From Durban’s local rag, Daily Sun:

SPINACH, green peppers, onions and carrots… all these vegetables with nutrition were grown at the school’s vegetable garden…

But the carrots started disappearing! Initially the teachers , pupils and parents at Mkhanyo Primary School in KwaMhlange, Mpumalanga, suspected the naughty boys from the villiage. But it was later revealed that it wasn’t them, but one rude tokoloshe!

Those who claim to have seen this thief of a tokoloshe described it as black and white in colour with a hairy face like that of a baboon, big round eyes and limping, as if it was missing a leg! Speaking to Daily Sun, a group of pupils coming from the school toilets say they saw the creature, adding that it went crazy and started to attack them… while eating a carrot!

It then rushed into one of the shacks at the school they say. Parents heard all about this. Theey got so frightened that they demanded that all of the children be sent home. But principal Simon Mahlangu refused. So the parents decided to release them. There were no classes from last Wednesday until Friday.

The parents then demanded a prayer meeting to be held to get rid of the carrot chomping demn. On Sunday community members, parents and the congregation of Christian Church of God all gathered at the school asking for God’s intervention. The prayer was led by the church’s Archbishop Sello Ramaekane.

The archbishop promised the parents that their children would now be safe as the power of the Almighty has already engulfed the school’s premises. “This evil thing that is causing trouble here will never come back again. Things will be back to normal and our children will continue with their lessons as usual and they will write their final year exams with no problems…”

Some parents also wanted a sangoma! “I want to see the tokoloshe with my naked eyes. Even if we have to donate money for a sangoma, I won’t hesitate,” said parent Annah Skhosana. Another parent, Angel Kekana, said the principal must remove all the shacks inside the school premises s that there will be no more space for it. A grade seven pupil, Refiloe Makuwa (13) said: “I believe the tokoloshe is gone and everything is back to normal. We will now go back to the class with or without a sangoma’s ritual.”

It is midnight, in 3 hours we’ll need to leave for the airport. Everything major has been taken care of. However, I am still awake because experiencing digital freedom seems to involve me spending all day getting the laptop ready for travel, installing all the apps I might possibly need, loading it with all the movies and music I have, downloading/encoding any other movies and music that I think I might possibly want, and downloading wikipedia. Just in case I need to find out about something on our travels. It is a lot of effort that would have been unnecessary had I decided to stick to my Moleskine. On the other hand, without it I wouldn’t be typing this up as I wait for my flight to Joberg.

Everything major has been meticulously positioned in the bag. Not only does it all fit, it also weighs in on the bathroom scales under the limit at 20kg. Its not a load that I am looking forward to hauling up mountains, but I decided I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.

The luggage includes, in order of importance, Tachihara field camera,  several boxes of 4×5 and 120 film, a very large and beefy tripod, tent, sleeping bag, a few toiletries and clothes. Also with me in hand luggage is my Yashica 124g, a little IXUS, and my new Netbook, which, according to Samsung is going to allow me to experience digital freedom.

Its only a few hours before we leave and I finally have my bag out, surrounded by a seemingly impossibly large collection of things that I want to take with me. In particular, the various boxes of film that I have been gathering over the last couple of months are out of the fridge and piled up in a stack that dwarfs the few items of clothing that I’ve set out. A few cutback may be in order.

Only one day to go! Most of the major things are taken care of. That is, all the ones that we could think of.

All that remains is to try and cram all of our assorted goodies into our bags. I haven’t tried yet, so I am really, really hoping that it will all fit. Of course there are also all of the non-vital tasks like choosing what music will get to come along with us, what photos and how much of wikipedia I can download to read on the plane. It is these tasks that seem to take up all the time.