Casaba Melons & Coffee Beans

I have not blogged much about Bryanston Organic Market even though we've been going there quite regularly since we moved here last December. In addition to the beautiful fruits and vegetables, artisanal cheeses and breads, specialty butchers, prepared foods and the all-important Italian delicacies purveyor Graziella, there is also a sizable craft market. Very good quality and very low pressure to bargain. I like that!

It was at Bryanston where Vince first found the Violet Moon Paper and Gourd Craft stall. We had been looking for a seagrass container to hold our cache of  coffee bean bags on the kitchen counter. But when he saw the carved, and in some cases painted, casaba melons and gourds at Violet Moon, our search took a different tack. The straw basket is probably better suited to bread anyway; the casaba melon will be more airtight, he reasoned whilst coveting one.



So we set about ordering up the right size casaba from the artist Mariette Erasmus. She thought she had one drying at home that would be both the perfect size and shape. We talked design, decided on a price and we were done.







To see pictures of Mariette making our casaba coffee holder and to see the finished product, like and check out her Facebook page. Search for Violet Moon Paper and Gourd Craft.

Elephant Tree Dreams

I have fallen in love with the fruit of the the Elephant Tree or more specifically the cream liquor that is made from it. Amarula is a cream liquor from South Africa made with sugar, cream and the fruit of the African Marula Tree which is also locally called the Elephant Tree. I prefer it just on the rocks but if I really want to get fancy I will make a Amarula Golden Glow sundowner with Peppermint liquor, Peach Schnapps, a teeny bit of vanilla ice cream, and fresh peach slices!

The Rhino Africa Blog, rhinoafrica.com, even recommends it served with coffee for an early morning game drive while on safari,

Amarula Coffee 

( www.rhinoafrica.com/blog/2011/07/15/our-favourite-african-holiday-drinks/)

Ingredients:

• 6 x 250 ml strong filter coffee
• 6 tots (25 to 30 ml each) Amarula liqueur
• 200ml whipped cream
• chocolate shavings

Pour the coffee into six cups and add liqueur. Spoon plenty of cream on top and sprinkle with chocolate.

Best enjoyed: on an early morning game drive when there’s a chill in the air. Wrap you hands around a big mug of this and woosh – heaven on earth.       


May have to give that a try!

Simple, South Africa and Banking, 3 words that do not go together

This post, another from my husband - guest blogger, business traveler, my personal private banker - will give you a little peek into the final frontier in Africa. No it is not the Kalahari. It is the banking "system." I guess they are so worried about bank fraud that they keep your credit and electronic funds transfer limits so niggardly low that when you need to do just about anything, you have to call up your private banker, in our case Omphe, and ask like Oliver Twist for "More please!" of your own money. 

Here is the scene. I have spent the last two days putting together some vacations for July, one to go skiing in South Africa and one for a couple of consecutive safaris in Kruger and Thornybush. All I needed was a money transfer to finalize the bookings. Vince flew in late last night from Cape Town and left this morning for Ghana via Namibia. Before he left, I asked him to do an electronic funds transfer (EFT) and pay for the bookings. He decided to bring all the info with him and do it at the airport while he waited for his flight to Windhoek. One EFT was to go to Tiffindell, the ski resort and one was to go to BushBreaks, a company that books game drives and accommodations for safaris all over Africa. Simple right? This is the email I received this afternoon from Vince.

"Just in case you run out of blog topics, here has been my journey today ... and in the interests of marital peace and quiet, kindly do not characterize in your mind any of this as the result of putting things off - I had 8 (count 'em, 8) time critical things to do this morning, none of them the result of procrastination, and they've all managed to get done, if not elegantly, at least timely... (From me, "I do not know where that came from! I really don't.")

So, I went to pay BushBreaks by credit card. But they don't take credit cards over the phone. No, they only take them by some secure CC service. So they had to send me a link. On to Tiffendell. I go to do the transfer, but our monthly transfer limit is just short of the amount needed to transfer. Credit card. No, you need to print and fill one out and scan etc.

So I write to you to get the EFT limit raised, and go back to BB. The link is in my Gmail, and I go on the site, try to pay by CC 3 times before I notice the little codicil on the bottom of the web page (which doesn't show up well on the mobile phone I'm using to do all this because by this time I'm on the shuttle bus between the gate and the airplane ... I'm flying to Accra on Air Namibia, did I mention that?) that says that the site only accepts "3d secured cards" whatever that is, and if I'm not in that program it's a simple matter to call the bank and get signed up. Simple, South Africa and Banking do not rest well in the same paragraph, let alone sentence.

So no go, and of course I can't transfer funds because of the aforementioned limit. On the plane, doors closing.

Get to Namibia. There's wifi in the airport transfer lounge! Buy a 30 minute voucher from Out of Africa, a store that mostly sells souvenirs and get online. Message from you and Omphe that the limit is raised. Go onto Standard Bank online. Pay Tiffendell whom I had set up before the plane. Getting cocky. Set up BB for payment. Groovin'. Then Standard Bank sends a one time password when you try to set up a new payee. They send it via SMS. To my cell phone. Which doesn't work in Windhoek. Stuck.

But wait, it says on the website that I can call Standard Bank for an alternative. So, over to the MTN shop in the transfer lounge. I get a prepaid SIM, put it in the phone, call Standard Bank, get a guy on the phone, go through the security checks which comprises reciting every number associated with my life, and he changes the SMS one time password to go to my Gmail instead. Groovin' again. Get through the beneficiary setup screen, go on Gmail, there's the OTP, go back to the Standard Bank screen, and the wifi voucher runs out.

So back to Out of Africa for another voucher (you're wondering so I'll say that they only come in 30 minute allotments) and then log in and go through it all again, and miracle of miracles, it works.

Living the dream :-)"

Simple, South Africa and Banking do not rest well in the same paragraph, let alone sentence. Gee I will have to remember that, as if I could forget ... Now I better lower those limits again with Omphe before someone frauds us.

Living in the Kalahari

Last night I went with my neighbor Nikki to see and hear Patricia Glyn and the Kruipers, the Bushman family with whom she shared an amazing adventure in the Kalahari. Nikki is from the Northern Cape which is near where Patricia's book What Dawid Knew is set.

Patricia is an eco-adventurer and author who has previously written books about her ascent of Mount Everest and about her 2000 kilometer walk in the footsteps of her Victorian ancestor on the trade route from South Africa to Victoria Falls.

It was on this last adventure that she met Dawid Kruiper and was inspired to trek with him and his family from their home in northwestern South Africa on the border of Namibia and Botswana through the bush deep into the Kgalagadi Transfrontier, ancient Bushman territory where they are denied access. With Patricia's help, the Kruipers were allowed to return to the land of their ancestors and thereby re-establish the link to their history and legacy.

This is an inspirational story with which any American who has an understanding of the history of our own native indigenous people can relate. Occupation, domination, suppression, betrayal, diaspora, genocide, and the denial of access to the very land that defines who they are, the aboriginal Bushmen's story is all too familiar. It may be worse actually because at least our Native Americans did not have to live through government-sanctioned apartheid.

But it is inspirational because recently the Bushmen have been gaining some political ground. After years of court battles, they have been given back some token farmland and hunting grounds to return to after hundreds of years of dispersal, struggle and oppression. They have been given a future.

rock art made by the Kruipers

But what Patricia has given them is much more important to the Bushmen; she has given them back their past, the opportunity for the elders to show their descendents where they come from and to tell them their stories in the very land which holds the secrets of their ancestors.

For more information about the Kruipers, the Bushmen and visiting the ‡Khomani San Heritage Park, visit khomanisan.co.za and you can go to patriciaglyn.co.za for more on Patricia Glyn.

KEEP CALM and GIVE IT HORNS!

I bought one of these silly things for the hood of my car. Don't laugh. I got one for you too for Christmas! It is a recycled plastic rhino horn being sold by the not-for-profit Rhinose Foundation with the proceeds going towards the effort to stop rhino poaching in South Africa and in the world. In my defense, Vince pointed one out to me on a car as we were driving around Joburg early on in our South African adventure saying, "You know we are going to have to get one of those!" I agreed. The hope is that everyone will feel that way, put one on their hood and drive it around the towns and countryside to remind people of the plight of the world rhino population.

I will spare you all the gruesome details. You can get those yourself by looking at any or all of the following websites, rhinoprotect.org, rhinoseday.com, savetherhino.org as well as many other wildlife conservation organizations' websites.

The only thing I will say is to repeat the fact that at the present rate of illegal rhino poaching, the rhino will be gone, obliterated, extinct in 17 years! A rhino is slaughtered for its horn every 10 hours, more than two a day and it is increasing!

To put that into perspective, I saw my first rhino in the wild in Kenya in 1979. At the time ours was the only land rover of the five that were part of our safari to see a rhino. We knew we were lucky! But that was almost 34 years ago, twice the life expectancy of the rhino with the current slaughter rate. We would have no hope of seeing one today if those rates were current in 1979 and had prevailed. Two times no hope to be exact!

We are going on our first safari here next month in Kruger and I am hoping to see a rhino as part of the Big Five. Fingers crossed!

mirror covers too!

Rockin' Zulu Mass

The 3pm Mass at Rosebank's RC Church of the Immaculate Conception is billed in the Church Bulletin as a Zulu Mass. Since Vince was still feeling a little under the weather from the Ghana Grip we slept in this morning and took in the 3pm Mass.

I wasn't sure if this was going to be a complete feathered headdress Shaka Zulu thing or what. What we got was even better, a regular Mass with a homily spoken in English but most of it spoken in Zulu and all of the responsorials sung in Zulu by a choir of what I think were nuns in blue capes and hats. They sounded awesome!

The procession of the gifts was accompanied by dancing and percussion. It was rockin'!!! What a joy! Listen for yourself ...

The Ghana Grip

Vince came back from this last trip to Ghana and Nigeria with a nasty flu. (I don't even want to think about it!) It is apparently going around here too because all the neighbors have been talking about it. It starts in the head with some serious post-nasal drip and quickly escalates into an upper respiratory virus and accompanying cough. He is mostly over it now except for a little sinusitis that just will not subside. I'm calling it the Ghana Grip.

No one in New Jersey is a stranger to sinus problems or allergies, least of all us, so I knew just what to get. I ran out to the DisChem, the local Rite-Aid / CVS / Drug Fair, and bought our old stand-by Sudafed Sinus. The formula allowed by the Federal Drug Administration here must be different or else the makers of Sudafed might export a different formula because it did not work like the magic I remember. It reduced the sinus swelling and headache, but did little to decongest poor Vince.

Our neighbor Daphne told me to get some muti instead. Muti? Muti is homeopathic or "traditional" medicine which along with vitamins actually has its own huge aisle in DisChem. I got him some Kali Mur which is a decongestant and as a backup I bought a combination muti for coughs and colds.

Hope it works because my next stop is Mama Fina and her black magic!