Yeehaa!There’s a jar of my Dukkah on some Australian chicks kitchen shelf and another jar of my seaweed salt in some Frenchies kitchen.Ha ha. Does that classify as exporting?Well, for their sake, let’s at least hope the stuff made it through customs ok.
Our first market went ok.We made a few pennies but more importantly it was great putting our seaweed products out there and getting such a good response.There were a few people who got a rather alarmed look on their face when I invited them to have a taste of seaweed flavoured food. The rest of the public, well they were intrigued at first, then very pleasantly surprised by the taste and then bought some.
Working the markets is also a great way to network with other vendors and I got some good leads. The best thing about Tokai Earth Market is the fact that there’s beer available. The second best thing is that the vendors aren’t shy to support the bar.By the time the morning was over, I had knocked back a pint or 2 and was pleasantly enjoying myself although I might have euphorically tried giving the same sales pitch to people who happened to amble by my table more than once. Come to think of it, that might explain the alarmed look I occasionally received.
Foodie people who appreciate good wholesome food go there on Saturday mornings to stock up on free range bacon, chorizo sausage, beetroot chutney, chickpea bread, olives, organic veggies, German chocolate delectables and and and.On Wednesday evenings they meet their friends there for sushi, salad or salsa and of course more beer or organic wine.
Today we worked the monthly Holistic Market in Obs.That’s the one which we scouted last month where Theo back paddled when some chick offered to wash his aura with a piece of ginger.Well it certainly is more Bohemian.There’s nothing showy, just a rustic vibe which attracts earthy people, some with dreadlocks or hippie dresses but everyone more or less has the same agenda – good healthy food, save the planet and get in touch with yourself.You can buy really beautiful, artistically, creative goods from leather work to felt work to paintings or go for a reading and find out where you lost your mind or make contact with Aunt Beatrice on the other side. The people selling food around us were mostly foreigners, who I think by nature are more creative in the kitchen than many South Africans who are quite comfortable munching on a boerie roll.Other food vendors around us were a Palestinian dude doing pitas, an Italian chick who sold the most awesome, authentic vegetarian lasagne, a French dude who sold veree alfee stirfry and veree alfee jews to drink.I saw some interesting samoosa combinations such as smoked snoek and feta, who would have thought. Theo made a pineapple and Nori curry to cater for the vegetarians and even though we didn’t do as well as we would have hoped, I left there with a whole bunch of leads and a good feeling inside.And that’s what’s it all about.
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
In between experimenting with Kelp while in Struisbaai we caught up our good friends Theo and Amanda who live in Suiderstrand, the reserve area in L’Aghulas.
He is a very keen and accomplished fisherman and whenever we visit them, the two Theo’s always head off to the rocks and come back with, at the very least, one nice sized catch. Over the last few years, our friend Theo has expanded his options of catching fish from the rocks to getting himself a kayak and paddling out to sea where the fish are even more plentiful.My Theo decided to give it a go.
They wheeled the kayaks down to the beachfront on Theo’s odd looking, yet practical homemade contraption made from old bicycle rims and a frame.My Theo squeezed himself into a wetsuit and balanced his now vey lean looking body over the floating kayak as it gently rocked in the surf.Armed with instructions about how to drop anchor, use his oars effectively and set up his rod without falling overboard, they set off across the flat ocean.Amanda and I relaxed on her stoep, lulled by rolling waves while we watched Bulbuls catching insects in the Bitou bushes and we caught up on news.
The guys returned later that morning, Theo grinning from ear to ear.The Kabeljou (Cob) had been biting since his first cast and he’d managed to catch a whole bunch but brought one sized fish back in the storage holder on the kayak.Buddy Theo brought back 3.
Looking down while baiting his hook had made him a bit queazy and he admitted to meeting Ralph Kotze out on the seas but at least he hadn’t toppled over, not even when a harmless big cow shark came for a close inspection, flashing rows of serrated teeth.Rather him than me.
Later that day we braaied Kabeljou, enjoyed a glass or 2 or 3 of red while I babbled on about seaweed. By the time the wine was finished we had covered all the uses of slippery kelp, from culinary to using it as a fertilizer, to its health purposes from beauty wraps to detox.And that’s when the snot hit the fan.Did you know that the gel is even extracted to be used in, among other things, sexual lubrications?Now that surprised you I bet.Well it sure got our imagination going that afternoon.
I’ve been very experimental with all kinds of seaweed but that’s one use I haven’t tried yet.Never say never.Perhaps I’ll keep a 12 cm tube of Kelp in the fridge for a rainy day.
My inspiration to eat seaweed started months and months ago when I came across some interesting seaweed recipes written by Louie Lemmer and which I tested when we were back in Kleinzee. Her ideas about using free food from the ocean (which just happened to be super duper healthy as well) led me to me cook with the stuff, bath in the stuff and I would have wrapped up Theo’s unique physique in the stuff had he let me.
Back in Cape Town and having decided to turn funny green food into something tasty and sellable to the South African market where men are real men who eat real food wasn’t easy. We had decided to turn this into an income and the tension between Theo and I was mounting. I wake up stiff from tossing and turning, trying to come up with a seaweed jam recipe then head for the kitchen, while Theo wakes up stiff in different places then wonders what’s happening in the world so he checks out facebook or news 24. When the pressures on, there’s only one thing to do. Hit the road again. We jumped in the truck and a few hours later we were setting up camp at Tietiesbaai beachfront with plans to stock up on Nori and relax a bit.
Drying Nori in Tietietsbaai
Over the next five days we collected about 50 kg’s of wet Nori which we processed daily by rinsing and then hanging to dry on our hammocks. Waiting for low tide to expose the Nori growing on the rocks gave us enough time to crack a cold beer, cast a line, work on my tan and some much needed R & R. Theo cooked deevine seaweed pasta dishes which we will be placing on our new website sealogix.webs.com. We didn’t do any exploring or even stop at the well known Paternoster Hotel, instead we monitored our seaweed draped all over the show. We took enough dried Nori back to my mothers kitchen where we roasted it, ground it and surprised her by giving her kitchen tiles a new look of speckled fish food flakes.
Smoking out the box
A week later we met earthy Jenny, Louie Lemmer’s daughter who hopes to one day print her mother’s seaweed recipe book. Jenny is also experimenting with seaweed from food to skin products. It’s been great meeting someone just as excited about seaweed as I am. She uses Wakame seaweed (not local), and makes chocolate sweets with Kelp. Kelp is abundant along our coastline and until this stage all I had made with it was pickles but suddenly another trip to the coast sounded like a good idea. Anyway, we still hadn’t visited Theo’s folks since being back so we warmed up the truck’s engine for a trip to Struisbaai near L’Aghulas where there’s no pollution or chemicals being pumped into in the sea. We arrived with bottles and buckets and ideas to make watlemoen konfyt and dried sugared sweets with kelp. Collecting kelp is not as easy as Nori which I just pull off the rocks, leaving the base behind so that the plant doesn’t die, whereas picking Kelp you’re gonna get wet.
Yammy Fish Rub
We soon had a snail trail all over Theo’s mother’s kitchen. Jeez Louise, that kelp is slimy. Apparently kelp grows so fast that if you’re patient enough, you can see it grow (like who would do that) but I reckon it’s more a case of the more you watch it, the more it mutates into jelly until everything gets coated in a film of goo. The more you wet the goo, the more it spreads.
Oh well, Theo’s mothers kitchen has been coated in a healthy dose of Vitamin B12 gel and I’m nowhere near my destination but still slip sliding away.
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 resinwhich 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.
We left, gearbox intact, bank balance radically reduced, and headed to Rehoboth on the Kalahari Highway where we treated ourselves to a overnight stop at the dam. Theo had a go at catching the fish jumping brazenly in the water. Then on to Mariental where we expected a slightly bigger town than what we saw.
One of the things which make travelling to new town exciting is wondering about the town and what it’s made up of before you get there. An imaginary picture pops into your head of a general dealer and the cutest gift shop where a chatty, friendly girl sells unusual local crafts and goodies so you can buy just the right gift for your family back home and she even points out a 2nd hand book shop and invites you to her house to read your palm or show you her travel photos and you meet her exotic looking boyfriend who’s into falconry or is studying to be an entomologist and tells you fascinating things about insects. Wide shady roads flanked by old fashioned houses with brookielace stoeps lead you down to the market where you can buy fresh farm veggies and free range eggs. There must always be a pub where you can meet the friendly locals over a cold beer and if not get offered a job then at least get invited to park the truck in some generous persons yard.
When the sign says 50 k’m to go you start thinking about things you might need like tomatoes or toilet paper and whether you should stop at the tourist info centre. Eventually, over the koppie you see a cluster of roofs peeping out, their walls growing longer as you get nearer. You’ve arrived but its 1 o clock and the only shop selling toothpaste is closed. The whole town has buggered off for lunch except a lady waiting for Pep Stores to open so that she can buy another hankie. There’s no gift shop, info centre or anybody at the bar. It’s just you and the 3 beggars in the parking lot who accosted you hoping to bum a few dollars. You leave town and forget to buy Doom to exterminate the excessive flies. It’s never what you expect.
Arriving at bigger towns I anticipated busty German ladies serving draught beer in noisy pubs nestled in between quaint old German buildings dating back to another century. You arrive, all spruced up and find all the shops are open but everyone in the country is out there doing their shopping as well. After driving around in hectic traffic (anything more than 3 bakkies, a traffic light and a pedestrian crossing confuses you at this stage) you eventually find the laundry. There’s no place to park the truck nearby so you give up and decide to do your washing at the next small town except you know in the back of your mind that you haven’t seen a laundry for the last 2 villages. Instead you walk the streets among the working force, popping into deli’s and curio shops all selling the same stuff. You leave town none the wiser for its secrets but you’re happy with your cold six pack of Tafel beer and a loaf of dark molasses sour dough bread under your arm.
Another unexpected thing about Namibia is that everyone speaks Afrikaans so you barely feel as though you’ve left home. The nation is made up of 4 million people consisting of some white people, many more bustars (better known as coloured / brown folk in SA) and then mostly black people. A mixture of 2 million modern people live in the big city of Windhoek, while another 1 million live in smaller cities of Swakop, Walvis, Keetmans and Luderitz and serving industry and commerce from fishing to florists. The remaining 1 million people must live in the few villages widely spread throughout Namibia, and work in Pep Stores. some big enough to accommodate a hotel, a boerevereniging and of course the obligatory Pep Stores, while other villages are actually just a farm with a petrol station. The open stretches of sheep and beef farmers fill vast spaces in between these villages and then there’s 100’s of lodges. I hear a lot more people live in the north but unfortunately we didn’t get there.
As you drive past surprisingly many mountains and surprisingly green bushveld (in summer) you see a farm house and wonder about the people who live there. How long have they been living there and what are they having for dinner in their kitchen filled with all kinds of things which I could only wonder about? We stopped overnight before reaching Aroab when we spotted a shady pullover under a tree on the roadside which happened to be close to a farmhouse. Within 10 minutes the family had come over to meet us, offered us free milk and tomatoes, we swapped a bunch of movies with their 16 year old son and they even invited us to join them for coffee and a church service at Galloway (± 100 km away) early next morning. We certainly never expected that.
Next day we chanced the less graded gravel roads, thunder still cracked in the distance threatening rain every night but tough. We arrived at Aroab and stayed over at the municipal camping site for R5 p.p.p.n. How frigging cheap is that? Not totally unexpected though since we had read Toast’s article in the January issue of Weg magazine about his trip to southern Namibia in which he mentioned the spot. When it cooled down we went for a walk and discovered Aardvark spoor which we tracked back to its hole. Later that evening we took our chairs and a torch down to wait for him to emerge but no luck.
We crossed back into SA at the border town of Ariamsvlei with my new stone collection and rocks but we were concerned that the bike on the back of the truck didn’t have entry papers. We had produced our ownership papers when entering Namibia but only realised later that we hadn’t actually been issued cross border papers for the bike. We encountered many roadblocks in Namibia where occasionally a cop would ask about the caravan papers but after big smiles and a chat we explained that it didn’t have a chassis and was fixed onto the truck. No-one ever asked about the bike, not even back at the SA border.
If you’re so inclined to smuggle stolen vehicles across the border, then all you have to do is hang bells and whistles from the vehicle which you are towing and perhaps no-one will look upfront and notice the fancy tractor you are perched on and smuggling across.
So what did I enjoy about Namibia? I loved the fact that you don’t drive past dozens of factories spewing smoke or rows and rows of chicken runs to feed the masses. I loved the simple lifestyle and the friendly, down to earth people who aren’t racing to evolve into a high tech breed of society. Mostly, I loved all that space.
Monday, February 21, 2011
IS YOUR CUP HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY
I don’t think it really matters. Nor does the shape of the cup matter, but what does matter is what’s inside your cup.
And the plot thickens. All part of the trip which we will remember I’m sure. To cut a long story short, we slept on the road for 2 days, waiting for the mud puddles to dry up, got stuck a second time on the same 30 km road before hitting the tarmac back to Omaruru. The mozzies were having a fat jol in all the water puddles and we hadn’t taken anything for malaria but quite frankly my dear …... We decided to give Etosha and the Caprivi a miss and rather tour around the south of Namibia where rain floods weren’t a problem. We arrived in Omaruru and Theo announced that the gear box wasn’t working so lekker. Happy days.
We chatted to a guy at a pullover about the rain and road conditions up north while he waited to buy a big red rooster. I didn’t ask. He told us about the time the floods hit Rundu one year. He woke up to a flap flap flapping noise. The river had come down and was running through his house and a big fish was flapping under his bed. He said crocodiles and all kinds of animals get washed down. I chatted to a homeless 15 year old Herero boy who spent the night sleeping on top of a roadside table. We gave him some breakfast and he showed me his pocket album filled with happy photos of himself, other young boys and volunteer girls. I read some letters written to him from the foreign girls and I realised they worked at the Haven which I suspect he had run away from. He was educated and couldn’t have been on the street for very long. We gave him a pep talk about going back but I wondered what would become of him and what had happened in his past life.
Next morning the gears seemed to be a bit better so we moved on to Okahanja where a mechanic looked at it, said it should hold till we reached Windhoek where we could go to a gearbox place. We booked into a campsite and wow, like wow. You have no idea how blissful it was to soak in a bath and scrub. I cleaned the inside of the caravan and Theo hosed down six inches of mud on the bike and the bottom of the truck and six inches of salt packed on the rest of the truck accumulated from Kleinzee to Henties. We chatted to other travellers camping, mostly Germans, who also had changed from their original plans to go north after hearing about the heavy floods.
Next day we left for Windhoek, all spic ‘n span and broke down 20km before reaching the city. We were stuck without any gears. There wasn’t really much space to pull over and heavy traffic zoomed past into Windhoek at 4.30 in the afternoon. But wait, over the fence was a truck place. Gert, the owner at Truck and Cab had us towed the 200m into the yard and will open up the gearbox tomorrow. He said luckily it didn’t happen on the other side of Windhoek or towing would have cost a fortune or further south at Keetmanshoop where there aren’t always spares readily available. We thought bloody hell, luckily it didn’t happen in the bundus on the way to Etosha where’s there’s buggerall. And so we wait.
Well, turns out we need a new gearbox. We contacted our insurance to put a claim in since the gearbox gave problems after working it hard from trying to get out of the mud. They aren’t happy. R26 000 later we have a reconditioned gearbox and new clutch plate but we’ve been sleeping here at the garage for nearly a week waiting for the work to be completed and for our own money to be released from savings to pay the truck place. I’m feeling down. It’s been raining most of the time so we can’t even explore the area by bike. We did go into Windhoek one day to shop for a few groceries, visited the most uninteresting museum ever, made a bee-line for Joe’s Beerhouse, apparently the one place you have to visit in Windhoek but they were closed.
The whole truck breakdown has really affected my psyche. I’m depressed to realise that life really does revolve around money. I mean, if we didn’t have backup funds we’d be totally screwed. What happens when that runs out? We aren’t looking for work right now cos we have to be back in South Africa in April to renew the truck license and have the roadworthy tested again so our time here is limited. No prospect of any income, and sitting here a week waiting for our payment to be cleared has made me feel like a criminal and a failure. Yes we have our health and yes there are people out there who don’t have anything but its not about being thankful for what you have its about how you feel inside. Right now my insides are despondently sad. We watched a movie on the laptop earlier which made me think. The chick said feeling sad is easy cos it means you’ve given up. Our lifestyle to permanently travel this way was our own choice and we have always felt proud, no matter if we are parked in a friendly persons driveway or in the bundus by ourselves but today I feel like a squatter waiting for my luck to change.
I’m sure my spirits will lift once we leave here. Gert has been friendly, in fact he even took us into town this morning to get more groceries and is letting us use a bathroom with a shower behind the factory. I would also want payment for work done before letting customers disappear. More fights lay ahead with the insurance though and hopefully we will be refunded. Can money buy back your mojo?
