Wilderness Search and Rescue SOS Fundraiser

Photo: Donovan O'Neill

In South Africa's beautiful Western Cape Province, home to Cape Town, Table Mountain, hundreds of miles of shoreline and many, many other mountains, Wilderness Search and Rescue will come and get you if you call them. It's your first phone call if something happens to you. 

In their words, WSAR is "a collective effort co-ordinated by the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in the Western Cape that co-ordinates, manages and executes the search for, the medical treatment of and the rescue (or the recovery of mortal remains), of persons and/or patients whose health and/or safety is threatened or compromised in a Wilderness Environment (Mountains, Shorelines, Rivers, Kloofs, Non-mountainous wilderness areas, Caves, Deserts, Forests)."

That Wilderness Search and Rescue phone number is 021 937 0300

If you are using a foreign SIM it is  +27 21 937 0300

In South Africa, there is no charge for rescue services. Read that again, Americans.

Photo: Adam Griffin

It's summer in Cape Town and WSAR is very, very busy. This is their Instagram account if you'd like to see what they do: 

@wsarwesterncape

Screengrab from video by Chris Jacobs

It doesn't matter who you are or how it happens. Maybe you are visiting from Holland and you twist your ankle on an easy and popular tourist hike, are a local who has a heart attack walking a well known route, or a panic attack on a ledge, or get lost in the mist, or stranded because the cable car shut down due to high winds and you didn't realize that Table Mountains is actually a very big mountain, or very cold because the weather changed suddenly, or your squirrel suit adventure goes tragically wrong, or you become dehydrated, or you crash your paraglider. 

Or maybe you just slip and fall. 

This happened to my friend Don Kirkwood last August when he was on a hike with colleagues to visit a precipitous population of endangered plants. He didn't make it. Wilderness Search and Rescue worked tirelessly in very difficult terrain to locate his him, reach him, assess his condition, inform his wife Rosie, and to get him out, by helicopter.

Last year I made a donation in Don's memory after Rosie, Don's wife and my friend, highlighted their work. I will do that every year on August 26th, the day he fell. 

                               Screengrab from video by Grant Duncan Smith

Right now, WSAR is raising funds for headsets and radios for their chopper pilots. Get this: until recently they have communicated with ground personnel in rescue situations via HAND SIGNALS. 

A modest donation in dollars or Euros or Pounds Sterling will translate well to South African Rands (known as ZAR). And of course if you're in SA, you're donating to a superb local resource.

Your donation will make a tangible difference. 

Here is the link to donate to their SOS for Life Saving Equipment

As of right now they have raised R18,264.00 and their goal is R327,421.00

Let's see if we can boost that. And thank you.

Resources:

Wilderness Search and Rescue

Be Prepared

Suppertime

Warm baguette, wrapped in a napkin. A hot dish of bubbling olive oil, with garlic and melted anchovies. A bowl of raw vegetables for dipping. Bagna cauda, a favorite. 

And a cat, watching it all.

The fridge

This month, on Thursdays, I have been making and delivering a batch of chile (chilli, chili) to a community fridge a mile-and-a-half north of us. A digital friend of many years is doing the same in Baltimore, and her exceptionally organized efforts inspired me.

I make enough for 10 meals. Usually, it's a beef chile, with two different beans and lots of vegetables and aromatics, but yesterday's version was chicken with white beans. The beans start soaking on Wednesday, and I build the stew the next day in the morning.

It wasn't beautiful but it was really delicious (I set aside a small bowl for myself, for lunch - the Frenchman can't do beans, sadly, so it's a treat for me).

Cooking for invisible people is not easy. What can't they eat, what do they need? Where are they from, what speaks to home? Chile - this version is a very mildly spicy bean and meat stew - seemed to cover a lot of bases, in terms of calorie content, nutritional value and possible comfort appeal. Adding the animal protein obviously excludes anyone who doesn't eat meat.

It also has to be something easy to heat, eat and serve. But it still assumes a microwave or hot plate or pot. There are none of those on the street, where people have been freezing to death. I have been pondering sandwiches.

At the fridge yesterday, half the containers left my hands straight into other hands. I was there an hour earlier than usual, and the fridge was empty, aside from a large container of cooked rice. Three containers I actually placed inside, and when I came back after going around the corner to buy some fruit and small yogurts to add, they were gone. 

All three customers were in their sixties or seventies, and the last was with two little children who looked no different from all the other little kids out of school in a high-rent neighborhood. "I am feeding seven," she said, and told me where she was from in Europe.

A few months ago I might have described the customers in more detail but we don't live in a time or place where that bodes well for anyone.

Once, the fridge was packed to the rafters, including the freezer section, with meals in covered plastic bowls, all labeled, still warm. A mother and small child were looking at them and she asked him if he preferred chicken or pork. Pork, he said.

Last week, 30 individually wrapped cookies I placed in the pantry section vanished in seven minutes flat (again, I had gone around the corner to get fruit - I don't bring it with me because it's heavy and the chile is also heavy). I have many questions, most are unanswered.

But I can't forget the two men yesterday, who said quietly when I arrived, It is empty. After my first deliveries this month I was worried that the chile would not be eaten and I went back the next day to move the containers it into the freezer for food safety. I needn't have worried. The worry, of course, is far bigger.

The citrus flock

On these coldest days - the coldest I can remember in my life in New York, and it's been more than half my life - I sometimes stay in the bedroom to work. It's where the sun and the citrus trees are. The Meyer lemon is in bloom.  

A new shoot. The word. Shoot. New growth and life, take a picture, and the intent to kill with a thing that is made only for killing.

Shoot. Like, darn, bother, dammit. Oh, shoot. 

In my eternal endeavour not to overwater my citrus trees I managed to underwater the Meyer lemon. I only discovered how badly it had been stressed when I pulled the rootball from its pot (in the bedroom, on the floor) about three weeks ago to try and figure out what was wrong. A mass of dead, dry roots about one third of the way down, but the rest healthy. It's a tricky balancing act. I removed the dead roots, added fresh soil mix (a blend of cactus soil and bark chips) and gave it a very good drink, sucking the excess out of the saucer with the usual turkey baster so that there wasn't a flood.

Its leaves have recovered, and are a good, rich green. There's that new shoot and there are hundreds of blossoms. So the bedroom smells wonderful.

The little bergamot tree has been flowering continuously for about six weeks. It won't won't stop. It has big blossoms. 

The tree is too small to support all the fruit as it has set, so if they don't abort naturally (which they often do, dropping while green), I'll have to grit my teeth and cut some off. When ripe the skin of the bergamots smell like Penhaligon's Blenheim Bouquet, a cologne. My father wore it. It's very disconcerting.

I've left many of the calamondin fruit on the tree, because they are pretty, and these are the fattest. But I should collect them soon and make something. Perhaps just salt them again, because I've used up last year's crop.

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Corner store tulips

Why are they on corners, so often? The all-day, sometimes all-night corner stores. The nearest one, Mr. Kiwi, is open 24/7. Need compostable-bin-bags-organic-milk-or-a-bunch-of-scallions at 1am? How about a fresh cocao fruit (why is the powder cocoa and the fruit cacao)? Or tulips.

Mostly, I buy winter tulips several blocks away. About a half-mile walk. At another corner store, called Food Train. Their tulips usually arrive on Wednesdays or Thursdays and I like them in tight bud, so that they last as long as possible Their latest deal is three bunches for $30, which is more than I want to spend. It's too much. But it's still $10 a bunch if you buy three, which is low. For here. Last year it was two bunches for $20. Now, if you buy just one bunch it's $14.99. Around the corner, it's just $12.99 a bunch but no deal on multiples. Way down 7th Avenue it's also $12.99 and very fresh tulips but cash only. 

The minutiae. 

My mother used to find it amusing that I knew what everything cost. She didn't know what anything cost. 

She would have liked the tulips.

Flars

 They help. In that moment when our glance falls upon them.

We are lucky to have them.

Those toes

If you open a sweater up, assuming that it is empty of a human and lying flat on a  nice, soft surface like a bed, Pirelli will dive right in, disappearing deep into it and curling himself quickly into a ball. This is not the time to put your hand in to stroke him. Not unless you're wearing armor. Or armour.

When he relaxes, about 10 minutes later, he will stretch his feet luxuriously, and allow them to show. You may stroke him now, and he will make a small, extended grunt of contentment, before turning himself upside-down and stretching his legs again and spreading his toes