Hello
Before our recent reader trip to Greece,
I visited the island of Santorini
and took a boat trip to the tiny volcanic island of Nea Kameni.
Our tour guide was a modern-day Greek god. The women
swooned. His smile was straight out of a toothpaste advert and he
sprinted up the hill to the lookout point with a grin on his face, while
the rest of us stumbled after him, panting.
Impressive, I thought.
But then he opened his mouth and raised the stakes even higher:
he could speak seven languages fluently. The words tripped off his
tongue like honey off a hot spoon; it was as if he’d swallowed
Google Translate; a real polyglot.
As a lover of languages, I hung on every word while the rest just sat
and stared.
Muttering under my breath, I said that with those looks and language
skills he must be a ‘polygod’. But my joke was completely overshadowed
by his thrilling tales of the Santorini caldera in Greek, English, Spanish,
French, German – I can’t even remember the other languages.
Next level, I heard someone say. Indeed. My last attempt at using
third-year Xhosa (from my university days almost three decades ago)
outside Builders resulted in me getting a very bad hot dog with a spongy
pink vienna inside – not the juicy boerie roll I thought I’d ordered.
Somewhere after kunjani I had clearly lost my way. And on the way
home, with heartburn already as volcanic as Nea Kamini, I tried to
remember where my isiXhosa dictionary was...
The multilingual Greek wasn’t the only mind-boggling encounter of that
sweltering Greek summer. On the way back to the boat, as true as nuts, a
Japanese couple were posing for a selfie. Not with arms uncomfortably
outstretched, clutching a cellphone, nor with a selfie stick. They had a
drone. I kid you not. The man held the control in his hands, the drone
fitted with the camera floating 10m up in the air, capturing the perfect
Insta-moment with Santorini in the background.
Seeing is believing, they say. I saw it, you’d better believe it.
“Seeing is believing” best describes how I feel about the eco homes in
this issue. The container home in Riebeek West (page 24) exceeded my
wildest expectations. The clever combination of steel beams, bricks and
mortar, and five containers is simply, well, next level.
The timber cabin outside Stanford (page 44) is also awe-inspiring.
So too the light-steel frame house in Rosendal (page 36) and the home
made from recycled bricks outside Stellenbosch (page 52). Not to
mention the previously dilapidated wine cellar in Robertson – a visionary
transformation (page 78). Most people would have demolished this
ramshackle structure but not Braam Colyn. Truly inspiring!- I love our readers’ creativity. The winner of our Rookie Stylist
competition, in partnership with MRP Home, has just been announced:
Nadine Theron of Worcester came out tops with her stunning bedroom
(left). Two other competitions are in full
swing: our annual Fix it with Flair contest
(see page 66) and we’re looking for our
first-ever Tjhoko Champ in collaboration
with Tjhoko Paint – all you have to do is
jazz something up with chalk paint.
To enter, go to paintit.tuis.co.za.
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