Christmas Trees—in Africa

Christmas trees—in Africa. We are now past the halfway point of our stay in Cape Town. And the passage across the southern Indian Ocean is already closer than our passage across the South Atlantic. When are we going to tell you about Africa? From the ocean? Right now I’m facing a dilemma: either write the journal or live through the events, because doing both at once simply isn’t working out. There have already been wine farms and football matches, African elephants and lions in the wild, a performance at a rural school and a visit to archaeologists in a cave, Bushman country and the land of the leopard. Dozens of stories about people whose paths through life have been so convoluted you could make a film about them. Oh yes, and a gentlemen’s club where Hollywood—unlike me—regularly shoots films. . Digest African penguins fly past the website with mournful squeaks, and Cape Agulhas and the Cape of Good Hope go with them. The story of the engine breakdown is heading the same way (or rather, the starter, which we couldn’t revive on our own and sent off for repair). And our young sailor spent a month attending a local Montessori school. And the other day, she played one of the leading roles at the Russian New Year party. The captain changes pumps when he isn’t replacing shrouds. And coiled steel cables take up half the saloon. The other half is occupied by the mess we’re tired of shifting from place to place, because the next day it all has to be shifted again. Then there’s the local African flavour and local crime, illegal migration and safety procedures, heavenly paradise and hellish hell, the peculiarities of the way of life and the distinctive character of the most unusual country on the Dark Continent. We’ve already had two meetings with heroic polar pilots who brought us a miracle mould remedy on a cargo plane (six months earlier, it hadn’t been allowed through the usual way at Domodedovo Airport). Not to mention the contemporary art museum in a huge grain silo, the First Thursdays art event at the beginning of every month, and our hike up Table Mountain. Cape Town Gentlemen’s Club. Do you know what this chair is?—It’s a set of scales. . On the Great Capes And over the past month we have already rounded the Cape of Good Hope twice: the first time with friends from near Smolensk, and the second—the day before the day before yesterday—with friends from Africa. The second time, most of the guests were seasick to the point of death, and so was part of the crew, namely me. Despite that, along the way we filmed snippets for the programme “Good Morning” on Channel One. We don’t yet know when it will air, but it should be soon :). One Saturday we attended a gathering of sailors at False Bay Yacht Club in Simon’s Town. Photographs from sailing trips on the screen, two presenters, a microphone, several speakers on various topics relating to safety equipment on board (including that very thrilling liferaft inflation we posted on Instagram), navigation in the Caribbean and Latin America, tactics for dealing with hurricane season, obtaining GRIB files (weather forecasts), and, as the icing on the cake, navigation in Antarctica by a family crew with children. . The Holidays Are Coming And then the yacht club held a Christmas party for children. Most children’s holiday shows here take place at the beginning of December, because the children’s summer holidays have already begun, and if you delay even a little, everyone will scatter on holiday to different corners of the world and there’ll be no one left to gather for the celebration. As if to prove the point, the sailor, the young sailor and I have just now departed for a Russian camp about 50 kilometres from Cape Town—and here the kaleidoscope of events is even more packed, just as it should be during a short session at a great camp. But the week before, the whole crew went to a Russian New Year party with Father Frost and the Snow Maiden, some minor skulduggery involving the lights on the tree, plus various dwarfs and Snow White. Our young sailor was given the responsible role of the latter. . Preparations For Snow White to look just like Disney’s, Mum spent the whole night sewing the princess a ball gown. Fortunately, a yellow guipure skirt had been bought at the Chinese market; by itself it looked rather silly, but it was full and sunny. All that remained was to turn it into a complete ensemble with the rest of the red, navy and light blue. Luckily, we have our very own Cinderella aboard the yacht. She sat sewing until two in the morning, then again from eight. At night, the thread kept snapping; by morning, the needle had become even more flattened against the mechanisms it had been rubbing against all night (after all, the thread wasn’t snapping for no reason). On yet another seam there was a knock, the needle broke, almost splintering. And a sliver flew into my eye. Luckily, my reflexes are like a sniper’s. I snapped my eyes shut and removed a sharp 2 mm splinter from my eyelid. But the costume turned out just like the real thing—ready to go straight into the Snow White business. And our young sailor performed brilliantly. She danced the dance, sang the song, delivered her lines in verse and uttered the magic spells. She fixed the Christmas tree lights, which had been tampered with by the troublemakers. A solid five out of five. I gave her 5.8 for technique and 5.9 for artistry—just so she’d still have something to strive for :). Cape Town’s Russian diaspora is made up of people from all sorts of places: St Petersburg, Moscow, Siberia, Ukraine... Father Frost, meanwhile, was actually South African and spoke Russian almost without an accent. And then came the delicious continuation of the festivities—a buffet put together and prepared by the parents and organisers. Before the official and unofficial parts of the celebration, we witnessed a miracle: in just a few hours, through the efforts of several people, a black-and-white sports hall was transformed into a wintry glade filled with white Christmas trees. And by evening, it had turned back into an ordinary black-and-white hall. And on 16 December our younger daughter set off for South Africa’s wine valley to serve as a Young Pioneer. Nastya was taken on as a camp counsellor, and I, of course, was put in the kitchen to wash dishes—well, from each according to their abilities :). We’ll tell you all about that in our next report. Cool dwarfs 🙂 After the official part 🙂 Ksenia and Nina—the presenter and one of the organisers We called this photo “Join the Queue!” 🙂 With Father Frost (although that’s obvious enough anyway :))) A winter fairy, a princess, or the Snow Maiden?