Day 158-Day 164 Thank you God for Where I live.

One Time flight t115, Joburg to Cape Town, landed one hour late at 9:30  on Friday  the 10, I climbed out exhausted into my beloved South Easter, it felt like the wind blew into my very soul, filling my lungs with the essence of Cape Town, just in time to prevent me drowning. Ahh how i love this place, more than that it seems attached to me as a limb or an extra sense, only understanding it’s value when it is not there.

I have just spent the last week,  53 hours, marking 1200 math exam scripts, staying in the City lodge Morningside, waking up 5:40 am in order to have time to get some breakfast and then catch the 6:20 bus traveling to St Stithians every day, returning with the 5 pm bus in the afternoon. Sjoe!

It was actually one incredible experience, meeting hundreds of fellow math teachers, getting detailed about some finer points of algebra, philosophising about education in general, and sharing many laughs with awesome individuals from all around South Africa. Man what an incredible country we live in.

The only downside was the serious lack of sea. It wouldn’t of been too bad if i had had a car. Joburg is decidedly not walking friendly, walls and electric fences prevent access to all but the main roads. Sandton also has a noticeable lack of nearby dams or fishable rivers, this coupled with the exhausting task of marking for 9 hours a day made fishing rather problematic. Luckily the dams i had seen on Google earth at St Stithians had a good population of bass, carp, tilapia and barbel. So every lunch i would rush over to the Boys school where lunch was served, wolf down some food and rush over 500m back to the girls side, where i would pick up my rod and head to the dam for 15 minutes of casting a rapala. After marking i had 45 minutes before the late bus came so once again up the hill and cast cast cast.

Fishing in Joeys

I wasn’t really set up for bass with a limited number of lures and plastic, no friendly tackle shop nearby to replenish my stock, so wasn’t able to find a working pattern. The first day at lunch i had a few takes from cruising baby bass, almost hooked one, but it was the one that got away. The other definite bite ended up turning my curly tail grub into just a grub, probably a catfish.

As if to challenge me further were the storms, complete with thunder and lightening that stopped play on the Thursday afternoon, drenching us as we ran 3 m to the waiting bus. The lightening was magnificent, but given as the dam was situated on a high point and i was fishing with a graphite lightening conductor, i gave fishing in the rain a miss. Had no wet weather gear either, in packing for the heat I forgot about the Joburg afternoon showers.

Took a long walk to Nelson Mandela square and Sandton city in the vain hope of finding a tackle shop, no luck but i did find the quintessential monument to capitalism and consumer culture. Felt nauseous at the consistent display of stuff i had no hope of buying. Kind of ironic that this whole edifice of three interconnected malls and stuff  is presided over by a gigantic bronze of our great leader himself.

Finally Friday arrived, we finished a bit early and i decided to take my assassin out and practice casting on the fantastic fields, three casts later the lightening siren went off and the thunder heads rolled in, me on a field with a 14 foot lightening conductor playing at being Benjamin Franklin. Did manage one 70m gooi with not much effort, gives me hope for the holidays.

4 hours later we were on the plane after a number of delays, should be called “sometime”, not “onetime”. A remarkable adventure with no fish to report but the holidays are here and i intend catching up on all the time i missed, planning to put in a few 24 hour missions, see you on the beach.