Jozi Escapades: Part One

I am sitting down to write this, mug of tea in hand (rooibos* if you were wondering) on a lovley sunny day in Joburg. Ted's house has this cozy corner next to the kitchen that is sunlit in the afternoon, I can put my feet up and just write - it's rather lovely. The last 10 or so days in Joburg have been full of fun escapades (…roll credits) which I shall now recount to you in list form (and two parts because … well I want to make it two blog posts and this is my blog).

1) The Search for Chai

Whenever we manage to come back to South African, there is one person I immediately contact: Kelly Haubrich. Kelly is my first friend. We met in at pre-school in Capte Town at aged 3 and we quickly became firm friends – we shared a mutual love of cats, and I remember her having a really cool blue unicorn dress**. I changed pre-schools after a year and we then went to different primary schools so Kelly and I have been in a long distance friendship for the last 19 years so we are pretty frikkin’ good at it.

Kelly moved to Joburg in January and has been working here as a physio so I was extremely excited when I realised we would be in the same city for TWO WHOLE WEEKS. This never happens for us. When you only see each other every 5 years - catching up involved more than one cup of coffee. Kelly and I have been able to hang out pretty solidly all week and our friendship is still going strong.

Among other outings (making dinner, going to a market, watching The Mindy Project), she took me to one of her favourite places to run – Delta Park. It has a gorgeous view of the Joburg skyline.

(Excuse the photo, we had just run uphill – I was out of breath, sweaty, and taking nice pictures came in second to my need for more oxygen)

Her taking me on a run came with the stipulation that we had to go get chai lattes afterwards (yes, this was super basic of us – whatever, chai lattes are delicious – see asterisk 1, reason 3). We had finished our run (with difficulty – altitude, man, it makes things more challenging) and went off, as promised, in search of our chais. This turned out to be more of an expedition than we had bargained for. The first place turned out to be closed – it was 5:45pm on a Monday. The second place was closed on Mondays. The third place she thought might have them only did coffee. The fourth place we had visited earlier that week so we went in and sat down, a little disappointed that it wasn't somewhere new but relieved to have found a place that would serve us chai. We looked up at the waiter and said “two chais please” in unison, he then informed us that they had run out. I felt so sorry for him in that moment. He was faced with two distraught, sweaty white girls being deprived of their chai lattes. It was a bit of a walk back to the car and Kelly stopped in every single establishment to ask if they served chai – bars, restaurants, a sandwich shop – we were desperate. I know this story is absolutely nail biting so you will be happy to know that we did (sixth time lucky!) find an open coffee shop and the chai was delicious.

2) A Bit of Art and History

I’ve spent a lot of time this week hanging out with my cousin’s wife Kate because she has finished with work (they are moving to Australia). She has taken me round to some really cool places in Joburg – but the most blog worthy were the Wits Arts Museum*** and the Origins Centre. The WAM had an incredibly display of photographs of Joburg – the photographer had tried to capture “his joburg” and done an absolutely brilliant job. My favourite photos were the reflection of a boy’s face in a car window and the wooden archway against a completely black background that said ‘Staff Only’. When looking at the latter picture, my face was perfectly framed as a reflection in the archway - I don't know if that was purposefully done but it was very striking.

The Origins Centre is also on the university campus and leads you through some of the discoveries at the Cradle of Humankind****, a history of the San people, and some cool rock art. It also has a small display about the complications that come with using different names for different groups of people (they specifically talk about bushman vs san) which I found very thought provoking.

3) Sunsets and Salsa Dancing

My last escapade for this first post was a fun night of watching the sunset and moorise over the joburg skyline, followed by a night of salsa. On Wednesday evening, Kelly, Mark, Kate, and I went to East Koppies – a small hillly park quite near where we are staying. One surprising fact about Joburg is that there are so many trees (over six million according to Wikipedia) and is often referred to as the world’s largest manmade forest – don’t fact check me on that. Looking down at the city, it looks so peaceful – you see houses here and there dotted amongst the leafy green. One would never think that each of those houses (and all the ones you can’t see) are surrounded by high walls and electric fences. Security in Joburg is unreal.

We then went to a jazz bar called The Orbit – seeing live jazz was on Mark and Kate’s bucket list. Although we went on a night when they had a jazz-salsa fusion band. I didn't think that was a genre either. But hey. Obligatory picture of Kelly and me with our drinks below (dark because it's a bar):

We are drinking appletizer mojitos. APPLETIZER MOJITOS. I saw it on the menu and freaked out. Appletizers were the drinks of my childhood – it’s basically just fizzy apple juice but I love the stuff. Adding mint and rum just made it better.

The salsa band was fine – they were quite fun although the lead singer tried (and failed) at making jokes in between songs. The music itself was okay but once everyone started dancing, the atmosphere was great. At one point in the evening, this man (who had been sitting with his boyfriend on the edge of the dancefloor – the boyfriend looked a little too hipster to be seen salsa-ing) came up and asked if Kelly or I wanted to dance. I’d been trying to get Kelly to dance al evening but she had declined so I leapt at the chance.

I don’t think I’ve danced salsa before – he was so good and it was such fun! I'd definitely like to try it again.

I think I better finish part one right here before I lose you completely, part two will be coming soon! xx

*Rooibos is a delicious South African tea that I love love love love love. My reasons for loving rooisbos:

1) It is so deliciously tea coloured. It just is the perfect colour. When you put milk in other tea, it sometimes has a sickly grey quality to it whereas rooisbos turns this lovely orangey-pink-TEA colour.

2) Woolworths (akin to M&S) has so many differently flavours. My favourite currently is Vanilla Rooibos because it smells like cake – in the best way.

3) Because it’s tea. And tea is delicious.

**Our friendship did survive the day we both grew out of that unicorn dress. Thankfully.

***Wits (pronounced Vitz) is short for Witwatersrand University.

****Hopefully I will get to go here – it’s just outside of Joburg and is where they’ve found some of the oldest humanoid fossils.