Sustainability South African-style

While the whole eco/sustainability thing doesn’t seem to be that much of a big deal out here in South Africa as yet, I’ve nonetheless happened upon a couple of enlightened local initiatives just over the last week or so.

 

In fact, although such discoveries appear to fly in the face of Stellenbosch’s reputation as being a bastion of arch-conservative Afrikanerdom, the area would definitely appear to be leading the way in what still seems to be a minority sport elsewhere in the country.

 

As for the first initiative to grab my interest, this was the Lynedoch eco-village. Located near the well-known Spier wine farm just outside of the town itself, it’s apparently the only development of its kind in the whole of South Africa.  

 

And one of the things that makes it special apparently is that, not only was it designed with a host of lovely ecological/environmental sustainability principles in mind, but it was also built from the ground up to be a socially aka racially mixed community.

 

While such concepts may not be particularly radical in the UK, in South Africa, which is still scarred by the forced ‘resettlement’ policies of the apartheid era, the idea of deliberating creating a diversified rather than racially monolithic community is a novel if, at times, challenging one given on-going sensitivities and the everyday potential for misunderstanding.

 

Nevertheless, some 34 residential plots at Lynedoch have either had, or are currently in the process of having, homes built on them, 15 of which are designated for people with low-incomes who are eligible for government-housing subsidies and belong to either black or coloured communities.

 

Another means of trying to address generations of inequality in the country, however, is by putting child education and welfare at the heart of the eco-village’s activities.

 

As a result, a Montessori-based pre-school has been set up to cater to the needs of 40 children as well as a primary school for a further 475, who mainly come from the families of local wine farm workers.

 

Sustainable development

 

Each of the houses, meanwhile, must be built using environmentally-friendly materials such as Adobe brick (clay and straw), sand bags or straw bales, and projects are in place to ensure that energy generation comes from renewable sources.

 

By the same token, household effluent is treated using a variety of techniques ranging from anaerobic digestion to biogas digesters, the methane gas from which is used to power kitchen stoves, while the resultant recycled water is used to flush toilets.

 

As to where the idea for the eco-village came from in the first place, however, it was the brainchild of co-founders, Professor Mark Swilling, divisional head of sustainable development in Stellenbosch University’s School of Public Leadership, and Eve Annecke.

 

Annecke, an educationalist by background, also founded and now runs the Sustainability Institute [www.sustainabilityinstitute.net], which was set up at Lynedoch in partnership with the University in 2000, a year or so after their original brainwave took shape.

 

Not only does the Institute act as a vehicle to channel external funding into the eco village – although the aim is to make it economically self-sufficient over time – but it also runs a Masters course in sustainable development for both domestic and international students. Research and any practical projects are, unsurprisingly, centred on the settlement, which, in turn, benefits from the broad range of new ideas being explored.

 

As a quick aside though, if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of the boutique Lexi Cinema [the lexicinema.co.uk] in Kensal Rise, north west London, do give it a go. Every single penny of the profits generated by the social enterprise, which was set up by Sally Wilton and is run by local volunteers, go to support the aforementioned Lynedoch community.

 

Wilton’s latest venture, The Nomad [http://www.whereisthenomad.com] roaming pop-up cinema that she established with George Woods, also donates around 50% of its profits to the eco-village too.

 

Biodynamic farming

 

My second encounter in the area of eco-innovation, meanwhile, took place at a ‘Winter Harvest Table Lunch with Farmer Angus’ (McIntosh) at the Spier wine farm last Saturday.

 

The interesting thing about Farmer Angus is that he uses biodynamic principles to raise cattle, sheep, laying hens and broiler chickens as well as to grow vegetables, animal feed and vines on the 54 hectares of farmland that he leases from Spier, which is itself known for its sustainability work.

 

While I must confess that I, in my simplistic ignorance, had thought that biodynamic farming was just about planting, cultivating and picking crops in line with different phases of the moon to ensure a more abundant harvest, I have since discovered that it actually comprises an entire philosophy and way of doing things.

 

Essentially it’s an holistic agricultural approach, developed by German philosopher Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s, which views plants, the soil and animals as a single, interrelated ecosystem or living organism, which has the potential to be self-sustaining if managed correctly – not dissimilar in nature to the Gaia theory put forward by Professor James Lovelock, in fact.

 

Important features of the approach, therefore, include using manure from livestock to maintain plant growth by recycling nutrients; a focus on plant, insect, bird and animal biodiversity and wellbeing; and employing traditional crop rotation methods in order to ensure that the land doesn’t become exhausted. Some people even take it a step further and include staff wellbeing in the mix as well.

 

Although dismissed in some quarters as “pseudoscience” because of its spiritual/cosmic elements, Farmer Angus is nonetheless a complete advocate of the method, to the extent that he is currently seeking biodynamic accreditation [http://www.demeter.net/certification/procedures/procedure-example] from German NGO, Demeter (Greek goddess of the harvest) International, which guards the use of its trademark and the ‘biodynamic’ moniker jealously.

 

So tough is it to join the biodynamic club, in fact, that it generally takes at least three years to get aspirant sites up to scratch, not least because Demeter refuses to certify bits of farms here and there, preferring instead to adopt an all or nothing approach.

 

Which just goes to show that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Or something like that.

 

 

 

 

Home sweet home

The first thing that I noticed on my return to the UK for a few weeks to catch up with family and friends was just how green and lush the country really is.

 

While some people would undoubtedly question whether it could be anything else after having suffered such a rainy spring, I, having absented myself from the proceedings, was unaware of quite what an impact the inclement weather would have on the local flora.

 

But it’s also these kinds of everyday details that you tend to forget when you’ve been away for a while and start acclimatising to someone else’s landscape – although you certainly notice them when you come back, not least because you’re looking at everything through the new eyes of a partial stranger.

 

So while South Africa may boast the scrubby high drama of soaring mountains and spectacular if barren cliffs plunging down to azure seas, England, on the other hand, is blessed with its own more fecund charm and a decidedly gentler, rolling beauty.

 

And nowhere is this more true than in the North East. Although I’m biased having been brought up there and undoubtedly feel protective towards this despoiled and battered child of the industrial and post-industrial revolutions, I can say in all truthfulness that it’s no longer grim up north.

 

In fact, the huge amount of trees of every ilk and hue that you see in Durham County in particular is simply astounding. Following a massive planting scheme 30-odd years ago, they’re everywhere you care to look these days, growing in lavish abundance by the sides of roads, beautifying old slag heaps and rejuvenating former brownfield sites, filling in every possible gap and restoring Durham to its former rural glory, just as if the last 250 years had never happened.

 

It truly is amazing what a difference our arboreal cousins can end up making to a landscape.

 

Dear UK

 

Another thing that struck me on coming home, however, was just how expensive the UK has now become. Although I’d been aware over the last few years that my salary wasn’t quite stretching as far as it used to, pitching up again from a developing country like South Africa really underscored the difference.

 

In general terms, food and drink here cost about half of what they do at home, I’d say, while other commodities such as clothing and household goods are probably about 25% cheaper. So despite living off my beloved’s bounty as my visa doesn’t permit me to work, I feel comparatively wealthy for the first time since leaving California about a dozen years ago, where my money also seemed to go a lot further.

 

Perhaps that’s just the joy of ex-pat living. Or more likely it’s because stagnant UK wages and apparently ever-increasing inflation levels are really starting to take their toll on people’s standards of living.

 

But that sorry state of affairs, combined with an excessively weak rand, are making us British ex-pats feel relatively affluent. And concern over the seemingly endless strikes in South Africa’s key mining sector, which are spooking the markets and dragging the currency to historic lows, don’t look set to abate any time soon either.

 

Whatever it is that’s going on in the wider economy, however, I still seemed to spend a veritable fortune at home despite foisting myself on anyone who’d have me and so not even putting my hand in my pocket pay for hotel rooms. Nonetheless, exorbitant train fares and an endless round of eating out and socialising all take their toll on the old bank balance after a while.

 

For example, even after booking online a couple of weeks in advance with Cross Country trains, it cost me a huge £125 return to migrate from Durham to Oxford in order to visit friends, before commencing my grand tour of London and the South East.

 

Shocking, particularly as I had to stand for the initial chunk of the four-and-a-half hour return journey due to delays to the service in the wake of signalling problems, which meant that, in the scrum that ensued, I couldn’t even get near my reserved seat, let alone sit on it. Not impressed.

 

Little absurdities

 

But apart from being a generally more affordable country in which to live, South Africa also has one or two other pluses, one of the biggest being that it always offers up some special little absurdity to make me laugh.

 

On picking me up from the airport on Sunday, for instance, my beloved thought it would be a nice treat to take me for lunch to the first wine farm that he ever went to in the country years ago as he had such good memories of it.

 

So on the road back home to Stellenbosch, we stopped off at a Cape Dutch-style establishment called the Saxenburg, which apparently has amazing views over Table Mountain – when the damp, eerie mists aren’t blanketing everything from sight, that is. My beloved had it in his mind to sample a succulent guinea fowl again at the eponymous restaurant there and we were both looking forward to a lovely roast dinner.

 

So imagine our surprise when, on seating ourselves expectantly in the aforementioned almost empty restaurant that we were told was full until my beloved insisted that the waitress check, we perused the menu excitedly only to find there was not a guinea fowl dish to be seen.

 

While there was ‘Tipsy Butterfish’ served in white wine sauce as well as the indescribable horrors of deviled lamb’s kidneys, the nearest thing we could find to our goal was the rather misleadingly entitled ‘Guinea Fowl Waldorf Salad’, which although replete with the usual apples, raisins and the like had not so much as a dusting of bird wafted over the top.

 

We couldn’t even see any guinea fowl racing around outside, which is pretty unusual as they’re almost ubiquitous everywhere else. The nearest we got to one, in fact, was watching the rather over-the-top Maitre d’ clucking around, but he didn’t look that tasty anyway.

 

So in the infamous Guinea Fowl restaurant that didn’t serve guinea fowl, I plumped for local delicacy, bobotie, which I’d never had before and probably wouldn’t bother to have again – spicy minced meat (beef) with dried fruit in and an egg-based topping served with rice really isn’t my thing, unfortunately.

 

So welcome to South Africa. It’s good to be back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

South African book clubs: A novel experience

I do love a good book. Which is why, when a mate suggested that I set up a book club as a possible means of meeting new people and making new friends in foreign climes, I leapt at the idea.

 

With her being of the new media persuasion, she even encouraged me to take advantage of the possibilities opened up by twenty-first century technology and sign up to the social networking site, MeetUp.com, which is all very novel for a Luddite such as myself.

 

For those not in the know, MeetUp.com is a cross between a kind of platonic group dating site and Fresher’s Week at university. Organisers set up virtual stalls for a monthly fee in a bid to woo you into joining their club, while you browse through the attractions on offer to see if you’re interested in signing up to any of them (for free) and attending their get-together in the physical world at a pre-designated time/date.

 

Although Cape Town has a veritable cornucopia of options available being a big city and everything, the choice in little old Stellenbosch is, unsurprisingly, somewhat more limited. By far the most popular group in the area is Kiki, which is aimed at local photographers – it had an impressive 346 members at the time of writing, all presumably rushing around taking snapshots of all those lovely bleak mountains and cliffs plunging down into the sea.

 

But other groups, including my own book club, are not quite so well endowed. Boland (the former name for the Cape Winelands district) Badminton Academy has the grand total of 25 members.

 

My book club, coming next on the list in the popularity stakes, boasts a more humble six, including myself – although thankfully I’m not completely bottom of the list. That dubious honour goes to the admittedly very specialist SocialVine group for social media marketers, which has so far managed to rack up only three participants.

 

One last chance

 

All a bit disheartening really especially as, despite being in existence for a good couple of months now, we have yet to hold our inaugural meeting. It’s all a bit odd really. People initially seem to be wildly enthusiastic – “can’t wait, I’ve always wanted to join a book club, sounds fabulous” etc.

 

But as the deadline for the MeetUp approaches, their enthusiasm appears to waver. “I was really looking forward to coming, but I tripped over and snapped a fingernail and now need to go into therapy for at least a month to get over the trauma and so won’t be able to make it.”

 

Or “I’m really sorry, but I put the book down on the dining room table only for a minute, but an eagle came swooping in through the window and made off with it in its talons. And all of the local book shops and online stores have now closed down temporarily and so I won’t be able to get another copy for at least a month.”

 

Things like that. So after having my hopes raised and dashed so cruelly no less than three times now, I’m giving it one last chance. I’ve set a date for about a month’s time when I’m back from my much-anticipated trip back home to see friends and family in the UK and then that’s it. If it doesn’t happen, I shall terminate my subscription without so much as a backwards glance…..

 

Continuing on the subject of books though, I went to the launch of a particularly moving one a couple of weeks ago at the convention centre in Cape Town. The book entitled “Journey into the Unknown” was written by dental surgeon, Dr Adam Mahomed, and his now deceased wife, Noorjehan, who lost their three young daughters following a disastrous car accident near Durban in 1986.

 

The book sees both of them giving an account of their lives leading up to the event, their experiences of how the tragedy enfolds as well as the devastating aftermath and how they managed to cope with the profound grief and loss that it generated.

 

A happy ending

 

Unsurprisingly, the couple were initially very depressed and even suicidal at times, and their marriage started to suffer as they blamed each other for what had happened before retreating into their own personal worlds of pain.

 

One of the things, over and above bereavement counselling, that really seemed to help, however, was coming off anti-depressants and going out dancing instead, although some members of their wider Muslim community disapproved of this activity, feeling that it was inappropriate.

 

But as Dr Adam explained: “In Brazil, they’ve opened up a dancing school for depressed patients as they’ve found that general exercise is very effective due to the release of endorphins. But dancing is much nicer and more graceful. Your mind’s not cluttered, it’s free. It’s the only time that angels can dance in your mind.”

 

Other key things that seemed to make a difference were the cathartic experience of writing the book as well as getting heavily involved in charitable work.

 

For example, the Mahomeds not only set up various scholarships, but also established the Shahumna (a portmanteau word based on the names of their daughters, Shamima, Humeira and Nadia) Assessment Centre for people with hearing impairments in Durban.

 

Moreover, Dr Adam, who has just remarried after finding love again, is also channelling all of the proceeds of the book into his charitable endeavours, which include funding dialysis machines for the community in Chatsworth, an Indian area of Durban.

 

And so the rather powerful moral of the story would appear to be that great oaks out of little acorns really can grow if you let them, and even the saddest of stories can, sometimes, have a happy ending….

 

How to survive a Cape winter

You can certainly tell that winter’s arrived in the Cape. This weekend ushered in the start of the stormy season, and all of its usual associated joys, with a vengeance – gusting winds, torrential rain, thunder, the odd flash of lightning and even hailstones that laid thick on the ground like snow in some areas.

 

But after an out-of-the-ordinary Indian summer that served to lull us all into a false sense of security, the change came as a bit of a shock to the system, arriving as it did so swiftly and really quite unexpectedly.

 

Luckily for us though, and not wishing to gloat, we were able to take full advantage of an aesthetically pleasing, diamond-shaped fireplace, which not only takes pride of place in one of the corners of our living room, but also happens to work.

 

And fortuitously, after having spent great chunks of childhood at my grandma’s who eschewed the consistent niceties of central heating for the more spasmodic earthy pleasures of a coal fire, I even know how to light one.

 

But to truly enjoy the benefits of an afternoon spent luxuriating in front of a blazing, open hearth when there’s a gale howling outside, serious preparation work is called for. Such things can’t be taken lightly – they need planning.

 

And so it was that my beloved and I found ourselves last Saturday morning among the heaving crowds of the huge, local shopping mecca that is the Somerset Mall, located 20 km or so away from Stellenbosch in the somewhat more functional, and larger, settlement of Somerset West.

 

The first thing to bear in mind when catering to the requirements of a perfect stormy day is to ensure that you have the right comfort food available. For general grazing purposes or even lunch, this involves purchasing such nibbly snackettes as dips and pitta bread, crisps and chocolate biscuits.

 

But to really get those anticipatory taste-buds going, such naughtiness should always be followed up by an aromatic casserole (in our case, chicken), accompanied by the obligatory creamy mash and the odd glass of red, as opposed to white, wine to wash it all down – see previous blog.

 

Life-changing inventions

 

Second, and just as important, is the entertainment. This may comprise books, newspapers and DVDs, either individually or in any combination of the above, depending on your preference. We opted to purchase the first series of ‘Game of Thrones’, the US epic TV fantasy drama that so many of our friends seem to be raving about but which has, to date, passed us by.

 

In fact, we’re now on episode six (each one is about an hour or so long) but, while undoubtedly enjoying it as a compelling yarn, neither myself nor my beloved are quite as bowled over as expected – although I acknowledge that this is often the case when things have been over-hyped to any great extent.

 

The third and final consideration, meanwhile, is having something to look forward to later on in the day when cabin fever sets in. While the beauty of your chosen item will be very much in the eye of the beholder, my much-anticipated treat took the form of by far the best (belated) wedding present that I’ve ever received (I kid you not) – a dual-control electric blanket.

 

The joy of this truly inspired invention is that, should you and your partner’s body temperatures exist in different stratospheres, as is the case with mine and my beloved’s, then you need freeze\boil (delete as applicable) no more.

 

Instead it’s perfectly possible, and without argument, to establish the perfect temperature level on your side of the bed, either manually or using a pre-set timer. It’s transformed my life. No longer do I reluctantly drag myself away at all hours of the night from our toasty living room to face the ice cold sheets of Dante’s hell.

 

I now positively bound towards the bedroom, as early as I can decently contrive, in anticipation of sinking into the snug, enfolding sumptuousness of our glorious kingsize. It’s a revelation.

 

While a traditional fan of all things literary, I must say that, since being endowed with my new electric blanket, I’ve never read so much in my life – a fact that hopefully bodes well for my new book club, which I recently established courtesy of the MeetUp.com website and which is finally due to hold its inaugural meeting at the end of next week following a couple of false starts.

 

So in anticipation of this great event, let’s just hope that the weather eases up a bit or I could well be sitting in the Basic Bistro, eating my dips and clutching my glass of red, all on my sad, little own-some….

 

 

 

 

 

 

A glimpse of South Africa’s underbelly

There are a couple of things over recent days that have given me pause for thought.

 

The first relates to the immense amount of poverty and deprivation that there is here in South Africa and the fact that, all too soon and without even noticing it, people like me, even if they reckon that they have some kind of social conscience, can all too easily find themselves insulated from, and inured to, it.

 

When I first came to this country, I simply couldn’t tear my gaze away from the vast expanses of corrugated iron that are the townships on the outskirts of Cape Town, and which seem to stretch on for ever as a testimony to human misery – and as a reproach to the rest of us for allowing this abomination to be.

 

While some progress has been made in building small breeze block homes to replace these tumble-down shacks that lack even the most basic sanitation, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone could live in such conditions. It really is a testament to human endurance as well as people’s innate adaptability and ability to survive no matter what.

 

But as time goes on, to my immortal shame, I find myself staring less and less at these scarcely habitable monstrosities as I sit in my comfy rental car and I wonder if, after a while, I’ll even notice. It’s scary how quickly you get used to the impossible.

 

Closer to home, meanwhile, there’s the matter of the relative value of R500 (£35). The other day, I met up with a lady who, under the auspices of the Catholic Church, organises a couple of soup kitchens for children (and all too often hungry adults too) in Cloetesville, one of the ‘coloured’ or mixed race areas of Stellenbosch.

 

One of the key issues she faces is that, as tends to be the case everywhere, it’s the same people from among the congregation who keep on providing the vital veg, meat and other necessaries such as rice and lentils each week. The local Spar also gives bread that’s just passed its sell-by date when it’s available, which really helps too.

 

Stark contrasts

 

But when it’s not, she has to try and eke out a R500 monthly donation from someone that likewise has to cover the cost of gas and any other supplies that may not have materialised for whatever reason.

 

Which is all well and good, but the fact that my beloved and I spent more than twice that on a posh lunch at the IndoChine restaurant at his favourite wine farm, the Delaire Graff, to celebrate our twelfth wedding anniversary this weekend, does make you think.

 

Don’t get me wrong – it was a fabulous experience. They seated us in a lovely blue wood, semi-circular loveseat that would have afforded stunning views of the mountains if it hadn’t been so misty and wet that day, although the quality of the food and expertly-matched tipples more than made up for any deficits weather-wise – and the company was superlative too, of course.

 

But the contrast with the soup kitchen scenario was stark. While friends have told me that I can’t right every wrong in the world, which is true, it did serve to point up to me the huge canyons between those who are lucky enough to have in this country and those who haven’t. Because there’s not even anything approaching the UK’s increasingly despoiled social security system to fall back on here as a safety net. There’s nothing.

 

And so, with unemployment rates upwards of 25% across South Africa, and a huge 50% or so in many of the townships, one of the few things that all too many people rely on to get by is charity and hand-outs, if they can get them.

 

So my role in the soup kitchen context, while meagre, will hopefully prove at least vaguely useful. The idea is that I take letters stamped with the official emblem of the Catholic Church to the various supermarkets in the vicinity in order to ask them for veg donations, hopefully on a regular basis.

 

White, middle-aged males

 

Once pick-up times/days have been agreed, it’ll be my role to deliver any offerings to the hall at St Mark’s church and to help with sorting it into two bundles, before it’s carted off to the good women of Cloetesville for cooking up.

 

And it does appear that Cloetesville is a community in need of help in more ways than one. According to the care professionals that I’m working with to put on a substance abuse educational drama at the end of September, it suffers from the worst addiction rates in the Stellenbosch area, closely followed by the Idas Valley, another coloured community in which we’ll be holding a second event. So things certainly aren’t easy there.

 

The second thing that gave me pause for thought this week though was the apparent plight of a growing number of white, middle-aged South African males. I’d met a couple of guys for lunch and we were talking about the useful role that the almost forgotten art of story-telling can play in corporate life by helping to stimulate discussion and get a point across in an entertaining and memorable, as opposed to dull PowerPoint-y, kind of fashion.

 

As this form of consultancy is only nascent here, I inquired about who their customers tended to be. They replied, with a remarkable lack of bitterness, that things weren’t always easy because large corporates were effectively no-go areas for them as they didn’t fit into the black economic empowerment (BEE) agenda. As a result, most of their work was generated, via word of mouth, from smaller, more flexible organisations that were more able to fly below the radar.

 

And similar tales of woe seem to be making the rounds elsewhere. Nearly everyone you speak to in the white community appears to have a story about a friend, or friend of a friend, who found their services were no longer required after training up a BEE successor, a situation that resulted in them not only losing their job, but in some instances, their home.

 

So, while John Simpson’s article on the BBC website entitled ‘Do white people have a future in South Africa?’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22554709) may have been leaped on in fury by the establishment over here (http://www.africacheck.org/reports/do-400-000-whites-live-in-squatter-camps-in-south-africa-the-answer-is-no/), it would appear to have at least a grain of truth in it, no matter how politically unpopular.

 

And when push comes to shove, what is very clear is that poverty and hunger are no respecters of colour.

 

 

A eulogy to the Great British Pub

The one thing that my beloved and I agree we miss most about the UK, apart from family and friends of course, is the Great British Pub.

 

Although an ailing institution in the wake of the smoking ban and a spending squeeze that has led to more and more people drinking cheap supermarket booze at home, it still has its own inimitable, if sadly increasingly sanitised, charm.

 

To me, there’s nothing like sitting outside one on a warm summer’s day, indulging in a glass of crisp white wine and maybe listening to a band playing bad cover versions or watching Morris Men camp about clashing their sticks together.

 

Or sitting inside one in the winter months, ideally by a roaring fire (we used to live in rural North Essex, where such things are perfectly feasible), having a glass of red or pint of beer and chatting about everything and nothing with anyone who happens to be in the vicinity.

 

Although my beloved thinks it’s nonsense, I have a weather-related theory about wine by the way – a lovely white, with cold droplets of condensation running down the outside of the glass, to my mind, can only truly be savoured on a hot, or even vaguely warm, sunny day when everything is sparkly and golden.

 

The richer, heavier spices of a good red, on the other hand, are perfect for those cold autumn/winter evenings when you need warming up both inside and out.

 

Pub charm

 

But the true charm of a traditional British pub is really, to my mind, less about the alcohol per se, although it admittedly does help to loosen the collective tongue of our still emotionally reserved race, and even less about the increasingly upmarket food on offer to try and win over a new family-friendly clientele in a bid to generate enough margin to stay in business.

 

Instead it’s much more about the camaraderie and the tall tale-telling and the daft banter in a dark, cosy setting, which manages to be intimate and impersonal at the same time. It’s about the getting together with friends old and new and just chewing the fat in a world that all too often finds itself too busy to bother.

 

And call it nostalgia if you will, but despite having been a non-smoker for a couple of years now following an unbelievably successful bout of hypnotherapy, I do miss the old days when everyone was at it.

 

There was something about that dingy, smoky atmosphere that was perfect for trading stories and sharing secrets, and something vital, to my mind, has been lost since publicans dutifully pushed through their own version of apartheid and smokers were banished outside to partake of their habit in the cold and rain.

 

On that note, however, I’ve been trying to put my finger on just exactly what it is that most foreign drinking holes, apart from one or two gems discovered in northern Europe and the ubiquitous Irish pub chains, lack when compared with the old-fashioned British boozer – as opposed to the worryingly trendy, binge-drinking bars aimed at the youff that keep springing up uninvited.

 

And I came to the conclusion that it’s just that – most of the aforementioned hostelries overseas aren’t drinking holes at all. Instead they’re salubrious, civilised places serving respectable food and drink, rather than just the latter, and are, in general terms, distressingly wholesome. With their unlived-in furniture and their too-bright lighting and their tasteful décor, they’re just too Nice.

 

Or else, they’ve gone so far in the opposite direction that it constitutes a health hazard simply putting your foot through the door and definitely wouldn’t be recommended as you’re likely to lose it.

 

Tuk-Tuk Stellies

 

Having said all of that, and just to contradict myself in the process, my two favourite places to go for a drink in Stellenbosch are the beer garden in the Brazen Head Irish pub on Andringa Street, which is a bit studenty but reminds me of home, and the Basic Bistro on Church Street, which is more of a cosy restaurant if you sit inside and a good people-watching spot if you park yourself down outside.

 

The thing that’s put us off going for our traditional Friday night out since we left our B&B near the centre of town and moved to the suburbs though is simply the lack of minicabs. Strange but true in a town of this size.

 

We’ve been warned off using the minibus-style taxis as being unsafe for the middle class likes of us and neither of us are keen to venture into the dangerous realms of drink-driving, although we’re possibly among the few who don’t. So what to do, apart from stay at home?

 

But it now seems that hope may have been restored to us in the shape of that mainstay of Southeast Asia, the tuk-tuk. I spotted one lurking in the car park of the Eikestad Mall in the centre of town on my way to the gym last week and veritably skipped towards my awaiting exercise (for once) as a result.

 

I’d heard on ‘Carte Blanche’, the weekly, magazine-style Sunday evening TV programme which simply everyone watches over here, that their successful introduction into Cape Town, had led to plans to roll them out elsewhere. And my hairdresser told me that their arrival in Stellenbosch was definitely on the cards.

 

So when I duly did a Google search to find out the current state of affairs following the Mall sighting, I discovered that, while the launch of ‘Tuk-Tuk Stellies” gleaming new service was imminent, it had, unfortunately, been held up temporarily by some kind of permit problem.

 

As a result, according to the company’s Facebook page, it isn’t now expected to make its initial debut until the start of June – which, disappointingly, won’t take place here either, but at the ‘Wacky Wine Weekend’ up in the Robertson Wine Valley, a good hour and a half’s drive away. So after raising our expectations so cruelly, let’s raise a glass to them being able to find their way home, one way or the other.

A taste of life in the Cape Winelands

I’ve never known a nation to put on quite so many food and wine festivals as the South Africans – apart from maybe the French.

 

OK, so Stellenbosch may in the heart of the Cape Winelands, where the focus is definitely on all things alchoholic and/or gastronomic, but even so. Let me give you an example: the very first week that we arrived in town (at the end of January), there was a 10-day wine festival here to celebrate the start of the harvest.

 

On the opening Saturday, a flotilla of tractors pulling brightly-coloured floats complete with local bands and dancing farm-workers paraded through the town, before stopping at the historic Rhenish Church near the green, which is called Die Braak, or “the fallow area” in English, for an official harvest blessing from the minister and the Mayor.

 

This little burst of excitement was then followed by tailored food and wine pairing experiences at innumerable restaurants in Stellenbosch itself or at one of the local wine farms round about. And if you’ve not experienced it firsthand, I can now confirm what a huge difference having the right wine to go with a meal can actually make.

 

Instead of just knocking it back, if you’re given the chance to sample several varieties side-by-side during your repast, you can really taste which work and which don’t. Some will enhance the flavour of the dish, others will dampen it down, while still others will completely obliterate it.

 

So if you go somewhere posh and happen to run across a Maitre d’ who knows their onions, so to speak, then cherish them. In fact, so impressed were we by such discoveries that we’re now thinking of doing a beginner’s course at one of the local wine farms over the winter months in order to get a better handle on it all.

 

Anyway, the aforementioned festival finally culminated in an inevitable three-day “Wine Expo” back on Die Braak, which basically consisted of loads of stalls offering wine-tasting (no knowledge required).

 

While this particular little indulgence appears to be a regular fixture at most outdoor events around here, this was wine-tasting extraordinaire, with at least 100 stands offering their wares with gusto.

 

South African cheese festival

 

So after paying the entrance fee, it was simply a matter of grabbing a free wine glass and wandering around, looking for anything novel or interesting to catch the eye.

 

It must be said that the sparkling wines of JC LeRoux, made in the Methode Cap Classique, or classic French champagne-style to you and I, numbered among my own especial favourites – as we didn’t hesitate to inform the stall-holders while launching into our second, or maybe third, glass.

 

Anyway, it isn’t just wine festivals that you’re likely to stumble on in this neighbourhood. We’ve been to everything from slow food and organic markets to cheese and olive extravaganzas, and they’re always packed.

 

In fact, our quest for new culinary delights took us, and 27,000-odd others, up to the grandly-named South African Cheese Festival in Sandringham a couple of weekends back, a place about half an hour’s drive more or less directly north of Stellenbosch.

 

My beloved is a big cheese-lover and, despite my dairy intolerance which means that I’ve got to be careful, I have been known to indulge in the odd morsel or two of blue now and then – the pongier, the better generally.

 

Whether you’re a cheese-lover or not though, it really wouldn’t have mattered too much because, despite the wealth of choice, it definitely wasn’t the only item on the menu.

 

Beyond the inevitable wine-tasting stalls, there were also cakes, charcuterie, relishes, jams and chocolate in as many forms as the imagination would allow. As well as a new innovation in the shape of Marmite Cheese, which sounds vile but was actually quite nice – a more creamy version of the original really, although I guess the old ‘love it or loathe it’ adage would still apply.

 

For lunch, meanwhile, we also sampled some scrummy Dim Sum, followed by the worst paella either of us have ever tasted, as we sat in the sunshine and watched a live band singing cover versions of old US classics. Great stuff.

 

Riebeek Kasteel olive festival

 

Nonetheless, probably my favourite food festival to date was last weekend’s olive spectacular at Riebeek Kasteel in the fertile Riebeek Valley. The Valley is located in the municipality of Swartland, or self-proclaimed Shiraz country, and is only about an hour’s drive north west of Stellenbosch, so not far.

 

The town, which was deservedly nominated in 2009 as one of the Western Cape’s most beautiful – alongside Stellenbosch (hurrah) and Clanwilliam, which is up north on the way to Namibia – by South Africa’s highest circulation Afrikaans-based Sunday newspaper, Rapport, also boasts the country’s oldest hostelry in the shape of The Royal Hotel, which is quite exciting.

 

In fact, the place is altogether a charming one, with a slightly Provencal feel – lots of little white-washed shops linked by narrow back alleys, all sitting on the slopes of the 946 metre-high Kasteelberg mountain, with the church and hotel acting as the town’s main hubs.

 

The olive festival itself, meanwhile, was dotted all over the settlement and its spacious environs. In the square, a large marquee dubbed the ‘Olive Emporium’ had been erected to house everything from olive oil and wine-tasting stalls to vendors selling various kinds of sausages as well as oysters at R10 (about 70p) a pop.

 

But hop on a tractor pulling trailer flatbeds stacked with hay bales for (at least theoretical) comfort or an open-topped ‘fun bus’ and you were also whisked off to a choice of six other venues.

 

My favourite though was the ‘Het Vlock Casteel’ wine farm, where you could sit on yet more comfy hay bales in the gardens and either simply watch people as they meandered from one food/wine stall to the next or drink in the vista over the valley to the mountains, which rise in a semi-circle from the valley floor. Stunning.

 

So all in all, I’d say the South Africans have it sussed when it comes to putting on a good food/wine festival. None of your being herded into vast, airless, impersonal exhibition halls for them – oh no (which perhaps says more about the relative attitudes of the British and South Africans to food and food production than we realise).

 

Here it’s all about conviviality and making the most of the amazing settings from which all of the lovely fresh produce actually comes. And what a difference it makes. Really.

 

Living in lovely Stellenbosch

Stellenbosch really is a lovely town. And for a European who’s never got on with US-style malls, faceless suburbs and communities strung out along apparently arbitrary roads with no clear centre to orient yourself from, it truly is a very pleasant home-from-home.

 

To give you a flavour of just how charming the place is though, it’s the second oldest settlement in South Africa behind Cape Town, which is located about 50km to the west and is, somewhat surprisingly given the colonial connotations, universally referred to as the Mother City.

 

You can tell Stellenbosch’s venerable nature, however, by all of its solid, honest-looking, white Cape Dutch architecture, much of which emanates from the eighteenth century and is dotted around the place in the shape of innumerable churches, museums and university buildings.

 

And nowhere is it more evident than in the historic hub of Dorp Street, just slightly south of the town centre, which even has a row of beautiful Cape Dutch cottages complete with Victorian filigree ironwork on their verandahs and attic windows in their gables, as well as an old general store called “Oom Samie se Winkel” (or Uncle Samie’s shop – see all of those Afrikaans lessons have paid off after all).

 

The shop was set up in 1904 apparently and has, somewhat bizarrely, been preserved in aspic, which means that it’s changed little from the days when it was a rural trading outpost, stocking everything from besom, witchy-style brooms and cotton clothing to biltong, handicrafts, and (a presumably more modern innovation) tourist tat.

 

A major plus though is that, should all of the aforementioned retail activity wear you out, particularly during the summer months when the weather is scorching, you can always park yourself on a conveniently-placed bench on the stoep and recharge your batteries while treating yourself to a bit of people-watching.

 

Another clue to just how lovely Stellenbosch is though is its Afrikaans nickname of “Die Eikestad”, which roughly translated means “the town of oak trees” due to the large number planted by its founder, Simon van der Stel, first governor of the Cape Colony.

 

A working, Afrikaner town

 

And it’s apt. The place is littered with wide, dappled avenues lined with towering oaks, some of which are as many as three century’s old and regularly make passers-by nearly jump out of their skins by unexpectedly throwing acorns at them.

 

Just to add yet more colour to illustrate the picturesque nature of it all though, the town is situated in a basin and surrounded by the somewhat craggy and bleak-looking Great Drakenstein, Simonsberg and Jonkershoek mountains, which stand on average about 1,500m above sea level.

 

But it isn’t all about quaint, fetching stuff for the tourists. Stellenbosch is a working town and administrative centre and, as such, is much more expansive than it seems at first glance.

 

Moreover, along with the various attractive little squares situated off the main streets, you’ve also got a very serviceable shopping mall, imaginatively dubbed the “Eikestad Mall”, at your disposal, which includes such delights as a multi-screen cinema and Virgin Active gym to keep you occupied.

 

One thing to bear in mind though is that Stellenbosch is very much an Afrikaner town and, as such, Afrikaans is its first language and the one that you’re most likely to hear being spoken on the street and to be addressed in.

 

It’s also safe enough to walk around the streets by yourself, even at night, which sadly seems to be a novelty for South Africa, from what I hear, making it a veritable oasis in a sea of fear over personal safety.

 

But all of these pluses means that it’s not cheap by South African standards and, looking at some of the huge and beautifully-maintained properties in suburbs such as Mosterdrift, it’s definitely a spot that’s favoured by the well-heeled – old money too apparently, although I’m not entirely sure what difference that makes.

 

A university town

 

Anyway, another point of note is that Stellenbosch is home to the Afrikaner community’s most prestigious university, the evidence for which is provided by the gaping emptiness of the streets, roads, bars and restaurants outside of term time.

 

The institution was set up in 1863 and is not only ranked second or third in the country in academic terms, depending on whom you listen to, but is also treasured as one of the few tertiary education establishments in South Africa where Afrikaans remains the primary language of tuition.

 

Somewhat more controversially, however, it was also once the intellectual engine room of apartheid and sheltered many of its key players in various shapes and forms over the years. These included DF Malan, who was the university’s chancellor from 1941 to 1959 and led the National Party to victory in 1948, thus ushering in the regime, as well as Hendrik Verwoerd.

 

Verwoerd both studied and lectured psychology at the university and was widely held to be the guy who dreamed the whole apartheid thing up in the first place, before implementing it in his role as minister for native affairs, maintaining it as prime minister – and being assassinated in 1966.

 

On a happier university-related note though, it must be said that one of my favourite places has to be the compact but bijou botanical gardens. I do like a nice botanical garden at the best of times, but what makes this one special is the gorgeous woodland setting of the Katjiepiering Restaurant right at its heart, where you can get a spot of lunch and/or huge scone to keep you going on your expeditions.

 

And if it’s raining, you can always venture inside to recline gracefully in the bohemian, sofa-bedecked conservatory, or even the more formal wood-paneled dining-room from which the university used to broadcast radio programmes about its botanical research for the South African Broadcasting Corporation. All very exciting.

 

Following on the woodland theme, however, another of my fav eateries in town has to be “De Volkskombuis”- not so much for the food, I hasten to add, which isn’t particularly startling, but more for its al fresco dining area on the banks of the Eerste Rivier (First River) under yet more shady oak trees. It really is a lovely place.

 

 

Monsters the size of your fist, and other animals

One of the things that I love to do here is meditating outside in the garden, when the weather’s good enough, that is.

 

But, being autumn in the Cape region, it’s a bit all over the place at the moment, so it’s not an everyday occurrence. There tends to be a couple of days of rain, shadowed by a few of overcast dullness, followed by one or two of sunshine, with temperature fluctuations of on average about 10 degrees Celsius in between. Very confusing – and a veritable nightmare in wardrobe terms.

 

Anyway, one of the things about sitting outside on your yoga mat on the lawn, closing your eyes and focusing inwards is that, when you open them again and focus outwards, you’re much more inclined to notice the little things that may otherwise pass you by.

 

Like a beautiful, blue dragonfly resting for a moment on a leaf before floating delicately off on the breeze. Or little ants scurrying around industriously, performing their allotted role as nature’s cleaner-uppers. Or tiny, black spiders spinning their glistening webs on your coriander plant.

 

Counter-intuitively in South Africa though, it’s the smaller spiders that you’ve got to watch out for rather than the big ones, although there are apparently only four venomous arachnids in the country overall.

 

First off is the violin spider, the bites of which cause hideously painful ulcerating blisters, followed eventually by tissue breakdown. Oh joy. Then there’s the yellow sac spider. Their bites have similar symptoms and are the most common as people have a habit of rolling over on them in bed when the creatures have gone walkabout. Nice.

 

But there’s also the little, black button spider, which can be identified by the red splodge on its back. Its venom causes profuse sweating and shaking, raised blood pressure and all-over muscle pain and cramps. Lovely.

 

And last but by no means least is the sand crab spider, which is potentially deadly, but luckily only tends to be found in arid rather than fecund wine-growing areas.

 

Rain spiders

 

So if you’re unlucky enough to have a chunk taken out of you by one of the above, the general advice is to try and establish exactly what it was that got you and to take yourself off to the nearest hospital as soon as possible for a shot of anti-venom. Or, if none exists, to at least get a dose or two of antibiotics in order to keep the necrosis at bay.

 

We had a spider experience recently that terrified the life out of us both though. Although decidedly undeadly, my Beloved and I strolled nonchalantly into the spare room to be greeted by a black monster the size of my fist, literally, sitting possessively on the white wooden blinds.

 

It was a rain spider as they’re called here, or a huntsman as they’re known in Australia, and I was already familiar with the things, after an aggressive female, allegedly protecting her egg sac, chased my mum around the front room of my brother and his wife’s beautiful, old Queenslander house in Brisbane where they lived at the time. Not good.

 

When my Beloved and I screamed and ran though, slamming the door behind us, the poor old rain spider seemed to take fright as well and disappeared, only to be discovered by our “maid”, who comes in weekly to do the cleaning, ironing and such like, a few days later. It was sitting on the wall of the utility room, looking as terrifying as ever.

 

Much to my horror as they’re pretty harmless and had never done anything to us, the maid quickly dispatched it with insect spray and summarily poked its corpse out of the door with an ostrich feather duster. A rather unseemly end, I thought, to what was after all a magnificent, if rather disturbing, beast.

 

Anyway, back to the garden, which we regularly share with those most spirited of creatures, the squirrels. The ones here are a funny mixture in shade between the greys of US origin and the UK’s native browns, and they’re constantly rustling around in the undergrowth in a somewhat sinister fashion, running up trees and along our fence and generally expending vast amounts of energy.

 

They don’t seem particularly scared or nervous of humans either. On opening my eyes after one meditation, I found one burying her acorn in the herb garden, mere inches away from my feet. I could almost have reached out and touched her. She was so caught up in her task that I barely think she noticed me, bless her, even as she was patting everything neatly down.

 

Our feathered friends

 

But squirrels aren’t the only visitors. We’ve also got friends of a more feathered variety that make periodic appearances too. There are the inevitable sparrows, Karoo thrushes, and even the odd hadeda ibis stalking around and poking its long, sharp beak into the ground to try and root out earthworms and various tasty insects.

 

I’ve also seen a goodly number of helmeted guinea fowl poking about too. I’m sure they wouldn’t be flattered by the description, but they look as if a headhunter has been at them – their tiny blue and red bonces appear to have been shrunk and are wildly out of proportion with the rest of their big, fat bodies, poor things. They’re certainly wouldn’t win a beauty contest.

 

Surprisingly, given their girth though, they can run at a rate of nots if startled, but with a brain the size of a pea, I wouldn’t expect them to be getting into Mensa any time soon.

 

Most amazing of all though is our resident African goshawk that we’ve named Esme. The reason that it’s amazing is that it’s apparently pretty rare to see them as they’re shy and generally avoid habited areas (not that I would know myself, but my Beloved is well into birds, and raptors in particular).

 

But we’re lucky enough to have a little river and what is, for all intents and purposes, a small rainforest on the other side of our fence so there’s obviously cover enough to make her feel safe.

 

And so, one Friday evening, a few weeks ago when the weather was still warm enough to enjoy sitting outside and relaxing with a glass of wine before dinner, we just happened to look over and there she was. Just sitting on a branch on the other side of the stream as bold as brass.      

 

She must have stayed there for a good 10 minutes, before some small bird caught her eye and off she zoomed to get some dinner of her own. Beautiful. We’ve been keeping a watchful eye out for her ever since but, while we may not have been lucky enough to spot her again, we do sometimes hear her mewing.

 

Simple pleasures. And the fact that they’re among the happiest may definitely be something else worth meditating on too.

 

 

Learning the South African art of communication

I truly never thought I’d find myself learning lists of vocabulary ever again.

 

After years spent studying French and German to degree level, followed by a couple of months of Spanish at night classes with the aim of returning to South America to teach English after falling in love with Peru (I ended up working as a journalist in California for a couple of years instead), I thought I’d had my fill of such delights.

 

But no. Here I am again, wading through loads of foreign words, this time Afrikaans in origin, and trying to imprint them, with more or less success depending on the term, into my befuddled mind.

 

The Job’s comforters among us always warn that languages, among other things, will inevitably be harder to learn as you get older because your brain gets less porous. But, to be honest, I haven’t really found that, so far anyway – although, it must be said, I’ve only had one lesson to date and so it’s early days.

 

The thing with Afrikaans apparently though is that it’s a phonetic language so once you know the sounds – and boy, are some of them tough: a ‘g’ at the start or in the middle of a word sounds like the ‘ch’ sound in loch. Try it. It’s a veritable nightmare for an English speaker – there are very few exceptions and so you just follow the rules.

 

Afrikaans speakers have also described their esteemed mother tongue, perhaps somewhat harshly, as a grammatically dumbed-down version of Dutch, of which it’s a daughter language, with lots of borrowed words from Malay, Portugese, Bantu and Xhosa thrown in for good historical measure – although I’m not sure everyone would care for that depiction.

 

According to the 2011 census, out of 11 official home languages, Afrikaans is South Africa’s third most commonly spoken one and is used by 13.5% of the total population, which equates to about seven million people or so. Only Zulu and Xhosa are spoken more widely at 22.7% and 16% respectively.

 

English, meanwhile, ranks a mere fourth on the list at 9.6%, although it still remains the predominant language of the media and is often used as the lingua franca, in the Cape region anyway as most people are at least bilingual.

 

A thriving language

 

Nonetheless, fears that Afrikaans is under threat and in danger of decline don’t appear to be born out by the facts. Although in a post-apartheid South Africa, it may have been demoted from being the sole official language, a resurgence in Afrikaans pop music since the 1990s, undoubtedly helped by events such as the KKNK (see last week’s blog), has reinvigorated interest amongst the country’s youth, who don’t necessarily look on it in the same politicised way as their parents anyway.

 

And after all, Afrikaans is not only spoken as the native language of 61% of white people in the country, but also by 76% of those described as Coloured, or people of mixed race, making it the dominant tongue of the Western Cape at least.

 

And there are still plenty of Afrikaans newspapers, radio stations and books around, along with a respectable number of sub-titled films and even the odd TV soap opera.

 

In fact, I’ve been instructed by my tutor to watch one of them, 7de Laan (Seventh Avenue), at 6.30pm each day, Monday to Friday, on public broadcasting channel, SABC2, in a bid to get my ear more attuned to the language. It’s got almost cult status over here apparently but, thankfully, comes with sub-titles.

 

As for why I decided to learn Afrikaans in the first place, I guess that coming from a linguistic background, I always find it embarrassing when people, our friends from the Northern Suburbs included, have to break into English to accommodate us, particularly when we’re with a group of Afrikaans-speakers. It just seems rude somehow.

 

And having taken the decision to move to an Afrikaner town in an Afrikaner area, it seems that it’s the least I can do really, especially as, being a German-speaker albeit in the dim and distance days of my youth, I’m told that Afrikaans shouldn’t prove too difficult. Or that’s the theory anyway.

 

But being a lover of language, as I am, I also have a few favourite phrases among the South African version of English too. Top of my list is ‘waitron’, which is their non-gender specific designation for waiters and waitresses, followed by ‘robot’ for traffic lights. I also love ‘soapies’ (soap operas) and ‘blankies’ (blankets) as I think they’re cute.

 

Commonly-used phrases

 

But here are some other commonly-used phrases that might come in useful if you ever manage to make it out here:

 

Bakkie – pick-up truck

 

Biltong – dried strips of meat, eaten as a snack. It’s similar to jerky in the US, but not just made of beef. It can, in fact, comprise anything from ostrich and kudu to springbok

 

Braai – BBQ

 

A buck – a Rand (South African unit of currency)

 

Circle – roundabout

 

Geyser – domestic boiler

 

Howzit? – how are you? (as a greeting rather than a question)

 

Is it? – a ubiquitous expression of mild surprise similar to really? So if I said: “Oh dear, my arm’s just dropped off”, the response would more than likely be: “Is it?”

 

Just now – later, in a short while or a short time ago

 

Koppie – small hill

 

Matric(ulation) – school leaving certificate (the equivalent of ‘A’ levels in the UK)

 

Now now – very soon, immediately

 

Oke (pronounced ‘oak’) – guy or bloke as in “that oke over there has huge feet.”

 

Rooinek – an English-speaking South African (it means red-neck but, as opposed to the connotations assigned to the phrase in the US, the attribution was given because their white necks went red in the sun)

 

Shame – used ubiquitously as an exclamation of sympathy. So if I said: “My house has just burned down”, someone might respond “shame”. It’s also employed to emphasise how cute something is, as in “Agh, shame – look at that little puppy.”

 

Sosatie – kebab (on a stick)

 

Stoep (pronounced stoop) – patio, porch or verandah

 

Taxi – minibus-style taxi holding multiple occupants

 

Tekkies – trainers.