Big Guns

One Saturday I went to the tar road to catch the bus to Thohoyandou to do some shopping. While I was waiting for the bus I noticed the SA Police going past the bus stop more than normal and they had their lights flashing, but no sirens. Strange. Their lights are just small white ones that flash.

After getting on the bus, it stopped in the middle of the road in the next town and people began talking and standing up and looking to the side. I also looked and saw a white vehicle with a man getting out carrying a handgun with a very large barrel. A police car had stopped directly in front of the bus going in the opposite direction, another car was on the side and I think there was at least one or two others but do not know because I saw the man with the handgun and another with a rifle coming towards the bus. It was pretty unsettling because everyone on the bus spoke mostly Tshivenda. I did get one woman to tell me in English that they were looking for someone but she said she didn't know anything else. After searching the bus, the police left, put their guns in their cars and we drove off. We drove on picking up people and I wondered if a person who committed a crime would actually use the slowest form of transportation in the area as their get away vehicle.

These buses are not normal size - they are two buses joined together and they have an area that rotates in the middle for going around curves. The bus is really slow because it can hold a lot of people so it stops a lot along the way. It can take up to 2 hours to travel the 54 KM to town. And most of the time the seats end up filled up very early in the trip and the isle becomes crammed full of people. They will put as many people on the bus as they can get. Someone said as long as there is an empty lap, another person can get on the bus or taxi.

I met a friend in town who started up an after-school program for the children in two rural villages south of the next town over, Tshaulu. We rode the bus home together and he found out that the police were looking for 3 men. He is very interested because the bus was stopped in his town but he has not found out anything else.

I do not know if there is any correlation, but the following week someone entered my room while I was in the outhouse and stole money, a wind-up flashlight and my multitool. Made me realize this area is not as safe as I thought.

Snail

I have previously only seen cartoon pictures of this size of snail.  But a few days ago some girls saw me outside.  They came to our gate and one of them handed me a really large perfectly form shell. We do have a river someways from the house, but the ocean is quite far and this shell did not look like it had weathered, had no chips and was really nice along the edges.

I thanked the girls very much and notice that it looked like it was full of wet sand.  So I put it in the garden to let the sand dry and forgot about it.  A couple of days later I went outside early in the morning to brush my teeth and I saw this very large snail wearing what looked like my shell.  I went to the garden and the shell was gone and I was very glad that I had taken it to the garden and did not bring it directly into my room.  I continued to periodically check on the snail while I was getting ready for school.  For some unknown reason it decided to crawl up the outside wall of my house.  There isn't anything up there but a metal roof and I would think that it would be unpleasant for it to crawl along, if it could crawl along, the overhang and get on to the roof - but it was definitely feasible as it had climbed all the way up the outside wall of my house.

I wished I could have stayed longer to see what it did next, but I had to go to school and have not seen it since.