A barbecue and a concert

What a lovely evening! A barbecue was ready for the steak. The wood had been collected and was piled up ready to make a fire. Chairs were set out in near the fire. The stars shone and so did the moon - and we were ready to go.



The fire was lit. Soon there were enough hot ashes to put into the barbecue - quite a delicate operation. The wood smoke gave the steak a delicious flavour. Even I, who am hardly a carnivore at all, ate a whole T bone steak. (Mind you, Peter ate one and a half. He says it was only two halves.) Apart from the usual attempt to escape the smoke, it was lovely. Except the smoke didn't come towards us at all, only to the young women. But as Kelone observed, it is known that woodsmoke veers towards the most beautiful.

And it got even better. The three young women had been learning to play the marimba (with some help from Ida, a volunteer from Berlin) so they had formed a band and offered to play for us. Yes please! And they were great. The three marimbas - made locally - were in one of rondavaals. The girls had a great time and at the same time made lovely music. We demanded an encore and got one.

Thank you everyone!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Khame Ruins and Great Zimbabwe

Image
We are back home now. But I can't leave this blog without including a post on these two excellent archeological sites in Zimbabwe. However, it is going to be a very short post, mostly pictures. There is a lot more information on google if you are interested!      Before we left Britain I knew I wanted to visit Great Zimbabwe. I had heard of it as an enigmatic ruin in Zimbabwe, I thought of it as maybe dating from the middle ages. Peter had visited it as a boy with his brothers. At that time there was a widespread assumption among white people that Africans could not have built such an impressive structure (Peter's father had no doubt that they had, knowing the local Africans better than most whites did). They thought that maybe it had been constructed by the Queen of Sheba. All of that has been completely overturned by more recent historians and archeologists. The ruins date from the 11th century and were occupied until at least the 15th century.   ...
Read more

When Mo was small. Part 2 The house in Mbeya

Image
Finding the house. Another extraordinary meeting - and indeed an extraordinary discovery. I'd chosen a hotel just a few hundred yards from where we thought my family house in Mbeya had been; again judging by google earth, and also by Peter's memory of having stayed near there forty years ago when he was working in Tanzania and had visited the town. The satellite showed a house with a shape like an E but with the middle arm missing. The long side of the E was the front of the house, facing the road. That is what our house had been like. When I was aged about seven we had moved there from Dar. The family lived there until Dad retired, when I was ten. After we had arrived in Mbeya from the Dar train, and changed our clothes we walked along. There the house was, now gated and with high opaque walls. Peering through the gate I suddenly remembered the front verandah, its red tiles, and my mother sitting there crying. She was holding a letter saying that Great Aunt Ethel had...
Read more

A saunter round Gaberone

Image
Kelone was having to deal with Exam Board preparations all day, so Jes took us into Gaberone to pick up our rail tickets to Bulawayo. (Booked on line but you have to collect them in person with your passport.) We sauntered down the main street, past the Presidents Hotel which I remember in a earlier incarnation from 50 years ago when the city was a fraction of the size. Like so much , here it is peaceful, easy and immaculately clean of litter. It was getting on for midday so we passed a fast food queue getting their lunch. There it is on the right of the photo. The man with the red stripes round his clothes is serving. You could get sorghum porridge and additions of various sauces. We also passed this stall selling nuts and other snacks. I was interested to see those black things in the front on the left which are mopane worms. I knew they were a delicacy here but had never seen them before. It's not the best season for them apparently, so we didn't try them. At the e...
Read more