Margot and Zara: June Diary Writing

What animal is that?

Margot’s June writing

1/6/10

Bitza

A few weeks ago Zara, my sister found a tedy (teddy) in a tree at Hluhluwe game reserve. It’s position was quite funny; he was lying on tummy with his front paws and his head over one side of the branch and his back legs and tail the other side.

Zara wanted to keep him but Dad said that we should leave him. In the end Mum said that we would keep him but leave our phone number on the tree. Some days later, we got a text from someone and it read:

“ Hi, I am Liz. My son Tom lost his teddy in Hluhluwe. I gather you found him. Please call me back on….”

Zara was so pleased and we were too! The problem was that they lived in Balito and Balito is 3 ½ hours away from here!

When we went down to visit Grandad, we decided we would drop Bitza on the way back. The next day we arrived at Balito just in time for tea. Tom went mad when he saw Bitza. They had some lovely chocolate muffins on the table and they gave Zara and I each a “Charlie and Lola” magazine and a Kinder surprise egg! We said a big thank you and Tom did too!

4/6/10

Comrades

Dad had been training for the Comrade marathon since February. He has been dreaming about running it from when he was a high school boy. The Comrades is an 89.4km running race from Pietermaritzburg to Durban with 23,000 runners. Dad had never run the Comrades before.

He got up for his morning training at 5:00 O’clock and came back at 7:30. We didn’t see Dad much except for breakfast, sometimes lunch and dinner. I am happy that the Comrade is over.

Sit back in your chair and let me tell you a story about Dad and how he finished an 89.4km running race in 8h53minutes.

“Creek” went the floor as Dad got up before his race. “Zara” I called to my sister, “ do you want to see Dad start his race”? “Let me sleep”, she said as she rolled on her side of the bed. “OK then” I said and cuddled back under the thick woolen blanket. “Good bye girls” Dad shouted out from the doorway of our room. “Good brrrrye Drrrrad” Zara said Sleeply.

“Brrrrr” I heard the car drive down the driveway. I felt bad about not coming to see the start.

After breakfast mum drove us to the second drink stop. We parked on the side of the N2 and walked up a side road and onto a bridge. Everyone else was shouting to the people they knew that were running. We didn’t get to shout to anyone, we didn’t see Dad.

At the third stop we didn’t see him either but along the road on the way to the fourth stop we saw a big crowd of people running and one of them held a flag in the air. Then we saw a little man in a white and red shirt with a cap…it was Dad! We sprang out of the car and ran to the sidewalk. “Hi, Dad!” we all shouted and threw him some goodies. “Well, see you at the finishing line”. I waved to Dad as he ran away with the group. At the finish line we couldn’t find anywhere to park. It was chaos. Dad felt a bit sick when we found him after parking. Dad was exhausted, so were we. Well done Dad!

Lilac Breasted Roller

14/06/10

If Aliens invaded Earth…

If Aliens invaded Earth in their oval shaped flying saucers armed with guns that shoot poison that kills you in one second, what would become of us humans?

Would we get extinct? Maybe they would turn us into frogs or something disgusting. All the beautiful marigolds and irises would droop to the ground as the bright lights of the space ships approached and lowered their ladders to attack.

But what if Aliens were nice and offered to bring us to their planet. What if they looked like us but could breathe in outer space. What if in their world everything could walk and talk. What if they lived in Lollyland and everything was made of candy. What if from their world you could go to the attraction park in the blackhole.

I would like to meet an Alien and I bet they would like to meet me!!

11/6/10

Horses

Horses are mammals. They have four legs and hooves. Horses have lived for the past 45-55 million years. They were once a small multi toed creature. Most horses today are domesticated but the only real wild horse is the Przewalski’s horse, as well as some common populations. Horses can sleep standing up as well as lying down. The mare (a female horse) carrys (carries) her young for about 11 months and the foal (a baby horse) can stand, walk and trott (trot) soon after birth. Most domestic horses start training at about 2-4 years of age and this is when you can ride them. They reach full adult age at 5 and have a lifespan between 25-30 years. They have three temperatures of horses blood: hit, cold and warm. There are over 300 breeds of horses in the world today used for many different things. Horses were historicly (historically) used in warfare. Horses provide many products for us such as meat, milk, hide, hair, bones and medcines (medicines). We provide food, water, shelter and care/attention to domesticated horses. The oldest horse we know of is called “Old Billy” and he lived to 62! Horses can run very fast to escape from predators.

Horses are amazing!

Art at home!

18/6/10

Mozambique

On Wednesday, my friend’s dad Joseph invited our family to their family home near Mozambique. It didn’t seem a long dive. When we arrived, they had set the outside table under the magnificent flowering yellow and pink mango trees ready for lunch. The table looked very nice because the table cloth had happy looking pompoms hanging down from the edges of it.

Joseph is a Tongan. Tongans are people that lives in Tongaland, an area from the South African/Mozambique border to south of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.

Me and my friend Siphesihle played with cards while Mlando (her brother) played hide and seek with Zara, my sister.

For lunch, we had some nice Tongan dishes. There was some mashed potato stuff that tasted kind of like mash sugar beans (it was really nice), with some lamb gravy and cassava (an underground long potato). When I was eating my lamb, I realized there was only fat but I didn’t want to spit it out in front of everyone so I swallowed it! It didn’t taste very nice!

After lunch, we drove up the dusty road to the Mozambique border. The border itself was quite small and if you had spike-proof gumboots and gloves, you could probably climb over it! It was easy to get to Mozambique because there was like a V-shaped gap in the razor wire fence. On the other side of the fence, there was a nice little market. I tried springbok meat there. We were sad when we had to go but we will see each other another day.

28/06/10

On Sunday last week, Dad drove down to Durban to pick-up his sister Amanda, his brother-in-law Johan and his nephew Nick. Amanda is probably my favourite aunty. When we are with her, she almost always treats us. She has short orangish coloured hair and is very practicle. Johan isn’t much different except that he hasn’t got orangish coloured hair . He works for an insurance company and is quite sporty too. Nick is a quite boy, always reading or finding something to occupy himself. (I guess there is nothing better to do if you are a single child!) and he is twelve years old.

We planned to have a one week trip with them but because they aren’t the full on camping type, we had to stay in luxury resorts the whole way!

We started off by staying at Hluhluwe/Umfolozi research center, then we went to a real nice place called Nibela Lake lodge. Then we had to come back home because it was Amanda’s birthday, Andrew and Maddy (our Friends from Mseleni) were leaving and it was Bafana Bafana vs France game. It was a real cool party!

The next few days, we stayed at Kosi Bay Cottages, Tembe Elephant park and Rocktail Bay lodge. We don’t usually get visitors so we had to make the most of it! Next time we get friends, we will have holidays for one whole month!

Zara’s June writing

1st June

I went to the Royal Show. Kobus was going to arrive (arrive), but we left too early. At the Royal Show, I went on a scery (scary) ride called Spin Doctor. I cride (cried) after that. I will never go on a Spindocter agane (again).

7 June

Aliens

Aliens come from Kindoo. Kindoo is a big, round planet where all Aliens live.

It depends how many legs they’ve got. If they’re green, they‘ll have three legs and if they are red, they’ll have six legs.

Aliens have a bad habit when they eat. They leave all of their food scraps on the ground. Then, the planet sucks up all their scraps on the ground and shoots them out into their lunch boxes.

I might meet an Alien one day. Would you like to come with me?

11 June

Zara wrote a truly amazing story book with fantastic illustrations about a teddy she found in a game reserve and that got reunited with its four years old owner 10 days after. The book is being printed and assembled by a printing company. She intends to sell it!

15 June

I am Zara. I love rabbits. Rabbits are nise (nice). Did you know that I’ve held one befor? (before).

Some of them have infecshons (infections) on them. I would love to have one. One got killed for us to eat. I wanted one that was allive (alive). I wanted one that was black, cute, fury and snugly.

20 June

Ones apon (once upon) a time, we went to Michelle and Sarah’s place for a party. At the party, we had berryany (Biriani). Berryany is quit (quite) spicy. Everyone wanted my book that I made. My book has twelve pages and it is called “Zara found a teddy”.

29 June

We had a big party at home. It was fun. We met lots of peplle (people) there. I loved it because we had some cake. When we had finished the party, we had a small shower.