It was much harder this time painting the floor of the bathroom and bedroom that was flooded, as I had to first get all the furniture out, and that took a lot of muscle. I have now made the aquaintence of a woman called Charmaine, who was working for Sheila, as Christalina had resigned due to their moving to far away. Christalina is the one that painted the creosote on for me and made such a bally mess. I had to laugh when her mother told me later that Christalina offered to paint their kitchen, but apparently there was more paint on the floor and on herself than on the walls, and I just laughed, as I knew exactly  what aunty Sarie, meant, and Hannes's ruined ladder is still a silent reminder of that catastrophy! Charmaine was not a pleasure to look at, her two front teeth non existent, and she had a lot of woolly hair standing in weird directions all over her head, but she had an ability to really work harder than any of the the men in the village. She quickly came during her hour lunch time and helped me take the furniture out, and I then had the joy of crawling on hands and knees for two days, first I had the nice job of getting all the paint that was lifted by the mud off, then marking out my blocks again with masking tape, and then painting them a flat brown. Took for ages to first get the old paint off before I could start on that, but it got done, and after a day the paint was dry, and I took different browns, a red, an orange a a yellow and again very laboriously worked the different colours into the brown base, that is after I removed the tape first. My poor knees were still not fully recovered from all the crawling around on them the previous year, having actually grown two small knobs where they were in contact with the hard cement floors, and by the end of that night they were again warm and swollen, but my trusted horse linament put that right fast.
Then, after the paint had dried, I gave the floor two coatings of varnish, and I was ready to live again! This time I did not put as much effort in as the previous time, but it did not look bad at all.
I had to get the room ready, as my children were coming from Denmark to spend Xmas with us and of course for my daughter in law Nina, to see what her husband had bought on his previous visit. Irma had sold one third of her remaining two thirds to them, as she was not planning to come and stay permanently, as she still had to work. I was quite looking forward to see Nina's face when she saw her new abode, but whether they would ever come to live in South Africa, I doubt very much, as the government have a policy of affirmative action, and the chances of him getting a job here was very small indeed. I still think that to practice affirmative action towards 7% of the population is unfair, but nothing we can do about it.
Charmaine had consented to come and help me in the garden on Saturdays after she finished the milking for Sheila, and we worked together to try and get rid of the kikuju grass.
Between us we managed to make two more beds for the veggie seedlings I bought, and I was very thankful towards her, but unfortunately she couldn't come on a regular basis, as she had three children to see to over week-ends.
And then Skramunkel came into my life!
Irma and Kiana came for the week-end, and we were having a rest after a morning of hard work, when Kiana came running in, crying with rage, telling us to come and see what Danny's children were doing. We first wanted to know what happened before interfering, but she was so cross she just ran back to Danny's place, vowing to kill the lot of them!
As indeed we felt on seeing what they were busy with. On the ground was a tiny little foal, almost new born, with a stomach swollen up like an overblown balloon, and so thin the skin were stretched tightly over the little body. And what made us scream at this kids that we were going to whip them, was the horrible fact that they were throwing stones at the little thing, screaming at it to get up! They ran away on seeing how cross we were, and stood at a distance while we had a look at the poor little thing, trying to assure us that they were just wanting the foal to get up and play. On Irma asking them where the mother was, they said that she had died just after the birth. We looked around to see if there were water for the horse, but nothing, and on our enquiring as to feeding it, they said that they were actually going to still feed it.
Oh, we were livid, and we called Sheila, who was a qualified nurse, and also knew a lot about animal husbandry, and she brought a piece of sacking upon which the foal was transported to her yard. She then gave the little thing some vitamin injections, and other stuff, and we kept the foal's head up while she gently threw a week milk and water mixture down it's throat, and indeed a little was swallowed, but Sheila  said that she would be mighty surprised if the foal was still alive in the morning. It was!
Something amazing happened the next day when Sheila's cows were fetched for the milking. Josie, the bally cow that chased me and was the most bad tempered old hag ever, came to have a sniff at the Foal, and started nudging her, like they nudge their calves to get up after birth. The foal was too weak, and just lay there, but did open her eyes to have a look at the cow. We were absolutely amazed at this, and had a lot more hope for the survival of our little baby, but it took a lot of faith to believe that we could pull her through. We got a powdered mixture from the co-op, specially for youngsters who were denied their mother's milk, and that had to be given three hourly, and after two days the wee thing lifted her head and had a look around, getting quite animated when Josie came near her! We were elated!