Sensual Salad

Do yourself a favour and experience this salad:

• Squash cherry tomatoes into a beautiful bowl until they pop
• Tear a mozzarella ball into shreds
• Bruise basil leaves to release the taste and smell
• Season with a couple of twists of coarse salt and pepper
• Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (I used mango and green chili balsamic vinegar)

Chill in the fridge for at least 20 minutes (or preferably leave overnight)
Serve with ciabatta to mop up  the sauce or toast bread and top with salad
Enjoy! (you are allowed to lick your fingers)

Variations - add chopped garlic clove, or chili or use red wine vinegar instead of balsamic.

Being safe

Carrying this camera around makes me feel very vulnerable. It does not seem implausible to imagine that while I have my eye screwed up to the viewfinder someone can come behind me, knock me over the head and steal my camera. I hate that I feel like this. I want to be excited by capturing special moments that occur in the normal course of the day (like the two women on the mattress in the bus shelter). Instead I have to think about safety. Of course the reality of the situation is that the camera can very easily feed a family for a couple of months (or someone's drug habit).

I love South Africa. We have travelled the world and I am always happy to come home. I love the physical beauty, the spirit of the people, the road we have travelled and the transformation we have been part of. I love all the ordinary people who strive every day to make this a better place for us to live in - the gogo in the township, the projects like Project Playground and the musician who gives his time to teach children in the townships.

Every time I return home, though, the news of crime on the television and in the newspapers feels like a physical onslaught. I think that when I am home I develop a certain immunity which is necessary for survival. And of course an automatic vigilance which makes sure that the car doors are locked or that my bag is slung across my body when I walk out in public, and so on.

Moving away is not the answer. I don't know what is. But I do think we need to make more of an effort to  be part of a community that looks out for each other, that takes back the park or the street. A community where we can call on our neighbours. A community that cares. A community where I can feel safe enough to take a photograph. 

Photography and Yoga

I am still smarting from my less than perfect matric dance photo session. I now have new respect for wedding photographers. It cannot be an easy task to deal with family and friends brandishing cellphones and cameras, telling your subject to look this way and that. I was completely overwhelmed and suddenly had ten thumbs when it came to operating my camera and deciding on lighting, apertures and shutter speeds!

However, I had such fun taking photos for the course last week that I thought I would post a few. The subject was willing, the serene environment conducive and I could combine two interests. The dappled, late afternoon light was a bit of a challenge but I think I managed to get some good results. 

  

           


Many of the students on the course seem to have a passion (architecture, child portraits, food, shoes or nightclub photography, and so on) and I think I may have found mine. Melissa patiently posed for me. You can learn more about her yoga studio by clicking here yogaway.

All Grown Up

In spite of me bearing witness (with my camera in tow) to the transformation of the past few days (hair, make up and so on) when she put on that dress, the young woman in front of me took me by surprise. 

Of course we were running late and when she came down the stairs all the family and friends who had come to wish her well, swarmed around with camera lights flashing. She looked as overwhelmed as I felt. All I wanted to do was to freeze the moment and allow flashbacks of her taking her first tentative steps or her first day at school or even that picture after she lost her front teeth, to roll before my eyes. All too soon she was off to the pre-party and from there to school, where the dance was being held.

True to the unpretentious school tradition, the matriculants arrived to cheering and clapping on bikes with sidecars, vintage cars, on boats (yes, being skilfully steered by a jeep from behind) and in our yellow beetle decorated to look like a bug, complete with black spots and eyes. The parents were allowed a peek into the "Night in Venice" hall and then it was time to say goodbye. Time to hand her over to her partner, time to let go for the first all-nighter to come, time to trust that she would have fun and be safe.

sneak preview

So here we are the day after - we have survived the matric dance, the pre- and post-parties and life can go back to normal. We have moved onto a new stage, the 18th birthday looms as does the driving test and then, before we know it, final exams. I am steadfast in my resolve that it would be best to send me a "Just Married" postcard.

Celebrating the Ordinary

I feel like the camera has given me a new set of eyes. Suddenly I notice so many details in photographs and also have become more critical of elements like composition and lighting. The ordinary has become more photograph-able. Unfortunately, I don't always have the camera on hand.

Like, driving down the main road last week, I wished I could have stopped and taken a picture. There, filling the bus shelter, was a double mattress- and bed-set with two African mamas having a relaxing chat while they waited for the bus. One of them had even taken her shoes off. It reminded me of the time, a few years back, when we were doing some renovations in our previous house. The bathroom door we removed was not standard and we were not going to use it again. Mavis, who was our domestic worker at the time, jumped at the offer of a door for her house. "Don't worry," she assured us. "I bring someone on Saturday." Saturday Mavis arrived with a friend. I looked around in vain for the bakkie I had assumed they would be coming in. "No," Mavis replied to my query, "we take on train. She is going to help me with the door onto the train!" Now there would have been another good picture.

On another occasion, I pulled up at the robots next to an enclosed bakkie, at a busy suburban intersection. Eyes right, and right again! I didn't imagine the cheetah giving us what I hope was not a hungry eye! On closer inspection, I discovered it was the bakkie of the Spier rehabilitation centre for cheetahs. They had probably been to one of the schools in the area as part of the education program they offer. Only in Africa.

I am sure there is much material for many books on uniquely South African scenes. Here is one website I had discovered recently:

 http://www.photographersgalleryza.co.za/obie-oberholzer/

Send me a Postcard

Having survived a traditional wedding, I have always joked with my daughter that perhaps she should get married in Paris and send me a "Just Married" postcard! Right now, I am feeling even more convinced that that is the way to go. We have just had the make-up trial, yesterday was the visit to the hairdresser to discuss the style for the day and the dress, shoes and accessories have been shopped for. We have made the appointments for facial, manicure and pedicure and just now discussed who should be invited for tea. She keeps checking how my photography course is going, with, I suspect, less than pure motives.

No, this is not the wedding we are planning, but the matric dance. It seems that there is nothing else to talk or think about. All I can say is, thank goodness that it is happening now and not towards the end of the year when exams which will determine futures, have to be written. During the holidays she went out for a bite to eat with two girlfriends. They couldn't decide where to go. It turned out that the dilemma was that one of the girls was on a pre-matric-dance juice diet. Then there is setting up friends with partners for the night - and this is more than a "bring-your-brother-or-cousin" affair. A number of coffee dates have been organised for a friend who has still not decided. 

These days it is common to have the family and friends round for drinks to see the belle off to the ball. Seems we are having tea at 15h00 pm fit in with the pre-pre-dance routine. That plus the after-parties and recovery time, seems to be adding up to a weekend of it. I have been reminded that this is a once in a lifetime occasion - I am glad. Elopement still seems very attractive. 

Eating like French Women

Over the last few weeks, then, I have been trying to live more like a French woman and I am feeling good. It really comes down to eating mindfully - to be in the moment with all your senses. I love how in the book, French Women Don't Get Fat, the author describes the process of eating from going to the market (which French women do every 2 or 3 days) to select the ingredients right to the presentation of the food on a beautifully made up table. 

For the last while I have been buying an organic vegetable box from a project, Harvest of Hope, that supports people in the township. It was quite a mindset change to be presented with vegetables which were in season and to learn what to do with what was in the box. I was forced to look up recipes in which I could use the vegetables that I did not normally use; this in itself was a learning curve. We so easily take over-wrapped fruit and vegetables off the shelf with little regard to whether or not they are in season, have been in cold-storage or have created huge carbon footprints by being imported from New Zealand or Norway. 

I bought a vegetable brush and to the strains of Edith Piaf (well, sometimes, when my daughter is indulging her French appetite) scrub the veggies and make pots of soup or sauces for pasta, or simply roast veggies. I now look forward  to the challenge of unpacking the box  and thinking up a recipe for the week's yield.

To come back to French women, putting your food on a plate and sitting at the table makes food a conscious occasion. When you eat in front of the television or on the run (as I sometimes do), you lose focus and fail to register when you have had enough. It takes a little bit more effort and planning to get everyone in the same place at the same time but sitting at the table allows us to catch up with each other at the end of a busy day and it certainly has been a pleasure.

• French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

Our complicated relationship with .... Food

Towards the end of last year I was completely fed up with my body - it seemed hell-bent on doing its own thing, in spite of me eating healthily, doing regular yoga, walking (OK, maybe not so regularly). So I did what I usually do - I bought a book. 

Women, Food and God jumped out at me off the shelf. The blurb at the back promised to "reveal how our relationship with food is the doorway to freedom and what we want most: the demystification of weight loss and the luminous presence that so many of us call 'God'" - quite a claim, but I was interested to see what she had to say especially since I have this ongoing quest to define spirituality and religion. I did not encounter any new revelations and felt that the book was directed at people with more complicated relationships with food than I have. But it did remind me of another book which I had read cover-to-cover about two years ago, French Women Don't Get Fat.

I had taken that book on holiday to Mauritius and devoured it while lounging in the sunshine at the edge of the Indian Ocean. Periodically, I read out the bits which we were going to implement at home,  to my husband. We enthusiastically, in the idyllic environment of having someone cook for us every hour, embraced the principles. To our credit, I must say that we carried on eating like French women for a good while back home before the rat race intruded more forcefully.

Anyway, I hauled it out to read again and everything makes as much sense now (away from the sun and the ocean) as it did then. This book is written by a French woman who spent an exchange year in the US as a teenager and returned home "looking like a sack of potatoes", to quote her shocked father when he picked her up at the airport on her return. It describes the lifestyle of the French and eating for pleasure, yet staying healthy. It makes good sense.

I am also coming to the end of another book which deals with similar issues (interesting how books become magnets for other books) - When Hungry, Eat. I enjoyed the insight into the process of what makes you leave the country of your birth and all that is familiar, to settle in a new country. I also enjoyed her writing about the time before and immediately after democracy. As far as eating goes, I did not feel that I gained any major new insights. 

All three books in different ways, highlight how our relationship with food is tied up with beliefs, culture, comfort, pleasure and control. How many of us remember not being allowed to leave the table until our plates were empty? At the end of the day, like so much else in life, it comes down to finding the balance. It is a sobering thought that humans are the only animals that eat when they are not hungry. 

• Women Food and God by Geneen Roth
• French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano
• When Hungry, Eat by Joanne Fedler