Major food group
Should I get another jar?
Making all these difficult decisions, eish! Went to the Virgin Active yesterday for my Splash class and coughed up $40 to cancel my membership at the end of the month. Made an appointment with Owen at Road King Panel Beaters (auto body shop) to repaint the bumpers and do a few touch ups on the Citroën before I turn it in to the rental company. Even made an appointment with my dentist in Ottawa for June 1st to look at a loose crown. Strange feelings, sad and glad at the same time.
Meanwhile, 18.3 kms down the road from me
In Alexandra township last week
The government’s response to xenophobia: send the army in to help police raid the men’s hostels in the townships (township hostels=criminal activity in the minds of most people). Find a few guns, some stolen foodstuffs, and foreigners with no papers. Make no real difference because the problem is something else.
Reminds me of Ottawa during the War Measures Act back in 1970. Army trucks trundling down Rideau Street, a bivouac in the fields beside our house in Alta Vista, a guard posted 24/7 at the house across from my friend’s apartment in Sandy Hill. Locking all the Canada Post mailboxes. Did it make anyone feel safer? Not me.
The business sections of the paper are now worried about SA’s international reputation and the impact on trade and tourism. Durban is having a 20% reduction in travel, game reserves are getting cancellations, etc. Nigeria recalled its ambassador.
But at my local SPAR, there’s a new donations cart, replacing the powered milk one for rhino baby.
I added some Pilchards in tomato sauce
Oh, and those pesky statues!
Equal opportunity defacing
This is the monument at Saartjie (Sarah) Bartmaan’s gravesite.
She was a Khoikhoi woman who, due to her large buttocks (steapopygia) was sold and exhibited in Europe during the early 1800’s. She was known as the Hottentot Venus and resold a few times before dying in poverty in Paris in 1815. Her body was then dissected and remains exhibited at the Museum of Man in Paris until they were finally repatriated in 2002.
For some unthinkable reason, her gravestone was desecrated last week.
Check in out on Wiki.
At the WITS Art museum yesterday
I spent a couple of hours looking at a retrospective of Penny Siopis’ work. I had never heard of her, but was mesmerized by her versatility (painting, collages, sculpture, film, installations) and her story and “message”.
Maybe instead of sending the army to the townships, JZ should take people to see this show. It’s a great history lesson.
Here is one of her very large (6×6) painting/collages:
Penny Siopis- retrospective
And here is the detail:
Looking closer…
and even closer….
I will miss all the tweets
From my backyard neighbours, the feathered friends I have grown to love. I hope you can find a way to access the media files on this…
The irrepressible Hadeda Ibis
better than alarm clocks
The whiny grey go away bird
nice mohawk!
The obsessive-compulsive weaver bird
Engineer at work outside my window
And not to forget the floral cousins
Paradise birds, very quiet
That’s it for now, folks!
My gap year in Joburg 
Catherine, thank you for sharing your observations and insights, enriching us all. What you have done this past year is awesome. I’m happy that you took this journey and even happier that you will soon be home.
Hey that mayo is cheaper in SA than here!
Great post Catherine. I will miss them when you get back but I will be glad to have you back!
Quite the story about Sarah Bartman — a sad tale made even sadder with the desecration of her grave.
See ya soon Cath.
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No surprise to me that you’d post great tales, incisive, wide-ranging, provocative, humourous. Still, it’ll be good to have you back in the nabe.