Surfing is not for Sissies

One balmy Thursday morning I'm sitting at home writing out a shopping list (as one does when one is unemployed); Mike is surfing (as one does when one is unemployed). I hear his car pull in, steady steps on the gravel walkway, he appears in the doorway carrying the shopping. Looks a little pale, upon closer inspection actually, looks like he's been mauled by a dog - swollen face, blood pouring out one side of his mouth. Panic stations I'm thinking car accident, shark attack, altercation with barbed wire fence?

None of the above.

He'd come short on a particularly big, bad wave. In the ensuing wipe-out his surfboard catapulted out of the foam ball with all the force of a freight train, and smacked him in the face.

The corner of his mouth split open in two places by about a centimetre. The inside of his mouth resembled mince meat - a couple of healthy incisors and jagged molars had ground his cheek muscles to pulp.

With his face swelling before our very eyes, we rushed off to Casualty. The doctor took one look and shook his head. "This is a job for the plastic surgeon" he said, and backed slowly out the door. Dr Plastic-Fantastic arrived 45 mins later amidst a flurry of obsequious nurses, bowing and scraping, speaking in hushed whispers with wide, adoring eyes - this was obviously THE man.

I watched while he worked, injecting anaesthetic directly into the wound four times. You'd think this was the squeamish part. Not even close. The crazy man then took a pair of scissors and cut the remaining piece of flesh that was holding Mike's mouth together, as if it were fabric. I felt the room swim out of focus, all the blood draining out of my toes I thought it best to look at the floor and count the spots in front of my eyes. Collecting myself, I watched him do the rest. First he stitched the cheek muscles back together, then he worked on getting the mouth back in one piece - fascinating, so skilled, I'm calling this guy to darn my socks!

Armed with antibiotics and ointment, we paid the magnificent doctor his equally magnificent bill, and limped home.

It's been 10 days since, Mike is finally able to smile with both sides of his face and Dr Wonderful has earned his stripes because there is barely even a scar. Sho!!

Here are some delightful pics - unfortunately, we weren't too snap happy before we left for the hospital otherwise I would've had some real gruesome material. These were taken the day after.

You can see from these next two that the split goes about a centimetre into his mouth. You cannot even see where the flesh has been stitched together underneath the skin, this is only the outside.

Lopsided smile - cheek muscles are now fully functional and the smile goes both ways again.

I have a new-found respect for surfers. They are so hardcore.

U.F.O.

Unidentifiable Floating Object

12 weeks 5cm long 56grams

Greetings Earthlings (little white arrow is pointing to a hand)

And to all those begging for belly pics, there are none because there is no belly. Only 14 weeks, baby is approx. 6cms long, will not produce a belly for sometime yet.

Standby.

Now what?

So we're pregnant and we're thinking, ok what now.

Let's get out of Joburg. Priority No 1. Less talk more action.

So we did.

Our search for the ultimate happy place began in Mpumalanga, home of the mango trees and banana plantations - too beautiful but too far inland. We needed to taste salt in the air. Ponta d'Oura on the South Coast of Mozambique seemed like a logical progression and a week amongst the 'camarao' and mozzies convinced us this was a place reserved for holidays and backpacking. 

A twenty minute hop over the border and into Kosi Bay where friends of ours put us up on the shores of a magnificent lake in a wooden house with a deck that overlooked the rising moon and grazing hippos. It almost seduced us into staying - I even managed a job interview and was successful but deliberated over the reality of a life lived in extreme rural South Africa. Not a practical choice but a difficult one to make. We left it behind. South Coast of Durban welcomed us with all its lush greenery and 'kif bru's' - we've lavished here for some time in a mansion on the sea. We have swept the coast from South to North and settled on a spot - made for the likes of us tree-loving, outdoorsy, happy hippy types.

Sub-tropical Umdloti Beach, a small seaside village in Kwa Zulu Natal about 30kms north of Durban. Umdloti is nestled amongst rolling fields of green sugar cane and indigenous forest on one side with golden sandy beaches and the warm Indian Ocean on the other. Dolphins frequently visit all year round and in the winter Humpback and Southern Right whales pass through. We've found a 2 bedroomed cottage in Mt Moreland a bird sanctuary where the Barn Swallow resides. Every year the residents of this small village welcome the return of over a million barn swallows after their R&R in the Northern Hemisphere. This year the magnificent spectacle is scheduled for 11th November. I will be hugely pregnant and waddling like a duck.

Our cottage is 5k's from the beach and 2k's into the sugar cane down a dirt country road and through some rusty old gates. A short bicycle ride to some pretty sick waves so I'm told.

We've left the strangling claustrophobia of Joburg behind - the traffic noise and aggro and all the shitty stuff. But we've also left some pretty special people there and hope that they find themselves on our pull-out couch more often than they realised they would.

We know some people here, not many but enough to avoid being Nobby-No-Mates. Last night we were invited by a group of about 25 people to a sweet little camping spot by the sea. A bunch of surfers and non-surfers, an eclectic mix of beach goers, wine lovers and quiet contemplators. A day on the beach riding waves and reading books, followed by an evening of epic radness. A spearfisherman hauled 7 crimson-red crayfish from the sea and deposited them straight onto the coals of our braai. Fresh cray meat under the stars, happy banter round the camp, tanned faces huddled in a circle, sandy feet and salty hair. Lazy lovers swaying, tummies full, in a hammock stretched between two palms, surf boards propped up against trees and mellow tunes in the background. So it was with a massive bonfire to close the night and marshmallows on sticks to send us sweet dreams for our sleep. I paused a moment to realise.

This is our new life.