Dan’s comments are bold and italicized

Before I start this (short) post, here’s a quick update on Dan. Tomorrow will be two weeks since his eye operation to fix a detached retina and to change out his lens. He’s doing incredibly well and says he has about 80-85% of his vision back. The rest should return over the next few days. This man has never had an operation in his life and, over the past two weeks, I’ve learned that he’s not the world’s best patient! I really do not know how to respond except that patient is not an accurate description of my mood.

Because of the operation, we can’t do our usual beginning-of-the-month trip to a game park as that would be too large of a drop in elevation for Dan’s prognosis. I still have an air bubble inside of my eye. The air would expand and cause a whole lot of issues, so that needs to disappear before I can travel. The experience is odd. It is like looking through a glass half full of water. I can see out of the top just fine, but there is a very distinct line across the lower part of my eye that sloshes from side to side if I move my head. As we’re both good at entertaining ourselves, this hasn’t posed a problem (I’ve read Snowdrops by A.D.Miller [not recommended unless you’re into Atlantic Cult Classics] and am currently reading The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu). I’ve become proficient and confident with driving our mechanical Goliath and keep myself busy; albeit busy doing very little!! As for me, I am relegated to light duty, but I’m still cooking. Thai Green Curry and Beef Stroganoff are favorites. Today, I tried something new today called Toad in the Hole which is sausage cooked in Yorkshire Pudding batter, the best of both worlds, but the photo I took failed so I am including a stock photo that looks similar to my dish.

Because we were to be in Johannesburg for a while, we decided to go to the theater a couple of times; Dan planned outings to see Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and the Ndlovu Youth Choir.

For the first outing, we left home early so we could take a good look around the Montecasino compound, have dinner and make it a real (old person’s) date night!

Oh my goodness, the Montecasino compound is amazing. I’ve mentioned it before when we went to see the musical Pretty Woman, but we were able to explore it much more this week and were extremely impressed. It may be that the places in Las Vegas are like this…but we don’t gamble so, to us, this place is out-of-this-world! The choice of restaurants is overwhelming. There are over 30 to choose from. We looked at the menus of 6 places, and decided on Italian at Col’Cacchio. We both chose spaghetti (Bolognaise for Rhia, and a Blu Formaggi [Italian style Bleu Cheese sauce]), and split a Cobb Salad. I would highly recommend this place for anyone interested.

Before going to the theater, Dan wanted coffee (I bet none of you saw that coming, did you?) We found a place that served a cappuccino and cake for $4. We didn’t expect too much so were a bit surprised when this showed up…

But something I’ll remember about the evening (more than the play…more about that in a bit) was the bathroom in this cappuccino-and-cake cafe; it was wild…

Though the bathroom seems to be designed as a tourist attraction, finding the entrance was extremely difficult. There were no signs, and the single door to the kitchen looked exactly the same as the single door to the bathroom.

I was enthralled and went back to the table eager to share this experience with Dan, but found him looking sad and discombobulated. Apparently, he’d pulled the theater tickets up on the phone and had realized that he’d booked them for a theater in Cape Town (about 1,400 km away). Confusingly, the Pieter Toerien Theatre is different from the Pieter Toerien Theatre Company, but they both use the same booking website. Even though the shows we see are professional ones, we only pay about $25 per ticket so one couldn’t be sad for long as we’d had a lovely evening…and still got back home in time to go to bed during regular, old-people time. The same play will be coming to our local theater later this month, so that is exciting, and is being planned…fingers crossed.

Another lesson learned; things don’t have to go to plan for you to have a great time. Does this mean that I’m going to know my travel details before leaving home? No…but I may have more details than the date I fly in and out of a place. Maybe…

We were back in Montecasino four days later for the Ndlovu Youth Choir. I expected it to be good but…WOW! I’m amazed that I’ve not heard of this group before. Ndlovu Youth Choir is a S. African musical group founded in 2009 by Ralf Schmitt (composer and conductor) and Sandile Majola (lead vocalist and team leader). It comprises ONLY of youth from an area in rural Limpopo. It was originally formed as a therapeutic outlet designed to help heal a community that had been devastated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic that had left many orphans. This group has gone from strength to strength, including being invited to take part in America’s Got Talent in 2019; although they didn’t win, they were in the top 10. Ndlovu (meaning elephant) is a Zulu, Ndebele, and Xhosa word as all three languages belong to the Nguni language group; the group sings in these languages, Afrikaans, and English.

It was amazing. It was sort-of a Godspell-esque musical event celebrating Africa.

I was fascinated by the singing of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. I thought it was just a cutesy song written in the west. But I learned that the 1961 hit by The Tokens was preceded by the 1951 folk cover by The Weavers. In this version, the song was called Wimoweh which is a mishearing of the Zulu chorus uyimbube (which means ‘you are a lion.’) But even this wasn’t the original; the song Mbube (lion) was written and recorded here in Johannesburg in 1939 by Solomon Linda!

Another song that I truly enjoyed was an African rendition of O Mio Babbino Caro (sung by Sandile Majola). I recorded this one, as they encouraged people to take pictures and share. It’s not the full song as a few seconds had passed before I realized how beautiful it was. The recording itself was just taken on my phone and, sadly, didn’t sound like it did in the theater…though it gives you an idea of what we experienced. We had front row, balcony seats, which was ideal for filming.

The highlight of the night for both Dan and myself was Bohemian Rhapsody! I learned that Freddy Mercury was born in Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania). Ralf Schmitt wrote to Brian May (one of the three founders of the group Queen, along with Freddy Mercury and Roger Taylor) asking that they be allowed to translate the song into Zulu and put an African spin on it; this had never been done before so the choir was thrilled when they received the go-ahead. It took almost two years before they were happy with what they had created. I’ll attach what was recorded last night here…but I’ll also attach the website for you to hear the official, professional version.

If something goes wrong with the link below, the address is https://youtu.be/gbljPQbxtTQ?si=Vj8woC5ecIzkBELk

I can’t believe that we’re fortunate enough to live in a place with so much culture available…and at a very affordable cost! Last night was the choir’s last performance here in Johannesburg as, today, they are on an airplane on their way to the Edinburgh Festival where they will be giving 24 performances. If any of you know of anyone going to the festival, please suggest that they go to see the Ndlovu Youth Choir; they won’t be sorry! Up next at the theatre is Swan Lake, but we will be missing Mamma Mia as we will be back in the states for that run.

How lucky are we?