style="font-size:15px;"> It’s the custom with Afrikaner weddings for the groom to be heckled by his friends during his speech, so poor Snap had to put up with the jeers and catcalls of his mates, but Jacques, as best man, had an easier time.
After the speeches everyone danced the traditional Afrikaner sokkie dance – a mixture of jive, boogie, swing and foxtrot, which is energetic and lively and a lot of fun. Jacques is a good dancer, but he has size 13 feet so he sometimes finds it hard to avoid my toes and we end up teasing one another about whose fault it is.
Being in Johannesburg was a lovely opportunity to spend a couple of days with Jacques’s parents, Elna and Johan, who live in one of the suburbs. I’ve known them since I first came to South Africa; they treat me like one of the family and I’m really fond of them. Elna is an interior designer, while Johan works for an engineering company. Jacques’s younger sister Sonia came round to say hello, too. She works in the law, and like Elna she’s warm, chatty and outgoing. Sonia always looks glamorous. As a vet that’s pretty hard to do – we spend our lives in practical clothes, with hair scraped back, short nails and no make-up, so I love it when Sonia brings out my girly side and we talk fashion and hair.
It was a short visit for me this time, all too soon I was kissing Jacques goodbye and I couldn’t hold back my tears. It would be almost three months before I saw him again, but at least we would be able to look forward to Christmas together.
Mum had warned me that when I got home I would meet the newest member of the family. She and Dad couldn’t cope for more than a few days without a springer spaniel in the house, so they’d gone to a rescue charity and found a six-year-old liver-and-white springer called Roxy. She’d belonged to a family that loved her, but they’d had to give her up when they had a baby – maybe on account of her particularly ear-splitting bark, which my parents only discovered after adopting her!
Still missing Tosca, I wasn’t sure I felt ready for another dog, but when I met Roxy my heart melted. She was very different to Tosca, in looks and in disposition. Unlike the independent Tosca, Roxy stuck like glue, a little shadow following us around, seemingly constantly anxious. One evening we watched One Born Every Minute – the television programme about childbirth – and as soon as a baby started crying, Roxy would get up and start pacing the room. She fussed around Paddy, our Yorkie, too. Paddy was prone to reverse-sneezing attacks, a spasm of the soft palate a bit like a very sudden bout of hiccups. It’s fairly common in small breeds with long, soft palates and not dangerous, but every time he started sneezing Roxy would go over and sniff around him like an over-attentive mother.
Unlike Tosca, Roxy was obedient and attentive, desperately trying to please. That is until she went for a walk, and then her spaniel switch flicked on and seemed to short-circuit her ability to hear. On walks she lost her fretful demeanour and became a typical springer, leaping and throwing herself about without a care in the world.
When I started taking her to agility classes she excelled, and we had a lot of fun. She’d fly over the jumps and scuttle through the tunnels. She’d even race over the dog-walk and A-frame. But the seesaw was her nemesis; as soon as it started to tip she panicked, suddenly not quite so brave.
There was big excitement in the Hardy household for another reason, too, because the week I got home both Mum and Ross were graduating. First Ross graduated from Canterbury Christ Church University. His degree was in music, and the ceremony was held in Canterbury Cathedral. Ross is two years younger than me, but his degree was two years shorter, which is why we ended up graduating in the same year. As his big sister I was grateful that at least my ceremony had come first. His was lovely, although unfortunately Mum, Dad and I were stuck behind a pillar inconveniently placed there by the Normans when they rebuilt the cathedral some 1,000 years ago, so we spent a lot of time craning to try to spot him.
Mum’s graduation ceremony came five days later in London at the Barbican. Her parents, Grandma and Grandpa Nevison, were there with us, beaming with pride. Mum had gone to art college after leaving school and was working full-time as a graphic designer when she began her studies with the Open University in 1998. After three years she deferred the remainder of her degree to research and write a book, only taking up her studies again in 2011 once she’d wound down her design business. Now she had qualified in humanities with creative writing and we were all hugely proud of her.
Feeling a little left out, Dad joked that his degree was in fatherhood, from the School of Hard Knocks. He hadn’t liked school and hadn’t done well and when he left he’d gone to work in construction. A few years later he got a job in the City, starting at the very bottom of a large financial institution. Now he’s one of a handful of people running the company, though I still don’t know exactly what he does!
Before my next locum job I had a couple of days in which to begin planning my trip to Uganda with World in Need. I had met David Shamiri, the director of WIN, through our local church. He came to England from Yemen, and he and his Polish wife Magda do a huge amount of work to help others. In my last year at vet school I decided I’d like to travel and do some voluntary work before settling into a permanent job, so I went to David and asked whether he could use the services of a vet.
World in Need works to transform the world through aid and education, and David suggested I might go to Uganda to help remote communities without access to a vet to care for their animals – especially goats. WIN had arranged to give goats to many of the villagers, but its aim was to give one to every household as part of the drive to help them become self-sufficient. However, many of the goats’ new owners had little idea how to look after them.
So I agreed to go to Uganda for four weeks to help out and we arranged the trip for the following February, after my stint with the Grahamstown SPCA. David told me I would be able to stay with the local pastor, George Amoli. Conditions would be very basic, he warned me, with sparse electricity and a bucket for a shower. And, of course, no internet or phone connections.
‘You up to living like that for a month?’ David joked.
I hoped I would be. It was certainly going to be a challenge.
David suggested I contact a few animal charities to see if they would sponsor me, and perhaps even donate equipment or medicines. I wrote to dozens of them and eventually ended up in a room with members of the British Goat Society, who were keen to know more about how I’d use their money if they were to sponsor me.
It’s probably fair to say that the members of the British Goat Society are fairly passionate about goats. They write the standards for goat shows, of which there are many, and their members can spend many happy hours talking about, viewing and tending to these animals. In the interview room with me were 15 people who were spending the day having a conference about goats.
‘Are you any good with goats?’ asked one member, peering over her glasses at me.
‘Well, I did some work experience as a teenager at a goat rescue sanctuary called Billie’s. I learned to muck out and feed and was taught how to trim their feet.’
Home to dozens of goats, Billie’s was beautifully run and maintained, and what had surprised me when I worked there was discovering that goats aren’t timid like sheep, they’re more like dogs and can be very playful – they have big personalities.
More questions followed and I did my best to sound hugely enthusiastic about all things to do with goats. I must have passed muster because, much to my delight, the BGS very generously agreed to sponsor me to put together 100 goat ‘goody bags’ to take with me to Uganda. They were very excited about supporting a project that they could see would make a real difference to the health and welfare of goats, and hence the owners, too.
I was on my way.
