four unrelated things

1. my boss leaves for a 3 week trip after today, and came to work this morning wearing a tshirt that just says "kwerekwere" in capital letters across the front which is a kind of snub term for foreigner in isiZulu (unrelated to kwerekwere the city in malawi). the man is from oregon...kwerekwere indeed! he is an expert and an academic leader, yet he maintains a sense of humor. well done.

2. a couple of american program kids got mugged at knifepoint at 10 am walking to work from the shuttle stop yesterday, right near the parktown campus (we live on main campus). they are ok, nothing stolen since they had nothing on them, and no one was hurt, but this is a lesson in Don't Walk Around Joburg. i think when i get home i am going to take a 3 hr walk in brooklyn just to reclaim my right to be a pedestrian and not risk my life/belongings in the process. might have to bundle up for that, though, i hear it is already cold in ny.

3. i got skype to work. for those of you who roll with skype, my skype name is janet_m_sloth (referencing the vice magazine "raised by sloths" caption a while back). guess i could stop using it after going running and getting so tired i fall nod off in the middle of a call, though.

4. fingers crossed for THIS and fingers crossed for neat thunderstorms during the african spring. i hear this city is the international capital of lightning strikes, which, as long as they don't hit my building are gonna be spectacular to watch. until they kill someone's appliance with a massive electrical surge. got to remember to unplug things. thanks to a wits friend for reminding me of this.

play the blues

anyone in joburg for any amount of time should go to the radium beerhall in orange grove, and listen to the blues guys on wednesday nights. they were really good yesterday evening and there is no cover. plus it is a restaurant and you can eat a proper dinner while grooving on the nice sounds. we're going back another week on friday for live jazz, since there is no cover for that either and it's been a while since i've seen a good live jazz show.

people back home, think of the brooklyn tavern crossed with cleveland's beachland ballroom, perhaps with a bigger kitchen? and more old people. god knows i love to go to shows full of old people, though, i made it when yo la tengo played the beachland and i was fifteen, me and a bunch of old people singing along and requesting devo. those were the days.

a massive data swap between a wits friend and i this week has been making me miss new york's hipsters. almost. maybe. a little bit? my itunes is going to DOUBLE before i get home, it is wonderful.

some more storytelling

first mishap: i check in with a friend's passport by accident (she had left it in my desk drawer for safekeeping, guess i passed it back without looking). we laugh about this, since she isn't white and yet the clerk still had no trouble giving me (her) ticket after staring at her passport.

first sight in cape town: the shacks on the side of the freeway as we drive to rondebosch. some things are the same all over.

first trip: to the 24 hr diner for dinner (burgers) and then to pick n pay for breakfast (one bag of cereal for the whole week). main street in rondebosch is incredibly convenient and nice to walk along, with all kinds of stores, and we can't shut up about it because we are used to joburg, which is, according to our wits friends "a raw deal". 24 hr diner? ability to walk around like a normal person? SOLD.

first minibus ride: 6 rand all the way downtown! more reasons to move to cape town. the minibuses only go in two directions, and are easy to hail, since they go down the road starting and stopping with the driver's right hand guy whistling and yelling their destination repeatedly.

first trip through the street market: so many pairs of cheap sneakers! thank god i resisted the urge. train station market, outside and inside, had many vendors you can buy almost anything from. it is a little like if the west side market in cleveland diversified into clothing, shoes, herbal medicines and household items.

first stop at a travel agency (since i've gotten here): only to discover that four or five days stopover for some time in dakar is going to DOUBLE my airfare home, so there is no chance in hell of that happening. i think she quoted me 20,000 rand, which would be more than the whole roundtrip fare is now? how come no one wants to go to dakar? this baffles me.

first ride on the metro: along the coast, which my sleepy brain mistakes for the croatian coast subconsciously. a whale swims by. an incredibly cute little boy sits next to us and makes faces. i try to photograph the obviously orasac-like mountainsides but the window is all scratched up and the pictures come out terribly.

first time in the ocean: to surf at muisenberg, total beginners, in what is basically a windstorm, with a big horizontal riptide dragging our weak little human bodies down the beach. i heard the shark siren at one point, but it might have been a different beach since i looked over and the instructor motioned to me to come back in and try again. i gave up when my arms stopped working.

first realization about sharks: the siren! plus also when the rasta shark watcher guy came over with his shark tshirt and radio and was like, you are safe with us! apparently, just out off of muisenberg and surrounding beaches is a great white breeding ground. nature is fascinating.

first hike: cape point to cape of good hope. too many stairs. at least i had real shoes on, couldn't say the same for my companions. at the top of cape point there is a lighthouse with a lot of graffiti, some even in croatian. some dude from zagreb left his mark at the bottom of the inhabited earth.

first ostrich sighting: beach ostriches near cape of good hope. they remind me of raptors, with their dinosaur looking feet.

first night out: stones in observatory. enough said.

second night out: a bar called marvel on long street which played great hip hop hits from home, and was really fun, if not way too crowded. towards the end i was throwing elbows to prevent getting groped, which is when i went home.

first late night food run: other than the 24 hr diner which we never really ate at that late, actually, we did go for samosas (here it is samoosas, i think) at 3am after closing hours and convinced the chef to open up just for us. in the restaurant was an off shift waitress who either a) just escaped from her 12 step program or b) was just crazy. first she told a rape joke to cure my friend's case of the hiccups, then she tried to get us to order a round of liquid cocaines.

in other news, our host in cape town is roommate to a pair of unrelated tall canadian redheads, although they look like sisters (imagine the odds). one of them is a triple citizen in canada, australia and new zealand (once again, imagine the odds). i didn't even know that was possible.

things i am missing

1. the annual conference on transitional justice at nyu law.
2. big, controversial conference on torture and psychology and law at john jay.
3. a gazillion free food events at nyu welcome week.
4. numerous paralegal openings.
5. dregs of the ny summer/start of the fall. god, i love the ny fall.
6. idealist graduate school fair. :( two years in a row i missed this!
7. most of the public fall conflict lectures at wagner.

unrelated:

i think i heard a white south african student say this today: "ew, i hate colonialism, i hate reading about it, i didn't know this class was all about colonialism." to which i thought, REALLY? i wonder if she knows why she even lives here? why she was born here? hint: she hates it! also, the class is called "psychosocial perspectives on human rights", you'd think since it's taught in south africa it will have a LOT to do with colonialism. looks like it'll be a good class though.

cape town wildlife

i am not sure what this is, but it might be a rock badger. it was very friendly and very gobbly.

baboons! near cape point.

penguins at boulder beach. one of them bit our host.

a very tiny lizard at cape of good hope.

guide to south african nightlife

a flowchart for how to decide if a nightclub, bar, or lounge is a good idea, based on my limited experience.

the --> means "if yes".

step one: 

do you see only or mostly white people? 

--> are folks wearing 'subculture' clothes, ie the kind that one group of kids wore in middle school/high school? --> leave

--> is bad 90s rock music playing? --> leave

--> are there pool tables? --> not into pool? --> consider leaving.

--> is it a gay bar? --> is it not very crowded? --> it is probably not a good one, maybe leave.

step two: 

do you see non-white people/a well-mixed group?

--> is the music not rock? --> give it a shot

--> is there an extreme cover charge? --> leave

--> is it a gay bar? --> is it fairly crowded? --> give it a shot

step three:

are there samosas available?

--> buy a whole bunch and enjoy them, then repeat the other steps.

step four:

is there a creeper old dude sitting the back staring at you and your friends, with his fly unzipped and his hand down his pants, and a big grin on his face? 

--> LEAVE NOW, lest you throw away cash money for the bar version of a creepy subway ride in new york. 

special thanks for that last nightlife lesson goes to the ex-pat hangout "stones" in observatory, cape town. i am sure there is a good time somewhere, but each time folks talk me into going out, i am reminded of what i'm spared when i decline.

in other news, i am already wondering if/how to get back to cape town again. it is wonderful. it is everything i love about south africa mixed with everything i love about dubrovnik & the surrounding area in croatia, with a bunch of english speakers and great public transit. perfect. pictures & adventure re-counting next week!

exams, how they went

literature exam: because it is literature, it is open book, open note, you had the questions 48 hours before you took the test, etc. needless to say i am not very worried. i got to outline everything down to the last detail before we wrote the exam. oh, literature.

international law exam: not open book, not open note, didn't have the questions beforehand. still went pretty well. the exam venue had an epic view--7th floor. i had the urge to cite cases, only we didn't brief any, (civil liberties panic mode is a permanent reflex!) and instead settled on citing country case studies and authors from the journals we read. is it weird to get a head rush out of stacking a paragraph with citations? whatever. it is great.

now i am not going to have to take that friday 8 am intro to international law class at nyu that jita recommended to me, which is WONDERFUL, because, really, am i going to drag my sorry self all the way from central brooklyn to school at 8 am for what is essentially an intro class where you review for the final by reading wikipedia? no way.

now all i have left is a 3000 word paper for the internship class and some journal entries for my unpaid job. oh, internships, what a strange idea. i can't wait to get home and do bitch work for $, instead of doing bitch work and being paid in essay assignments and more reading. work visas are hard to come by, though, which is an understandable obstacle to getting foreign exchange students proper work. if i had a car to get to and from a job, i'd bartend, cash only, right. to be fair: the people who organized this did the best they could. they are pretty great.

also: a thing that might be about racism. what is especially apt is just the part at the end really. john campbell for the win!

completely off topic, but awesome.

my brother is crazy! in the best way! he is doing this:

http://web.mit.edu/esummers/www/driving/quebec08.html

700 miles in the canadian wilderness...in a toyota camry. a tricked out, modded for the wild camry, granted. but still...gutsy! nothing i would ever try, ever. i can barely handle not getting killed on 271 south back home.

today i am thankful i'm not living in the south side of chicago.
true story:
http://stereotypist.livejournal.com/115377.html
trayvon's cousin died, probably because the response was not fast, and because they ran him over on purpose, which is a thing that'll kill you. rip, little man. jesus, gang violence.

john campbell drew that, by the way. go see his other things if you haven't. they're about a sad feeling that makes you happy or a happy feeling that makes you sad, according to him. the new yorker just interviewed him as well, which was pretty funny.

off to study for international law test/read for the core class tonight. CAPE TOWN IN THREE DAYS. i can't wait to go running on a trail, maybe even a paved one. exciting. and possibly the beach, even if it is cold.

cleaning out the camera...

...because i never put up photos (sheer laziness), and this is kind of a finals week lull, no adventures. i'll probably run down exams (and adventures!!) after i come back from cape town on the 23rd.

1. cooking like my mother, despite having bland/vaguely unsatisfied memories of eating her food as a little ravenous kid just home from swim practice. it turns out that's the best thing for an african winter too. bean soup! all full of onions and garlic and green things! and mushrooms! if only there was smoked tofu to eat it with. i haven't had anything soy since i got here.


2. i have a sneaker problem. i can't pass up big stompy running shoes like those new men's nike airs to the right, which were on sale at rosebank. they were an investment in not wearing holes in my shoes in a few months, like i did with the reeboks on the left. i didn't even jog in those till i got here and they still had holes! is the ny pavement especially aggressive? hopefully the airs will last through both jogging here AND a long time walking at home.

the, uh, recipe of the week...two cups delivering newspapers...

those of you who know liam lynch got the joke in the title. if you don't, go to itunes --> podcasts --> lynchland --> episode two, skip to the sock puppet skit, and prepare to laugh till you cry.

this is the recipe of the week. of the week used loosely, of course. here we call it mealie-meal or pap, not polenta, but the deliciousness is all the same.

since the topic here is food: i've noticed people seem to be a lot less disordered in their eating here. things are made with sugar instead of corn syrup. there are plenty of 100% juice juices to pick from. portions are normal. drink portions are also normal, including coffee. there are not too many skinny sick looking white girls going around sucking on diet cokes like at home...instead there are so many beautiful, big, proudly curvy african women. just this morning at rosebank i saw a gorgeous lady on five inch gold heels walk by on the arm of her beaming husband; she had curves about as wide as my arm is long. she didn't look like she was wearing any spanx or whatever to suppress them, either, and her skirt was a bright apple green, not the kind of shapeless black thing an american woman her size might prefer in order to 'hide flaws'. her husband didn't look like he thought that ass was a flaw, hey! it was almost as if she loved how she looked. shocking! this acceptance that your body is gonna do the things it is gonna do, within reason, it is a positive outlook. that woman will never in her life be a size six, there is probably nothing in the world that could make that happen, and i bet she couldn't care less about that.

another thing: i've never heard an african woman do the requisite verbal guilt performance while eating (you ladies know it: oh my this is so bad for me, straight to my hips, but it's so divine, i'll just have a tad more then, maybe one more, oh i'm so fat, oh i have no self control *chomp*) ...a thing that is incredibly common at home. people eat butter and drink whole milk and eat whole yogurt and whole cheese and nobody panics over fat content. they just eat the rich things in proportion to other not as rich foods...at normal portion sizes. even the nastiest fast food: normal portions. fascinating! i wish i could import this non-confrontational, low-anxiety, common sense outlook about fat and food home to everyone i know who spent the healthiest, most attractive years of their lives truly hating themselves.

reflecting on UN missions

a friend loaned me a copy of emergency sex and other desperate measures: true stories from a war zone, written by 3 UN employees who were on the ground for missions in cambodia, haiti, rwanda, bosnia, and somalia. the book isn't really about sex, despite the title, although there are a few stories about the authors' very international love lives. as a whole it's more about trauma, ineffectiveness, bureaucracy, and epic tales of violence. go read it. it is FASCINATING. i read the whole thing this morning instead of drafting my lit paper.

next time someone starts talking at me saying so you totally want to work for the UN and go on missions because that's totally what human rights is about, i'm gonna slap their face, and then loan them this book. and if they get that the UN is not the end all of human rights work after reading the book, i might apologize for slapping them.

but honestly, if there is one thing i've heard all the former mission staff say -- and this is everybody from the folks in the book to the guy who spoke at the puck building for wagner (he also did cambodia and somalia, and had close friends in haiti) to my old boss, who consulted for the UN in the congo, it's this: there is so much corruption. so much waste, inefficiency, inaction. bribery, kickbacks, sexual abuse, theft, drunkenness, drug abuse. the philosophy of "hurry up and wait".

the story goes that if you have any kind of a conscience and are not in on the backroom deals and sex trade and bribes and are actually there to do a good thing if you can amidst the chaos, you will quit, or go crazy, or both. romeo dallaire knows all about it...

while doing some work on the motherwell report today www.nelsonmandelabay.gov.za (the municipality motherwell is a part of) has this to tell me on security. doesn't it kind of sound like directions to criminals, maybe beginners who want advice? ha! the methods are interesting. i like how they tell you the "best part" at the end, too.

“Recent criminal methods of operation.

Palisade fencing: A normal car jack is used to open and thus separate the vertical bars on palisade fencing, thus allowing criminals to walk through fencing and remove objects or prepare cars for hijacking.

Electric fencing: It’s simple. Take a length of wood with two nails attached, push it through two wires, and voila, the current is re-directed, causing no harm to the criminal, but damages and disables your electric fence, which will inevitably cost you in repairs. Another method of deactivation is by jumper cables. Simply redirect current and the result is - No alarm.

To disable a motorised gate: Simply pour petrol over it and set alight. This allows for the gate to be moved open without too much difficulty. Don’t be surprised at how easily your car was removed.

The best part is this: The very latest trend is to place a burning CD in an open window of a home. The toxic fumes serve to drug the inhabitants. The effect is a very deep sleep to awaken a few hours later, feeling very drowsy. Whilst asleep, the criminals have free access and reign to everything in your home. The terrifying part is that you cannot even protect yourself - you simply go to sleep.”

learning: it is hit and miss!

HIT: i saw richard goldstone speak last night, due to the efforts of our director who is a goddess. yes, my excitement about this makes me a legal nerd: richard goldstone. you lead the prosecution for international criminal tribunal in yugoslavia, and that was your first experience prosecuting, your first experience with the region at all. nelson mandela was telling you, son i'm about to amend our constitution to get you to go and take this job. when you were under pressure to accept from both madiba and your wife, you knew you had no choice. and you learned as you went. you indicted karadic fourteen years ago. you watched milosevic die in prison. you showed those assholes. i don't care if you can't pronounce srebrenica, you're my hero anyways, ok?

MISS: today a professor found it necessary to define the words "war" and "land mines" to us. basic concepts, we can has them?!? it was a little patronizing, i guess.

HIT: the all too short 6 week state sovereignty (international law) class. one of the lecturers, timothy longman from vassar is like The Rwanda Guy and knows so much, he is full of insight. the wits lecturer is excellent as well, so it is win all around. i wish the class was twice as long. we did our evaluations and we all agreed: awesome. more please.

MISS: said evaluations are "focus groups", facilitated by evalutors who are like ad agency ladies. it is like what gatorade might use to try out new flavors or something, very corporate process. kind of made me feel like a consumer and not a student, but a lot of things do these days. because it is the case.

we saw wall-e this past saturday, which was EXCELLENT, and made me think of a) the robot version of cute overload, or b) the feature film edition of the air song "how does it make you feel?" robot romance! it was WONDERFUL. i am going to BUY A COPY. i have never spent so long hyperventilating from The Cute in a movie theater...there wasn't any words in the first half hour, just little beeps and boops of robot noise.

then we catered/very aggressively hosted a house party in bedford view on saturday night. in a mansion. with a zen pond and fountain inset next to the kitchen. with a tennis court on the grounds. with a tiled pool. with a built-in oven thing for braai-ing next to said pool. with floor to ceiling windows. it was one of the moments where i think about my obsessive focus on new york/brooklyn and realize that i'm probably going to live in a tiny, poorly-lit, cluttered space for the rest of my life. is that enough motivation to look elsewhere? not really. still got that nytimes real estate page bookmarked!

hopefully going to hit up oriental plaza this saturday, buy cape town tickets at some point, and see the play "a touch of madness" at a very deep discount on sunday.

marechera

in the midst of studying for two finals, writing three papers, doing a presentation, and trying to figure out the cost of spring break (at the moment durban is looking like a slightly better deal than cape town, we really would like to get a tan), i got to read dambudzo marechera's 'house of hunger' for class, which is a crazy surrealist commentary on life in zimbabwe when zimbabwe was rhodesia. violence against female characters aside, it reads a little like african vonnegut with a splash of hemingway, a lot of intense description and fighting between people. very interesting.