Fire

Sad news Mdumbi fans... the Mdumbi kitchen/restaurant/main lounge building burned to the ground early Thursday morning. What a sad day that was! All those years of guests, meals, parties, fights, music and just hanging out were burned crispy in less than an hour. The fire was so fast and hot that the glass from the windows melted, the stainless steal tables buckled, and pretty much everything else in there was completely distroyed. Funny enough, they did find some meat left in one of the freezers and in trying to save as much as they could, the Mamas cooked it. It was terrible, but the thought was nice!
I feel very sad for Johann who was practically raised on this land and has been here since the beginning and puts his whole life into this place. His brother was telling us about the sleepovers they used to have in that room, and every once and a while someone will remember something that was in there, like a lamp Adski made, or poker chips that have been there for ten years, or all of Andre's music. This I, personally, am most sad about!
People ask me often what they can send to me, and I never really know what to say, but now I am asking, please send music. Any music! We will take it! MP3 CDs are probably the easiest way to do this as you can fit tons of music files on a cd and then just put it in an envelope in the mail.
The worst part about this fire is the timing. It happened early December 1st. The first day of Mdumbi's busiest month of the year. So now we are all working as much as we can to try and get Mdumbi up and running again as fast as possible, and as cheaply as possible, as they are not sure that insurance will give them any money to rebuild. Johann has hardly sat down since the fire!
Fortunately for Mdumbi, they have made many amazing friends over the past ten years, and people from all over SA are asking what can be sent. A person from East London, owns a lumber mill and offered to give lumber at an exceptionally cheap price, which will be a HUGE help! Friends from Cape Town are even giving laptops to replace the ones lost in the fire. The people around here have also been awesome! When the fire started a group of Mamas were getting water at the nearby tanks, saw the fire and came running to help put it out, and later that day many came back to pray and offer food as Mdumbi lost all of theirs in the fire.

Life otherwise is going well, I have been working at Mdumbi for the past 3 days and before that I spent a day in Mthatha getting shoes, a new dress, and my visa extended.
At Tata Spargs' we eagerly await the next group of guests and I am trying to prepare as much as I can now. I can't remember if I said in the last post that we have showers now, but we do!! They are awesome!! I never want to shower in a normal shower again, rocket showers are the way of the future! It was such a long, hot shower, and I didn't even have to feel guilty for using too much water because you actually can't turn it off until the fire at the bottom goes out. I may actually start showering more!... we'll see.