The Olive Bowl

While at boarding school, life revolved around a fairly fixed set of contacts, interspersed with weekends at Bonair Road and church on Sunday mornings. However, during the holidays there was a wider world to be experienced. I have no recollection of who organised my itinerary, but I do have good memories of those times.   Betty's Bay I have described Betty’s Bay in ‘Lighting a Lamp’ and other blog postings. This place continued to be a haven of contentment and exploration for me. Over the Christmas holidays, Jess's sisters and their families occupied four houses nearby, given to them by their father DG Mills. I was incorporated into this large group of cousins. (I am pictured third from the left at the back).   I remember a couple of my friends joining the family on holiday at Betty’s Bay, which added another dimension for me. Malcolm Emms joined us on at least one occasion, and we went fishing on the lake in a rowboat to see what “baited” frogs could do for us in th...

For the first few years after my parents returned to Lebanon and left me in Cape Town, I lived with my u ncle and aunt, Jim and Jess Mathew in Bonair Road. I went to school every day by bicycle, come rain or shine. Theirs was a growing family, and when Libby and then Alison were born, the y needed extra space in the house. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but it did seem best for us all that I moved into the Wynberg Boys School boarding establishment , Littlewood House . Most weekends , I was at Bonair Road, and I continued to spend my holidays with t he Mathew family , or with other relati ves.     Becoming a boarder meant I be came part of another community, and I needed to learn new ways of relating . In my adult life, I have had the opportunity to live and work in a number of different countries. In those instances, w e adopted deliberate, conscious actions and attitudes that would help us become Belongers in a new culture. A s a teenager, no on e helped me...