The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music

I don’t think many (if any) white people get to spend the whole day as we did today, experiencing the Xhosa culture performed by the children of this region.

We were so lucky to have been invited to the interschool Arts and Culture Festival which took place in Centani. The trip there took an hour on the bad dirt road with 3 of us in the front of a bakkie and about 15 kids squashed in the back, with their props and costumes on their laps. The rest followed in 2 more crammed bakkies. Everyone, us included, was super excited. We piled out at a building with no toilets but the 1 000 or so participants and a dozen or so teachers didn’t seem to mind. In fact I don’t think they noticed. You lift your skirt and wee behind the building facing the back road. When in Rome.



The day was quite an emotional one for me. Most of the teachers were dressed in their traditional outfits and the cultural ambiance was quite something. The theme was Human Rights and the morning opened with various drama scenes acted out by the children depicting their rights to education, food, social services, freedom of choice of faith and marriage. I was quite moved to realise that what they were portraying was real for some of them. The short plays were all performed in English so we understood everything. Watching children act scenarios of being too poor to afford school clothes which denied them access to a school while their mother sat at home drinking out their government grant money, touched a sensitive note. Other plays were about orphaned children living with other family members and being abused. This was their lives for many I presume. I don’t really know what goes on in their homes but I do know that most come to school with clean but broken school clothes, many have shoes tied together with string, and when they queue for their samp and beams for lunch I often wonder if it’s the only meal for some?

Then the singing began. Those kids just sing so beautifully and when they do that pumping thing with their arms and shuffle their feet from side to side and their voices harmonise so beautifully I had to keep swallowing back a lump as their voices resonated though to my soul.

Then the angry poetry followed which we couldn’t understand but there was lots of viva South Africa and waving of sticks as they shouted their proclamations.

Late afternoon they performed their traditional Xhosa dancing and I sat on the edge of my seat, goose bumps all over as the dancers captivated me. It was just so wow. The girls danced bare breasted, wearing string skirts and beads around their necks and ankles and they kept a beat by clapping while others stomped and shuffled and kicked and I felt the music coursing through my body. Some danced to traditional music played through speakers while others kept a beat on a drum or banged on a bucket. One group even had a bucket with a wet plastic rope attached inside which they pulled hard and created a deep sound together with their drum. I was enthralled by them. The boys added whistles, kuduzelas, guitars, safety hats and tattered clothes combined with animal skins to their acts. They were amazing.

Then the dancing changed from girls dancing to their interpretation of older women dancing. Young girls show their breasts and wear flimsy skirts when they dance but older women wear colourful wraps and skirts with aprons as well as headgear. They shake their big backsides in a certain way which some of the girls did excellently. The teachers who ululated throughout the day at any acts which did well really belted their tongues cheering at these girls.

After the traditional dancing came the free style dancing and I was amazed to see the same children, girls who had just been dancing bare breasted on stage were now wearing jeans and T Shirts and shaking their pelvises to kwaito rhythms.

We arrived back in Qolora by the sea school at about 8 o clock that evening. It was already dark. The kids excitedly made their way home, barefoot, following foot paths in the dark to their homes scattered over the hillside. Theo and I had a good laugh as we too made our way home in the dark, camera over our shoulder and passed a man whistling along and carrying a pick axe over his. How different we were.

The day at the Arts and culture Festival was one I will never forget and I consider myself extremely lucky to have been able to see the children perform their singing and dancing.

Wedding Bells, Vocab Vowels and Japanese babies all in a row

Aoi, Kyro’s bride to be, turned out to be the sweetest most delightful daughter in law we could have imagined.   

Love was in the air.  Kyro swooned.  Aoi fluttered her eyelashes innocently.  Did I mention love was in the air?  The charming couple wanted a fairytale forest wedding to capture their fairytale romance and Kyro planned each step of their wedding day with Aoi following via skype from Japan.  Aoi, having never been to South Africa, imagined we might live in a hut and feared for her safety.  The poor girl had no idea what to expect but bravely ordered her wedding dress and booked her plane ticket.  Kyro assured her we weren’t savages and that she wouldn’t get mugged on each street corner as she expected as per CNN.  I warned her that we were a meat eating nation and that some men event hunted for their meat.  I just omitted to say not in our back yard although memories of that pigs head in the fridge had my mother thinking otherwise.  We planned to kit Theo out in a loin cloth, unshaven, clutching a turkey leg to greet her at the front door but decided that would surely frighten the living daylights out of her.     

Aoi arrived, brave as can be, and a week later they were married.   My mothers house burst at the seams as Japanese gifts, flower arrangements, layers of wedding cake, various stages of plasic icing flowers and 60 meters of organza filled every corner of the house.  Aoi’s wedding dress and all the things necessary for a romantic honeymoon overflowed out of the bedroom door.  The bathroom was scattered with Japanese earbuds, false eyelashes, dental floss, creams and puffs and anything necessary for a bride who worried that there weren’t any shops within 400 km’s from our house.  The kitchen, well where to start. The kitchen bulged with everyday Japanese things like tofu, seaweed, mochie, noodles, cherry blossom and tuna flavoured crisps?!?,  soy sauce rice crackers, fish sauce, rubberlike ball thingies, funny green things, sticky sweet little pink things, long slimy white things and brown gooey things.  Poor Rosemary struggled to find the bread to make her daily rashion of a peanut butter sandwich and my unadventurous mother played it safe and went on a diet.  
The house was alive and vibrated with activity.

Theo was in his element because he could do the catering and moved the bamboo shoots aside in the fridge to make room for hunks of beef and pork fillet which he was curing for the 3 course banquet braai which was to take place under the trees at Paarl rock.

The big day finally arrived and everything went smoothly. The intimate group of guests celebrated the day with Kyro looking ever so dashing and Aoi as beautiful as a princess in her wedding gown.

After the honeymoon, life at my mothers house certainly did not return to normal.  Six weeks passed in a blur of Japanese and South African cuisine, the lovers whirled in and out the house, permenantly joined at the hip, doing as many site seeing trips and shopping trips as daylight hours would allow. Now the thing about falling in love with someone who you can see via skype but are not able to touch is that there’s a lot of catching up to do.  A lot of it.  And the result - Kyro slipped in significant little hints that they would one day like to have twins.  In fact, prior to her arriving, he had sent Aoi on a quest to find Yams in Japan.  This apparently would prepare her offspring producing hormones for twins but unfortunately the gene altering vegetable didn’t grow in her homeland.    

Then sadly the six weeks came to an end.  The joy they brought to our house and their infectous happiness was to end.   The tearful day arrived for Aoi to return to Japan, alone but Kyro would join her a few weeks later. She packed her bulging suitcase with koeksusters, Rooibos tea, Zambak, dozens of pairs of new shoes and memories of South African. With a lump in my throat I tried saying my goodbyes to my sweet, loving and delightful new daughter in law, her cute foreign English accent and even more foreign recipes.

Three days later, after a visit to her doctor in Japan, Kyro announced that we were to become grandparents.  TO TWINS!  No Yams or family gene involvement, just the power of positive thinking.  Well, that kind of news required another bottle of whiskey. 

We spent every possible minute with Kyro over the next month, realising our time with him was soon to end, as our only son, was about to leave for Japan for good. We turned my mothers house upside down again, well actually it never returned to its old orderly fashion, what with Kyro packing and repacking his suitcase in the middle of the lounge every few days to squeeze in the family rocking horse and baby gifts which kept accumulating, not forgetting the twin stroller which eventually got bubble wrapped after we all took turns pushing it down the passage a few times.  We took over my mothers sewing room, dug out her stash of ribbon, fabric, elastic and lace and I whipped up some “granny” gifts for my grand children.  Delicate needlework is not my forte, being a more slap stick boer maak ‘n plan kinda person, so my rouch stitching didn’t quite match Aoi’s perfect one millimetre chain stiching on her delicate hand made coasters which she brought for us all as gifts.  I eventually sent 2 roughly blanket stitched felt fish, one lackings its dorsal fin, and two owls, one without wings.  In the end I’d given up trying to do the tiny stitches required, but hopefully the twins wouldn’t mind too much. The sewing machine worked overtime and I, with Kyro’s help, made a colourful bag, decorated with cute animal cut outs which I traced and glued on, and which I thought looked quite nice besides the fact that the whole bag was very lopsided.  Kyro whipped up four of the cutest little soft leather shoes, biaz trimming and all, two pouch slings to carry the infants in and a huge zip up carry bag, complete with elastic pockets to store bottles and other goddies and reinforced and lined with my mothers boob xrays which he discovered at the bottom of the cupboard. Since we were on a creative streak, I went into a fabric flower frenzy and made a bunch of flowers for my friends birthday. I spent hours researching other craft ideas which would keep me busy when we eventually hit the road again and which could come in handy in some rural village. Recycled craft ideas was what I was after.  Kyro showed me how to turn plastic packets into long strips then he plugged my mothers liquidizer into the passage plug, tied the end onto the spinning bottom bit and tada, we had 10 meters of twisted plastic wiggling through the house ready to be woven or plaited into things like bags or mats or anything else.  On days like these, my mother stayed in bed a little longer doing her dementure proof Soduko’s.  The baby shoes turned out so good that Kyro decided to make himself a pair of sandals, especially since he would struggle to find shoes in Japan to fit his boat sized feet.  He promptly cut soles out of my mothers garage rubber mat for his new project, leaving a gaping size 11 left and right shoeprint.  

Theo kept himself busy with his favourite pastime and cooked Souh African food to make sure Kyro didn’t forget his roots and things like pap and wors, rooster bread and braaivleis once he settled on Japanese soil.  He cooked food outside in a solar cooker which he made by placing a black potjie in a plastic cooking bag in the centre of a cars shiny silver sun shield which he first folded into a cone sort of shape.  Four hours later our free energy food was cooked.  He studied up about permaculture and did research about farming using natural resources.  We scanned the internet for charity organizations or NGO’s involved in upliftment programmes which we hoped to get support from once we left Cape Town.

Oh yes, inbetween everything we celebrated a big family Christmas, celebrated my mothers 69^th birthday and passed our TEFL exams.  Kyro with intentions to teach English in Japan and us to leave for what started out to be a journey to Zambia had now changed to the Eastern Cape, old Transkei, since it seemed easier to achieve.  Theo and I were hoping to find a rural village somewhere beautiful and unspoilt by western man and possibly teach English combined with teaching rural people how to plant a vegetable garden.

And then the day rolled around for Kyro to leave.  It had to eventually I suppose.  We were excited for him but damn I was going to miss him and his uncomplicated yet unconventional ideas about how the world could be.

We drove to the airport making jokes, pretending everything was all right.  He carried a lever arch file under one puffed up arm and a board game under the other bulging arm which struggled to bend since he was wearing most of the clothes he owned.     There wasn’t any space in his suitcase since it was filled with gifts, baby things which were identically matched for the identical twins and one blue antique rocking horse wedged from corner to corner.  The bubble wrapped twin pram would have to survive the cargo hold.  His pockets bulged with extra socks, 2 dozen semi precious stones and tomatoe seeds (he’s a very keen gardener) which if questioned about at customs, he planned to say he messed tomatoe from the salad he had at the airport and the serviette which he wiped it up with ended up in his pocket.    No-one stopped him since his excitement to see Aoi again had him grinning from ear to ear all the way through customs. 

We cried our goodbyes, promised to skype and waved good wishes to Kyro as he set off to start a new life far across the ocean in a place that had earthquakes and eggrolls and where no-one could say rrr.

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.

KLEINZEE NEXT TO THE BIG C

KLEINZEE NEXT TO THE BIG C
We zoomed through busy Springbok asap. We grabbed a bunch of brochures to email our CV’s to guesthouses in hopes of getting a job since our cash was running low, and then we headed into the wild wild west. Theo’s homemade Bokkoms no longer hung at the back of the truck so someone might have got smacked with a flying dead fish on the N7 somewhere between Bitterfontein and Springbok or alternatively we probably had a lot of people confused about road kill in the Namakwaland as 15 fish lay scattered across the tarmac amongst the odd Springbokkie and Bat Eared Fox.
We made a quick stop at the Namakwa National park but I’m afraid to say that all that stood out for me (it was only a 2 hour stop for a little walk about) was their goat biltong which was very tasty. Ja you see a lot of donkeys, goats and dassies out here between the rocks, fynbos and the succulents. The only big 5 is our vyfman Namakwaland doos wyn. You could find Veldkool (Trachyandra cilliata), which grows wild and can be cooked as you would green beans although they look like asparagus heads. That and suurvye (Carpobrotus edulis) (which are lekker to suck when they are nearly dry) are the only edible plants which I’m familiar with out here. I’m still saving the Hoodia gordonii for later – a bit like end of the month crackers.
Our gas bottle ran out on the way to Kleinzee which is 100 km from Springbok so once again we had to work our way through the contents of the freezer. Luckily the funny smelling pork chops or chicken had no side effects. We pickled a lot of the mussels and Theo made crumbed mussels twice a day and devine mussel soup.

Kleinzee is owned by De Beers so you have to get a permit to stay overnight and show your ID at the gates to the town. This is diamond country and they are big on security even though De Beers has sort of finished mining and are now rehabilitating the area. Anyway we had to pay for accommodation for the first time in almost a month since leaving Cape Town but you can’t just sommer stop along the roadside once you enter the area owned by De Beers.
We arranged to stay at Kleinzee caravan park for 2 days and within hours of meeting Charles, owner of the small caravan park and yes another friendly west coast local, he and Theo got chatting over a slet sap (better known as a brutal fruit to everyone else) and next thing we had a job. Turns out Charles needs someone to help him run his restaurant called the Crazy Crayfish since he was off to build a oil rig in some or other African country where the money is good. He is going to arrange a house for us to rent in the deserted Kleinzee mining village.
The small kitchen and busy bar accommodates the 30 locals and apparently lots of 4x4 tourists, surfers and divers who pass through.
Charles doesn’t beat around with words and either calls a spade a spade or a naai. He has a gentle refined side as well since besides being married to a very nice English woman, every night he comes down to the caravan park to tumble dry the cat”s blanket to make sure Asblik sleeps warmly in his cat tree house. Last night he brought us and his friend Jakes each a Gemsbok liver the size of a soccer ball. We might spend a few days with Jakes, who also happens to be a missionary and a very keen fisherman on the Orange River. Sounds like he has been around the block and most of Africa since he has been a builder, a bouncer and after hearing about his drunken past, quite a boxer. He used to think the worm in the bottom of a Tequila bottle was for girls so he and die manne used a scorpion or even a Puff Adder instead.
We will go back to help Charles at the Cazy Crayfish in October but in the meantime we want to explore Port Nolloth where the real diamond cowboys are at and then next week hopefully off to the Orange River with Jakes and his Bible.

Footnote: If you made rollmops as per my previous blog they will flop since I forgot to mention you should salt your bokkom fillets first and you might want to water your vinegar down a bit.

Bokkoms – dried fish, salty as hell, best eaten with a cold beer
Dassie – Hyrax (the biggest, common, most spotted mammal in the Cape)
vyfman Namaqualand doos wyn – 5 Litre box wine
lekker - yummy
Sommer – just like that, If not why not
slet sap – slut juice
naai – f*cker, idiot, arsehole – depends on your mood or how much slet sap you’ve had
die manne – the tough guys

Every Which Way But Loose

Well the upside of living in South Africa is you probably will get burgled somewhere along the line. Make sure you’ve got insurance, as we did, and you’ll be ok. Luckily we don’t have a mansion of a house full of stuff which other people want.

In the meantime I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a hot looking bergie in leather pants, the ones I’d only just been able to fit into again after eating vegetable soup for 3 weeks. The 10 stolen bottles of aftershave had sentimental value. They were years and years of unimaginative Xmas presents I’d given my dad since the age of 12 and which my mom had recently given to me after he died last year. Nothing else will be missed.

Anyway our insurance sent us off to a shop in Cape Town to choose replacement things. Theo made a b-line for a Garmin. Very sensible choice considering my direction skills are non existent. In fact the other day I realized, as I lay in bed with aching toes, that even the blood traveling around in my body was getting lost these days. It zooms down my left side and forgets to make a detour down to my toes before rushing up my right side.

Getting back to the point, we took the Garmin for a test drive. I’m impressed. The thing even talks to you telling you when to make a turn. It’s got a calculator so we can work out how far we can travel before the next fish and chip shop. You can see what the time is in Japan in case you’re wondering if anyone there is watching the same awesome sunset as you, and you can see which way the North Pole lies. Finding places is gonna be easy now so long as you know the exact address, spelt correctly, to punch in. I wonder if I’ll be able to punch in “bar – Kosi Bay – Beach front.

I’m just dying to find out.

Journey Into The Unknown

I’m finally ready. Mentally that is. Theo and I have wanted to change our lifestyles for some time now and that’s how we ended up deciding to sell everything, and buy an old diesel bus, hook up 2 on/off road bikes and travel South Africa. Indefinitely that is. Wow - scary and exciting. It’s taken me a while to get my mind, which I almost lost in the process, around the idea but that’s pretty par for course since I’m prone to getting lost. I mean you don’t just wake up one morning and say “gee let’s buy a bus and disappear into the sunset”. Mind you Theo did and at first I thought it was just another one of his schemes. Eventually my earthy side won the battle going on in my head and I thought what the heck, lets go for it.

We’ll be selling our car and our 2 road bikes in exchange for the bus and 2 old, cheapo on/off road bikes. We don’t have property to sell and we haven’t won the lotto and anyway if we did we’d still definitely go ahead with our idea. Our small work pensions will be our backup for new tyres or gear boxes etc so we plan to work at different things as we go along.

So you probably think our idea sounds a bit far fetched, ha, well picture this. We plan to convert the diesel bus to run on used fish ‘n chip oil. That got your attention I bet. It’s the latest rage overseas you know. The plan is, as we pass through towns, we’ll collect the old oil from fish and chip shops and the occasional restaurant. The oil gets strained and stored in a container under the bus but needs to be heated before it can run through the engine. If you don’t see us coming you might smell us.

We plan to buy a wind generator kit which we’ll attach to the roof of the bus as and when we need to generate more power. The electricity will be stored in a bunch of batteries and we should be able to run our laptop, a fridge, a sound system and 1 or 2 smaller items. Who needs more? Our TV will not be missed! I hope.

Besides a bed, a kitchen area and packing space, we plan to install a caravan type toilet, water tanks for running water which we could heat with gas. Luckily I’m not a finicky person and don’t have a problem peeing behind a bush. We will also be stopping at caravan parks occasionally, and not forgetting all the one stops so look out for us next time you all meet at one for a breakfast run. I suspect we’ll be very visible. Mind you I’ll probably be catching a shower while Theo sorts out the dump.

We plan to explore some out of the way places on our on/off road bikes. In fact I think that’s how the plan materialized. We got gatvol of riding the same roads around Cape Town and missed out on the dirt roads cos as you know road bikes don’t do well on gravel. We were ready to exchange the speed thing for getting back into nature. Well it was that combined with the fact that Theo was gatvol of his job and I was starting to feel like part of the furniture at mine. I got a fright when I realized I was getting sucked into the system shared with work colleges who thought it was a great achievement to retire after giving 40 years of service to the same company. My 20 year old son doesn’t need me around anymore to wipe his nose and I think his youthful ideas about quantum physics and thinking out the box has inspired me.

Every now and then my stomach churns when the scary thoughts enter my spacious mind but then I remind myself that it is what I want to do and it is possible. Getting off the grid is gonna be a challenge but it sure is gonna be an adventure and I can’t wait.