In 15 years time I�ll be spending my retirement winters in SA. I should get my house started in a couple of years, the plot is already there.

I am a goddamn optimist.

Or just dumb?

cewe- I think about the same for retirement, but perhaps renting in either Moz, Namibia or RSA. If your buying, well......

I lost my heart to Africa, in the Congo in 1963. I lived there a year with my dad. He was stationed there to help the Belgins teach the African soldiers how to drive and handle heavy equipment. During thaty year I went to the Embasy schools. A junior officer was a hunter and took me with him on short outings where he shot a lot of game. I watched him kill a large elepahat that we tracked for two days. It was a time of dreams and a time of remembering.
I had always dreamed of living out some of my retirement time in Africa. Zimbabwe was my dream with Zambia next. Now it seems that as I start to make the final turns in my life, I won't be able to live the dream that was AFRICA!

Oh how I love Africa, but when it gets down to the nut cutt'en, I will have to stay in the good old USA, I love this country, besides they don't rope in Africa, something basically wrong with a culture that doesn't rope cattle for fun....

Susan and I are looking forward to seeing you again in Dallas. There are so many interesting things you have done. You are so much like a good friend of mine. Cody has done a lot of big game hunting in his life and those experiences can never be repeated. He has a grand slam of American sheep as well as most of the other major species of America on his walls. That kind of hunting now requires a kings ransom worth of money to attempt much less to be successful at. See you in Dallas.

Ray,
Following on your comment about grit, the question is often asked: What exactly, is a Boer. Directly translated a boer is a farmer but Boer, meaning a specific, culturally connected group of people, is something else.

The answer was given more than a century ago by a British historian in a book, "The Great Boer War."

On page one, chapter one it starts as follows:

THE GREAT BOER WAR
Chapter 1
The Boer Nations


Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and fortune and left their country forever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman and the rider. Then, finally, put a fine temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer - the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain. Our military history has largely consisted in our conflicts with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated us so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles.

From: THE GREAT BOER WAR by A. CONAN DOYLE - 1901