Fetching Poles

Today we will learn how to get poles. It's a quite easy receipe: pack about 10 kids into the landrover, drive to the forest, cut the poles down and drag them back to your place. No kidding. In the Mpame Forest they have plantations for poles, and you just go there and say which ones and how many you want, pay for them (we pay R 1.70 for a 6m gumtree pole) and go cut them down in the section that they tell you. The kids are useful, apparently they like doing that work, cause often we don't even have to ask them if they want to help – they just jump into the landrover by themselves. (Maybe they just want a ride in the landrover and don't know that we're off to the forestry and will make them work ...) Anyway there are some kids that really are very helpful: little Dedisa (don't know if the name is really spelled like that) never misses a chance to be around us, and Sandile is also a very reliable and important helper. So off into the forest they all go, with saws and machetes (don't worry, they know how to handle that stuff), and cut the trees and chop off all the branches. Then we drag them to the landrover, stuff them all in, tie the bundle to the side of the car and drag the whole thing back – with the kids sitting on the pile of poles inside the landrover. I hate the drive back, the landrover creaks and the noise of the poles being dragged over the stoney street drives me mad. I'm always glad when we finally reach our hilltop. There, we unload all the poles and immediately strip the bark off. Like that, they don't only look nicer but also don't get eaten by borabeetles. So that's it ... and with these poles, we built the boma and the new kitchen space and half of our treehouse. Right now we're out of poles again, so we have to fetch more but we're blocked because the landrovers tires are flat – well one was flat, so we put the spare tire on, and now that one's flat too – a kid was playing with it and let all the air out. Arrrgh. Now try to find a pump in this village ... it's impossible. Looks like we'll have to stuff the extra tire into my poor beetle and drive to Mpame to find someone with a pump ... wish us luck!