February 12-17, 2012
Now she has been found: Bertina Engelbrecht
Bertina has a husband Francoise (Billa) and a brand new son, Noah.
Lyd and I are going to the California Grill, this trip, and will take a letter, and pictures, to Yoshie from Bertina
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| FEBRUARY AT DISNEY WORLD February 12-17, 2012 | ||||||||||||
| We're spending the week of Lyd's 63rd birthday at Bay Lake Tower at Walt Disney World. | ||||||||||||
| California Grill | ||||||||||||
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In 2000, a few months after my trip to South Africa, I met Bertina Basson working the dessert counter at the California Grill.
Her name tag said she was from Lamberts' Bay.
We had a lovely conversation and started communicating through email.
We saw her a few more times both at the California Grill and at Boma, where she is a "plank-owner", a member of the opening cast.
In March, 2001, she spent a weekend with us in Jacksonville.
In April, we did our final farewell and I took her to dinner at Jiko.
Shortly thereafter, her visa expired and she returned to South Africa.
We wrote a few more times and then her email went inactive.
I spent ten years trying to find her using web searches.
Occasionally, I'd get a hit in an Afrikaans language newspaper piece about where she was cooking.
Finally, in October, 2011, I found a reference to her parents at a church in South Africa. Now she has been found: Bertina Engelbrecht Bertina has a husband Francoise (Billa) and a brand new son, Noah. Lyd and I are going to the California Grill, this trip, and will take a letter, and pictures, to Yoshie from Bertina | ||||||||||||
| At about 1530, I went to the front desk customer service and was met by Sarah, from England. I explained to Sarah that I had an envelope for Yoshie and that Kelly Larkin, a CG manager, was expecting me. I needed someone to take me up. Thus begins our story. Sarah secured a pass card to the elevators and attempted to take me from 1 to 15 – nope. She went and got another pass key and we tried from 2 (CG check in) to 15 – nope. She went back and got a master key card from her manager and tried again – nope. At this point I mentioned that there ARE other elevators than the public ones. Sarah indicated that she is not authorized to use those. She tried the manager’s master key card two more times with the same result. We were on 12, and she led me across the lobby and into the service area. There, of course, the elevators worked fine, even without a master key card and we came out in the kitchen, closest to the doors to the stage kitchen. Sarah asked the location of the managers’ office and we proceeded past a dozen or so cooks, chopping. The managers’ office was empty. I asked three nearby choppers if Yoshie had arrived yet this evening and was told that she had switched days off and wasn’t coming in. I was in the process of rejecting trying to do this another night when a voice behind us asked what we were doing. Jason is a sous-chef. He went to the same high school as did our son-in-law, Sal, in Pennsylvania. I started to introduce myself and Jason stopped me and told me he surely knew who I was and confirmed that Yoshie had, indeed, swapped days off. He assured me he would deliver the envelope to Yoshie. During our retreat from the back kitchen, I asked if I could take a picture in the back kitchen and Jason said, “No.” So ends Act I of our little play. I’m not entirely sure if there will be an Act 2 as it is very difficult to get up there from the public side. Tonight is our only visit to the CG this trip. We’ll be going there again in April and I’ll try to confirm that Yoshie did, indeed, get the envelope. Perhaps, in the meantime, she’ll use your email or facebook to respond. | ||||||||||||
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