When he comes up to Gauteng to visit us, and his family, and in laws, he stays at our home, and tells everyone he's going to stay at his timeshare, and we do the same when we go to his place.We do have timeshare though, at Mabula, and have owned it for more than 16 years!
Anyway, Saturday morning we drove down to the coast. We had to go with my Toyota Corolla 1600, as the VW Kombi was in the shop for gearbox repairs. We towed the trailer with the Kazuma 125 in it, as LuckyL wanted to take it down so he could do some off road riding. I wasn't sure how well the car would travel down, as the furthest I have driven it in the 5 years I have owned it was 160km one way to Sun City. However, I was pleasantly surprised. We travelled the 700 km in 7 hours, including the stops for refueling, and all the slow going in places because of trucks. So, overall, at 11 km / Lt we didn't do too bad. The sun was shining and all was well on arrival.
Sunday and Monday have been terrible. Overcast, raining, cold. Not much fun. We have spent most of the time doing repairs the the 3 quads he recently bought. Unfortunately he bought a dud lot, and as it was a private deal there is no warranty or recourse. So we do what we can to keep them going, but it's very frustrating, especially for him as he spent quite a bit of money on them, and isn't getting the return he deserves. Maybe we'll get lucky, and we will be able to sell them, take the loss, and replace them with something better.
Mom's doing well. Or not. She is recovering well from her fall, and from the shingles, but seems to suffer from bouts of forgetfulness, and weakness. She's eating quite well, has a good sense of humour, but, well she's just not what she was before the fall. We're hoping she will make a full recovery, but even Mom is saying she's not sure she will be able to live alone anymore. That poses another problem, because finding dependable live in help will not be easy. We may have to try and get her into a place where she will have some supervision and care. Or she must move in with one of us, permanently.
Monday night the guy doing the weather said it would be another miserable day on Tuesday, so we decided we would go down to Durban for the day as my brother knows where a whole row of factory shops are and we wanted to get some stuff for the kids. Durban is 180 km away. While we were there Princess got a call from the office asking her to come back to Jo'burg for one day! The company would pick up the tab, so we called the airline and booked her to fly out Wed. morning, hire a car to the office, sleep at home Wed. night, and fly back Thursday morning. Nice, jet setting round trip! She's not impressed though. Even though it may be fun flying, it's still a drag as it's about an hours drive from the airport to her office, and it's Jo'burg traffic.
The day in Durban was great. Warm and sunny with lots of great stuff for the boys especially, and I even got a pair of LEE denims for R80.00! A bargain, it's a brand I always used to wear till they got a bit expensive. We were back at my brothers place by 3.30 pm. Mom's looking OK today, seems to be getting more of her appetite back which is good news.
When I was a lot younger I used to love Durban. I could easily have moved there, just never did. It had a great vibe, and was friendly, great weather, I was totally at home there. It was the only place we went on holiday as a family. Today, well it's still nice, but it doesn't have that pull for me. But then neither do most locations around the country anymore, except maybe Cape Town. I think the influx of people into the cities all over the country has created a sense of overcrowded slum. My perception! Typically too many hawkers / unemployed bums / beggars / criminals. It's dirty (not excessively so but...), and many of the beautiful homes are being converted into offices space, as the residents are moving out of town and further into the suburbs. It has lost it's "something"!
Salagatle!
Anyway, Saturday morning we drove down to the coast. We had to go with my Toyota Corolla 1600, as the VW Kombi was in the shop for gearbox repairs. We towed the trailer with the Kazuma 125 in it, as LuckyL wanted to take it down so he could do some off road riding. I wasn't sure how well the car would travel down, as the furthest I have driven it in the 5 years I have owned it was 160km one way to Sun City. However, I was pleasantly surprised. We travelled the 700 km in 7 hours, including the stops for refueling, and all the slow going in places because of trucks. So, overall, at 11 km / Lt we didn't do too bad. The sun was shining and all was well on arrival.
Sunday and Monday have been terrible. Overcast, raining, cold. Not much fun. We have spent most of the time doing repairs the the 3 quads he recently bought. Unfortunately he bought a dud lot, and as it was a private deal there is no warranty or recourse. So we do what we can to keep them going, but it's very frustrating, especially for him as he spent quite a bit of money on them, and isn't getting the return he deserves. Maybe we'll get lucky, and we will be able to sell them, take the loss, and replace them with something better.
Mom's doing well. Or not. She is recovering well from her fall, and from the shingles, but seems to suffer from bouts of forgetfulness, and weakness. She's eating quite well, has a good sense of humour, but, well she's just not what she was before the fall. We're hoping she will make a full recovery, but even Mom is saying she's not sure she will be able to live alone anymore. That poses another problem, because finding dependable live in help will not be easy. We may have to try and get her into a place where she will have some supervision and care. Or she must move in with one of us, permanently.
Monday night the guy doing the weather said it would be another miserable day on Tuesday, so we decided we would go down to Durban for the day as my brother knows where a whole row of factory shops are and we wanted to get some stuff for the kids. Durban is 180 km away. While we were there Princess got a call from the office asking her to come back to Jo'burg for one day! The company would pick up the tab, so we called the airline and booked her to fly out Wed. morning, hire a car to the office, sleep at home Wed. night, and fly back Thursday morning. Nice, jet setting round trip! She's not impressed though. Even though it may be fun flying, it's still a drag as it's about an hours drive from the airport to her office, and it's Jo'burg traffic.
The day in Durban was great. Warm and sunny with lots of great stuff for the boys especially, and I even got a pair of LEE denims for R80.00! A bargain, it's a brand I always used to wear till they got a bit expensive. We were back at my brothers place by 3.30 pm. Mom's looking OK today, seems to be getting more of her appetite back which is good news.
When I was a lot younger I used to love Durban. I could easily have moved there, just never did. It had a great vibe, and was friendly, great weather, I was totally at home there. It was the only place we went on holiday as a family. Today, well it's still nice, but it doesn't have that pull for me. But then neither do most locations around the country anymore, except maybe Cape Town. I think the influx of people into the cities all over the country has created a sense of overcrowded slum. My perception! Typically too many hawkers / unemployed bums / beggars / criminals. It's dirty (not excessively so but...), and many of the beautiful homes are being converted into offices space, as the residents are moving out of town and further into the suburbs. It has lost it's "something"!
Salagatle!
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