Friends are blunt. Sometimes the most simple questions are the most difficult to answer. A Facebook friend posed a straightforward question:
“Is this book available in Canada?”
It’s not the done thing to refer friends to your FAQ. it’s about as friendly as giving a long-term prisoner a dictionary as reading material.
The short answer, for those of you who have found your way here – and read material more interesting than dictionaries is that, much like the Internet, The Cape Aflame – Cape Town’s Dance with Fire is available in Canada.
Sort of.
Virtually.
The Cape Aflame is available through our website at a special introductory price – to South Africans and the world. However, there’s an obstacle to processing international orders in the normal fashion, namely that the price charged international customers is based largely on delivery costs.
We’ve therefore had to look at quoting our international customers on a per order basis (taking into account the cost of delivery to each customer) and we’ve set up a mechanism to do this.
If you’d like to buy a copy, all you need do is place to what amounts to a request for a quotation through our website. You do this by clicking on the Foreign Orders button on the home page and submitting your contact and order details. We then find the most cost-effective courier company for your order, add the price of delivery to the book and send you the quotation. If you’re happy with the quoted price, we then process your order manually and fulfill it by courier and you settle the invoice.
Pretty weird, eh? Not the conventional way. But, then again, we do tend to do things a bit differently around here. As CBC reports on the above video:
In a work camp tucked away in the bush of the boreal forest northeast of Slave Lake, a concert is going on.
A dozen young, fit firefighters from South Africa — dressed in hard hats, coveralls and heavy workboots — start their day by dancing, clapping and singing.
It’s a wake-up call for the Canadian crews, many of who pull out their cell phones to record the acapella offering.
[…]
“The [Working on Fire (Wof)] program was designed a dozen years ago to alleviate poverty and give young people in that country a job and a purpose in life.
Now more than 5,000 firefighters, like Constance Mavuso, are trained to international standards and ready to travel anywhere in the world.
One of Mavuso’s jobs in northern Alberta is to hunt for smoldering hot spots and snuff them out. However, Canada’s wildfires are not what the 28-year-old is used to.
“Mostly we fight grass fires,” she said.
While in Canada, visiting fire crews are tackling stubborn ground fires — ones that burrow into the peat and underbrush, just waiting for a gust of wind to breath life into the buried embers.
Workers from South Africa, Mexico, United States, Australia and New Zealand answered the Alberta government’s call for assistance during this busy fire season.
Mavuso and a couple dozen other workers have spent the last month in the forests of northern Alberta and B.C..
They’ve learned about our climate, bugs and fire-fighting techniques. Mavuso says she is thrilled to be given the chance to help protect nature.
The South African crew will return home this week, in time for the start of their own fire season in the east of their country, singing as they go.
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