South Africa, Russian-Style

South Africa, Russian-style. In three months, South Africa seems to have squeezed itself into our lives as a vivid, action-packed chapter. Finding friendship and losing it, falling in love and saying goodbye, modern cities and resort villages, old plantations and shady forests, rich and poor, Black and white... Hardcore crime and lacy, glossy cuteness... We did the right thing by joining the Russian-speaking diaspora even before we arrived in the country. Because that was where our South Africa began. And that is where it ends. Before heading out into the ocean, we duly held not one but two farewell gatherings. Six days apart, we hugged almost everyone we had befriended and spent time with over more than three months. There ought to be lots of photos on the subject next, but the MacBook crashed and all the photos I’d prepared vanished. So the photos won’t be entirely relevant. Sorry. The MacBook is tired of oceans too ((. But this post, following our first gathering, was written almost a week ago. Just imagine our schedule here if I haven’t had time to upload it all week. The Morning After the Farewell Gathering Oh, for goodness’ sake! Why didn’t we take our Friends Book to the gathering yesterday? I cried, throwing up my hands ruefully, as one does “after the battle.” We’ve had more get-togethers in Cape Town than anywhere else, and fewer entries in the book. Uh-huh... the captain nods thoughtfully. We’ll have to hold another farewell party. We never did get around to singing songs to the guitar. But we did give about five tours of the round-the-world yacht Lady Mary, met people we hadn’t known before, and even discovered mutual friends in Antarctica. Katya’s husband is at Bellingshausen Station now, where the polar explorers tell stories about our young sailor. Their son Andrei was in the younger group at the Russian camp, and their daughter Yasya is every bit as lively as Laduska. Our Kind of People Zhanna, “Grandmother Winter” from the New Year’s party in Cape Town, had saved our Lada from a squirrel bite a week earlier. Our young sailor was walking in the park and feeding squirrels from her hand. Either the squirrel was very hungry or just overly frisky, but after gobbling up the nuts, it nipped Lada’s finger. They wiped away the blood, then ran to Zhanna to have the wound treated. When her parents found out, they had a good laugh. Paraglider pilot and diver Rustan started watching our YouTube channel a year ago and was surprised to discover us in Cape Town. So far, the strong wind has kept us from leaping off Table Mountain together, but perhaps we’ll manage it before we leave? 🙂 Irina Poddubnaya and I had been following each other on Facebook for a couple of years, ever since we were in the Caribbean and they were setting off westwards from Thailand on their catamaran. She travels with her thirteen-year-old son Andrei, a true gentleman and a very deep young man, and with her beloved Harald, the most easy-going and cheerful German we have ever met. Surprised to discover each other in South Africa, we found a way to meet in real life: we visited each other, met up at the Ukrainian Festival, and travelled together through the land of leopards and Bushmen somewhere beyond Lambert’s Bay. Nadine’s husband Henk turned out to be the first foreigner I can remember who had read and clearly remembered In Search of the Castaways. Today we’re devouring their sweets, along with the berries from Rustan, for breakfast. And we were friends with the two Tanyas throughout our Cape Town story, chatting about everything under the sun while the children played, went off to live like Bushmen, or pruned roses at Tanya’s wine farm, Tempel Wines. With another Tanya, our young sailor transformed Cape Town’s dreary walls into a work of art, where Cape gannets came alive as Ukrainian almost-firebirds. Natasha and her daughter Nesya became almost members of our family. For all three months, we were either taking the children to the same school, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, or having tea at each other’s homes. I drove all over half the surrounding area in this good fairy’s car :). Nina Zelenskaya—the guiding light and senior Pioneer leader of Cape Town’s Russian camp and Russian Sunday school—dropped by to see us for a little while. Together with her cheerful husband and outrageously charming little one, we explored our Lady Mary. Tanya Tarasova from Stellenbosch is a research biologist. Her stories about studying Africa and the ocean take you into a world you’ve only ever seen on television. She gave us elegant jewellery and a magic pen for signing contracts with sponsors :). I hope we still have time to join her tour through South Africa’s rich history. When Lyosha and Yulia last visited us, bringing delicious pies and their wonderful sons, they figured out what we needed most on board. They gave us a cool suction-cup GoPro mount so we can film storms from inside. Their boys and our young sailor immediately raced off with the other children across the yacht club’s vast grounds. Ladunya had made friends with Liza back at camp. Her parents, Petya and Katya, are software developers from Tver and St Petersburg. In eleven years, they have moved ten times, most recently from Johannesburg to Cape Town. We spent two months trying to arrange a meeting, but it never worked out. And then we became such good friends! . Children and Adults in Just the Right Proportion Altogether, about twenty adults and ten children came to the gathering. The yacht club’s spacious grounds let us all have fun without getting in one another’s way. The children, aged four to thirteen, both under the warm wing of their camp leader Nastya and out from under it, never quite managed to reduce the yacht club to splinters, though they tried very hard. Then everyone settled down to play Uno, and by the end, as usual, they couldn’t bear to part, although half of them were already nodding off. As our young sailor says, even though it was a farewell day, the party still turned out to be fun. And I’m thinking: since we’re being delayed a little, perhaps we should do it all again? Thank you, our dear South Africans, for three whole months so packed with events and—I’m not afraid to use the word—love! We haven’t felt this good in a very long time. It looks as though we’ll miss you and South Africa as never before. And we’ll carry a little piece of your lives and a whole heap of extraordinary stories with us into the southern Indian Ocean. After all, the twists and turns of each of your lives could fill a book of their own. And it’s a shame we didn’t give you the chance to write a few words in our Friends Book. No, really, we definitely have to meet up again! So drop by for an evening get-together :). For now, we’re scheduled to set sail right now, on 25 January. God be with us! Leave us comments—they warm our hearts!