The List

I am a consummate list maker. I make lists every day for shopping, to-do lists of tasks for myself and honey-do lists of little jobs for my husband. These lists are usually made to be completed and discarded or in the case of the honey-do lists to be noticed and ignored, turn yellow with age and discarded.

I also keep lists of recommendations for travel. I have a list for things-to-do-and-places-to-go-and-places-to-eat in Paris, London and New York, three cities I frequent and plan to frequent forever. I even have a Smythson of Bond Street leather address book labeled "New York London Milan Paris" with sections for each city. These lists I do not make to discard. At most, I will cross something off the list or erase in the address book if the business closes or the recommendation proves unsatisfactory.

faire du leche-vitrines @ Bell'occhio

I have one list I treasure which I did not start myself. It was given to me about seven years ago by my friend Nancy who runs a lovely shop in Montclair, NJ called Parcel. If you are ever in Montclair, NJ you should visit Parcel on Bloomfield Avenue. I highly recommend it so put it on your list.

Bell'occhio in SF

The list Nancy gave me is for the greater San Francisco Bay area and it is a list of shops Nancy likes to visit when she goes on buying trips there. At the time she offered me a copy of the list, my husband had just taken an apartment in San Francisco to split the distance between New York and Asia where he was traveling for business. Coincidentally my oldest son had just transferred from Rochester Institute of Technology to an art college in the East Bay as well. So now half of my family was living on the west coast and half was living on the east coast. (Sort of. My younger son was living in Pittsburgh, PA attending Carnegie Mellon University but it was east of the Mississippi anyway.)

the turtle doves @ The Tail of the Yak, Berkeley

I was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area regularly, almost monthly in fact, and usually had a lot of free time during the day. Nancy's list was long but I managed to visit all the shops on it within the first year. My husband gave up the apartment after about three years but my son is still there and is now working in game animation. So in the last few years and before I moved to South Africa I still visited the Bay area fairly regularly, at least once a season, in order to see him. I always brought the list with me. I had three or four  shops which I visited every time I went west. I added to the list over time. Places to eat, things to do, places to visit and a few shops I discovered on my own. The list became a living thing and I passed it on to different friends if they were moving to San Francisco or visiting for an extended time and asked for recommendations. They usually came back with recommendations of their own which I added to the list for my next visit.

In the same spirit I just received another list from a South African expat living in New Jersey named Helena. I was introduced to Helena by my friend Deb in the months preceding my move to Joburg. It is a list for things-to-do-and-places-to-go-and-places-to-eat in South Africa. Helena sent the list to me saying, "This has been put together by various locals over about 10 years, and keeps circulating - enjoy!" I love it! Once again this list is a living thing which is passed around, added to and amended as it goes from person to person.

It makes me happy to know I am not alone. I am part of a nation of list makers and as it turns out, it is an international one at that!

Tambo is not just the name of the airport

I found out who O.R. Tambo is. I did not even know he was a "who." I thought it was just the name of the international airport I use to fly in and out of Joburg. But it turns out he most certainly is a "who" and there is currently an exhibit going on about him  curated by the Apartheid Museum.

This kind of connecting of the dots will help me to settle into living in South Africa and establish my sense of place. It reminds me of a conversation I had with my husband many years ago while we were touring around northern Vermont. I grew up in the birthplace of the American Revolution in the northeast of the United States of America in one of the 13 original colonies. So in grammar school, details of the Revolutionary War between the colonials and the red-coated British were staple fare in history class. My husband on the other hand grew up in the mid-west, specifically in Minnesota and Kansas, where other American conflicts such as the Civil War and the French and Indian War as well as the whole Manifest Destiny, "Go west, young man" and Oregon Trail wagon train concepts were much more topical subjects in his schooling. Still I was surprised when he commented as we passed a statue of Ethan Allen in downtown Montpelier, "I cannot believe they erected a statue after a furniture store here!" "You mean Ethan Allen as in Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys?" I replied. "The who?" "The Green Mountain Boys! Didn't you learn about them in school?" "No." So I dusted off my Third Grade Revolutionary War patriot memories and explained who Ethan Allen really was, also known as the lecture on "what came first, the Ethan Allen furniture chain or the Green Mountain Boys?"

Much the same with O.R. Tambo. Born five years after the birth of the African National Congress (the ANC) Oliver Reginald Tambo spent most of his life serving in the struggle against apartheid. 'O.R.', as he was popularly known by his peers, was born in 1917 in a rural town, Mbizana, in eastern Mpondoland in what was then the Cape Province (now Eastern Cape).

Tambo, along with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, was a founding member of the ANC Youth League in 1943, becoming its first National Secretary and later a member of the National Executive in 1948. In 1955, Tambo became Secretary General of the ANC after Walter Sisulu was banned by the South African government under the Suppression of Communism Act. In 1958, Tambo became the Deputy President before being exiled himself in 1959.

According to the ANC website, among black South African leaders, Oliver Tambo was probably the most highly respected on the African continent, in Europe, Asia and the Americas. During his stewardship of the ANC he raised its international prestige and status to that of an alternative to the Pretoria Government. He was received with the protocol reserved for Heads of State in many parts of the world.

During his years in the ANC, Oliver Tambo played a major role in the growth and development of the movement and its policies. He was among the generation of African nationalist leaders who emerged after the Second World War who were instrumental in the transformation of the ANC from a liberal-constitutionalist organisation into a radical national liberation movement.

He returned to South Africa in 1991, after over three decades in exile. At the ANC's first legal national conference inside South Africa, held in Durban in July 1991, Tambo was elected National Chairperson of the ANC. He was also chairperson of the ANC's Emancipation Commission. Unfortunately he passed away before seeing the cause he worked so hard to promote come to fruition with the election of Nelson Mandela as the nation's first freely elected black president.

So the next time I run through O.R. Tambo Airport to catch my flight, I will have to keep my eyes open for a statue of the airport's namesake. I am sure there is one.

POWER OUTAGE WARNING

That headline in The Star newspaper certainly got my attention! According to the front page article, repairs to several power stations and overdue maintenance will mean a lower output of electricity this winter. That, and the usual seasonal electricity usage increases in winter, practically guarantee a number of blackouts over the next few months. So I ran out to the Woolies to stock up on torches (flashlights), batteries and candles in anticipation of the impending darkness.


Now on a related topic, they do not recycle in South Africa (stay with me; it is related.) I guess they have bigger fish to fry what with apartheid only (relatively) recently being outlawed and rhino poaching still rampant. But it bugs me coming from a place where recycling and composting had become an integral part of my daily routine. So as we also have been collecting a large number of wine bottles which I have been loathe to just throw into the trash, the thought occurred to me, "These wine bottles would make great decorative candle holders if they just didn't have that narrow top part!" In other words, instead of recycling my old wine bottles which I can't do anyway, I can re-purpose them as candle holders for the candles I need to have for all the power outages that are forecast for the winter. See? Related.

So I sent handy-dandy Vince (he really is) out to the local hardware store to get a glass-cutter and set him to work. Now instead of an endless supply of wine bottles filling up the garage, we have an endless supply of very attractive and unique candle holders around the apartment. And as an added bonus I do not have to feel bad about all that wine we seem to drink. I am doing my part to be a good South African citizen and reduce electricity. Bring on those power outages!

Happy Days at the Jozi Craft Beer Fest

I had to employ a guest blogger for this post for a couple of reasons. First, I was out of town when this event was happening in nearby Emmarentia, having gone back to the USA to finalize the last details of our move, for a week long farewell blowout in New York City, for my niece's graduation from Boston College and my nephew's Purdue crew regatta in Philadelphia at the Aberdeen Dad Vail. 

Secondly and probably more importantly, Vince is better suited to write about a Beer Festival anyway. I bought him a ticket and sent him on his merry way.

I am in the dead center 

You see, I am not a big beer drinker. I only drink beer occasionally usually with Mexican and Chinese food or on the Fourth of July. Yet in spite of this lack of commitment, I did go with my husband once to Oktoberfest in Munich years ago. It did not go well for me. After ordering one giant frosty mug, one humongous pretzel and singing one round of "Ein Prosit" while linking arms with Vince and our fellow table mates in the Spaten tent, I figured we were done. "OK, what do you want to do now?" I asked Vince. He looked at me perplexed.  "What do you mean? There is nothing else. This is it. Relax, we are going to be here a while." And we were.

Vince went back to Oktoberfest again later, several times in fact over the years, and always without me. Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit.

"Jozi Craft Beer Fest: one guest blogger's quest to sample a hundred beers from 40 South African micro-breweries - Vince Kasten, Guest Blogger

During the fall South Africans participate in all manner of sports - double marathons, iron man triathlons, and 100 mile bike races to name a few. On the whole they're a robust and outdoorsy bunch. I'm neither, so at 10AM on a cloudless, amazing weekend day I headed for the Jozi Craft Beer Fest. As it turns out, Johannesburg residents also treat beer drinking as an outdoor sport.

 The fall weather drew a big crowd of relatively young, fit and attractive people (and they looked that way "before" I started to drink). Almost everyone was with a group, except me it seemed, but that was ok, for me this was not about enjoyment, it was about fulfilling a solemn commitment as guest blogger. So along with my official beer mug I got 200 Rand worth of Coupons (Ron White fans will understand) and began sampling - if you can call a pint a "sample."

The advertisement for the Beer Fest said 100 beers from 40 micro-breweries. I only counted 30 or so beer tents, but the 100 beers sounds about right. Here's what I had: Copper Lake Brewery Jozi Pale Ale, Smack!republic IPA, Roeks Blonde, Everson Pear Cider (an nice pallet clearing fizzy alcoholic drink, and the only tent with a guard dog - a Dachshund named Keg), Cockpit Brew FokkerWeisen, Drayman's Jolly Monk Rauchbier, a small glass of a nondescript white wine from Alphabetical Wines (motto: Internationally Famous & Hangover Free) and a shot of a single malt South African version of Irish Whiskey.

I should probably have sampled more as I take the role of guest blogger seriously, but I also take my
freedom seriously and had to drive home. 30 years ago my buddy Ric and I each drank our way around the world (28 beers from 28 countries) in two days at a place called Turtle Krawls in the Florida Keys. Today at the Jozi Craft Beer Fest I didn't make a dent, but the day was more about the sun, the music ("Play that Funky Music White Boy" was popular...), and the fall crowd. It was not as much fun as it would have been had Darlene been there with me (my official position, despite the sms I sent both the boys about how they should think about moving to South Africa given the large numbers of tall, blonde, athletic females that apparently like to drink beer), but it was a good way to spend a sunny Saturday."

You can get anything in NYC!

I had to go all the way back to NY to find the basket I want to buy to hold the multiple bags of coffee beans we use for our morning french roast coffee in Joburg! Seriously, we have been looking for just the right size and shape basket to put on our kitchen counter.







We've been describing it to the purveyors at the Bryanston Organic Market, the Rosebank Craft Market and even the Old Biscuit Mill Neighbourgoods Market in Cape Town. They either do not have any or they look at us like we are nuts. But we found them at the Union Square Market in Manhattan! Proving yet again that you can get anything in NY! Anything!

They are made in Senegal and they most definitely do exist. But rather than spend the $70 only to hand carry one back to Joburg which would be silly,











we will bring pictures instead to show the seagrass lady at Bryanston, our best bet in South Africa to find one. And I am sure they will cost less than $70!

A Couple without a Country

Chase at one of their famous parties

Chase and Isobel are friends of ours whom we met through Overlook Hospital's Mother's Group class. Our son Alex and their daughter Brittany were born at Overlook within days of each other a few months before we met. Vince and I had taken our Lamaze class there before Alex was born and at the suggestion of our maternity nurse I signed up for their Mother's Group class which would begin a couple of months after his birth. The class consisted of lectures and hands-on demonstrations on infant nutrition, baby CPR, ways to baby-proof your house, etc. I signed up for the class partly because I wanted to learn about all that of course, but quite frankly even more because I wanted to meet women in my community who were going through the same things as me at exactly the same time as me. I didn't want a mentor; I wanted soul sistas!

I had taken a maternity leave from work about a month before I had Alex and very soon after he was born, Vince and I made the decision to make my leave permanent and for me to stay home with Alex until I felt comfortable going back to work. (It took me 21 years to feel comfortable by the way!)

Isobel @ the same Halloween party!

This was a shocking decision that was wholly unpremeditated. I had been an ardent feminist since high school having been extremely influenced by the women's movement of the 70's. I did not change my last name to Vince's surname after Vince and I were married, was a card-carrying member of the National Organization for Women and had even attended NOW conventions in the past. I supported Planned Parenthood and subscribed to MS magazine. I had majored in the male-dominated disciplines of math and computer science in college. I had two Masters degrees (an MBA and an MS in Computer Science), wore "power suits" to work in venture capital in NY and pretty much defined myself as a PROFESSIONAL WOMAN (all caps).

The phrase "having it all" had not entered the vernacular yet. That ideal would come in my younger sister's generation. For my generation, we either had careers or we stayed home with the kids. Anyone who tried to do both risked doing them both very badly.

But even  as a little girl, I never once daydreamed about getting married, never mused about what my wedding dress would look like, never played "Bride and Groom" with my brother, never practiced writing my name as "Mrs. John Q. Anybody". (Oddly enough I did play "Nun" when I was little which I consider the world's second-oldest profession.)

I didn't babysit in high school. I didn't particularly like other people's kids and never really yearned to have children of my own. I didn't necessarily "not want to have children." I just simply never thought about it. We had waited five years after we were married to have our first child and totally enjoyed the yuppy phase of our marriage. Once I got pregnant, I had planned on giving birth and going back to work after three months, the standard maternity leave at the time. Stay home with my baby and "just" be a mother? If a fortune teller had predicted this future for me from her crystal ball or tarot cards, I would have told her, "You have got to be kidding! You might as well tell me I will be joining the Contras and running guns to Nicaragua! That's how ridiculous it is! I want my $2.00 back."

But what I didn't foresee, what I was totally unprepared for actually was the truly life-changing effect motherhood would have on me, the amount of love I would feel for my son and the amount of anxiety and dread I would experience at the thought of leaving him with a nanny to go back to work. So I didn't. Instead I crossed the bra-burning, Equal Rights NOW picket line to the other side (or that's what it felt like anyway). And it was the best decision we ever made.


But with every decision comes unforeseen consequences. Once I stayed home I felt like the proverbial fish out of water. In addition to the exhaustion and the post-par tum depression many mothers feel, I suffered from a kind of post-life depression. I had completely chucked my old life and had entered the brave new world of the stay-at-home mom. It was as if I had a life transplant or was swallowed alive or abducted by aliens and dropped into an episode of Leave it to Beaver and I was expected to be Mrs. Cleaver, wearing my pearls while baking a pie.






I needed to find out if the aliens had abducted anyone else so we could band together for survival like in Planet of the Apes. So very early on in the first months of stay-at-home motherhood, I brought Alex to an introductory class for Gymboree. We sat around in the Gymboree circle and introduced ourselves. We were asked by the group leader to tell everyone a little bit about ourselves, where we lived and the name of our baby, etc., and as an ice-breaker, to also tell the group of anything that had changed in our lives since becoming a mother. One by one the other mothers went around in the circle, introduced themselves and said things like, "Things have not really changed that much for me and my husband. We were always homebodies and now we just stay home with our baby" or "I don't get enough sleep but that's about it."

I was dumbfounded. I was in a circle of Stepford Moms! When they got to me, I launched into a tirade that lasted about a half an hour. "What has changed in my life? How about everything," I started, "I do not know who I am anymore. I am lonely and sad and miss interaction with adult people. I love my son but I miss my independence, dinners out, the excitement of my old life, the fast pace, the accolades when I did a good job, the power I felt making my own money, the constant boosts to my self-esteem. My life has been turned upside down in every conceivable way, my equilibrium is completely off. Nothing is the same. My entire life has done an about-face. I miss getting dressed in the morning and going to work. Blah blah blah!" They all stared at me in shock. I might as well have said I had joined the Contras and was running guns to Nicaragua!

I didn't go back to that particular Gymboree class. I was afraid they would chase me out with sticks like Mother-stein for not immediately embracing the joys of motherhood as they all had. But before I went back to any Gymboree at all, I went to my first Mother's Group class at Overlook. There I found many confused and bleary-eyed women who had had big jobs before they had children and big dreams besides motherhood and were having similar feelings of life vertigo. Sue was a chiropractor, Dede had worked for the NJ Division of Motion Pictures promoting New Jersey as a location for the film industry, Adria was in PR on Madison Avenue, Aleece in Finance on Wall Street, etc., etc. Then there was Isobel. Isobel was a Professional Expatriate. Whatever, she was a professional and they were all my soul sisters!!! We all clung to each other emotionally, shared our similar stories of self-doubt and loneliness, sought and gave advice without judgement, slowly started becoming ourselves again, and vowed to meet weekly with our babies alternating at each others' homes once the hospital class sessions ended.

Now back to Isobel, the Professional Expatriate. She and her husband Chase were both serial expats, a kind of couple without a country. A British citizen who had never lived in the UK, Isobel grew up all over Asia. Her father had been in International Finance and she had lived in Pakistan, Hong Kong and Singapore, among other places. Chase was originally from Arizona and had become an expat in the days following the Vietnam War representing American Express in Saigon. (I wish they had blogging back then. His stories were unbelievable!) They met in Hong Kong and married there, lived in several other Asian countries before moving to Chatham, NJ to give birth to their daughter Brittany at Overlook. They had adopted the expat experience as a permanent lifestyle. They were wild party animals who lived the life of the international jet set. And they added just the right amount of spice to our new Overlook Mother's play group.

farewell dinner menu

Isobel and Chase lived in Chatham for seven years, the longest they had ever lived in any country. Then as we all expected would eventually happen, they were transferred back to Asia, to Jakarta this time. However, just as they were about to move to Indonesia, Isobel found out she was pregnant! With seasoned expat aplomb, they altered their plans and based themselves in Singapore instead to take advantage of the more modern medical maternity facilities. Vince and I visited Isobel and Chase in Singapore after their son Cameron was born as part of a big Asian trip we took that also included Bali, Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand. I got to see a Professional Expatriate in her native habitat!

Singapore

Unfortunately we and our Mother's Group all lost track of Chase and Isobel after they had been gone from the States for a few years. Chase changed jobs from American Express to work for the Bank of China and the last thing we heard via their Christmas card was that they had moved from Singapore to Hong Kong. I still wonder about them especially now that Vince and I have joined the expat community ourselves.

If you are out there Chase and Isobel and you read this ... call me, soul sista!

Job done: Côte d'Ivoire Colonial in the house!

This is a follow-up post on my April 26 "Stalking a good price on the African Tray Man" blog post that just came in from my man on the ground, guest blogger and husband Vince. I am back in the States for a visit and he is still in Joburg, but the blog must go on!

"Taking slight exception to the characterization of my colonial tray carrier as 'tacky,' I implemented the negotiating plan to get the R 5,000 price ($550) to something more reasonable. 

I'd anticipated a longer process of wearing the guy down, using R 2,000 in an envelope (with the subtle message of, '2.000 Rand for a Colonial' written on the front) as a means of mobilizing my man's avarice. I'd visited him twice on the plan, and each time after he rebuffed my offer i walked past him later with something I'd bought. BUT, as I was in the market today looking for a basket for corralling kitchen coffee things, I saw another colonial tucked in one of the stalls. And it was within view of my man's stall.

So, in sight of him I pulled out the now familiar (to him) envelope...but didn't show the inscription to the new guy. And got a price on his colonial: R 3,000, which bargained down immediately to R 2,200. Still too much. Off to my main man who (having watched this so far) said he'd take the R 2,000. I told him that if he'd just given me a reasonable price the first time we'd already have done the deal. He offered R 1,800. Which I immediately took back to my new guy, who offered back R 1,500. 

Final price, R 1,350. And he looks all kinds of awesome in the bathroom. Tacky my a**."

Vince, guest blogger 
P.S. I am so proud!!!!