Bye bye Bookworms!

Delicious and festive pot luck Christmas lunch with the International Women's Club of Johannesburg Bookworms book club.

savories

sweets

My Easy Pea-sy Pea Salad Recipe
Ingredients:
2 (16 oz packages of frozen petite peas)
6 oz. smoke-flavored almonds, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 cup mayonnaise, or more to taste
ground black pepper to taste

Place frozen peas in a colander; rinse under cold water until thawed. Drain and transfer to a large bowl. Add almonds and onion; mix well. Fold mayonnaise and black pepper into the pea mixture until evenly coated. Cover and refrigerate until serving. Enjoy!

Four Years in Paradise

It's been four years since we started the process of moving to South Africa. Almost Four Years in Paradise. And now our Great Migration to Africa is coming to an end.

But we're not returning to the USA quite yet. We are off to our next adventure in ...

Singapore!

Yep, we are on the move again. A new city and a new continent! I have mixed feelings about it actually. I have really enjoyed our time here in Africa. As a matter of fact I've loved it! And I haven't seen or done nearly everything I wanted to do while we were living here. There are still some 550 wine estates alone that we haven't visited! And I never made it to Ethiopia or Madagascar as I'd hoped. (But guess what? They will still be here for a return visit.)

But we have had some incredible experiences and exciting adventures. We have seen many natural wonders and marvelous forces of nature and we've had up-close and personal moments with rhinos, penguins, meerkats, nesting turtles, gorillas and sharks. We have explored the heavens above and crawled deep below the earth. We have challenged ourselves in the sky, on the land and in the sea. We have scaled a few hills and high mountains, but we still know our limits!

This has been a unique time to be living in South Africa too. In Johannesburg, we have seen first-hand the amazing renaissance happening right now in the Joburg CBD and while living in Cape Town, we have seen it bloom as a world class design and tourist destination. We have been here for so many important historical events like the passing of Nelson Mandela and the discovery of Homo naledi as well as historic cultural events such as Trevor Noah taking over the Daily Show in the USA and the first ever performances in South Africa by Bruce Springsteen and Dave Matthews.

We have really tried to "dig" into the diverse cultural landscape here, whether it be Ndebele, Zulu, Akrikaner, Cape Malay, Indian, English, Khomani San, or even the lost culture of Mapungubwe. We have met so many inspirational, amazing and  lovely people along the way and even made dear friends. It will be sad to say goodbye but saying au revoir is still better than if we hadn't made their acquaintances altogether, n'est-ce pas?  (I think so.) We have expanded our pan-African palate and shown some South Africans how it's done where we hail from. We have tried to fit in ... but we know who we are! And there was just enough art, music, theatre and dance to keep this self-professed culture whore relatively satisfied.

kangaroos!

wombat!

I will especially miss having the African bush at our doorstop. We will be trading in our beloved safaris to see the African Big Five - Rhinos, Lions, Cape Buffalo, Elephants and Leopards - for new safaris to see what I am calling the Asian Big Five plus Orangutans - Sumatran Rhinos, Tigers, Water Buffalo, Asian Elephants, Snow Leopards plus Orangutans. Living in Africa has certainly changed me and I hope I've changed Africa a little for the better with my conservation volunteering.

Vince in Phuket

But the good news is there is still much of Asia left for us to explore. Vince's beat will stretch from India in the west to Japan in the east, China in the north to New Zealand in the south. We will get a deeper understanding of the cultures in the parts of Asia we have already visited and there are plenty of new destinations to explore. (For instance, I have always wanted to go to Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Borneo - all a stone's throw from Singapore.)

Not to mention some of the best scuba diving in the world! (Good thing Vince got all his paperwork in order for the Sardine Run in June and Zanzibar in September.) For me, Asia has whales! And Singapore is only a Pacific Ocean away from our sons on the west coast of the United States with plenty of islands in between for us to meet up for holidays. Christmas in Hawaii next year?


Blogging has been a great experience and the results will serve as a comprehensive journal of our time here in Africa. But I will definitely not be blogging from my new digs in Singapore. For one thing, just about the time I am settled in Singapore I am committed to embark on a new blog where I will chronicle my Antarctica adventure as part of the 2041 Foundation's International Antarctic Expedition in March.

And secondly, I won't need it. I started The Great Wildebeest Migration blog to help me manage my own feelings about pulling up stakes and moving to the other side of the world far away from family, friends and the familiar. I am not in the same place moving from South Africa to Singapore, both literally and figuratively. So I will wind this blog down over the next couple of months and say good-bye to blogging about my expat adventures as well as living in South Africa!

We're off on our next adventure on the "Road to Singapore."

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Jane, Chris and I @ 44 Stanley in the Joburg CBD

We have been entertaining some American visitors since Thursday. Chris and Jane stayed on in Sandton over the weekend after a two week trip through South Africa and a jaunt up to Victoria Falls. They picked the best time and the worst time to visit Sandton and see more of Joburg.

Joburg rolled out the purple carpet for our guests!

Firstly, the Jacarandas are in full bloom. We took them to the Four Seasons Hotel The Westcliff to take advantage of its fabulous view overlooking the Jacarandas of the Parks and Joburg below.

And for their sundowners of course - or in this case, clouddowners.

Sterkfontein Cave

And the Homo naledi exhibition - which was originally scheduled to close on October 11 - was serendipitously extended until October 18 which allowed Chris and Jane to experience this other incredibly ephemeral opportunity. These two circumstances made it the best of times.

They were there!

In one of her previous lives, Chris ran a consulting company back in the USA which helped plan educational exhibits for museums. We introduced Chris to the Rising Star Expedition's Lindsay Hunter who is in charge of designing the National Geographic visual lab experiences for Homo naledi at Maropeng.

But it was also the worst time to visit Sandton. Their visit landed right smack dab in the middle of the EcoMobility World Festival in the Sandton CBD and Jane and Chris stayed right smack dab in the middle of EcoMageddon Ground Zero, the Protea Balalaika Hotel. We had to drive in and out of Ground Zero several times over the long weekend and with all the road closures, detours and restrictions, it was very painful. The worst.

How do we know Chris? Chris was Vince's High School Senior Class English teacher! She was a huge influence on his life and he has seen her and kept in touch with her all these years. She recognized his writing ability amongst the football jocks in the back row and according to Vince, "mercilessly edited and critiqued his work." Two published books as well as several chapters written for other authors' works, countless papers, magazine and journal articles, speeches and talks later, he is in Cape Town right now being interviewed for an upcoming TED Talk documentary on cognitive computing. (see the finished product below!) Thanks Chris!

I wonder if they read A Tale of Two Cities that year. It would have been prophetic. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; ... " - Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities

 

It's a Crime!

My South African book club loves crime novels. And they really love the crime novels written by Deon Meyer, one of (if not the) South Africa's most celebrated authors of that genre. I have read a few of Mr. Meyer's 11 published novels and I have to agree, they are a good read. 
 

Deon Meyer writes in Afrikaans and his novels have a true South African sensibility. They are currently translated into more that twenty languages - including English of course - and his books have a large international following. In fact, when I went to listen to the Sunday Times Talk with Michele Magwood on Wednesday night to launch his latest novel Icarus, it was on the eve of Mr. Meyer's promotional book tour through Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. 

wine and cheese reception on the lawns of Kingsmead

The Times Talk was part of the annual Kingsmead Book Fair and was held on the lovely Melrose campus  of  Kingsmead College.

Along with being very good reads and thrilling thrillers, Mr. Meyer's novels retain much of their sense of Akrikaan-ism. He leaves many phrases and idioms untranslated and it is a very effective way to maintain that sense of place in his books. (And just in case you have trouble deducing the translations of the Afrikaans from their place in the sentence or paragraph, he does include a glossary in the back to help!) Mr. Meyer was born in Paarl, grew up in Klerksdorp in the gold mining region of Northwest Province, and currently lives in Stellenbosch.

Icarus is set in and around Cape Town and the Cape Winelands and involves the hit on the South African developer of the notorious Alibi smartphone application which supplies real-time alibis for philanderers and cheating spouses. Sounds intriguing!

Searching for Sugar Man ... the book

First it was the 2012 Academy Award-winning documentary film and now it is a book!

On Monday night we went to the book launch of Sugar Man. The Life, Death and Resurrection of Sixto Rodriguez by Craig Bartholomew Strydom and Stephen "Sugar" Segerman, the two fans whose search for Sugar Man after apartheid led to Rodriguez's performing live on stage in South Africa for the very first time in 1998.

The book launch was held at one of Vince's and my favorite tapas restaurants in Cape Town, La Parada (Order the croquetas de jamon!) There, the authors were interviewed by Marianne Thamm, herself an author as well as a columnist, satirist, and the assistant editor of Daily Maverick. After a conversational interview with Marianne, Craig and Sugar entertained questions from the audience and then signed copies of their book.

The authors (seated) with Thamm in the middle at La Parada

We absolutely loved the movie and we are big fans ourselves of Rodriguez's music as a result of watching it. But while director Malik Benjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man chronicled the book authors' odyssey to find out what had happened to their musical hero from the 1970s and 80s, their book presents a much bigger picture of the Rodriguez saga.

The book is broken up into four parts - The Mystery, The Man, The Music and The Movie and it outlines three separate journeys and the obstacles and triumphs that each presented: Rodriguez's struggle to make a life from his music, the search by two fans to find him, and Benjelloul's pursuit to bring the story to life on the screen.

And apparently there is talk of bringing the movie-turned-book to the stage in the form of a Broadway musical! Produced by Hal Prince no less! What?

Rodriguez is scheduled to perform live on stage again in South Africa next year but unfortunately we won't be here to see him. So the book is going to have to suffice. Until the Broadway musical, that is.

Cemeteries!

the cemetery in Jerusalem

I have a dark confession to make. I love to visit cemeteries!

Not all cemeteries. Just the cool ones. By that I mean cemeteries with history or famous inhabitants, beautiful grounds or remarkable architecture. I always check to see if there is a cool cemetery in any city we visit. Pere-Lachaise in Paris, Highgate in London, La Recoleta in Buenos Aires, the D-Day Landings Memorial cemeteries in Normandy, the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, the "new" Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem, the Novodevichy in Moscow and the Alexander Nevsky in St. Petersburg.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Boston

I am not macabre or anything. It's just that you can tell a lot about a city and the people who lived - and died - there by their cemeteries.

Autumn is the best time to visit NE!

The USA has some great cemeteries too. The simple and somber Colonial and Revolutionary War cemeteries in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, the grandiose cemetery statues and mausoleums in the Southern cities of New Orleans and Savannah. Forest Lawn in LA, Green Wood in Brooklyn and Mt. Auburn in Boston. The military cemeteries like Arlington National Cemetery and Gettysburg. (I especially like to visit cemeteries around Halloween - okay, that's a little macabre!)

Yet I hadn't visited any cemeteries in Africa since moving to Johannesburg ... until now when the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation offered a tour of the Braamfontein Cemetery as part of their program over Heritage Weekend. I had read about Braamfontein Cemetery in Lost and Found in Johannesburg, Mark Gevisser’s wonderfully written memoir about growing up in Joburg during apartheid and was eager to visit it myself.

The Cullinan family plot

Braamfontein is the oldest existing municipal cemetery in Johannesburg. There are many famous family plots there - like the Cullinan family plot  - and there are mass graves from some of Joburg's most notorious disasters - like the Dynamite Explosion of 1896. Most of the cemetery is broken up by religious denomination. Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, and the large Jewish burial ground described in Mark's book. There are even crematoriums and ash burial grounds for the Indian population as well. (I didn't see any Catholic graves but I assume the Catholics are buried in Catholic cemeteries. I must look into that.)









I didn't recognize many of the famous people buried in Braamfontein but famous graves are not the only reason I visit cemeteries. I like to look for symbolic elements on the older grave sites.

the clasping hands indicate a final farewell

flying hourglass = the swiftness of time's passage

the draped urn is a visual of the separation of the living and the dead

the dove indicates peace and purity; usually found on the grave of a woman who died young

angels are guides to heaven

a column represents mortality

a woman carrying a cross = faith

a woman holding an anchor = hope or eternal life

lilies = purity, chastity

lamb symbolizes innocence; they are usually found on the tombs of children

wreaths symbolize victory over death

We were warned not to visit the cemeteries in Gauteng unaccompanied. There was evidence of  squatters and the homeless in Braamfontein and it is dangerous to venture in alone or unguided.


 





 

So I am waiting for an escort to visit the Heroes' Acre Church Cemetery in Pretoria where along with the tomb of Paul Kruger, you will find the graves of Harry "Breaker" Morant and Peter Hancock,  two of the court-martialed defendants immortalized in Breaker Morant, the 1980 Bruce Beresford film set in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War.

One of the fierce women from the SH2015 Gaza Gray archaeological dig in Kruger happens to be a South African "cemetery expert" and knows exactly where their graves are situated. Maybe we can visit on Halloween, Leonie?

Tokoloshe

I checked out three books to read last month from my Bookworms book club mobile library. The Tears of Dark Water by Corbin Addison, The Prophesy of Bees by R.S. Pateman, and this lttle ditty, Tokoloshe Song by Andrew Salomon.

I was very familiar with the settings in Tokoloshe Song - Cape Town, Mossel Bay and Nieu Bethesda - but not with the species of the title character, the tokoloshe.

Tokoloshes have a special place in South African folklore. Somewhere between a bogeyman and a gremlin, there are a number of theories about exactly what a tokoloshe is.

In Zulu mythology, a tokoloshe is a dwarf-like water sprite. It is considered a mischievous and evil spirit that can become invisible by drinking water. Tokoloshes are called upon by malevolent people to cause trouble for others. At its least harmful, a tokoloshe can be used to scare children, but its power extends to causing illness and even death upon the victim.








Another variation is that the tokoloshe resembles a zombie, poltergeist, or gremlin, created by South African shamans who have been offended by someone.














One  particularly strange tokoloshe practice is its rumored propensity to bite off sleeping people’s toes. (!) According to legend, the only way to keep the tokoloshe away at night is to put a brick beneath each leg of one's bed.

In any case, one can only get rid of a tokoloshe completely by calling in a sangoma who has the power to banish him from the area. Good thing I kept Mama Fina's contact information!

That Time I Was Forced Into Piracy ...

me and Captain Ali

After seeing the dhows sailing around our hotel in Pongwe Beach and cruising in the harbor at Stone Town all week, we were keen to sail in one. We made arrangements with Captain Ali from our hotel to take one of the hotel's resident dhows out for a sunset cruise on our last evening in Zanzibar. In retrospect, one should never wait until the last night of a trip to do something on your must-do list of things you really want to do while you are on vacation. I know this. I made that rule up. But I thought it would make a nice farewell memory on our last night in Zanzibar. Well it did, but not for the reason you think!

We made arrangements to meet Captain Ali on our beach at about 4:00 and the three of us all proceeded to take the short walk together on the beach over to Pongwe village to launch the boat. When we got there, the captain told us to wait for him on the beach for a moment while he ran into the village for something. Okay.

He returned about twenty minutes later and informed us of the bad news. Some sneaky boys from the village had absconded with the dhow that we had reserved to take some Italian tourists on an ad hoc spending-money-making snorkeling trip. Did we want to go out on the motor boat instead? Uh no. I want to sail on a dhow.

I have to admit at this point I got pretty pissy and I started reenacting one of my favorite scenes from Seinfeld. You know the one where they go to the car rental counter only to find that the reservation they had made did not really hold a car reserved for them.  

Jerry: I don't understand. Do you have my reservation?
Rental Car Agent: We have your reservation, we just ran out of cars.
Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
Rental Car Agent: I think I know why we have reservations.
Jerry: I don't think you do. You see, you know how to *take* the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation. And that's really the most important part of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take them.

Well it worked. Captain Ali came up with an elaborate plan to take the motor boat out to the coral reef where the boys had brought the Italians snorkeling and commandeer the boat back from them. We were going to be pirates!

When we got to the reef we found the two dhows anchored with the snorkelers in the water. Captain Ali dropped anchor on the motor boat too, and to our surprise, he dove into the water and swam over to the two dhows leaving us all alone in the motor boat.

He tried to convince the little would-be pirates to surrender the dhows willingly, but one of the boys was having none of it. He pulled up the anchor on his dhow, hoisted the sail and escaped with a couple of the snorkelers still on board.


The second dhow was not so lucky. Captain Ali dragged the dhow over to the motor boat like Gulliver did with the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels.

The Italians got off the dhow and climbed into the motor boat and were very apologetic about the whole "misunderstanding." They clearly had no idea that the boys had stolen the boats out from under us for their nefarious snorkeling scheme.

We got in the dhow just before sunset with Captain Ali at the tiller and one of the former pirates manning the sail.

Vince and one of the pirates

I really had to resist the urge to say to him a la Captain Phillips, "Look at me. I'm the captain now."