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

 

EcoMageddon Week Two Status Report

Jacaranda Taxi photo by Caroline Hopkins

We're halfway through Week Two of the EcoMobility Festival in Sandton. School is back in session. Good news: I haven't really noticed much of a change in traffic volume.

But  to be totally forthcoming I have not tested it during rush hour. Vince is traveling this week in Istanbul and Dubai so I don't have to do the daily commute. But I did drop him off at the Sandton Gautrain station on Sunday which is on the border of the no-go zone. No problems there either. And I did actually go shopping at Sandton City yesterday. Plenty of parking and hardly any traffic. It's working!

But we have guests arriving tomorrow who will be staying in a hotel right smack dab in the middle of the Sandton CBD. I called the hotel to ask how best to navigate the street closings and one-way restrictions to get to the hotel entrance. There is a way, but it will still be interesting getting them to and fro outings and the airport. Needless to say, we won't be doing much actually inside the CBD over the weekend!

putting out cones on Sandton Drive for the rush hour lane restrictions

bringing a little orange into Sandton's purple October

 
  .

I'll tell you one thing though. I think it was brilliant to schedule the EcoMobility Festival during the height of the Jacaranda Bloom. I almost want to sit in traffic and take them all in! Almost.
 

On the EcoMove

So the much-anticipated (or if you prefer, the much-dreaded) EcoMobility World Festival which was supposed to start on October 1 and was instead delayed until October 4th actually started - for the commuters anyway - on Monday, October 5. So now on Day Two, I am prepared to share a little of my observations on how it's going so far.

First of all, it is not a total EcoMageddon as I had feared. No mass hysteria. No panic in the streets. Of course, we are still in the middle of school holidays so perhaps that helps the commute a little. We will see when the school commute resumes.

I did drive Vince to the office yesterday and it was relatively traffic-free. We avoided the morning commute rush hour entirely by traveling at 10:00 am, but when I picked him up at 6:00, we traveled at the height of the evening commute. There was noticeably more traffic on Grayston Drive which is the boundary of the EcoMobility no-drive zone, but still it was manageable. I drove him again this morning during rush hour and once again, traffic was light.

I did notice more signage too whilst driving around Sandton City yesterday. (Around, not in.) Apparently the Mall at Sandton City is not only open during the Festival but they even provide a Rooftop Park & Ride. Good to know! I can still shop at Sandton City and Mandela Square during October and I can walk from Sandton City to the Gautrain if need be.

I decided to do more research on the Park & Ride situation to find out more about the alternative means of transportation that the city is providing. Information is "available" through a portal on the Moving Gauteng website. According to the website, "The purpose of this portal on Moving Gauteng is to provide detailed public transport info for people commuting into Sandton." It is not quite as accessible and detailed as they would like you to believe. I had a little trouble navigating the website to get the information I wanted.

So I dug a little further. They have a google map of the Park & Ride stations. That is helpful to know.














And bus route maps. This is the route Vince could take to avoid commuting by car and driver (me) completely. He could pick up the bus at the stop on Outspan and Ballyclare and be dropped off right in front of his office building on Grayston.

I tried to talk him into giving it a try if only for my blog's sake, but he would have none of it! Honestly, I cannot blame Vince for not wanting to be my EcoGuinea Pig.

photo by Mark Straw

That's okay. I found a blog post by Mark Straw of  Joburg Photowalkers fame. Mark did a little system test himself this past weekend. He parked at one of the Park & Ride lots and took a special EcoMobile bus to Sandton City for the big Festival Kick-off on Sunday.

photo by Mark Straw

After reading Mark's report, I am very happy that Vince's commute is not going to be affected by the EcoMobility Festival. We chose our apartment especially because of its easy commute to the Sandton CBD. Although as luck would happen, IBM moved their offices even closer to us from the original location on the corner of Rivonia and Sandton Drive to the corner of Grayston  Drive and West Street. And with IBM's serendipitous move to our side of the CBD, Vince's commute reduced dramatically. (There's that awesome Serendipity again!)

During rush hour, the old commute took  about 15 to 20 minutes - even longer if robots were not working or if there were construction delays. Now, it takes about five minutes! Seriously, Vince calls me on his cell just as he is about to set foot into the elevator to go down to the lobby and by the time the doors open and he steps out onto the ground floor, I am pulling up in front of the building! That's a short commute! So the idea of his standing in a long line of bus commuters in order to stop ten times along the way to let passengers on and off only to be dropped off a few blocks from the entrance to Valley Lodge and then having to walk the rest of the way home? Not an appealing compromise; I get it.

Besides I feel we are already compromising by only having only one car in a two-car garage and doing the driver (me) commute thing anyway. We are already EcoMobile at Valley Lodge!

EcoMageddon

They are calling it the  EcoMobility World Festival - the month-long moratorium on driving in the Sandton CBD. A "festival"?  More like an EcoMageddon.

From today, October 1st to the 31st, there will be new pedestrian zones and cycling lanes introduced, additional public transport resources available, and major traffic restrictions put in place for ordinary automobiles in the Sandton CBD. The idea is to relieve the daily gridlock by giving preference to alternative methods of transportation such as bicycles and mass transportation.  But I am still not clear on how it will actually work in practice. I am afraid. Very afraid.

Hey, I am all for reducing air pollution and eliminating gridlock; it's not that. It's just that I have not seen any real communication on how I am supposed to get to the Sandton CBD without actually driving there. Where do I hook up with these "additional public transport resources"? Is that a bus by the way?

Luckily, I do not spend that much time in the Sandton CBD. I mostly go through it - now I will go around it. (And probably so will everyone else which means the gridlock will not necessarily be eliminated but will instead just shift to outside the CBD boundaries.)

And really, I do not think the gridlock problem is as much a "too many cars" problem as it is a "too much construction" problem or a "non-working robot" problem, i.e. multiple lanes reduced to a single lane due to construction vehicles and stoplights out due to load-shedding. Maybe we should have a "construction festival" or a "load-shedding festival" instead.

I occasionally go shopping in Sandton City and Nelson Mandela Square and I do take the Gautrain when I am traveling to the airport by myself - both are right in the heart of the CBD - but my only other up-close encounter with the Sandton CBD is the daily commute to Vince's office when he is in town. His office is just on the edge of the CBD on Grayston Drive. Vince is in town today so I will find out soon enough exactly what I am up against for the next month.

Countdown to EcoMageddon. It could be a very long month ...

The Karoo is Quirky

It must be the endless infinite skies and the boundless empty landscapes but the Karoo does something to your mind. Remember the Owl House in Nieu-Bethesda? The Karoo is quirky!

We drove through Tankwa National Park on the way back to Cape Town from Sutherland. From the Northern Cape to the Western Cape. We only saw one other vehicle for the entire three hours it took before we turned onto the road 355. And we only saw one lone impala, a few raptors, and a mongoose too.

Even once we reached the highway the people and cars were few and far between. It wasn't until we hit highway 46 and the start of the Cape Winelands that we began to see what can safely be called "civilization."

It is understandable then why this is the site of Africa Burn on a farm somewhere along the deserted road 354 between Sutherland and Middlepos. One of the hottest gatherings in South Africa, Africa Burn is a Burning Man regional event that takes place annually in the Tankwa Karoo. It was just held a couple of weeks ago from April 27th until May 3rd. But don't worry, we didn't miss it. We avoided it. Our Woodstock camping days are over.

Some 9000-odd 'Burners' arrive with their Bedouin tents, contraptions that swing gigantic balls of fire through the air, plus everything they need to survive, including their best creative impulses. The result is a kind of massive, immersive, living art installation, fueled by the desire to reimagine the world and then burn or disassemble everything without leaving a trace.

the Tankwa Padstal

It has a quirky bar

elevenses with an emu

But while we missed Africa Burn this year, we saw this poster hanging inside the Tankwa Padstal. Looks like we can still make Bike Burn next weekend!

European Film Festival

The European Film Festival is in town at the Cinema Nouveau in Rosebank (and in Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban.) Here was my chance to see many of the films and performances that had been nominated for Oscars at the 87th Academy Awards on a "big screen", including 2014's Best Foreign Film winner, Ida.

The theme of the festival is "A Woman's World" in tribute to the role of women in film, both behind and in front of the camera. The 12 films were selected for the way they reflected their female directors' unique insights and perspectives on film or the way their female actors translated on screen dramas of everyday life or extraordinary destinies in a very powerful and unique way. I could get behind that! Each film was from a different country in Europe and, except for the UK's My Brother the Devil, were delivered in a foreign language.

I watched my first subtitled foreign language film in college. Fellini's Amarcord. I went at the suggestion of my friend Mariana. Mariana was surely one of the worldliest friends I had made in my short and thus far largely sheltered life. And the perfect person to accompany me to see my first real foreign film. Already well-traveled, Mariana had grown up on a huge plantation in Ecuador where her father was the Country Minister for Cacao Export and her mother was from some deposed branch of European royalty. Mariana had boarded at a finishing school in Switzerland before she started college at the University of Florida which was at the time full of the offspring of wealthy South Americans, many of whom were my friends. So she led and I followed.

Mariana, and it seemed like everyone else in the cinema but me, laughed hysterically throughout the movie. Like laughing-until-you-cry laughter. But I didn't get it. I tried; I really did. I concentrated really hard. But the jokes were just as foreign to me as the language requiring subtitles.

It was baffling to me. I was half Italian and I grew up watching movies. My parents loved movies and so they took us often when we were little. When I outgrew my parents' needing to take me, I would go to the cinema as often as I could with my friends to see all the latest movies. I watched old movies on Channel 5 and 11 and The Million Dollar Movies on Channel 9. Before VCRs and On Demand, I would set my alarm for 3:00 am just to get up and watch Fred Astaire dance! I loved movies!

After my Fellini failure in Gainesville, I decided to sign up for a college film class as an elective. Along with the requisite classic English language films, we watched a lot of foreign language, mostly European, films. And with each one I watched and a little help from my professor, I started to unlock the mystery behind enjoying them until I became a true fanatic. It was an acquired taste for me, but I certainly acquired it in that film class.

And I slowly stopped feeling bad about my initial cluelessness too. Once, a few years later, I saw the Woody Allen film Manhattan for the first time - in San Francisco. My date - who hailed from Brooklyn - and I laughed hysterically from beginning to end. The room however was practically silent. It might as well have been a foreign language film. Same thing happened in Australia. On a lark, Vince and I bought tickets to see Wayne's World after a wave of homesickness hit us both as we walked past a cinema in Sydney one night after dinner. We laughed and laughed at Wayne and Garth and their very inside jokes until we started to feel self-conscious. It wasn't subtitled but the context and situations must not have translated very well to much of the Australian audience. Comedy separated by a common language.

I guess comedy is just tougher to translate even when it is presented in your native language. Just like tragedy, comedy is based on universal human experience. But some of the nuances and contexts of comedy are less culturally relatable making it therefore harder to share in the joke.

Ida was pretty tragic. Set in a bleak black and white Poland in the winter of Communist 1962, it was full of lies, murders, good jazz played badly, loneliness, betrayal, alcoholism, loveless sex, nicotine addiction, what looked like really bad food, a suicide, and a fall from grace. All pretty universally tragic; no nuances there.

Just a few years ago, Fellini's Amarcord was playing at the Film Forum in New York. I had seen all of Fellini's other films over the years and loved them at first sight but I hadn't seen Amarcord since that first disastrous night in Florida so many years ago. I decided to go by myself and see if it was as funny as Mariana had said it was. And yes, I laughed until I cried.

Sophie

We only met Sophie briefly in the morning at her home and studio. She was on her way to perform at a local festival but she waited for us to arrive to say hello before hopping on a bus and heading off to the festival site. Thank you Sophie!

Like many of the accomplished women artists in the village, Sophie also teaches Ndebele arts and crafts to her daughters and other members of the community. She currently has a group of about 20 women working with her.

We caught up with her later in the day at the festival and we found that she is also an accomplished performer. Sophie sings, dances and plays music too!

Ndebele Art Tour

Ever since I first laid eyes on examples of it more than two years ago, I had been trying to find someone to give me an entree to visit the actual artists' homes and other buildings in the Ndebele homelands which display this beautiful art. It had been a mission.

Whenever I would meet Ndebele art collectors and artists at markets selling their work, I made inquiries, but no luck. Finally, I "found" Helene Smuts and she turned me on to Petrus Mahlangu (cell 083 675 8955), a guide and the curator of the Kghodwana Cultural Village near  KwaMhlanga, who would be able to take me to see all the places I had so desperately wanted to visit. The Nzunza Royal Palace, the Ndebele Foundation, the painted Roman Catholic Church, and especially the homes and studios of the most renowned artists.

We met Petrus about two hours northeast of Johannesburg in Mpumalanga in a place called Emthambothini. Close to Siyabuswa, don't even bother looking for it on your GPS. It just ain't there. Petrus emailed a hand-drawn map with our meeting place and we still got hopelessly lost somewhere north of Pretoria after the Zambezi turn-off. We had to call him at our meeting time and admit defeat. Luckily it only took a little bit of backtracking to get us to the right place. Petrus had called ahead and made appointments with all the sites on our list and arranged for keys to open the church.

First stop, Sophie Mahlangu. Petrus had only just found out that morning that there was a festival going on that day at a chief's house and Sophie was leading her troupe of performers. So in order to catch her at home, we had to rush to get there before she left on the party bus. We just made it.  See you later Sophie!

vintage apron!

Luckily her daughter stayed behind so we could peruse her studio shop at our leisure. We were able to buy some of Sophie's beautiful bead work as well as a vintage goatskin apron. Vince had seen a very similar one in Cape Town recently for R160,000. We got ours for R2000! He was psyched. (I was psyched too because I would rather give my money directly to the community.)

Sophie's beautiful bead work

Next stop a tour past the Royal Palaces and a stop at the homestead of Francine Ndimande. One of the founding forces behind the Ndebele Foundation, Francine is also responsible for the establishment and decoration of the Roman Catholic Church in town. We visited her home, the Foundation and the Roman Catholic Church nearby. We met her daughter, her husband and many other members of her family.

 



Unfortunately Francine passed away a couple of years ago but she has left quite a legacy within her community and family. We saw the grave where Francine is buried. As is the custom, the deceased are buried in the homestead's cattle kraal.

We brought Lou & Serge with us for the day and we had the help of Francine's grandson who acted as our dachshund handler. He was the best!















We were so happy to get to visit the Ndebele Foundation in person. A cultural center used for community training in the arts of painting and bead work, its existence guarantees Francine's artistic legacy will live on.

Next stop Francine's masterpiece, the Roman Catholic Church. Of course we were given an opportunity to purchase at both her home and at the Foundation. And we did. Some beaded dessert forks and other implements from Francine's daughter. A wicker placemat with a beaded border made by Francine herself. And a beautiful Easter egg and stand for my Ndebele Easter. Just what I was looking for!

Francine's placemat and her daughter Ellen's beaded cutlery

Francine's daughter Joyce made my egg and stand!

Our next stop was to the most famous Ndebele artist alive today. Esther Mahlangu. We toured her home, her art studio and school and her guest lodge. At this point we had run out of money but luckily Esther takes an EFT! Vince was able to transfer money using his cellphone. (I can't tell you how surreal it feels to be transferring money electronically via a smartphone while standing in a thatched hut in Mpumalanga. The gods must be crazy!) We bought a canvas painting and another Easter egg!

a canvas by Esther

Esther's egg

the Chief!

Finally Petrus took us back to see Sophie at the festival. We were treated like celebrities there! Everyone asked to take a picture with us including the chief and his mother.

the Chief's mother

The chief's mother runs a community foundation for victims and orphans of HIV. We donated to her foundation and she gave us beaded red ribbon pins.

We couldn't stay long and Petrus had to do a lot of explaining and apologizing for us. I felt bad for him but we had a two hour drive back to Joburg to look forward to and plans for the evening.













Here comes Sophie!

Sophie!

I could have jumped for joy like this little dancer!