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Cradle of Humankind, South Africa - 19th January 2009
By: MrsC
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Posted Feb 9, 2009, 8:38 pm Last edited Feb 9, 2009, 8:42 pm by MrsC
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Allensneck, South Africa - 4th February 2009
By: MrsC
OH. MY. WORD.
You know the insistent rain I keep mentioning? Today I had the most terrifying experience of my short little life.
Fi was driving to school to fetch the children and the rain was absolutely pouring down. The area she was driving through was in FLOOD! The road she drove on had become a raging river... and to make matters worse, paving bricks were tumbling down through the water too... the windscreen wipers could hardly keep up with the downpour.
At one stage she felt a rather large void under her tyre and knew the road was being washed away underneath her...
Indeed...this is what the patch of road looked like once the water drained away....
Some roads completely washed away and several cars did the same....
ENOUGH RAIN ALREADY!
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Posted Feb 9, 2009, 9:07 pm
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Home, South Africa - 8th February 2009
By: MrsC
You'd think with all the water about these days that I'd have seen a turtle by now... no such luck...sigh..
Oh! What's this?
Hello!
Fi? I want to see a REAL LIVE turtle please....FACE to FACE...
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Posted Feb 9, 2009, 9:16 pm
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Ballito, South Africa - 4th March 2009
By: MrsC
I feel like I have been here for months... actually I think I may just have been here for months....doing absolutely nothing, nothing at all. It has just rained and rained and rained.
Finally, one day Fi told her husband she had had enough, she was taking us and the kids in the car and going down to the coast. He said if she could wait just one more day then he would go with because he was busy with month end... so we waited and watched the rain a bit more.
He of course got home late from work, so after supper we piled into the car and set off! It took us over an hour just to get out of Johannesburg because of roadworks on the highway. We reached our destination at three in the morning!!!!
Four hours later the children were bouncing around and demanding to go to the beach, Fi and her husband were still trying to have a sleep after the marathon all night drive.
Guess who won?
Here we are at Thompson's Bay. This is called the 'Hole In The Wall', very imaginative... it is a hole in the wall!
There is a narrow little ledge through it that gets you to another beach.. but if you sit there too long and the tide comes in...well, let's just say we took no chances and stayed on THIS side of the hole...
Here we are sitting in the tidal pool.
The tidal pool used to be quite full of water. A year ago, there was a terrible storm and part of the wall was torn down. Nobody has bothered to fix it. This is not actually a bad thing, because the small children love it.... it is now a small walled off sea for them to play in.
The one side is rock pools...where you can fish for crabs and tiny fish...
It is filled up by big splashy waves like ...aaargh... run for your lives!
Oh, that wasn't that bad...
The other side, where the wall is broken, has nice waves coming in where the children can body board without fear of being washed all the way out to sea. It is calm now but a bit later on, the tide got quite strong and a bit rough.
In the middle is a nice beachy bit where you can build a sand castle!
I have a really stupid song stuck in my head now...
Let's go surfin' now
Everybody's learning how
Come on and safari with me
HEY! Maybe I'll see a turtle at last?
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Posted Apr 20, 2009, 10:52 pm
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Roodekrans, South Africa - 15th May 2009
By: MrsC
Fi has had to go back to work because of the economic crisis. Things are getting tough for the people of South Africa.
Sadly this meant that we didn't get out much, actually we didn't get out at all!
One day she had to go on a bit of a drive so she took us with knowing that the view from the top of the hill was quite spectacular.
The best view are on the road though and it is very windy, very steep, with no shoulder - so no photos from there. This was the best we could manage....kind of pathetic if you know what it looks like in real life!
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Posted Jun 15, 2009, 8:56 am
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Home, South Africa - 3rd June 2009
By: MrsC
As well as having to work again, Fi got sick so that was the end of it for us - we sat around bored to death. I got itchy fins and felt the need to travel...cause that's what ToyVoyagers do best.
So I packed my bag...
...and said goodbye to everyone. I'm on my way to Greece!
On the way to the post office, I asked Fi to tell me all about the South African flag on my cap.
Phew... it's a bit of a long story...
The story of our flag
The South African flag is the only national flag in the world that has six colours forming a large part of the pattern. People are always wondering what the colours mean.
The red, sometimes thought to represent the Communist party, is another colour red - chilli red, which is somewhere between orange and red. This makes the flag brighter than if it had been a pure red. The design is what is important - it shows a sense of coming together, bringing together all the different peoples and practices of South Africa and going on ahead altogether.
Our multi-coloured flag may have had something to do with the acceptance of the term, Rainbow Nation, which was used by the famous Anglican Archbishop Tutu to describe the new South Africa after 1994.
But it was even before 1994 - in fact in 1990, after the release of Nelson Mandela from jail - that we began selecting a new national flag for South Africa to replace the old orange, blue and white one. In 1993 a National Symbols Commission was appointed to do this tactfully (remember, 1994 was still to come when the first democratic elections would be held). This Commission then invited the public to send designs for a new flag. Even though more than 7 000 designs were sent in, the Negotiating Council, who had appointed the National Symbols Commission, and the public did not find any that were suitable. Design studios were also invited to produce design but these were also not found to be suitable and still there was no national flag!
In 1994, just a few months before the elections, a technical committee was brought together and led by the State Herald, Fred Brownell. They had one week to find a flag. In two days they came up with four designs, all to do with the ideas of linking or joining up. Two of these designs were sketches that Fred Brownell had made the year before when he had been in Switzerland at a vexillological (flag specialists') congress. It was one of these that was finally presented the month before elections were due. It was approved. The design was approved by both sides of the transitional governement then and also sent to Nelson Mandela who happened to be in Rustenburg so he received it and approved it by fax!
This bright flag with its lines of colour that come together was to be the 'interim' flag for South Africa. This was because the country had an 'interim' constitution at that point, which meant it was just for the time being (the real constitution would only be approved in 1996).
The people of South Africa saw it hoisted above their country in April for the first time as they went to the polls for their first democratic elections.
By the time President Mandela was inaugurated two weeks later, we already loved our flag. It first represented South Africa at the 15th Commonwealth Games in Canada.
When the interim government ended and we had our own constitution, the 'interim' flag was already hugely popular and there was no talk or chance of changing it. It has since gone into space with Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 and been planted on Mount Everest by Sibusiso Vilane in 2003.
The colours and patterns of the South African flag have been used in more ways than any other flag in the world. South Africans just love it!
Origin and colours of the new flag
The strips are red/orange and blue, the same of the previousflag. The added colors are the same of AfricanNational Congress's flag, which is composed of three equal horizontalstrips: black, green and yellow. Therefore I argue that the new flag is themerge of the two flags. Apart from strips' colors (orange and blue insteadof red and green), the colour of the second fimbration (green instead ofblack) and the absence of a coat in the triangle, the new South African flag is very similar to Vanuatu's.
Symbolism of the flag
The colours of the South African flag do not really have symbolic meanings in themselves. People do sometimes assign meanings to the colours (such as red for blood, yellow for mineral wealth etc.) but this is not the case with the current South African flag. According to Mr. Frederick Brownell, the former State Herald who played a large role in the original design, while the colours of the flag do not have any official symbolism, they do represent a synopsis of the country’s flag history. The design in turn, represents a converging of paths, the merging of both the past and the present.
Black, gold and green, which were first incorporated into South African national flags in the 19th century, also feature prominently in the flags of the liberation movements, particularly the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-African Congress (PAC) and Inkatha. These colours can thus be said to broadly represent the country's black population.
Blue, white, red and green reflect the British and Dutch (later Boer) influence, as shown in the earliest flags flown in South Africa, and also featured prominently in the old South African National Flag (1928-1994) and thus represent the white population of South Africa.
The green pall (the Y-shape) is commonly interpreted to mean the unification of the various ethnic groups and the moving forward into a new united South Africa.
The South African flag is the only national flag to contain six colours as part of its primary design (excluding those flags which contain various colour shades as part of the detail of coats of arms or other charges etc.).
Bruce Berry, 14 Feb 2000
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Posted Jun 15, 2009, 9:12 am
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Thessaloniki, Greece - 20th June 2009
By: vickyp
Hi mom,
I have arrived in Greece! Here you can see me with my friends.
They are all very nice and adventures so we spend the first day telling stories to each other of the countries and places we visited!
So here I am with SaruMaru Willy W. and Ladomar
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Posted Jun 20, 2009, 6:55 pm
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Thessaloniki, Greece - 5th July 2009
By: vickyp
Hey mom, I have some exciting news to tell you about.
I was the star in the first video ever made by toyvoyagers! I had so much fun when we were shooting it.
We were playing snakes and ladders when suddenly I got hit by the giant die, but I was lucky because an ambulance came to the rescue and all the other tvs helped me!
Enjoy the video over at YouTube here
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Posted Jul 5, 2009, 7:25 am
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