It's a wrap on the 2014-2015 Volvo Ocean Race!

cruising past the V&A on our way back to the RCYC after the in-port race

After an initial leg start in Alicante, Spain on October 11, 2014, the around the world Volvo Ocean Race finally finished on June 22, 2015 in Gothenberg, Sweden. Total race distance, 38,739 nm!

 







It was a blast to follow online and a special thrill to visit the Race Village, to see the boats in action and to meet some of the sailors while the race was in port at the V&A in Cape Town last November. 





The results:

Congratulations Abu Dhabi! Great effort Teams Alvimedica and SCA!

The Rose-winged Parakeet Project

The Rose-ringed Parakeet is an invasive parrot species which inhabits urban areas of South Africa. It is currently listed as a Category 2 invasive species in the National Environmental Management Biodiversity Act.

Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand are launching the Rose-ringed Parakeet Project to firstly locate parakeet roosting/breeding sites and secondly investigate the size and distribution range of the Rose-ringed parakeet population in Gauteng. This will be complemented by parallel studies (in association with European researchers and ParrotNet) focused on the behaviour of these birds in Gauteng. This will improve our understanding of the ecology and behaviour of the species in South African urban environments and ensure that informed decisions are made by policy makers regarding the status and management of this parrot.

Have you seen a Rose-ringed Parakeet? Do you live in Gauteng? Do you want to participate in this project? Then join their Facebook group.

All birders, citizen scientists, outdoor enthusiasts, and members of the public are invited to assist with and collaborate on the project by submitting sightings of these parakeets to the project database. They particularly need information on the exact location of permanent roosting and breeding sites as well as the number of parakeets seen.

Data submission guidelines: Please follow this link to the Google data form, fill it in, and submit. You may submit more than one form for the project. Please fill in all required fields as completely as possible.

If you have photos of Rose-ringed Parakeets, please send them to the Rose-winged Parakeet Project at urbanparakeets@gmail.com.If you have any questions or need further information please contact Craig Symes or Elize Fourie.

The Riel Thing

In July the Bushmans Kloof Nuwe Graskoe Trappers will be flying across the Atlantic to represent South Africa at the World Championships of Performing Arts in Los Angeles. (Coincidentally I will be in L.A. in late July too.)

A dozen pairs of feet, all clad in red veldskoene and white socks tap dancing and twirling. The young dancers who hail from the tiny town of Wupperthal in the Western Cape perform in farm clothes, headscarves and bonnets for the girls and feathered cowboy hats for the boys. 

Their dance is called the Nama Riel and it is being revived in festivals from the Kalahari to the Karoo. It’s a dance-descendant of the old Khoi and San fireside rituals and it became the Saturday Night Fever of sheep shearers and farm workers across the Kalahari and Great Karoo over many generations.

We first saw this unique form of dancing last March in the parade at the Cape Town Carnival. The crowd went wild as they made their way down the street stomping and spinning and kicking up dust -  or in this case, confetti. I was impressed and curious. I had never seen anything like it in South Africa. It reminded me of a cross between Creole Zydeco danced in New Orleans and Appalachian barn-dancing.

But it is a unique form of traditional South African dance. Ya know I love traditional dance! In Mpumalanga the traditional dances are the Gumboots and traditional Shangaan dancing; in Natal it's traditional Zulu and Gumboot. In Cape Town, it is Minstrel dancing, but in Bushmans Kloof in the Cederberg, it is the Nama Riel. The Riel is traditionally a courtship dance. The men imitate farm work and the movement of the animals, while the women imitate domestic tasks. A man might fling his hat up in the air and let it land on the ground; if a woman picks it up and places it on his head, she accepts his advance.

Best of luck in LA, Trappers! Hope to see you again when we're both back in South Africa.

Vladimir Tretchikoff

You see copies of his paintings everywhere in South Africa. Prints hanging on the walls in homes and restaurants, images on cushions and coasters in shops, and exotic women reproduced in jewelry and fashion. I even own a pair of earrings bearing one of his images. Vladimir Tretchikoff.

I had to find out what the connection was between this well-known Russian artist and South Africa. So I googled him. Here are some excerpts from the write-up in Wikipedia:

"Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff (Владимир Григорьевич Трeтчиков, 26 December [O.S. 13 December] 1913, Petropavlovsk, Russian Empire, now Petropavl in Kazakhstan – 26 August 2006, Cape Town, South Africa) was one of the most commercially successful artists of all time - his painting "Chinese Girl" (popularly known as "The Green Lady") is one of the best selling art prints of the twentieth century. 

Tretchikoff's "Xhosa Warrior" @ Valley Lodge

Tretchikoff was a self-taught artist who painted realistic figures, portraits, still life and animals, with subjects often inspired by his early life in China, Singapore and Indonesia, and later life in South Africa. His work was immensely popular with the general public, but is often seen by art critics as the epitome of kitsch (indeed, he was nicknamed the "King of Kitsch"). He worked in oil, watercolour, ink, charcoal and pencil but is best known for his reproduction prints which sold worldwide in huge numbers. According to his biographer Boris Gorelik, writing in Incredible Tretchikoff, the reproductions were so popular that it was rumoured that Tretchikoff was the world's richest artist after Picasso.

(Interestingly to me), international recognition came in 1937 when he was commissioned by the head of IBM, Thomas Watson, to represent Malaya in an exhibition of international art for which he produced the painting "The Last Divers."

When the Second World War spread to the Pacific in 1940, Tretchikoff became a propaganda artist working for the British Ministry of Information. In February 1942, Tretchikoff was on board a ship evacuating ministry personnel to South Africa. The ship was bombed by the Japanese, and the 42 survivors rowed first to Sumatra, which they found was already occupied by the Japanese Army. They then rowed to Java, which took 19 days, only to find that it too was occupied. Tretchikoff was imprisoned in Serang (where he spent three months in solitary confinement for protesting that as a Russian citizen he ought to be set free), and then was released and spent the rest of the war on parole in Batavia, (now Jakarta), where he worked under supervision of a Japanese artist. Here he met Leonora Schmidt-Salomonson (Lenka) who became his lover and one of his most famous models.

"Ndebele Girl" by Vladimir Tretchikoff

In 1946 he was reunited with his wife and their daughter Mimi in South Africa (they had been successfully evacuated on an earlier boat). He quickly became famous in South Africa thanks to a book that collected his portraits of Asian women and pictures of flowers, and held successful exhibitions in Cape Town and Johannesburg. His fame spread to the United States, where the Rosicrucians of San Jose invited him to launch an American tour. Around 57,000 people saw his show in Los Angeles and 52,000 in San Francisco. In Seattle, a rival show which included Picasso and Rothko was far less attended, to Tretchikoff’s satisfaction. Then he took his show to Canada, where he had an even bigger success. This was followed by a large exhibition in 1962 at Harrods in London where he decided that the Harrods art gallery was too small to accommodate the crowds. He requested and was granted the privilege of having his exhibition in the ground-floor exhibition space. He had more than 205,000 visitors to this exhibition. One of his British admirers, Leslie Rigall, bought a dozen of paintings and designed his new house in Windsor Great Park around them.

"Chinese Girl" by Vladimir Tretchikoff

His famous "Chinese Girl", a 1950 painting featuring Eastern model, Monika Pon-su-san, with blue-green skin, is one of the best selling prints of the twentieth century. Prints of the painting became widespread during the 1950s and 1960s, and the painting was featured in various plays and television programmes: Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), the original set of Alfie, with a drawn moustache in one episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus and an episode of Doctor Who. Other popular paintings of oriental figures were "Miss Wong," "Lady from Orient" and "Balinese Girl." He said of British prima ballerina assoluta, Alicia Markova, who sat for "The Dying Swan," that she was his most stimulating sitter.

Interest in his artworks underwent a resurgence in the late 1990s as part of a revival of 1950s and 1960s retro decor. In 1998 Sotheby's of Johannesburg sold an oil-on-canvas still life for $1800, double what they expected. In 1999 "Zulu Maiden" was expected to fetch $1800 but went for $10,000. In October 2002 another original fetched $18,000 and in May 2008, "Fruits of Bali" fetched $480,000 at Stephan Welz & Co in Cape Town. 

"The Dying Swan"

"Chinese Girl" was purchased at auction in 2013 by the Delaire Graff wine estate in Stellenbosch and is hanging in the art gallery there. The sale stands as the most money ever paid for a Tretchikoff painting -  nearly £1,000,000 at Bonhams, London. (The previous record was "Red Jacket," which fetched £337,250 in October 2012, also at Bonhams.)

my "Chinese Girl" earrings

He suffered a stroke in 2002 that left him unable to paint, and died on 26 August 2006 in Cape Town, his home since 1946. The South African National Gallery never acquired an original Tretchikoff because they did not "really regard Tretchikoff as a South African artist". In Esme Berman’s definitive book on ”Art and Artists of Southern Africa” he is dismissed in little more than two lines, under the heading ”popular artists.” Tretchikoff once said that the only difference between himself and Vincent van Gogh was that Van Gogh had starved whereas he had become rich.

Soon after his death the Tretchikoff Trust was established. The Trusts hosts workshops for teenagers throughout South Africa. The Trust is based on Tretchikoff's life motto "Express your passion, do whatever you love, take action, no matter what". 

The South African National Gallery in Cape Town

In 2011, the first Tretchikoff retrospective was held at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Curated by Andrew Lamprecht, it proved to be one of the most successful shows in the gallery's history."

Now I know. 

Icon jewelry

tribal jewelry hanging on the headboard

It really hasn't been all that hard to keep my promise to myself to not invest in expensive jewelry while living in South Africa. For one thing, it is a much more casual lifestyle here than the one I enjoyed in my old life in the US. And secondly, the tribal and craft jewelry here is so fun and festive ... and cheap! I have hardly felt the deprivation at all.












For instance I love collecting these icon necklaces. Made from photographic images framed in hammered tin, they pack alot of pizazz for a very small price.

Made in South Africa, the photographs feature iconic images like the ubiquitous Lucky Star pilchard can labels in these earrings. (Lucky Star Pilchards are the South African artistic equivalent of Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup cans in the U.S.)  Or these colorful shweshwe kanga cloth images adorning this necklace.

Nerson Mandela photographed by Jürgen Schadeberg

My favorite pieces though feature the photographs of  Jürgen Schadeberg, a South African photographer and artist. Jürgen Schadeberg was born in Berlin in 1931. In 1950, he moved to South Africa to rejoin his family and joined Drum magazine as official photographer and layout artist.

Schadeberg became a teacher and mentor to some of the most creative South African photographers of his time, like Bob Gosani, Ernest Cole and later Peter Magubane. As one of the few white photographers who photographed daily life among the black community, he became knowledgeable about black life and culture. As a result, he captured on film the beginnings of the freedom movement, the effects of apartheid and the vibrancy of township life.

Miriam Makema photographed by Jürgen Schadeberg

Schadeberg photographed many historic and pivotal events in the 1950s among them the Defiance Campaign of 1952, the 1956 Treason Trial, the Sophiatown removals of 1955, the Sophiatown jazz and social scene, the Sharpeville funeral of 1960 and pictures of Robben Island inmates. Some of the famous people he photographed include Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Trevor Huddleston and Govan Mbeki. He also documented the Fifties jazz legends such as Dolly Rathebe, Kippie Moeketsi, Thandi Klaasen and Miriam Makeba.

He was forced to leave South Africa in 1964 and went to London where he taught and curated photographic exhibitions, notably for the Whitechapel Art Gallery. In 1972, he returned to Africa where he accepted a position as photographer for Christian Aid in Botswana and Tanzania. In 1973 he travelled from Senegal and Mali to Kenya and Zaire to take photographs. In 1984, Schadeberg returned to South Africa. He continues to work as a photo-journalist as well as making documentaries about the black community.

The photographs are not limited to only South African icons either. This necklace - which I like to wear on Cinco de Mayo and Dia de los Muertos - features the iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.







 

photo from the African Queen Facebook page

I cannot read the very tiny stamped maker's mark on the back of the necklaces so I can't give credit to the actual jewelry designer. But I bought them all at either Art Africa in Parkview or African Queen in Benmore. Oh, I have to find that Tretchikoff necklace!












PS I went back to Art Africa to buy some more necklaces for gifts and I found out the jewelry designer's name is Beverley Price. And you can special order!

A South African Midwinter Night's Dream

Johann made his first pizza! Biltong of course!

Our guests arrived promptly at 4:00. Vince had already started the wood fire in the fire basket about two hours earlier in order to make enough coals for the braai later and the spareribs were slowly smoking away on the Weberbraai. This was going to be a proper South African braai - but with an American twist.

We opened a bottle of Namaqua Red Muscadel to start the evening. Then we set about preparing the starters. The pizzas were a group effort. Everyone designed and made their own mini-pizzas in the convection oven. Vince deep-fried buffalo wings on the the skottel outside and we served them with crunchy crudite and a house-made blue cheese and buttermilk dressing. South African cheese and biltong sat side by side with American BBQ spareribs. Butternut squash soup was served in warm in mugs to be sipped around the fire basket.

dozens of candles and the fire basket provided plenty of light

Then promptly at 6:00, the lights went out. Level 2 load-shedding had apparently been initiated just about the time our guests arrived but we had not been checking our phones for alerts. TIE.

Vince's iPad provided continuous music via the inverter

Luckily we had planned to eat and sit outdoors. We had already used the ovens inside for everything we really needed for our meal. (Truth is we could have baked the pizzas in the Weber if necessary too.) We had baked the malva pudding and pot bread earlier that afternoon. The gas heaters were already all set up outdoors anyway to keep us warm during our South African midwinter night's dream dinner under the stars.

The fire basket was blazing. We had faux fur throws and hot water bottles at the ready. The candles were all out and had already been lit around the edge of the garden for atmosphere. Now they would be doing double duty and actually provide the light we needed to carry on with our dinner party.

braai by flashlight

At 7:30, Vince put the meat on the braai - Lamb, beef, chicken, and boeries. Asparagus on the braai too. 

deep fry skottel in the garage

He deep-fried the pork belly on top of the gas skottel to complete the mixed grill main course. I brought out the already prepared Greek salad and we dined al fresco as planned.






 

a romantic candlelight dinner just as we planned

Then at 8:30 just as surprisingly as before, the lights went back on. Just in time to grind some coffee beans and warm up the Amarula custard for the malva pudding. (Once again, if necessary, we did have enough ground coffee on hand and we could have warmed the custard on the gas bistro stove.)

And luckily since our guests were South African and unfortunately well-acquainted with fickle Eskom load-shedding, there was no need to explain and apologize about our lack of electric service. We hardly even noticed. It was a perfect South African dinner party!

Besides, there are other ways to keep warm on a midwinter night!

The Local Grill

photo from The Local Grill FB page

We have dined at The Local Grill in Parktown North more than a dozen times - including last night - and yet I have never blogged about it. I guess I have taken it for granted. My bad. I will now attempt to right that wrong.

The Local Grill is one of Vince's favorite steak restaurants in Joburg. I love it too but for different reasons. He comes for the steak but The Local Grill is so much more than beef. It has a great "other" menu with delicious salmon and calamari offerings. The vegie sides are prepared to perfection. Crunchy garlic green beans and light and delicious onion rings! Their wine list is superb and they are very dog-friendly. Lou & Serge especially love coming with us to The Local Grill 'cuz they know they'll be getting Vince's leftover marrow bones from his starter when we get home!

in the kitchen with colleagues from African Parks and IBM

Ask for a tour of the kitchen if you want to get up close and personal with your entree.

set up for a demo and dine dinner in the kitchen

You can tour the meat locker too!

photo from The Local Grill FB page

They cook their steaks on Himalayan salt blocks!

me and the chef in the kitchen at La Mirande

They also offer private cooking demonstrations and dining in their kitchen. We have never done it at The Local Grill - that takes advanced planning - but we did do a kitchen demo and dine once in Avignon at La Mirande. They are super fun! Someday soon I promise I will organize a night in the kitchen for friends at The Local Grill.

this is what a kitchen demo and dinner looks like at The Local Grill (photo from The Local Grill FB page)

the private dining room and wine cellar (photo from The Local Grill FB page)

They also have a private dining room / wine cellar where a group of 8 or more can dine. Like the fabulous Cellar in the Sky in the old Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of New York's fallen World Trade Center. RIP WTC. :( Someday we will have to do a dinner there too.

Two more dinners at The Local Grill coming up!

Navigation by Springbok

When my niece Jill was visiting South Africa, she noticed that the navigation icon on my Garmin GPS was a boring automobile. How obvious. "Do you want a rhino with a blue horn instead?" she asked. Hell yeah!

are you following me?

Unfortunately the Garmin rhino icon she was referring to is now extinct. Hopefully not a metaphor for my beloved rhinoceros! She found me a deer icon instead to download in its place which I pretend is a springbok or a tsessebe when I'm driving in South Africa.

Save the rhino, Garmin!

PS She also changed my Garmin voice command to a squirrel "voice," but since we are in Africa I think it sounds more like a meerkat. Yum yum!

Explorers Club creds

Finally got my credentials and member's lapel pin from The Explorers Club!

And in true explorer fashion, they had quite an adventure getting here. They traveled from the headquarters in New York to Denver, Colorado by mail and then from Denver to Washington, DC to Frankfurt, Germany to Johannesburg, South Africa via courier (my niece Jill.)

The club had tried mailing them directly to my post office box in Benmore, but TIA. Still haven't received them. And probably never will.

(Hope this doesn't break any rules, but a lapel pin is not really my style so I had it made into a charm for my travel charm bracelet.)

High Tea @ the Intercontinental

I heard that the Intercontinental Hotel at OR Tambo Airport serves a mean High Tea. And we arrived at the airport to see Jill off for her flight back to the USA with plenty of time to check the rumors out.

We ordered the Sweet & Savoury combination which included a nice array of pastries, scones, quiches and sandwiches. The scones were served the South African way - with cheddar cheese, clotted cream and lemon curd - so we chose rooibos tea to drink with our South African High Tea.

It was a very civilized way to end Jill's visit to South Africa!

Giraffes with Jill!

Welcome to South Africa, Jill!

When I asked my niece Jill which animal she most wanted to see when she arrived in South Africa, she said "the giraffe." Giraffes are easy. They are plentiful in SA and they do not have any natural predators to speak of. Even the lion will not take on the giraffe's potential fatal kick in most circumstances. 

Jill on horseback with a giraffe in the Waterberg

Giraffes @ Ant's Nest

And we saw giraffes almost immediately as we set out on our first horseback safari at Ant's Nest. A tower of giraffes - that's what a group of giraffes is called! - even came out to say goodbye to Jill on the last ride before we left.

Jill rode an elephant at the Elephant Sanctuary!

Even though we saw plenty of her requested giraffe, I still wanted Jill to see as many other African animals as possible, both in the wild and in sanctuaries. And we did. We saw rhinos, zebras, warthogs, vervet monkeys, baboons, blesbok, waterbuck, impala, gemsbok, eland, sable, nyala, wildebeest, lilac-breasted rollers and yellow hornbills in the Waterberg; lemurs at the Monkey Sanctuary and African ellies at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hartbeespoort; dassies on Table Mountain and more dassies along with plenty of penguins at the Boulders penguin colony in Simonstown; common and bottlenose dolphins, humpback whales, dusky sharks, sardines, and loggerhead turtles in the Indian Ocean off Port St. John, as well as cape cormorants, subarctic skuas, cape gannets, southern giant petrols, and albatrosses in the sky overhead. We even saw the very rare cape parrots in Port St. Johns. Good spotting, Jill!

Walking with lions!

At Ukutula we walked with lions and interacted with baby cheetahs, (Asian) tigers, hyenas, lion cubs and orphaned caracals. And we saw crocodiles basking on the riverbank.

Giraffes @ Ukutula

We saw more impala, nyala and wildebeest on our lion walk at Ukutula and their resident giraffes even came out to say hello to Jill too!

HRC with Lou & Serge

Of course I couldn't let Jill leave without seeing South Africa's finest dachshunds, Lou & Serge. We had dinner with them at the HRC and Jill had their pictures taken with Nelson Mandela's statue in Mandela Square.

HBD Nelson & Jill!