This week was busy around the office, but otherwise mostly quiet.
No crazy monkey stories this week, but when we went for our daily walk today there was a whole troop of monkeys just sitting along the side of the road. The babies are so cute! They are not afraid of us if we are just walking on the sidewalk. If we head towards them, then they scatter. The babies go tummy-to-tummy with the moms, arms and legs wrapped around tight, and the moms run and climb everywhere. I guess it doesn't feel much different than being pregnant, except the baby is on the outside instead of inside.
And the weekly puzzle report: Major progress! The cheetah is done. (That's for our granddaughter Myra.) And the lion's face. Now the easy parts are finished. The rest will go more slowly, for sure. The elephant-colored pieces are all piled on a tray out of the photo range. Brown is lion. Purple and black are rhino and wildebeest face.
Our ward in Palo Alto has a tradition of getting the past Relief Society Presidents (the women's service organization) together for lunch whenever there is a new one. I missed the last lunch about three years ago because I was in Russia. I would have missed this one, too, but it was done on Zoom, so we could all be there. It is a wonderful group of women, and I am honored to be one of them. We just had a good visit, gave our thanks to Julia Jacobsen for her good service the last few years, and welcomed Jenni Wiener into her new role.
Sue's big project this week was, finally, the keys! Last March when we all got on the bus at 4:30 a.m. for the ride to the airport for the evacuation flight, someone had the good sense to collect everyone's keys -- house keys, car keys, church keys.
However, no one thought to label them in the process. The car keys almost all have a tag with the car license number on it. The church keys have a serial number stamped into them. But the house keys are a whole other problem... . Some of them were in bags labeled by area. Some of them did have tags with apartment names. Some of them have tags that say "back gate," or "laundry room," or some such useless wording. Since we got back to Durban, all these keys have been in plastic bins in a corner of the office. It was time to do something about them. The push came because we are closing seven more apartments and have to give the keys back!
Sue wrote the name of each of the seven Zones on a large piece of paper, and one labeled "Don't Know." She then put them all out on the large conference room table and started figuring what keys we have, what are missing, and what are totally unlabeled. A lot of them got straightened out! The ones with a Church key on the ring could at least be narrowed down to a particular city. More were labeled than originally thought. She found the ones for the apartments to be closed, except for one. Not bad!
We have 18 occupied apartments and 30 that have been empty since last April. We keep hoping that "next month" we will get a big group of missionaries back, so we keep paying rent and utilities. But it's not happening. President Lines was hoping for 30 to 40 in December. We got 9. Then we were hoping for 40+ in January. Nope -- we could have had 13 come next week -- but it is down to four. They are all South African. The four from the U.S. do not have visas yet. Two from Sierra Leone have not heard about their visas -- and they applied months ago. Two from Uganda were denied this week by South Africa. One from Zambia hasn't heard yet, but will most likely come through in the next few weeks. And some from the U.S. who were evacuated out with us were hoping to come back, but a big group now has less than six months left, so they will stay permanently assigned where they are in the U.S. Boo Hoo! President Lines says he'll believe someone is really coming when they are in the airport in Durban with luggage in hand.
Two of the apartments we are closing are in the remote country of Lesotho, where there are over 1,000 Church members, but the borders are totally closed. The landlord has spare keys, thank goodness! We will hire someone in the two towns of Maseru and Maputsoe to remove our belongings and store them in another apartment that we have in the same city until we can have missionaries come back. We have no missionaries in Lesotho at all right now, but Lesotho has seen three converts baptized so far this month, having been taught by missionaries here in Durban by long-distance/international telephone. The Lord provides!
Ken's excitement this week was having a car towed. President Lines decided we needed to rotate the cars we drive so not so many are just sitting. The Assistants (two young Elders) to the President usually drive a pick-up truck (bakkie in South African English), but they took one of the Renault Dusters to run an errand. They had to jump-start it because the battery had gone bad.
Then the transmission started slipping. The vehicle is still under warranty, though the battery is not. But Ken wanted it checked. Ken was worried about driving it to the dealership in Pinetown, up the hills from us. He didn't want anyone stuck with a bad transmission on the freeway from the office to there, so he had it towed. They didn't find anything wrong except a bad battery, so he had them do the regular maintenance, due in February, while it was there. Ken had thought it was just low on transmission fluid, although the problem could have been electronic failure due to the bad battery. Ken and the Elders picked up the vehicle and then caravaned it to a little shop way back in downtown Durban to buy a battery at half the price the dealer would have charged. It was quite an adventure in evening commute traffic.
Friday night we went out to dinner with President and Sister Lines, just for fun. The plan was to take them to 415 Mexican -- named for the San Francisco phone Area Code! We went there last March and it was good food. But, alas, the website says it is permanently closed due to COVID. So sad! So instead the Lines took us to a Thai/sushi restaurant they like in Berea called Green Mango.
They have patio seating, so it's more COVID safe, and the food was great. We ordered California rolls, of course. Ken had teriyaki chicken. Sue had fried rice with chicken. Yummy!
Saturday night as we were eating dinner, the Assistants, who live upstairs, said their washer was stuck. It wouldn't spin or drain, and the door was locked. It was full of water. It's a front-loader. We finished eating and then went up to investigate. Sue Googled the problem, and it seemed the pump was stuck. Google showed how to drain the water -- but it's hard to do! The drain hole is on the bottom right corner in the photo.
There isn't much room to get a pan under that low-down drain. We used a flat baking pan and some towels and managed to only flood the floor a little bit. Once the water was out the door would open and Elder Chola could get his clothes out. Inside the drain, blocking the filter to the pump, was found a piece of white dress shirt cuff about 1" wide and 6" long. No idea how it got there, but that was the culprit.
Saturday we decided it was time to go back to our habit of doing something fun and touristy each "P-Day." It's our chance to get to know the country and see the sights. Sue's first choice, of course, is to go to the beach, but all the beaches around Durban are closed due to COVID restrictions. But, Durban Botanic Gardens, an oasis in the midst of the city, are open. We had to wait about five minutes outside the gate in our car to get in because the gardens are limited to 100 people at a time. The place is huge, so it is not at all crowded!
The gardens were founded in 1849 as an experiment by colonists to see what kinds of plants would grow in South Africa that could be used commercially. Trees were brought in from all over the world. Cinnamon from Sri Lanka, bamboo from China, eucalyptus from Australia, bananas from South America, etc.
We took a golf cart tour with a wonderful guide. He's fourth generation South African, but of East Indian royal heritage. He said he's about the last tour guide left in Durban because most tourist sites are shut down, and he's very happy to still have a job.
Around the park are small garden areas with fountains and flowers.
The entrance area has a memorial fountain surrounded by impatience, periwinkle and petunias. The climate here is very similar to California, so we saw lots of plants that we grow at home.
This is the view from the other end of the gardens back down to the fountain, with Durban city skyline in the background. The U.S. Consulate for Durban is in that neighborhood.
This is a favorite tree. It is a gum tree (eucalyptus) and as the bark dies it turns red, then peels off to be bright green inside. We were there when it was in the shade, so we found another photo that really shows the colors.
Here is a "walking tree," a banyan that drops roots from the branches that hit the ground and then start new trees that are attached. The botanical gardens has to go around regularly and cut off the hanging roots or the tree will spread out and take over a huge area. The world's largest such tree is over two miles in diameter.
There is a large pond in the gardens with five-foot tall lotus flowers growing in part of it. Beautiful southern red bishop birds live among the lotus plants and flit around. See Ken's video below.
(Play it several times to see the bird flit across.)
This cycad tree is hundreds of years old and the last original male of its species. It has 24-hour video surveillance and embedded locator chips in case anyone tries to steal from it. The bark is more valuable than platinum. In Zulu culture cycads are considered good luck. There are three smaller clones from it in the garden, but there are no females left.
There are lots of plants with beautiful flowers and leaves. We saw Bird of Paradise like we have at home, too.
This one is like a poinsettia. All those coral/pink colors are leaves. It has little tiny yellow flowers, so it adapted the colorful leaves to attract bees.
Here are the "kissing trees," two trees that used to be separate, but rubbed together until the branches joined and now they are together forever -- just like us!
Banana trees grow all over, but the monkeys eat the bananas before they can be harvested by people.
This one is ideal for kids to climb!
This is the trunk of a tree that fell over. An artist has carved it into sea animals that live around Durban -- a whale, porpoise, seagull, turtle, and lots of little sardines. Our guide told us there is a huge sardine run near Durban in August. Many poor people catch them and sell them on street corners.
This was a favorite, the cannonball tree. You can see why. Those balls are the fruit of the tree. Someone has tried to make beer from them, but it evidently doesn't taste too good, so it's not popular.
However, the flowers are gorgeous, and smell good, too.
Thank you for joining us on our garden tour. Till next week.
The canal is lined with beautiful new buildings that have businesses on the ground floor and apartments above. 
