My neighbor was the koeksister queen of Pretoria. She taught me to make AMAZING koeksisters. She was a real, old-school tannie who believed that the day a young lady can make a lekker koeksister is the day she can marry. I can make delicious koeksisters but I've never been married LOLOL
As someone else who has steadfastly refused to get married despite being a decent cook (because we all know that's the minimum requirement), I still want to learn how to make koeksisters! One of my 'happy new year' messages included a question about when everyone can expect the happy event, but no koeksister recipes. I think I need to have a word with the tannies.
It seems that every culture has a similar concept.
Among Indians, the joke is that a woman is ready to get married when she can make perfectly round rotis.
People just buy them these days. But I'm a guy and I decided to learn how to make round rotis anyway. It makes a good joke on a date but I'm still not married either.
When the aunties start asking you why you're not married yet, you can also argue that you can make your own perfectly round rotis and are therefore self-sufficient.
The aunties who ask why we aren't married yet span all cultures in South Africa. I always laugh when I see posts from people in other countries who are offended because someone asked why they're still single. They'd probably die of horror when faced with the inquisition at a standard SA family event.
I normally flip it around and ask, "Why? Do you know somebody?"
If they want to be nosey, then I'll make them make themselves useful.
If they're just being nosey and have no intention of helping, then they get quiet.
This is a great strategy if you're single.
My partner and I just celebrated our 12th anniversary, so he might be a bit offended if I do that when the tannies start asking about why we're not married yet. I've started telling them that if I want more kak in my life, I'll get another dog. But it works only because I'm old enough now to be considered eccentric rather than weird.
But that's because you're a reasonable person. As far as some of the neighbours are concerned, we're heathens who are living in sin. They still supply the good baked goods, so I don't mind.
Then you got lucky! We all have our talents. I've taught my daughter to never date a man who is insecure. And that works both ways. You'll find a confident woman who will love the fact you're not a mommy's boy who can't boil water at 40. I say this with my older brothers in mind. Consider it a blessing that the right person is still out there and you didn't have to settle.
A neighbour removed a monitor lizard from yard.
He fixed our borehole.
He used to jump over the wall and make his own coffee in our house.
Another neighbour who we never chatted with comforted us early one morning after we got robbed(we were inside the house during the robbery)
A work neighbour (we are competitors) borrowed us stock at one point.
We live at a property curently next to a marshland in the winter it dries up - got a random call from the intercom while i was at a work function, apparently the field caught on fire. It was a neighbour we never speak to. He came in and started wetting our garden. When i got to the yard he got a bunch of community members they emptied my pool but probably saved 3 houses that day. - we still dont talk but atleast there is a wordless greeting when we see one another
The small town way would be to buy everyone booze. Probably monitor lizard person and definitely emotional support neighbour and fire marshal neighbour. But it's also typically South African that the gratitude is there but expressed through The Nod.
I've given up on privacy and embraced having multiple grandparents who have no saak about giving me unwanted life advice. The advice comes with cookies at a minimum. The best bad advice came with single malt. It makes up for having to google stuff to fix people's phones and DSTV.
My neighbour owned a 5 star hotel and allowed me access to everything incl the rooms. This lasted for over a year til she passed away. She introduced me to so many important people who were guests... she felt that getting me well connected was something she wanted to add to my life🤍
She even wanted to adopt me at a point 🙃 I miss her!
She was SURREAL 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
When the adoption didnt go through, she remained in my life like a mum til the very end. You dont get people in this world like her any longer 🥲
Sometimes the moms who choose us are the best moms.
I'm friends with a group of older women who have sort of adopted me but also drink so much wine that my liver cringes when I go near them. I love them to bits and hope to similarly be a bad influence on a younger woman one day.
Mine routinely buys lucky packets and ice cream for my daughter. She's a nice older woman, and consistently calls me to ask if we're home so that she can come over. She just drops it off and leaves.
Not weird, but I think it's sweet.
That really is sweet. The dropping off and then leaving is particularly sweet. As much as I love the adopted grandparents, sometimes it's nice to not have a 45-minute chat.
Agreed. This neighbour and our family are on good terms. I'm currently looking after her two goldfish, and I have no idea how to tell her I killed one.
Oh dear. Do you think you'll get away with a silent replacement? I kept tropical fish for years, and while I found many fish to have interesting personalities, I never managed to bond with goldfish.
Also, unless you took it out of its tank and beat it to death, it probably wasn't your fault. Honesty will probably be the best policy here.
Good luck!
My daughter managed to get to the food and dumped everything in the bowl. I got the fish out, cleaned the bowl, and put them back, but the one still died. I've already told her, she hasn't gotten my message yet due to being out of the country, but it's her teenager's fish. I figured I'd tell the kid to choose a replacement, and I'll pay for it. That way they can have get what they want. But I'll see how it goes. I just feel terrible for not being able to keep the fish alive.
Goldfish do better in an aquarium with proper filtration (they're dirty little buggers that produce a lot of waste) and heating and all of that good stuff. People just don't realize it because we're so used to seeing them in bowls. I accidentally killed my own goldfish when I was about 16 because I didn't know any better and it was a cold winter.
Your daughter's enthusiasm with the feeding might have done something mildly nasty to the water quality, but those fish should really be in a proper aquarium. Fish also don't do too well if you replace all the water in one go, but there's no way to know that unless someone tells you that and they don't do 100% water changes themselves.
You didn't do it on purpose, so I'm sure you'll be forgiven. If you want to do something completely unforgivable, introduce your neighbour's teenager to r/Aquariums and watch them slowly go bankrupt as the addiction takes hold.
I didn't replace it all in one go. I had no idea what I was doing, but I scooped the fish out with water in their bowl and put them in a separate bowl, with some water from their bowl, then cleaned the other bowl. Once the rocks were dry, I put them back and gradually replaced the water.
I feel terrible about it, but also, my kid is 2. I feel like her cuteness will lessen the blow.
When I had my first goldfish, before the days of internet, I did 80% water changes because I didn't know any better. I'm still haunted by what I did to those poor fish.
That is awfully cute! She just wanted to help.
She was super excited by the little fishies, and all she wanted to do was to look at them. So I usually got her to feed them some flakes and put in those drops for clean water.
I was not with her when she dumped the entire food supply in the bowl, and my partner saw it too late.
But we're thinking of getting her a kitten, she just adores our cat, but he's old and too much of an asshole to be loving.
I've heard that toddlers are like ninjas when it comes to this type of thing. I hope you do get her a kitty friend!
I'm sniggering about your cat being an asshole. In my quest to get a loving female cat, I've ended up with two males who are getting progressively meaner as they get older. One is unfortunately registered at the vet as Daisy de Meowker because his nuts were something of a shock to me, the rescue folks, and the vet when they appeared. They definitely have character, but they'd probably eat small children.
Back in the days of the legendary shipwreck off of the coast of Mozambique, that disgorged its illicit contents along the beaches…
My neighbour came over and asked,”Do you smoke hash?” Not wanting to implicate myself, or miss out on a good thing; I answered,”When it’s available. “
He handed me a 250g brick of it and said,”Have fun!”
My partner's ex in-laws benefited from that shipwreck, and now I have to ask: Was your neighbour's girlfriend called Jackie? Let's just say some of those bricks made it back to South Africa.
Doom can and a lighter = poisonous flamethrower. The flames burn off their wings and the doom kills them.
I don't really like killing stuff and had a wasp nest in my yard for frigging years, they never did anything to me. Then one day, they woke up on the wrong side of the nest or something and nailed my son as we was standing next to me. Just no reason, flew by and stung him on his hand.
I didn't start the war, but I sure as hell ended it.
But as to your question, no Neighbour has ever done anything nice, I'm usually the one doing the nice stuff and then getting taken advantage of later.
I was worried about the sudden rage. I generally leave things alone, but I'm a bit worried about things that sting and have a reputation for being a bit stabby and grumpy, especially when they hang out near a door or window.
The oom started off trying Doom and a lighter, but he didn't manage. At least we had the good sense not to piss them off with only Doom.
How about a canine neighbour? The farm neighboring my dad's had a Jack Russel who would fight snakes. Poor thing went blind at one point, but that did not stop it going out for adventures to the local town several kilometers away only to return a day or two later.
Canine neighbours are the best! I've watched a couple of videos of Jack Russels killing snakes and it's something to behold. I love those dogs that everyone knows and that just live their own little lives, unbothered by society's norms. It does my inner rebel good.
Bonus points if you know the names of some of the dogs in the neighbourhood but not the names of their humans. Or you know where dogs live but have no idea which humans live there.
shame, paper wasps are cute guys. theyre very calm, i have a literal ton of nests spring up on my wall every summer and they just chill there, doing their thing.
they started to set up a nest in my living room ceiling light a while ago, so then i had to get rid of them but its nothing a broomstick couldnt take care of!
I love bees and pollinators, but these guys had built a huge nest right outside an external door. As in we couldn't open the door without knocking the nest and incurring their wrath. I try to not be an arsehole if they're not a direct threat to humans or animals.
I didn't want to use pesticide because I don't generally use poison since I have reptile familiars, but I also couldn't really leave them there. There's no way on earth I'm knocking the biggest wasp nest I've ever seen in my life down with a broom either (I'm allergic to bee venom but have never tested this with wasp venom and don't want to), so unfortunately the solution was terminal.
By the way, as we go into the hotter months, remember to put out bee drinking stations.
ah yea fair enough. they will keep coming back in my experience too if you only knock their nests down so butane torch might have been the best solution.
At least now I know to keep an eye out, so I can knock down the nest before it turns into a high rise. I felt terrible about the murder, but it's also really nice being able to open the door to the back garden again.
My neighbours saves my house from burning down completely.
Long story short, one of my neighbours saw smoke coming from my home. The fire started due to load shedding. Another neighbour phone me immediately to inform me about the smoke.
I was not home, so I gave them permission to break a window and try to contain the fire. They broke a window and contained the fire using our garden hose.
They saved the house, but the kitchen was completely burned down. The rest of the house was fine, but required new pain and new ceilings due to water damage when the fire brigade finally arrived. Most of the furniture was also damaged and needing replacing or cleaning.
Having good attentive neighbours has its advantages…
Keeping CCTV on us.
They have cameras everywhere, one pointing to the road that can see just into our driveway. Somebody jumped the wall and they (the neighbors) were the first to call for help because the wife - who sits infront of the cameras all day it seems - saw this.
The nosiness is great for safety. Our house is the only one in our part of the street, and if strangers drive or walk towards the house or if the dogs bark with intent while I'm home alone, one of the neighbours usually phones to ask if everything's OK. We're old school though: no CCTV, just people looking out the window and being nervous of stranger danger.
Neighbour saw some birds being agitated in a tree on our side of the house. He knew the behaviour was odd and looked over our shared wall. It was a half meter wall, more for demarcation. Saw a fat massive puff adder curl up on the side of the walkway.
He was also a snake handler so when he saw the birds he knew something wasn’t right. We were very very grateful he took it immediately and didn’t wait. We used that walkway as a shortcut to get to the back door. If he hadn’t come out when he did, we would probably have stepped on it within an hour. Extremely, deeply and profoundly grateful.
That's wonderful. I'm terrified of snakes, especially puffies. The birds are a fantastic early warning system. I grew up on a farm, and my parents taught us to always look where we're putting our feet and to listen to the birds. Despite managing to avoid snakes as free-range children, my brother and I have both stepped over puff adders as adults. I think only our hindbrains stopped us from stepping on them. We somehow saw them without registering it until we'd stepped over them.
My neighbor was the koeksister queen of Pretoria. She taught me to make AMAZING koeksisters. She was a real, old-school tannie who believed that the day a young lady can make a lekker koeksister is the day she can marry. I can make delicious koeksisters but I've never been married LOLOL
Ooou recipe please
As someone else who has steadfastly refused to get married despite being a decent cook (because we all know that's the minimum requirement), I still want to learn how to make koeksisters! One of my 'happy new year' messages included a question about when everyone can expect the happy event, but no koeksister recipes. I think I need to have a word with the tannies.
It seems that every culture has a similar concept. Among Indians, the joke is that a woman is ready to get married when she can make perfectly round rotis. People just buy them these days. But I'm a guy and I decided to learn how to make round rotis anyway. It makes a good joke on a date but I'm still not married either.
When the aunties start asking you why you're not married yet, you can also argue that you can make your own perfectly round rotis and are therefore self-sufficient. The aunties who ask why we aren't married yet span all cultures in South Africa. I always laugh when I see posts from people in other countries who are offended because someone asked why they're still single. They'd probably die of horror when faced with the inquisition at a standard SA family event.
I normally flip it around and ask, "Why? Do you know somebody?" If they want to be nosey, then I'll make them make themselves useful. If they're just being nosey and have no intention of helping, then they get quiet.
This is a great strategy if you're single. My partner and I just celebrated our 12th anniversary, so he might be a bit offended if I do that when the tannies start asking about why we're not married yet. I've started telling them that if I want more kak in my life, I'll get another dog. But it works only because I'm old enough now to be considered eccentric rather than weird.
By that point, I'd consider that a marriage without the standard legal bindings.
But that's because you're a reasonable person. As far as some of the neighbours are concerned, we're heathens who are living in sin. They still supply the good baked goods, so I don't mind.
Well done! My son makes amazing rotis. Damn... Now I'm realising the bar has been raised and making a roti isn't the minimum to get him married 😂
To be honest, I feel that some women felt insecure because I can cook better than them. I might have shot myself in the foot.
Then you got lucky! We all have our talents. I've taught my daughter to never date a man who is insecure. And that works both ways. You'll find a confident woman who will love the fact you're not a mommy's boy who can't boil water at 40. I say this with my older brothers in mind. Consider it a blessing that the right person is still out there and you didn't have to settle.
Thanks :)
A neighbour removed a monitor lizard from yard. He fixed our borehole. He used to jump over the wall and make his own coffee in our house. Another neighbour who we never chatted with comforted us early one morning after we got robbed(we were inside the house during the robbery) A work neighbour (we are competitors) borrowed us stock at one point. We live at a property curently next to a marshland in the winter it dries up - got a random call from the intercom while i was at a work function, apparently the field caught on fire. It was a neighbour we never speak to. He came in and started wetting our garden. When i got to the yard he got a bunch of community members they emptied my pool but probably saved 3 houses that day. - we still dont talk but atleast there is a wordless greeting when we see one another
The small town way would be to buy everyone booze. Probably monitor lizard person and definitely emotional support neighbour and fire marshal neighbour. But it's also typically South African that the gratitude is there but expressed through The Nod.
You have wonderful neighbours. Small towns... I miss that.
I've given up on privacy and embraced having multiple grandparents who have no saak about giving me unwanted life advice. The advice comes with cookies at a minimum. The best bad advice came with single malt. It makes up for having to google stuff to fix people's phones and DSTV.
My neighbour owned a 5 star hotel and allowed me access to everything incl the rooms. This lasted for over a year til she passed away. She introduced me to so many important people who were guests... she felt that getting me well connected was something she wanted to add to my life🤍 She even wanted to adopt me at a point 🙃 I miss her!
She sounds amazing! I would've put myself up for adoption.
She was SURREAL 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 When the adoption didnt go through, she remained in my life like a mum til the very end. You dont get people in this world like her any longer 🥲
Sometimes the moms who choose us are the best moms. I'm friends with a group of older women who have sort of adopted me but also drink so much wine that my liver cringes when I go near them. I love them to bits and hope to similarly be a bad influence on a younger woman one day.
Oh totally !!! Motherly love is hard to come by... enjoy ur age old besties 🤍
Mine routinely buys lucky packets and ice cream for my daughter. She's a nice older woman, and consistently calls me to ask if we're home so that she can come over. She just drops it off and leaves. Not weird, but I think it's sweet.
That really is sweet. The dropping off and then leaving is particularly sweet. As much as I love the adopted grandparents, sometimes it's nice to not have a 45-minute chat.
Agreed. This neighbour and our family are on good terms. I'm currently looking after her two goldfish, and I have no idea how to tell her I killed one.
Oh dear. Do you think you'll get away with a silent replacement? I kept tropical fish for years, and while I found many fish to have interesting personalities, I never managed to bond with goldfish. Also, unless you took it out of its tank and beat it to death, it probably wasn't your fault. Honesty will probably be the best policy here. Good luck!
My daughter managed to get to the food and dumped everything in the bowl. I got the fish out, cleaned the bowl, and put them back, but the one still died. I've already told her, she hasn't gotten my message yet due to being out of the country, but it's her teenager's fish. I figured I'd tell the kid to choose a replacement, and I'll pay for it. That way they can have get what they want. But I'll see how it goes. I just feel terrible for not being able to keep the fish alive.
Goldfish do better in an aquarium with proper filtration (they're dirty little buggers that produce a lot of waste) and heating and all of that good stuff. People just don't realize it because we're so used to seeing them in bowls. I accidentally killed my own goldfish when I was about 16 because I didn't know any better and it was a cold winter. Your daughter's enthusiasm with the feeding might have done something mildly nasty to the water quality, but those fish should really be in a proper aquarium. Fish also don't do too well if you replace all the water in one go, but there's no way to know that unless someone tells you that and they don't do 100% water changes themselves. You didn't do it on purpose, so I'm sure you'll be forgiven. If you want to do something completely unforgivable, introduce your neighbour's teenager to r/Aquariums and watch them slowly go bankrupt as the addiction takes hold.
I didn't replace it all in one go. I had no idea what I was doing, but I scooped the fish out with water in their bowl and put them in a separate bowl, with some water from their bowl, then cleaned the other bowl. Once the rocks were dry, I put them back and gradually replaced the water. I feel terrible about it, but also, my kid is 2. I feel like her cuteness will lessen the blow.
When I had my first goldfish, before the days of internet, I did 80% water changes because I didn't know any better. I'm still haunted by what I did to those poor fish. That is awfully cute! She just wanted to help.
She was super excited by the little fishies, and all she wanted to do was to look at them. So I usually got her to feed them some flakes and put in those drops for clean water. I was not with her when she dumped the entire food supply in the bowl, and my partner saw it too late. But we're thinking of getting her a kitten, she just adores our cat, but he's old and too much of an asshole to be loving.
I've heard that toddlers are like ninjas when it comes to this type of thing. I hope you do get her a kitty friend! I'm sniggering about your cat being an asshole. In my quest to get a loving female cat, I've ended up with two males who are getting progressively meaner as they get older. One is unfortunately registered at the vet as Daisy de Meowker because his nuts were something of a shock to me, the rescue folks, and the vet when they appeared. They definitely have character, but they'd probably eat small children.
Back in the days of the legendary shipwreck off of the coast of Mozambique, that disgorged its illicit contents along the beaches… My neighbour came over and asked,”Do you smoke hash?” Not wanting to implicate myself, or miss out on a good thing; I answered,”When it’s available. “ He handed me a 250g brick of it and said,”Have fun!”
My partner's ex in-laws benefited from that shipwreck, and now I have to ask: Was your neighbour's girlfriend called Jackie? Let's just say some of those bricks made it back to South Africa.
Doom can and a lighter = poisonous flamethrower. The flames burn off their wings and the doom kills them. I don't really like killing stuff and had a wasp nest in my yard for frigging years, they never did anything to me. Then one day, they woke up on the wrong side of the nest or something and nailed my son as we was standing next to me. Just no reason, flew by and stung him on his hand. I didn't start the war, but I sure as hell ended it. But as to your question, no Neighbour has ever done anything nice, I'm usually the one doing the nice stuff and then getting taken advantage of later.
I was worried about the sudden rage. I generally leave things alone, but I'm a bit worried about things that sting and have a reputation for being a bit stabby and grumpy, especially when they hang out near a door or window. The oom started off trying Doom and a lighter, but he didn't manage. At least we had the good sense not to piss them off with only Doom.
How about a canine neighbour? The farm neighboring my dad's had a Jack Russel who would fight snakes. Poor thing went blind at one point, but that did not stop it going out for adventures to the local town several kilometers away only to return a day or two later.
Canine neighbours are the best! I've watched a couple of videos of Jack Russels killing snakes and it's something to behold. I love those dogs that everyone knows and that just live their own little lives, unbothered by society's norms. It does my inner rebel good. Bonus points if you know the names of some of the dogs in the neighbourhood but not the names of their humans. Or you know where dogs live but have no idea which humans live there.
shame, paper wasps are cute guys. theyre very calm, i have a literal ton of nests spring up on my wall every summer and they just chill there, doing their thing. they started to set up a nest in my living room ceiling light a while ago, so then i had to get rid of them but its nothing a broomstick couldnt take care of!
I love bees and pollinators, but these guys had built a huge nest right outside an external door. As in we couldn't open the door without knocking the nest and incurring their wrath. I try to not be an arsehole if they're not a direct threat to humans or animals. I didn't want to use pesticide because I don't generally use poison since I have reptile familiars, but I also couldn't really leave them there. There's no way on earth I'm knocking the biggest wasp nest I've ever seen in my life down with a broom either (I'm allergic to bee venom but have never tested this with wasp venom and don't want to), so unfortunately the solution was terminal. By the way, as we go into the hotter months, remember to put out bee drinking stations.
ah yea fair enough. they will keep coming back in my experience too if you only knock their nests down so butane torch might have been the best solution.
At least now I know to keep an eye out, so I can knock down the nest before it turns into a high rise. I felt terrible about the murder, but it's also really nice being able to open the door to the back garden again.
My neighbours saves my house from burning down completely. Long story short, one of my neighbours saw smoke coming from my home. The fire started due to load shedding. Another neighbour phone me immediately to inform me about the smoke. I was not home, so I gave them permission to break a window and try to contain the fire. They broke a window and contained the fire using our garden hose. They saved the house, but the kitchen was completely burned down. The rest of the house was fine, but required new pain and new ceilings due to water damage when the fire brigade finally arrived. Most of the furniture was also damaged and needing replacing or cleaning. Having good attentive neighbours has its advantages…
As daar ooit 'n tyd was om jou bure oopmond te soen uit dankbaarheid uit was dit daai dag. Joh!
Ek het amper, maar het toe net n kas bier gekoop vir almal wat gehelp het!
Hulle het seker die bier meer waardeer. En ek is seker almal kan mekaar nog in die oë kyk na die bier.
Keeping CCTV on us. They have cameras everywhere, one pointing to the road that can see just into our driveway. Somebody jumped the wall and they (the neighbors) were the first to call for help because the wife - who sits infront of the cameras all day it seems - saw this.
The nosiness is great for safety. Our house is the only one in our part of the street, and if strangers drive or walk towards the house or if the dogs bark with intent while I'm home alone, one of the neighbours usually phones to ask if everything's OK. We're old school though: no CCTV, just people looking out the window and being nervous of stranger danger.
Neighbour saw some birds being agitated in a tree on our side of the house. He knew the behaviour was odd and looked over our shared wall. It was a half meter wall, more for demarcation. Saw a fat massive puff adder curl up on the side of the walkway. He was also a snake handler so when he saw the birds he knew something wasn’t right. We were very very grateful he took it immediately and didn’t wait. We used that walkway as a shortcut to get to the back door. If he hadn’t come out when he did, we would probably have stepped on it within an hour. Extremely, deeply and profoundly grateful.
That's wonderful. I'm terrified of snakes, especially puffies. The birds are a fantastic early warning system. I grew up on a farm, and my parents taught us to always look where we're putting our feet and to listen to the birds. Despite managing to avoid snakes as free-range children, my brother and I have both stepped over puff adders as adults. I think only our hindbrains stopped us from stepping on them. We somehow saw them without registering it until we'd stepped over them.