WITH A CLUCK CLUCK HERE AND A CLUCK CLUCK THERE.

 Our hen is having an identity crisis. We left the chickens alone (besides a friend feeding them daily) for six weeks and now the oddest thing has happened. When we returned, Diablo, the only chicken we named out of the three, had doubled in size. Her beady yellow eyes which glare fearsomely at you, earned her the name. The other black hen is not nearly as greedy as her, but the rooster has always treated his 2 hens equally as far as courtship and calling them to share food. Only the smaller hen pops out her egg every morning much to Theo’s delight, but Diablo doesn’t seem to have the same desires to contribute towards our breakfast.

Well, the other morning, we were still in bed; I was enjoying listening to the birds and filtering through my thoughts which these days are limited to creating fun lesson plans, or recalling skipping songs from files which have long ago been abandoned to file 13 in the bottom drawer of my whiskey saturated brain. Anyway I have limited time to arrange these thoughts before Theo turns the radio on to listen to the traffic report in Cape Town or what poultice Tannie Sannie recommends to treat Boet’s recurring athlete’s foot calamity on Radio Sonder Grense. So there we were, 30 seconds into some or other Afrikaans singer belting out something about “ek wil styf langs jou lepel lê” when the rooster gave his usual “I got it all this morning crow” when clear as daylight, we heard an answering call in a deep voice right outside the door to our rondavel.

It definitely was not the neighbour’s rooster answering as used to before we left for Cape Town and I can only assume that he was eaten over the holidays, (probably to celebrate someone being circumcised) and now our rooster has to strain his ears to listen for an answer from another adversary over the hill. Anyway, Theo jumped up to investigate and true as bob, Diablo was out there crowing. WTF? Was it possible? Was Diablo messing with our rooster’s manhood, or more perturbing, was she a he? Surely the rooster would not have tolerated a rival on his property? She’s bigger than him these days and he can’t catch her for his mandatory bonk but since she has started crowing, the rooster is disgusted with her and he and the other hen have teemed up and poor Diablo is being ostracised. Well all I know is if it turns out that we have two roosters, one potentially to reach the size of a goose on steroids, then one of them will have to end up in the cooking pot and what a pleasure it will be to eat meat other than Russians.

I’m gatvol of Russian sausages. Theo’s culinary abilities have been put to the test in his attempts to disguise the taste of yet another meal of processed Russians. Slicing, dicing, braaing, boiling, drying and the latest way of mincing them and adding to soups, stews, and bolognaise served with rice, samp and beans or pap have been on the menu every day since we’ve returned. He has yet to pickle them. Last night he made lasagne, with home made pasta which was yummy so maybe there are more inventions to come.

Anyway, the chickens better figure out who’s who, since the latest advice is to take our rooster to the 90 year old mama who lives over the hill and who specialises in castrating roosters. This apparently will curb his lusty desires and become less aggressive but if you ask me, all that will do is encourage Diablo to blow her own horn. I researched this rooster castrating business and apparently it’s not as bizarre as I imagined, but slicing a chicken’s groin open to pop out his internal goonies just doesn’t sound right at all. I’ll rather let nature play out its course and if that doesn’t work, I could seek out a Sangoma for advice regarding our chicken problem. Chances are I’ll be told to bury a bundle of herbs in the yard to restore harmony in the coop. That seems to be the general advice I’m told, whether to heal a sick person, change your bad luck, or get rid of a persistent itch in your groin, burying a bundle of herbs will do the trick I’m told.

On the other hand, the Sangoma might cleverly tell me to bury a dead chicken instead and that would be the end of my problem of having two roosters. The next step is finding someone who will catch it, slaughter it and pluck it cos I sure as hell am not gonna be able to. I’m holding thumbs we will find two eggs in their coop some time soon.

WE’RE ALL GOING ON A SUMMER HOLIDAY

Us Wine Tasting with Charlene

Scarecrows at Mooibege Strawberry Farm

At mothers 70th Birthday Spitbraai party

WE’RE ALL GOING ON A SUMMER HOLIDAY

December school holidays rolled around and we decided to treat ourselves to a trip to Cape Town.  Well actually it was supposed to be a profitable breakaway since we planned to sell corn dogs at a 4 day new years music festival and make some money while we were there but plans didn’t worked out accordingly.  Before leaving, we spent 2 days pushing the wheelbarrow back and forth, emptying the cupboards in the truck to make space for more things to bring back. 

Our holiday in Cape Town was great although traffic was a bit overwhelming and I avoided those dreaded shopping centres as much as I could.  Indoor taps spurting instant hot water, glossy tiles, hallway mirrors, shiny draining boards, wardrobes and an indoor oven were a real treat.  My mother turned 70 and she celebrated the day with a wonderful spitbraai for friends and family.  4 Days later we stuffed ourselves again on Christmas day but sadly I was only able to wish Kyro and his new family in Japan via a computer screen. Rock the River music festival  turned out a complete disaster (opposite to the previous year) as traders were once again told to cater for an expected 8 000 people but only about 2 or 3 000 people turned up.  The wind howled at gale force speed the whole time and we went home with less money than we started off with and a shitload of left over Russians and Cheese Grillers which we would have to take back.

During the six weeks in Cape Town, my mothers’ friends and family dropped off bags and bags of children’s books, toys and clothes, some even from as far as Ireland which Charlene brought over.  Everything needed to be squeezed onto the truck together with our bed (the only remaining thing we owned besides our truck) which we’d stored in my mother’s garage.  We planned to ransack my mother’s garage and relieve her from any possible building material to build ourselves a new house once we returned to Transkei.  The kitchen zink got wedged next to our motorbike which stood in front of the fully loaded freezer with a donated bicycle strapped on top.  Our bed went on top of the truck in typical Transkei style and the weetbix wooden boards and boxes of left over tiles got slotted in between the caravan and the side railings.  The outside cupboards on the truck were rammed full of donated clothes, school bags, knitting needles, beads and pencils while the inside cupboards were bulging with bottles and bottles of tomato sauce, mustard and peri naise left over from the festival.  More boxes of lego blocks, teddy bears and suitcases of second hand clothes were wedged in between gallons and gallons of cooking oil, a kerm board and a broken gazebo (but still usable for a chicken run or something).  The laptops balanced on the porta potty, while the floor was stacked with crates of flour and maize meal, a couple of seedlings for our veggie garden, a toddlers scooter and a big bag of bras donated by someone who was clearly size 46 double D.  2 Bunches of bokkoms dangled above the bed disguising the ever present smell of Russian sausages.  Every time I opened the fridge the dam things were there, squeezed into every possible crevice, reminding me that we would need to eat our way through 80 kg of the stuff over the next few months.  I have an idea I’m gonna start drooling for tripe. 

The four day trip back was a tight squeeze and every time we stopped, we attracted every dog on the block and by the time we arrived back in Transkei I was already getting a bit tired of eating cold sausages since Theo couldn’t reach the stove to try and disguise the taste.

I watched the vegetation change from farmlands to fynbos to thorn trees and finally grassland.  Eventually we arrived home and I hung out the window, waving with both hands as we neared our village and passed people on the road. 

We were home.  Now all we had to do was unload the truck and bit by bit push the wheelbarrow the 50 m to our hut through lush swampy grass which had flourished in the torrential downpours of summer rainfall.  Before donning my gumboots I needed to get rid of the spiders and their webs which made our hut look like something from the movie set of Cocoon and sweep out the layers of mouldy dust, mouse droppings and sand mounds left by whatever other insects had moved in while we were away.  Theo’s job was easy - more Russians.

Ahaa, home sweet home.

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep




The other day we jumped on the bike and headed over the hill in search of Thelma’s crèche. Jock, the guy who sponsored the books and computers at the library asked us to visit the crèche and see what their needs were as he wanted to sponsor them. Jock has been trying to make a difference to the lives of the people here in Qolora since long before we even got here and Education is his prime concern. He has a successful legal practice in Cape Town and he’s connected to big shots in the Department of Education. His heart and brains are in the right place. I suppose by now you must be wondering how Theo and I are coping financially and how we manage to stay fat. Well, we left Cape Town with 2 months supply of food and thought we’d end up at Coffee Bay teaching. We stumbled onto the library here at Qolora and that’s where we’ve settled. It didn’t take long for Jock and us to connect and now he contributes towards our living expenses. Things just fell into place, proving once again that life is as simple as you want it to be.



Anyway, there we were, looking for a crèche, working our butts off, riding around the beautiful countryside, soaking up the scenery of hills and dales blanketed in feathery grassland. Putting along the gravel roads on our toot toot as the kids call it, with the sun on your back and the wind in your hair, dodging the odd cow, goat or pothole can really strain those smile muscles. And then there’s all that waving.

It’s much greener on the other side of the hill and the countryside has more of a tropical feel to it. Even the cattle kraals which are made by stacking branches in a large circle, had lush green ivy growing all over them. Kraals are a very very important part of a family’s homestead. A man who has any worth has a kraal next to his hut or house. Even if his cattle have died off, which is the case of some people, the kraal is still an important structure. The man of the house communicates with his ancestors at the gates of his kraal. This is where he runs all important matters of the living by his ancestors for their approval. For instance, if he wants to build a new house, make important changes within his family or suchlike, he will communicate this to his ancestors at the kraal. They will respond to him in his dreams thereafter and even if it takes a long time, he will not go ahead with the plans even if its months before he has their approval.



Communicating with ones ancestors is the core of Xhosa tradition and the lives of the people here are woven around their ancestors. Ancestors, who are in fact deceased parents, grandparents and great grandparents oversee their family’s wellbeing and are a gateway to God so whether you are a Christian or not, ancestors play a part in the Xhosa people’s lives. If a person is blessed with good fortune, then they need to thank their ancestors by slaughtering a cow or goat depending on the level of their success. The man of the house will select a cow and prick it in its neck to make it bellow. A good choice is if the cow bellows before the spear touches its skin, an indication that the ancestors are very happy. A cow cannot be made to bellow by hurting it forcefully as this would then not be a true reflection of their ancestors approval. If the chosen cow does not bellow then it’s a serious problem and the ancestor will communicate to them in a vivid dream otherwise a Sangoma needs to be summoned to determine why the ancestors are not happy. If something goes wrong, such as a person gets sick, looses their job or something of this nature then the ancestors are angry with them and a Sangoma needs to be consulted to determine why. A cow, goat or chicken can be offered to the ancestors to set things straight but usually they do not bring bad fortune. Basically, if you are the motherly type, you get to carry on controlling your family even from the grave although there are more male ancestors than females. You don’t automatically become an ancestor just by dying, it’s a special privilege and an ancestor is highly respected. They present themselves to their family in very vivid dreams which cannot be questioned or refuted. A year after a person has died, a ceremony is held which involves a cow being slaughtered and the passing of the ancestor is celebrated. An expensive tombstone is placed at the gravesite followed by great festivities to honour the new ancestor. This is a costly business and the people here don’t have a lot of spare cash lying around but they make it happen.



My father who passed away 5 years ago often wagged his finger at me from that other dimension but these days he is resting peacefully or perhaps he’s busy watching over other people who break the hairs in their ears by listening to loud music in discos. Anyway, he was a diabetic so I didn’t need to keep a herd of cattle to appease him, diet coke would have done the trick. Theo wouldn’t make a good ancestor as he would forever be demanding a spitbraai and would surely get very frustrated with only the aroma of meat wafting up past his nose while the living had a feast.

So whether or not you go gently into that dark good night, whether you put flowers on someone’s grave to remember them, scatter someone’s ashes over their favourite place or whether you believe they are still watching over you like a guardian angel, we are all going to eventually take our last living breath and return our energy back to earth. Some just get to wag their finger for longer than others.

Anyone who takes the time to soak up the energy around these hills will be able to feel the presence of the ancestors watching over their people. Me, I’ve set my father free.

Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye

Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye


It was time for us to go. After restoring my mothers house and the garage to somewhat resemble its previous orderly fashion, although the pots would never be the same, we were ready to head off to the old Transkei. After contacting a few people up in the Eastern Cape who were involved in upliftment programmes, nothing concrete materialised as to an income but teaching English and sharing our knowledge in rural villages about covered the general idea and we would wing it. We were mentally ready. We packed the truck and squeezed in as many things a person might need for an indefinite period of stay in rural Transkei. We packed the obvious fishing gear, extra canvas for a makeshift tent to extend from the truck, two massive hammocks which I had made but which we never got around to testing and in fact we were under the impression that there weren’t any big strong trees out there. Our spade got strapped back onto the side of the truck, the panga inside, 10 different kinds of chilli seeds and a handful of butternut seeds and we were about as set as space would allow in our efforts to being self sufficient, which was our ultimate aim. We once again had loads and loads of spices although I swore we wouldn’t take as many this time round but somehow it never happened. In fact this time we even had Miso, Dashi, Tomyum paste and some other funny Japanese stuff, not 1 but 2 sushi mats, 5 litres of soya sauce, and enough salt which was left over from my seaweed products to spike the whole of Coffeebay’s blood pressure off the chart for the next 5 years. Then there was the cast iron hand mincer, why?! well, you never know what might come in handy. We squeezed in bags and bags of books, files and files of English lesson plans and even a blackboard. To keep my crafting desires stimulated I packed bags and bags of leather scraps which I could use to make more bags or even plait around a walking stick with a few beads, bags and bags of fabric scraps including 10 meters of left over wedding organza to weave into bags or make flowers or such things, 1300 wooden skewers left over from our corn dog days which could be turned into a shit load of flower stems or woven into more sushi mats in case people in rural villages fancied a bit of sushimi. We also wedged in the welder and angle grinder, both electric but you never know. We were prepared.

My mother’s hyena club wished us well and with a blessing and a prayer from them, we set off.

We made a detour to say our farewells to Theo’s family before following the road up the East coast. We were in no hurry to get anywhere and I wanted to adjust to being on the road again. Theo and I had not been communicating very well the year we’d been in Cape Town and we needed time to work on it. His habitual hours of facebook, constantly checking on line news about things such as what Lady Gaga wore to bed and his senseless daily dose of Judge Mathis on TV bugged me endlessly. The more perfect I became the more he retreated. He refused to change to my idyllic lifestyle and I realized I was drowning him with my constant pushing, which I thought was a dam clever observation but I didn’t know how to fix it. Like I said, I was almost perfect.

A few days on the road with no city life distractions and short before long we started opening up and sharing our thoughts. We were happy again. Happy with each other and excited about our adventure. Staying on the N2, ticking off the kilometres didn’t offer very scenic pullovers but was more cost effective diesel wise. At Groot Brak we found an old but still maintained day camp site at the river mouth so we stayed for 2 days while Theo fished and I hauled out our “Introduction to isiXhosa” booklet and we practised greeting each other and how to buy meat which Theo deemed more important. We also practised Poi. I’ll explain what Poi is in case you haven’t heard about it. Basically you attach 2 balls, each onto a piece of string or wedge them into the bottom of a pair of long socks (I put bags of salt in my socks since I had an endless supply of the stuff). Then you swing them round and round in different directions trying to avoid knocking yourself over the head. It’s cool. Except the bruising part. The heavier the ball, the more you bruise as I soon found out. Theo kept whacking himself in the knackers and my glasses sat at a strange angle on my face giving me a distorted view of the world. We loved our new pastime and soon we had a good rhythm going with the balls. The tutorials at www.playpoi.com were a great help but we had quite a way to go before reaching the final stage of swinging fire balls to music and I wasn’t ready to light my socks just yet. Apparently Poi is an old Maori custom which was part of the haka and warriors used to swing rocks tied to the end of a rope in order to strengthen their muscles and prepare themselves for war. These days it’s sometimes practised by trance party goers who spin their glow in the dark or fire balls to music pulsating through every nerve and muscle as they prepare themselves to dance through the night.



We stopped at Sedgefield and Knysna and leisurely strolled through a few craft markets which got me all inspired to make things with wire and fabric. Oh yes I forgot to add that I had also packed 3 big rolls of telephone wire which we found in my mothers garage ceiling which I planned to strip and make things with. We spent a night at a cool free picnic pullover in the forest between Knysna and Plett. We went for a stroll, me with my coffee cup in hand, in search of edible mushrooms. We got so enthralled with the jungle-like mangrove forest with ferns twice the size of a man, that before we realised it, we were lost and it took us three hours to find our way back to the truck.



Closer to East London we passed loads of river estuaries tucked away in dense natural forest vegetation with a couple of houses dotted here and there overlooking the sea and river mouth. What beautiful places. How awesome it must be to live there I thought. The hills, which there were many of, were all covered in thick dense thorn tree vegetation spreading for miles, reaching the horizon in every direction. Further along we passed game farms and the narrow road was flanked with lush thorn trees but we still spotted loads of Gemsbok, Nyala and Springbok close to the road.

We stopped for free at another cool free beachfront braai spot at Kidds Beach, 30 km’s before EL. We stayed there for 3 days waiting for the weekend to pass, going for long walks, drinking Pinacolada, (well Theo’s home brew Vodka liqueur), making love at midnight and even got caught in the rain. Every morning at 7 o clock we watched a pod of a hundred or so dolphins leisurely pass by in their morning patrol, surfing in the waves and having themselves a great time. On Monday we set off for East London to do some business and shopping. We needed to take the truck through road worthy which passed YEEHAA and then get the new yearly licence. It’s quite a rigmarole and moerse expensive (R5000) to keep our truck on the road.

We pulled in at Nahoon Caravan Park, and met the weirdest couple ever. Off the chart odd balls. They cornered us as we drove in and within minutes Theo and I started making excuses that we desperately needed a proper shower which by the way wasn’t a lie. The husband had a beard and was going for the Jesus look except he combed his hair from his left ear across his bald head all the way to the right side. He dashed around, alternating between playing his homemade pan flute and preaching nonsensical gibberish. He reminded me of a toothless, scrawny guy who lived in a pit, surviving on Juniper berries in a Monty Python comedy. He had a serious A.D.D. problem and we struggled to follow his gist but I caught the word Jawe, Zeus, and penis and I tried really hard to follow since it showed potential interest but I couldn’t grasp the plot. His wife told me that we were in the final season for the end of the world and that they were prepared by stocking up with dozens of tinned food and a solar panel. This was within 2 minutes of meeting us, and that’s when I moved upwind, lifted my arms and flapped them a few times in the hopes that my exposed armpits might distract her and give me the gap to disappear. After our first meeting, every time we needed the loos we sneaked passed the Evangelists’ camper home, which by the way was very nicely equipped and even had a big organ.

A much more pleasant meeting was getting together with John, who I had contacted from Cape Town before leaving and hoped he could give us some assistance or ideas about our plans. He was a really nice person and thought our idea of living in a rural village, assisting with teaching and any skills which we could offer the community was wonderful. His church and community work took him to rural villages so he was able to give us some direction as to where to find unspoilt rural villages that we could settle at. He suggested that Coffee Bay did not fall in the above category as the influx of tourists there had brought drugs, alcohol and polluted beaches. He suggested alternative places, gave us a map and told us God would guide us to the right village. We chatted about the people, fishing, road conditions and our ideas. His quiet calmness left us assured that we had made the right decision.



The next day we excitedly broke up camp, packed up our fantastic new sputnik washing machine which I’d used with squeals of delight, and headed into an unknown territory of Xhosa people, goats, mud houses and the Tokkolosie.

Grannies, Gastronomy and Grammar

Those three words sum up my last year in Cape Town.  Squatting at my mother’s house and getting to know the old ducks who regularly pop in for tea and cake or line dance classes, summed up my whole social life.  Well, other than befriending a retired gay drama queen and an Arab at the market.  The innocent pill popping grannies are ever so sweet but I think Theo’s endurance for endearment was sometimes pushed to the limit since he was the only male in the never ending stream of senior citizens doing the forward rock side step line dance movement through the house.  Anyway, you don’t put your balls on the line when residing with 2 geriatrics, being my perfect mother & her perfect sister, and little ol’ me, not quite perfect but close enough to perfection without being called conceited.

The “hyena club” as we referred to the screeching grannies, watched in fascination as Theo banged pots and pans around the kitchen, wielding his metre long butcher knife through the air, trying hard to miss (or not) a purple shrouded head inquisitively leering over his shoulder.  Other days the liquidizer worked overtime in his attempt to drown out their shrill cackles as they planned my mothers next aptly named chatterbox meeting. 

Mornings, my mother and aunt, clad in fluffy nightdresses, clutching their crossword puzzles and Sudoku, which they adamantly slogged over for 2 hours every morning in bed in their attempt to keep their brains alert for the day, would have to sample Theo’s kitchen concoctions.  My mother, I suspect, hid hers in her collection of chocolate papers when Theo wasn’t looking since she assumed that everything he cooked contained either innards or curry and there was no way she was going to eat anything which she didn’t recognise.  Rosemary on the other hand, who didn’t recognise anything other than a peanut butter sandwich, would swallow the foreign morsels, pinky in the air, and in her ever so frightfully English accent would murmur “Well Theo, I don’t quite know what that was but it was terribly tasty”.

Occasionally Theo would surprise my mother by leaving a pigs head in the fridge in the hopes that she would have a heart attack and move on to better pastures but over time she became immune to finding chilli splashed up her once immaculate tiled walls, seaweed in the bottom of her toaster, jars of sprouts growing in the cupboards between her colour coded coffee cups and mouldy cheese maturing to a nice blue klunky aroma in her dresser.  Theo on the other hand was bewildered by her shiny doll size pots to heat her little portions of frozen peas (kept on the bottom left hand front corner in the freezer) to have with her little packet of plastic sauce (kept in the tupperware box, bottom shelf, middle kitchen cupboard, 4 inches from the left) and her little portion of frozen chicken schnitzel from a little box kept on the top freezer shelf, front right parallel to the frozen bread 3 inches from the frozen chocolate mouse.

During the year, Theo and I traded at markets to fulfil his obsession with food.  We entered the slow food market, Theo moving a bit slower than me, once he discovered the organic brewed beer.  We sold seaweed products which I proudly put together in my mothers kitchen of course, while Theo whipped up a few divine potjies, originating in said kitchen of course.  Our weekly sales at the Saturday market didn’t quite bring home the bacon so we switched to fast food, hit the road to a few festivals where Theo fried corn dogs to feed the other 99% of the nation; the ones who weren’t bothered with things like gluten free or organic but who clutched each other closely as they whirled their way across hay strewn dance floors to De La Rey and Rooi Rokkie.

Along the way, we collected a shitload more utensils and dishes, pots and pans and things which we squeezed into every spare orifice in my mothers neatly organised kitchen cupboards.   

Inbetween chopping pigs tails and forcing wads of dry seaweed into my mothers liquidizer, we decided to study English.  We ploughed through a TEFL course (teaching Englsh as a foreign language) in the hopes that we could do a spot of humanitarian work in rural villages in our travels to wherever and do something uselful with our time other than cooking. 

Then Kyro moved in, also to save money, and our calm household of 2 perfect, 1 graciously close to perfect women, and one frustrated husband turned into chaos.  Our procrastinated plans to save up to drive our camper truck to Zambia became easier to procrastinate about as we had other things to keep ourselves occupied.  A wedding needed to be planned.  Not just your everyday wedding either.  Kyro, our adventurous son, announced that he was getting married to a Japanese girl who he had fallen madly in love with after skyping her via the internet for the last year.  After sitting down with a bottle of whiskey, we realised that he was serious and we were about to gain a foreign dauguter in law who lived across the ocean in a place where tofu, earthquakes and Tsunamis were everyday things. 

But that’s another whole saga on its own.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET

I’m soooo excited about selling our products at the Earth Market in Tokai on Saturday.  It will be our first time, in fact I wonder if anyone has ever sold dried seaweed foodstuff at a market in South Africa. 

It’s funny how Theo and I tend to get ourselves into unique situations. I bought my first motorbike when I was in my 30’s and rode like a bat out of hell till I hit my 40’s.  We sold everything we own and bought a bus to travel South Africa on an indefinite working holiday.  Now it’s seaweed.  Except this time, it’s not just us eating the stuff, I want to introduce it to other people as well.  Will Cape Town be ready for seaweed meat rubs and Dukkahs, seaweed nut bars or seaweed pies?  Well, we will find out soon enough.  Once I’ve stimulated everyone’s thyroid and flushed out all their toxins from all the junk we expose our bodies to and once all the poor people living on the coast know that there is a free, super food growing in the ocean ready for them to pick, then I’ll be ready to try something new.  

So if you are looking for something to do over Easter, why not come around to the Earth Fair Market on Saturday morning and treat yourself to some exotic seaweed chocolates or stock up on gourmet goodies.

I’m hoping to sell out so that we can put diesel in the tank for another trip up the west coast to pick more Nori and Kelp.  

The Earth Fair Market is Main Road Tokai, behind Builders Warehouse www.earthfairmarket.co.za.  If you want to know more about seaweed check out the website which Theo is developing called  www.sealogix.co.za

 

  

GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS

GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS

Back in South Africa with no adventure travel plans lined up, we found ourselves racing back to Cape Town where we hoped to come up with our next plan of action.  But what?!?  Our relationship was out of sink, our finances down the toilet and my body and soul was as operational as a blocked drain. 

We had been toying with the idea of setting up the truck to sell braaied sticky ribs at festivals around the country but nothing was finalized and quite honestly, Theo was much keener about the idea than me. Then I remembered my dabbling in seaweed at Kleinzee and an idea took root.  Selling seaweed products at foodie markets around Cape Town tickled my fancy.  I was keen to hook up with earthy people who would inspire me and remind me what I’d set out to do. 

We cruised a few food markets in the southern suburbs of Cape Town which sell really good, healthy, exotic and even organic food.  I was sure my idea of seaweed spice and maybe a seaweed potato fritter or two on the grill would fit in just fine.  I threw myself into days and days of research, looked for seaweed recipes, gathered more info about South African types of seaweed, sourced spices without additives and packaging options.  Move over Ina Parman, I was on a roll! 

We loved going to food markets which offered all new kinds of foodstuffs although chewing on plastic tofu didn’t excite Theo at all and when a chick at the Holistic Market at Observatory offered to wash his aura with a piece of ginger root, he disappeared into the crowd rather quickly.  I gave her a friendly wave, murmured something polite and chased after him.  We tried some awesome pumpkin and coconut slivered fritters and bought some wonderful smelling incense.  We found Colloidal Silver, a new product which has intrigued me since Kyro, our son, has been carrying on about how wonderful a cure it is. We chatted to a friendly lady who sold blocks of crystal and metal chips set in resin which you are supposed to place around your house to demagnetise your body or something to that effect.  I probably wasn’t listening properly but she might have suggested something about sneaking around your neighbourhood to bury these blocks under your neighbour’s petunias or under the bus stop seat and I had visions of myself lurking in public toilets, dressed like a ninja, hiding the stuff in toilet cisterns and under dustbins.  At the Earth Market in Tokai, Theo made a beeline to the meat table to taste all kinds of delectable chorizo sausages and later we slurped up a pint of local home brew beer all served on tap. You can buy top class organic olive oil if you’re not counting your pennies or treat your colon to a pipe cleaning rush with all kinds healthy treats.       

The Old Biscuit Mill in Salt River has turned into the place to be for young hip people to meet and enjoy a hip looking slice of organic pizza (well it looked loaded with fresh leafy stuff and I remember seeing gluten free signs somewhere).   

The vibe at all the markets was just what I was after, good food for the stomach as well as the soul.  I have no intentions of turning into a health guru with a packet of budgie seed in my pocket or shaving my head and joining the Hairless Krishnas but I am becoming much more tuned in to myself.  I’m thrilled to say that the black space in my head is filling up again.  Pointless attempts at applying Feng Shui to our furnished truck would be limited to moving the chemical toilet wedged in between the fridge and the nook table about 1 inch backwards.  

My mother rolls her eyes at all the seaweed dishes we’ve been serving her and the buckets of seaweed being carted through the house to hang in the garden.  In the meantime, we are cooking up a storm in her kitchen and I’m one step closer to introducing South Africa to the benefits of eating delicious seaweed, free from the ocean.