Our son Selby and his partner of some seven years arrived on Sunday afternoon and no sooner had we arrived home from collecting them from the train than they disappeared up the hill in front of the house known as Germanelo. Those who read my blog may not have seen it unknowingly; it is often on the right of my pictures of sunsets taken from our verandah. Anyway, his haste was due to him wanting to surprise Maggie with a marriage proposal, which he planned and would record. Maggie obligingly set up the camera for the recording of the sunset to include in her own blog, with the proposal coming as a complete surprise. The resulting video (not sure if that is what they are called now with modern technology) made for interesting watching as following her initial shock her first utterance was “Fuck Off.”
After taking it in and bouncing through the wooden decking used as a viewpoint for twenty minutes, she finally agreed. They subsequently posted it on Facebook for those interested. It may have been a more interesting video if she had rejected him, although not what any of us would have wanted. We are so delighted she is joining our family. Maggie is both vivacious and a livewire. Welcome, Maggie.
As you get older, these events involving family members or even close friends make you reflect on your own life. I do remember when I got engaged to Diane and the trepidation I had in asking her father, Derek Belinsky, for her hand. She was a farmer's daughter, some seven years younger than me, and I was still a farm manager, spending most of my time away in the bush during the war like all white Zimbabweans then. I often wonder what effect the war had on my first marriage. No matter what, despite spending six to eight weeks together on returning home for R and R (rest and recuperation), we soldiers would spend our first night together getting drunk on each safe return. Most of our female partners would allow this, although some with a little intolerance.
My second engagement was not my doing; the proposal came from Rozanne, not me, as I thought I was an avowed ‘born again bachelor.’ Did I have too much whisky that evening when I agreed? Because of circumstances, having moved to Zambia to try and establish ourselves as farmers and businessmen after losing our farms, I once more faced absenteeism from the married home. It did not take long for Rozanne to figure out that she would have to move to Zambia if the marriage was to succeed. I am glad she did, and it has been wonderful.
“Marriage may start with romance, but it is a partnership of friendship and respect for each other that sustains it.” - Peter McSporran
Events like Selby’s engagement also make me reflect on the fact that although we oldies are in our twilight years, there are still lots of unknowns and, hopefully, opportunities to come for the young and even us in the future.
“If one does not believe there will be opportunities presenting themselves in one's future, life would become very mundane without any incentive to look forward with anticipation.” - Peter McSporran
It may seem depressing to think you have neither the wherewithal nor the energy to do what you did in your active working life, but you can still garner joy from the endeavours of youth, especially those close to you.
“Do not envy the young; we had our opportunities, even now, if only small. Rather, encourage them to make the most of their life on a daily basis.” - Peter McSporran
From an early age, when a rugby match or some other event like a fishing trip was on the cards, many of us could not wait for the day. In the army, we used to wish the days away towards the end of each call-up. It was in my thirties when I stopped doing this, realising I was wishing my life away. We are just living mammals with a finite life span; we certainly cannot stop time as many would want to. I am not one of them, and I always try to accept what each day has to offer, thankfully. Some days, it ain’t easy.
Talking about opportunities, when Selby and Maggie said they wanted to climb Germenelo to see the sunset as they ofttimes do on their first day here with us, we said they would be lucky to see it as this past week, not just as the sun was blotted out but the whole sky had been hidden behind a Sahara dust storm. This happens from time to time when we get a south wind, maybe a couple of times a year, normally in February and March. Low pressure over the Sahara allows the air to pick up vast quantities of dust, which moves north with the wind. Sometimes, it even reaches the Caribbean.
What luck they had in ignoring our advice and taking the opportunity. Suddenly, the sky cleared for a beautiful sunset, with rain setting in later in the evening to bring about what is known as ‘Sahara Mud’, coating everything with a sticky film of filth. It has not stopped raining since they got engaged.
“Opportunities always occur; by taking risks and ensuring you are in the right place, you can greatly increase the number of opportunities life offers.” - Peter McSporran
The wind and heavy rain continued all week, and parts of Portugal had snow and roads closed in the mountains.
A Trip to a Saharan Irrigation Scheme in Tunisia.
I will probably have the destination of our field trip following the International Federation of Agriculture executive meeting in Tunis wrong. I am happy to stand corrected, but I am certain it was to the oasis at Kébili, which is some five hundred kilometres south of the capital. The bus trip south was pretty boring; without the internet, we had little idea where we were at any given time, coupled with the lack of road signs. Just an endless desert; it made it a sort of mystery tour. We were told we would be visiting an irrigation scheme in the south where vegetables in greenhouses and dates were grown for export to the European market with overnight stops there and back.
A few things that stuck in my mind were that Arab doors are not just a tourist attraction in Zanzibar. They are common all over the Arab world. Some of the ones we saw on our drive were spectacular in colour and design. Unfortunately, we were heading south, and our hosts were ignoring Carthage, which is only a few kilometres northeast of Tunis, which I would have been interested in visiting. I suppose we were there after all to discuss agriculture, not ancient ruins. In addition to being shown Arab things, not Phoenician or Roman.
On the way south, we did not stop to view some of the ancient buildings we could observe from the road as they flashed past at speed. The other thing that has struck with me, having seen Halaal slaughter in Africa, was that although, when done skillfully, it is deemed humane, many of the roadside abattoirs, slabs of concrete or baked mud, saw animals slaughtered in what I would consider a cruel manner. I suppose this was true even in Europe in 1993, where abattoirs in the Iberian Peninsula were no better than charnel houses with animals hung without stunning before getting their throats cut. The meat in the roadside butcheries, in nearly all instances, hung on display in the open air covered by flies. We were spoiled by how our meat was processed in Zimbabwe; I was to learn in my later travels that much of Africa eats the meat of animals slaughtered inhumanely at the roadside or bush.
We had two stops on the way down, the first at a bedouin camp where we were served fat-tailed sheep for lunch. Despite seeing the flies on carcasses on the way down, we consoled ourselves that these freshly slaughtered animals would have been fly-free. It turned out to be the best lamb I had ever tasted, cooked on the open fire. Even now I have never tasted better. Delicious. Both Stewart Cranswick, my travelling companion, and I could not eat enough. When you looked around, we could not figure out what the sheep survived on, but let me assure you, they were very fat. That night, we stayed at what I think was the equivalent of an Arab transit hotel, where we were served a spicy, rudimentary evening meal followed by various sweets (not desserts) for supper, but only dry, stale bread for breakfast. Coke could be bought as an alternative to the sweet mint tea preferred by the locals. The real tourist spots in Tunisia are along the coastline, not where we were travelling.
On arriving at Kébili (Qibli), we were impressed, or should I say gobsmacked, by the size of what they called an oasis. In fact, an oasis enhanced by irrigation from what they called wells, which we Zimbabweans call boreholes. Some of them were artesian. These were not the run-of-the-mill eighty to ninety-metre-deep boreholes we were used to at home; these were anything between one and two kilometres deep, with the deepest over two and a half kilometres with the water coming up by underground pressure at a temperature up to 70°C. Since before Roman times, geothermal water has been exploited in Tunisia, and some of the Roman infrastructure, including canals, is still functioning today in Kébili. Traditionally, date palms were grown and are still grown, with the then-recent addition of greenhouses for producing vegetables for the European market. The hot water heats these greenhouses before it is applied as irrigation once cool. Salinity is a problem, and production targets have been set to cater to this. They claimed the salinity enhanced the flavour of the veggies; I was dubious. I read recently that there are over forty thousand hectares of irrigation in southern Tunisia; when we were there, it was officially less than five thousand. People back then were saying the aquifers were being over-exploited. Interestingly, they did not count the private schemes as they were illegal, therefore even in 1993, the area was probably double what the state recorded.
For some reason, I always thought the dates you bought in the shops had sugar added when packed; I was surprised to find how naturally sweet dates are. Once again, while individuals mostly grew small areas of dates, large monopolies controlled the packing and export. They are always the ones that make the money, be it dates, beef, or milk the world over. It is the processor and retailer that makes the money, not the farmer. Our hosts were proud to show us both the vegetable export infrastructure and date packing plants. It was all extremely impressive in the middle of the Sahara desert.
On the drive home, with part of the journey through a large salt pan, probably the Chott el Djeridwe, we had lunch at a wealthy Tunisian house, where, once again, we were treated to lamb. This time in a traditional stew known as Koucha. Both Stewart and I avoided the lamb's eyes looking at us from the tagine. Despite this, the food was excellent, a far cry from what had been offered at our hotel in Tunis. That night, we stayed in a more traditional Arab hotel, with our meal served in tents and us reclining on cushions. No beer was served, only that awful sweet tea. We had a final stop at the Great Mosque in Kairouan, which was very impressive, especially the mosaics and tile work. It seems to me that the poorer the people, the wealthier the church, no matter the religion or the region. This mosque was established in the 7th Century, the first in the Maghreb.
For some reason, we stopped at a rather decrepit zoo known as the Desert Zoo Si Tijani Bejghil. There, we saw only two animals of note: an aged, very skinny lion covered in more flies than the meat it was fed and a camel whose keeper demonstrated how it could drink coke from a bottle. Yesterday, I thought I would look up the zoo on Google and lo and behold, there was a picture, I presume, of the same camel drinking coke. The only difference was that the bottle was plastic, not glass, which it was way back then. That camel must be more than forty years old.
That night, back in Tunis, Stewart and I tested a Tunisian nightclub. It was very disappointing, but I believe the country is much more focused on tourists nowadays. It is certainly worth a visit. Its Mediterranean coastline is beautiful, and there are many ancient buildings. The next day, Stewart and I parted ways, him off to Europe and me off to the main IFAP conference in Istanbul, Turkey.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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