Why Joburg? It's the New York of southern Africa - only it hasn't managed the big cleanup New York accomplished in the last few years. Vibrant, dirty, dangerous and fast, it is a can-do city. As the economic powerhouse of Africa it represents both the hope and the enormous challenges of the region, and you feel it every day of your life in the City of Gold. Hopefully its fortunes won't go the way of the gold price!
A highlight of 1997 was our family trip to New York and Canada. We found New York so exciting that if we had to leave Joburg we'd like to live in New York. We also had a great time staying with Carl and Colleen and seeing Zak and Amiel and Lybi. In Canada we visited all of Colleen's family and several friends from Ottawa through Toronto to Vancouver.
Outdoor living was great in the Canadian summer, best of all being a canoe and camping trip across the lakes of the Killarney wilderness area four hours northwest of Toronto, together with Colleen's three siblings Deirdre, Leelah and John and families.
Stunning scenery and a great reunion of the siblings - several parallels with the bringing together of Mish and his siblings for Hans and Jessie's Golden Wedding in Cape Town in December.
Mish's company, Praxis Computing is growing fast and thriving on its diet of high quality software support, IT service outsourcing and specialised software development and training - stretching Mish and offering exciting new challenges every day.
His part-time interest in the media took him to New York and Monte Carlo for short, exciting visits during the year, and has him on the radio hosting a computer talk show live in Johannesburg and Cape Town twice a week.
Colleen has been grappling with the challenges of providing educational materials for the turbulent school system in South Africa. She's a science and maths publisher for Macmillan South Africa and their whole industry is in the throes of massive change that is only partially being managed by education authorities trying to bring equity and quality to the shambolic mess inherited from the apartheid era. A highlight of her year was the completion of her intensive mini-MBA course at Wits University with great success.
Shingi has just finished Grade 4 and enjoys swimming, running and computer games. He and Mish run about 3 km at least once a week, and Shingi has won every race except two. Their first anniversary run is on 3 January 1998 - a year after John and Lynn Dawson introduced them to the joys of running at Hillandale Farm.
"One of the best things about our North American holiday was going to my cousin Zak's birthday party in New York," says Shingi. "After seeing a movie, we went to the park and played with lots of his American friends."
This year at school Shingi did a team project on farming with four friends, and they built a model maize farm. "Along with lots of information about maize farming, I brought a live maize plant and a friend brought maize bread. It tasted disgusting to me but lots of others liked it!"
Temba has been swimming a lot. He can swim one and a half lengths under water in the pool at the back of our garden. He has just finished Grade One where he liked Maths and he learned to read.
"My Dad just borrowed a Sony Playstation to review for his radio show," says Temba, "and it is nice. My best game is Crash Bandicoot 2."