The week that was: Bring and Braai

As you may know from previous posts, I have been under the weather lately.  I am the only person I know who can have such a severe tummy bug, eat nothing but three pieces of plain toast per day for six days in a row and only lose half a kilogram! And I strongly suspect that the weight loss can only be attributed to the fact that I shaved my legs that morning!  Happy to report that I am doing much better now, but still not a hundred percent.  Any day now...

 

In the mean time, here's the week that was:

 

Last week André received an invitation from the South African Ambassador's office for us to attend... a Bring and Braai!  Special instructions:  bring meat and beer to share.  In South Africa, if you invite people to a braai (that's barbeque to you non-South Africans), you supply the food and drink, so this struck us as a bit of an odd invitation.  After reading the email several times, discussing it at length and giggling about it quite a bit more than that, we decided that we had to attend, just to go and see what this was all about.  Tummy bugs be damned, I was going to this bring and braai, come hell or high water. 

 

So, Friday afternoon we set off to the Ambassador's residence and, boy, were we pleasantly surprised.  Probably having been put off by the fact that they had to bring their own meat and drinks, a lot of invitees did not show up, but the majority of the people who did make it, were mostly pleasant and we ended up having a thoroughly good time. 

 

Having met the Ambassador, Dr. Molefe Tsele, on previous occasions, we have already established that he is an extremely down-to-earth, likeable man.  Having now seen him in his own home, hosting this picnic-type event, just gave me more respect for the man.  With his laptop outside on a makeshift table he played DJ himself, despite having staff who could do this for him; he promptly "stole" my ginger beer with a wink of the eye to taste if it was the same as Stoney's Ginger beer (the brand of tinned ginger beer available in South Africa) and he mingled from couple to couple and made sure we all felt at home and welcomed. 

 

"Hey, Mr. DJ, put a record on..."

 

The man hired to assist with this event struggled to keep the fires burning and braai the meat to our strict South African standards so of course, some of the men took over the braai and some of the women assisted in the kitchen and with setting the informal buffet-style serving tables.  

 

An additional Weber braai had to be brought in, as there was too much meat and too little braai-space.  The men looked all too happy to MacGyver this Weber together, of course having spare parts left when they were done!  The whole process was severely hindered by one beast of a man who drank way too much, became very loud and obnoxious and just started to get on everybody's nerves.   So, this was exactly like any, or dare I say most South African braai's. 

 

Drunk beast of a man's attention temporarily diverted elsewhere

 and therefore he is not featured in this picture!  :-)

Look at the "official" braaier, who's all but given up at this stage!

 

Dr. Molefe said a couple of words before we had a late lunch and most of us teared up when he talked about Madiba's current medical condition.  This was followed by someone who attempted to dedicate Psalm 23 to Madiba as a prayer, forgot the words, pretended to be overcome by emotion, which forced our host to finish the prayer in an abridged version, after which we finally ate.

 

 

We met some interesting characters, some of them we will attempt to meet up with again, some of them we will try to avoid at all costs, but overall we enjoyed the bring and braai and felt very guilty for having giggled so much at the invite.  Again, it goes to show you not to judge a book, or in this case a casual email invite, by its cover.

 

The Ambassador, the Voice of Reason and some dude from Nelspruit.

(We have no idea who this guy is, but he keeps popping up all over Amman, we are starting to suspect he's following us)