Johannesburg

Methinks South African grandad is rather fond of Miranda. We are back in Johannesburg staying with Les and Alana for a few days, and they are both doting on her -according to Alana she is the "best baby in Joburg" and Les is taking photos of her every few minutes on his phone. Even the dogs seem to like her! She has had an exciting few days as well. We were so hot and tired when we arrived from Nelspruit that we went for a swim in Alana's pool. Again, this was far too cold for the poor scrap and she yelled, and could only be appeased with the promise of a hot bath later on. Miranda REALLY likes baths. She sploshes about and even swims if it's deep enough, it is indescribably cute! I think she is enjoying this trip, there is so much for her to take in that I worry she is going to be bored when we get home and back to what passes as our routine!
We took her down to Hartebeespoort dam yesterday because there are loads of craft stalls down there and a touristy market. We needed to find a giant wooden giraffe for the Other Grandparents, obviously. Miri was utterly in awe of the craft market - so many colours and strange sights and sounds, and icecream to try and people admiring her. We bought her a mobile made out of banana leaves and Alana treated her to a little pink babygrow with a lovely cute zebra on it.

She has also been eating more strange things. It was Les's birthday on Friday and we took him out for a meal at The Meat Company (what a surprise!). Miri loved it, lots of bright lights, and she tried creamed spinach, mashed potato, the creamy garlic sauce off my (delicious) steak, and a naughty bit of my amarula coffee. You can only wash enormous steaks down with one thing in this country - very good pinotage wine. Miranda's eyes were fixed on everything we ate and drank, she even drooled at Carl's 500g T-bone. She saw Alana's wine glass, and that was it, she WANTED it. Fortunately she hasn't yet got the coordination to actually drink from it, but she did chew the edge of the glass, dribbling happily. It's kind of sad in a way; I love the way she copies us, but she gets frustrated when her hands don't do what she wants them too, and I feel so sorry for her! Alana came to the rescue and took her for a walk around the mall, in a thinly disguised attempt to show her off to some friends she met on route. By the time she came back, Miranda had crashed out asleep on her shoulder.
Les and Alana are thinking of moving back to the UK, specifically Alana's native Newcastle (yep, small world!). Whereas that would be lovely to have them so much closer, I think they might be in for a bit of a shock. One of the most striking things about Joburg is the vast differences between rich and poor here (a division on racial lines as well as economic!). Alana does not like this photo:

this is the view that greets you driving into Joburg from Nelspruit. It is infact the Alexandra township, not an area average Joburgers really want to show off as typical of their city. There are far worse areas too. We went over to see Lindsay, Gerhard and the kids again, and got lost, even with the Satnav. When we saw the turn off to Tembisa, another township, we realised we'd gone too far. Lets just say it was fairly obvious Lindsay didn't live out there.

In stark contrast, we met up with Clive, another old school friend of Carl's, and his new husband Frank at a veryveryvery posh shopping mall to have "brunch". Brunch involved a lot of guacamole for Miranda, quesedillas for us (which they insist on pronouncing "kwes-ed-dill-ers", not "kessed-eeyas") and lots of promises to keep in touch with her new Gay Uncles. It was lovely to see them, but I was half hoping Miri would do another Pootrastophe to help lower the tone in that place! Very posh, very exclusive, expensive and crying out for a good nappy filling session.
Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, the crime rate in Johannesburg is shockingly high, and so to maintain shopping centres like this place, or Alana's beautiful and large house, you need a ridiculous amount of security measures. Alana's house has automatic sliding gates with spikes on them, and an "armed response" burglar alarm. Even Lindsay's house had a similar sliding gate topped with razor wire. Their neighbour has a huge rottweiler and a sign on the gate saying "trespassers will be eaten". The whole effect is to make it feel as if they are all living in their own self-made prisons! I find it quite depressing actually, although I can understand why it is necessary - Les and Alana survived a horrific armed robbery recently. If they do come back to Britain, at least they won't have that to deal with. But then again, if they come back, they are not going to be 'rich' anymore, even in Newcastle. I have caught myself thinking it would be lovely fo Miranda to grow up out here; if not Joburg, then maybe somewhere like Nelspruit or Hazyview. It is lovely, if it weren't for the crime rate. Or the snakes.

Nelspruit/Mbombela

Today involved a mightily long journey from Johannesburg to Nelspruit to the farm where Shaun and Karen live. Shaun maintains all the machinary on a massive orange, avocado and macadamia nut farm, and they live on site. The place is absolutely amazing from our point of view, so lush and green. The perfect place for a kid to grow up, too. At the moment, Carl's neice, Lindsay is here as well. Lindsay is technically Miranda's only first cousin, but there is an age gap between them of 23 years! Lindsay is now married to Gerhard, and has three kids, Olivia (nearly 5) Abigail (15 months) and Gabriel (5 weeks!). So poor Karen has a houseful of babies!

Our journey should have taken us four hours, and would have done if it weren't for South African roads. These parallel Peruvian roads in their ridiculousness. The main free way out of Joburg has four lanes in either direction, and seemingly no speed limit. Worse, no one has any sense of lane control either, and we were frequently overtaken on both sides at once, which was more than a little unnerving. Outside Johannesburg, it got worse: two lanes in either direction, again with no lane control but also, no central reservation, so if you wavered over the painted line just a fraction, you could end up hitting a truck coming head on at 120kmph!
Of course, this sort of system invites accidents, and about 20 miles outside Nelspruit, we got stuck. We never found out exactly what happened, but whatever it was involved the police, ambulance and a massive tow-truck to remove the cars involved. And then they closed the road. Everyone still on the road (ie, us!) just had to sit there and wait for it to clear. We moved about 100 yards in 45 minutes!!! Aaargh. Poor Miranda had been asleep while the car was moving but woke up as soon as we stopped in the traffic jam. She was bored and hungry and had filled her nappy, and was highly pissed off. Her pissed off cry is deafening, but there was very little we could do about it at that point!We eventually got through the accident zone, and then promptly got lost. There is a new road, built for the World Cup stadium over the summer, which completely bypasses Nelspruit, and once you are on it, you can't get off. And there are no sign posts at all because they are trying to change the name from Nelspruit to Mbombela, and all the signs say Mbombela and we didn't realise it was the same place. And of course, my phone was rapidly running out of batteries, so we couldn't call Karen for directions for longer than a few minutes. And it was getting dark. And Miri was yelling her head off....

Once Carl had realised we were on the new road, he exercised his right as an almost-local to Insane Driving, and did a U-turn on the dual carriage way (sometimes the lack central barrier is a useful thing!). We randomly found a drive-thru KFC and parked there, tried to pacify Miri, and got Shaun and Gerhard to come and rescue us! Turns out we were incredibly, frustratingly close to where we needed to be, and that this new road actually cuts through part of the farm!! Never mind. We were welcomed with beer and yet more braai (exceptionally good boerewors!), and all three kiddies. Last time I saw them, Olivia was only 18 months old, and the other two hadn't even been thought of. Olivia is now a beautiful, sweet little girl and very much her own person, Abi has the most expressive face I've ever seen on a toddler and lovely spikey strawberry-blonde hair, and little Gabriel looks so tiny and sleepy in comparison with Miranda who is only 3 months older than him. Surreal. Miri seems fascinated with her new cousins though and got over the trauma of the long car journey very quickly when she had been fed, changed and became the centre of attention again! I think she will enjoy her stay here.

The Voyage to South Africa

Miranda's fourth (month) birthday was spent travelling to South Africa! We are on holiday, YAY! More precisely, we flew into Johannesburg in order to show off Miri to her South African Grandad, Auntie Karen and Uncle Shaun, and her cousins, Lindsay and Gerhard, Olivia, Abi and Gabriel. It was an incredibly long flight because we had a stopover in Dubai, which is more than a little bit out of the way. However, there was a logic behind the trip, mainly because that route is with Emirates Airline.
Not only do Emirates fly from Newcastle (which saved us a lot of money, time and sanity compared with going down to London!), they also really, really look after you. Miranda's ticket cost £60, and for that, we got priority boarding, and they set up a little bassinet cot for her clipped onto the central partition on the plane which also meant extra leg room for us! She was also offered a baby meal which we declined, was given a little baby bag full of useful things including an Emirates brand bib, and when she started yelling as we took off, they came round with a toy tiger for her to play with. When they realised it wa her first ever flight, they took her picture on a polaroid camera for us as a souvenir!
From our point of view, the extra leg room made the whole thing much more comfy, and we also got as much beer as we wanted (though I pretended to be responsible and only had one!)and one of the best meals I've ever had on a plane - coconut chicken curry. I honestly can't recommend Emirates highly enough.
Miranda was absolutely fascinated by everything, all those people to stare at, everyone admiring her, interesting things like apple juice to suck, and even Toy Story 3 on the little TVs. Her fascination extended to all the bright lights and strange noises and free Emirates pushchairs at Dubai airport. We landed about 11pm UK time, long past Miri's bedtime, but she insisted on staying up, absorbing everything, not wanting to miss a thing. She eventually crashed out about 2.30am UK time, just as we were boarding the next flight, so she slept for the entire seven and a half hour flight to Johannesburg with no problems at all. Sadly, I didn't manage to sleep at all!
Carl's dad, Les, met us at the airport, and immediately took half a dozen photos of Miranda. Getting out of the airport, finding the hire car and driving across Joburg was pretty difficult as ever, but we finally made it to Les's house and met his partner, Alana, and Miranda got licked appreciatively by Jessie (a very fat pug) and Lucy (a very pampered pomeranian). The men did Man Things and barbecued - sorry, braaied - a ridiculous amount of meat washed down with beers. I actually wanted to go to bed before Miri did; she lasted until about 9.30 and I followed shortly after.Miranda was so well behaved the entire journey, I am so proud of her! I was worried she was going to hate flying or get bored and yell, but she was fine. And she has her first stamp in her passport! YAY! I hope she's started as she means to go on.

Lost In Translation

I scribbled the following back in February, when, at 23 weeks pregnant, I suddenly decided to go to a conference in Guatemala City... A few musings on impending motherhood to share...

What is it about sitting in airport bars at stupid times in the morning? I've done this so often - usually half collapsing with exhaustion - that it feels part of the experience now. The journey wouldn't be complete without my dramatic, romantic, self-indulgent 'lost in translation' moments. This time I am in New York's JFK airport. As far as I'm concerned, it is 3.20am, but in New York, it is only 10.30pm. The barman and two blokes sitting next to me are speaking Spanish, which is oddly comforting. To them, I am just another Gringa, but it is still nice to listen in unnoticed. And I much prefer a Latino accent to an American one. I am on route to Guatemala after all.

The first time I did this sort of thing - sat alone in a strange bar full of strangers in a strange country - I was only just sixteen, drinking melon flavoured cocktails underage in the hotel bar in Helsinki, having accidentally on purpose 'lost' the rather dull Finnish bloke I'd come out to meet. This time, for obvious reasons, I am not on the alcohol, but that is irrelevant. I am still luxuriating in anonymity and possibility. This time I am not alone, however; Little One is with me always, kicking her appreciation or annoyance. Right now I really am "navel-gazing", - with good reason. I have to grow up, be responsible for another tiny life rather than just myself, and that is both terrifying and exhilarating. Will this style of anonymity and possibility - the desire to experience everything I can, everywhere I can - ever wear off? What, after all, is the point? Intercontinental travel is lonely and exhausting. Why do I do this to myself? Unfortunately I think I need to travel more to find out the answer to that.

(Here's my Guatemala adventures on my work blog)