Charlie's Bird
living the dream with Charlie and Thandi and chirping all the way back to the nest.Archive for November, 2020
I run
So, the incredible Gabarone Runner (https://thegaboronerunner.com) has done an amazing series of people running all over the world, I was thrilled when she asked me to participate, and I am sharing the post I sent her, I even made a video, but I cannot get it to upload onto the blog, I cant seem to convert it into a format that WordPress approves! So, until then, here are my photos of running in my amazing city. And pop over to her blog, GR is just incredible, motivated, passionate and a dedicated runner, who writes so beautifully! ( I also can’t seem to do those little active clicky links, sorry!)
I live and run in East London, a city in the Eastern Cape Province, one of the most economically challenged areas, but, shhh…, our secret, it’s South Africa’s best kept secret ever – it’s incredibly beautiful, the climate is divine, and the people are great. Situated on the east coast of South Africa, between 2 of the old independent homelands, the Transkei and the Ciskei, which were incorporated into one stunning province after our democratic transition, it is ideally situated for travel on the Wild Coast of South Africa, which is my absolute best place ever, to both visit and run! I was born in Mthatha which was the capital of the then Transkei, I was the 5th generation born in the Transkei; and my family moved to East London when I was 2 and a half, and I grew up here, until I studied in Johannesburg and Cape Town. I returned home in 2005, when I started working as an OBGYN in private practice here. I met my husband here and became a Mrs in 2008, and my daughter Thandi, born in 2011, has become the 6th generation born in the Eastern Cape, so you can see that the Eastern Cape really courses through my veins!
I love running in East London, because nothing is very far apart, so one run can take you from home, to an urban city setting, back into the suburbs and onto the beach. I love the diversity of the routes we can take. I don’t love how hilly my city is! It’s impossible to run a flat route in this city, but, as many uphills as there are, I always try to match them to good downhills too – my favourites!
My favourite runs in the city invariably involve the beach – Nahoon Beach is my favourite beach in town. It’s close to where I grew up, and pretty close to where I currently live. It’s really picturesque and on a hot summers day there is nothing better than ending your run at the beach, and then cooling down with a swim in the warm, but refreshing Indian Ocean!
I do a lot of road running, but when I get the chance, to run in the wild is just divine! Trail running really gives one a chance to small the fynbos and take your time. I find it quite restorative when my soul is tired. I am also really blessed because some of the trails I can hit are 10 minutes from my home; on weekends, when I am not on call I do try to hit the trails, including those a bit further off!
In front of the beautiful City Hall of East London. Once upon a time, my father was the mayor of East London, and had an office here. It is in Oxford Street, the main road through our town.
We have a long standing German link in East London – we have a Mercedes Benz plant which manufactures right hand drive C-class Mercedes Benz cars for the world. But our history goes back far further, to when the German settlers arrived here in 1857 1nd 1858.The influence of the 19th-century German arrival can still be culturally felt and seen in the names of suburbs and buildings around East London and, elsewhere in the Eastern Cape, in the names of towns such as Berlin, Potsdam and Stutterheim.
The Statue of the Multicultural Man.This is one of 4 identical works created by Italian artist, Francesco Perilli, as a tribute to multiculturalism. It depicts a faceless man standing on earth, surrounded by 7 doves representing the 7 continents. The other 3 works are found in Toronto, Canada; Sarajevo, Bosnia and Changchun, China.
The view towards the harbour and the main beach front from Nahoon Beach, taken from the boardwalk, which gets me to some of my favourite trails!
Hills for days!!!!!!!!!
Running along the Esplanade (the man beach front) is one of my very favourite places to run, unfortunately it isn’t very safe (one has to pass a dodgy picnic area to access it) so, when I get the chance to run it, I get so excited! The views make my heart sing!
Speedwork in the park
Jumping for joy at Nahoon Beach!
I am Charlie’s Bird and I run East London! (and yes, I have completely outed myself now…)
Thanksgiving
…so, I reckon, if we want Black Friday specials, we need to celebrate Thanksgiving. So last night we had a quiet gathering, sharing gratitude for another year and counting our blessings, which in the midst of this year is so important. It’s easy to caught in the downward spiral.
And I am truly thankful for so many things
- Charlie came home, and has been with me through this crazy time
- I am healthy, my family is healthy
- I have a safe home with adequate resources to keep my family comfortable safe and sound
- My father has the most amazing and dedicated carer – she saves me hours and hours of stress and worry
- Thandi girl is healing and her leg is strengthening
- I have incredible friends
- I have secure work opportunities
- I have wise colleagues
It’s so easy to forget it is the little things are most often the big things.
I am thankful for many things
hunkering down
…with the storm clouds gathering, the rumbles of thunder growing louder and the occasional flash of lightening on the horizon, I’m hunkering down again. I am starting to decline invitations again, minimise social interactions and just settling back down at home. There’s lots to be done – Christmas gifts to craft, family time to plan, and home improvements to work on. It’s time.
Head down, back turned to the wind, avoiding this coming storm. I’m tired of being in fight mode, exhausted by the quest to survive.
Kicking myself
…so last week ended on a really bad note for me. I did something that I thought was reasonable and it backfired on me and has left me reeling.
So I sent a voice note to my staff on our staff what’s app group on Thursday morning, just reminding them that Covid numbers in our province are increasing, the hospitals are filling up again and that they should behave themselves again – limit social gathering, think twice before they don’t wear that mask, don’t socially distance themselves; and that even if you’ve had it, it is no guarantee that you won’t get it again. One of them shared this message on and it went ‘viral’ in our little town, people were sharing left right and centre, with my name and my position and the hospital I work in all named. I had calls and messages from strangers, friends and colleagues. I was furious. I remain disappointed.
And while I didn’t give away any state secrets or give out confidential info, the fact is, the girls broke my trust. And if I can’t trust them to keep the advice I give them to themselves, what else are they sharing in the community. We work in a medical practice and everything needs to remain confidential. If they had come and asked me, I would have asked them not to share the voice note, but rather encouraged them to share the message. None of them owned up to the share when I directly confronted them, and so I am left facing a group of staff who I can no longer trust.
The SA government have made it clear that they will not tolerate the sharing of news via non regular channels, so I do potentially face some other consequences. And I’m afraid my insurers won’t look lightly at this sort of a matter if something does come of it. I also had to phone my hospital manager and apologise, and warn them, so that the PR officer could be prepared for what may come. I’ve had the weekend now to mull it over, and while I know the message wasn’t a ‘fake news’ kind of message, I am still angry (although less so) and upset that I find myself employing 9 people who I no longer trust. Kicking myself for ever trusting them anyway.
We managed to escape town for the weekend, and I got some Vitamin Sea to help my soul heal…
Rain
…its been raining now for 3 days, it is just wonderful! It has been so dry, and our dams have been looking a little sad, so knowing that good steady, soaking rain is falling is just making my heart sing! I am being a bit of a dispirit when it comes to running outdoors, but, that’s ok. I know I can run in the rain, I just don’t feel like it at the moment.
The other thing that is raining down in my little city, is Covid-19. Damn, I really hoped we would avoid a second wave, but we are definitely seeing a rapid and sustained increase now. The hospitals are filling up, and I fear that elective surgery is under threat again, which is problematic, since we are all playing catch up! I think everyone has become very complacent, and they have begun to disregard the common sense rules. I can confess that even I have been a bit too relaxed – back to showering and changing before I spend time with my family, making the groups I do interact with smaller again. Oh, those halcyon days of 2019…
Weekending in the Klein Karoo
…so, we spent the weekend on a delightful guest farm near Somerset East in the Klein Karoo. It was a farm that was established and reaped the success of the wool industry in its heyday, and the incredible ‘mansion’ fell into disuse and disrepair after that bubble burst, and has now been loving restored by the new owners of the farm. The house is enormous! And beautiful parquet flooring throughout warms my heart – I love it! The rooms are huge and comfortable, and despite arriving in 40 degree celsius weather (yes, really! I earned a toasty badge on Garmin for exercising in over 38 degrees at 17h30!) were really cool and comfortable. There is still farming ongoing on the farm, but on a much smaller scale currently, we even spotted a freshly squeezed lamb on Saturday afternoon!
The weekend was spent trail running and relaxing
(There is a delightful story of the Lord of the manor being distressed by his wife’s tardiness one morning, so, he proceeded to ride his horse into the house, up the beautiful wooden staircase, into the main bedroom, where he found her sipping her morning coffee!)
How do you
…eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Please excuse me today, I am slowly chewing my way through a seemingly insurmountable day.
The insanity of days
…so while the covid storm has been downgraded to a breeze, it seems like it might be picking up again. I am hoping beyond hopes that we never go back to a hard lockdown in this country, because, honestly, aside from further economic ruin, the citizenry are not very compliant with the rules, so we are unlikely to achieve any modicum of success. I can’t help getting nervous, as our task team meetings are back from 1/month to weekly again at our hospital group…
Now, this introduction is leading me to the what I actually wanted to say today. So while I am glad for some degree of normalcy, and I am enjoying seeing a few more people, doing a lot more, I am now just starting to feel overwhelmed with every other group/school/activity group trying to squeeze in some kind of social event and that sort of a thing, and I am starting to long for the quietness of hard lockdown. Does that sound strange? As a little family, we had a lovely quiet day together on Sunday, playing games, watching a bit of television; just being together, quietly. And I loved that. it felt like I had had the chance to step off the treadmill, even if just for a moment, before the sprint began again on Monday.
And a sprint this week will be – last night I made my Christmas cake – we are away over stir up Sunday, so I needed to get it done and since it is a 3 hour bake, I had to be at home and not on call. Tonight, there is a school meeting which I need to attend; on Thursday we are having a farewell for our retiring school principal, and since she has been at the school for 26 years, its quite a thing, and I am the chief organiser – argh! I still need to arrange drinks and decor. (call the PA!) And on Friday we go away for the weekend, which will be lovely, but is a 4 hour drive! Almost no time to sit and be quiet this week!
What a night!
…so in the space of 4 hours we managed to raise R60 000! We were astounded and very pleased. The evening went off very well. Everyone was welcomed, Covid-19 protocols were fulfilled, and everyone was seated. We then kicked off the proceedings with a presentation, but I am going to share the video that we made.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/WWOTR/permalink/3707967785900953/?sfnsn=scwspmo
(I wish I knew how to make these kind of things look prettier, apologies for the clunky refer to another site links)
The food was good – we started with home made bread and various dips and toppings, mains was fillet with roasted veggies and garlic potatoes, and dessert was a platter of brownies, strawberries, meringues and fudge. Yum! As the WW, we worked our bums off – I had bruises on the balls of my feet after wearing heels for the first time since pre-Covid!
The rest of the weekend was spent nursing my tender feet, but I did manage to get some runs in. We had the best weather this weekend, so Saturday evening the 3 of us had a little braai, and chilled outside, just shooting the breeze and listening to music, it was divine! Sunday I spent working on a little project for https://thegaboronerunner.com – watch this space! We spent the evening playing games – have I mentioned I hate Scrabble – some people might call me a bad loser! But, it was just awesome having some special family time together.
Launching #WildWomenDecade
…so guys, 2021 will signal 10 years since Wild Women on the Run was started, and so we are busy gearing up for our decade launch. We are small group of women who have been running up and down South Africa’s Wild Coast and raising funds for our 2 charities, African Angels and Busfare Babies, and to date we have raised just short of R1 000 000. Next year we hope to hit and surpass the R1 000 000 mark and we are challenging corporate SA to match our million! If a bunch of women – some stay-at-home-moms, some professionals, some farmers can raise that amount in 10 years, surely the big hitters in corporate, surely, can match us?
We are excited to see the ripples from our efforts run through future generations!
I’ll post some more info on Monday, and if any of you are in corporate or have connections, let’s see if in this little corner of the internet we can make a difference!
Charlie's Bird 