Day 26 - On the road again

The morning started with 10 of us sitting around the breakfast table tucking into Debbie's delicious scrambled eggs. The breakfast table always involves great topics and/or pranks and today's agenda was pranking Divine. Debbie convinced Divine that tonight we were having bee stew as part of our traditional African dinner. Divine was convinced especially when Alex, Andrew and Stef also joined in pranking her. It's always a great start to the morning. 

Alex, Andrew, Lisa, Divine and I headed out to do some shopping at Bendover but 2 things caught our eye during our journey. Firstly, we heard horns blaring along the street celebrating the winning of a soccer premiership, we believe, because we saw a team on the back of a truck in team colours holding a massive trophy. It was a Zimbabwean version of a ticker tape parade. Secondly, we saw a massive marquee setup on the soccer fields with sign saying 'Markets'. Curiously to investigate, we drove into the fields wondering what was happening. We hopped out of the car and watched a band and dance troupe entertaining everyone with their traditional African music and dance moves. We walked around the stalls looking at all the items: homemade woven baskets, oil paintings, African clothing and food. A pair of unique thongs caught the eye of Lisa and she is now the proud owner of some very feathery thongs.

meat, chomolia, sudza

eating dinner

markets

new thongs for lisa

African dancers

At Bendover we went on a shopping spree and bought items for ourselves as well as some of the girls at SJC. Alex scored a bargain finding a perfect fitting secondhand pair of cargo pants for $5. Walking around all day we got the munchies so we headed off to one of our favourite food places, Bakery Inn, where we bought a pie for $1.50. While eating our pies we heard a lot of honking from cars and we thought it was the soccer crew again, however, it was actually a wedding celebration. Convoys of cars lined the intersection honking and blaring their horns in unison for this special occasion. One guy even drove around in circles in the main intersection 3 times, honking his horn while also holding up traffic. 

After lunch we headed out to Willow Park only to receive our first fine from the police roadblock. We found out that if your car has a radio, it needs a licence, which we didn't have. We paid $30 for the permit which lasts till 31 December, just 2 weeks. Go figure.

 We reached SJC and saw the girls for a few hours. Andrew and Alex taught the kids guitar and we also helped prepare dinner with the girls. Girls will be girls and we were coaxed into playing their little games where they would tell us our future with women using a series of questions. Typical teenagers.

We headed home for swim and then a traditional African dinner, Sudza, meat and chomolia (kind of like spinach). It was so traditional that we ate sitting on the kitchen floor as I presume Africans do. It was a brilliant dinner and experience, washed down with some fantastic African beer. 

A couple of us drove out at 8pm to grab some ice cream for everyone at home. The first Creamy Inn's (ice cream parlour) sundae machine didn't work, which was very disappointing. Luckily, Creamy Inns are on almost every block and we found one with a working machine. We rushed home holding melting ice cream cones in our hands for everyone to enjoy. 

Thanks for reading and commenting

Jonno