The Personals

Spent the day in Nyanga yesterday, in that area behind the station where there are a few housing developments and a couple of trees and you can buy chicken off a braai at the corner of the road. I spent the day at one of my partner organizations, shadowing my two students placed there. I met some development practitioners (fortunately of the local variety, because the ex-pats can really annoy the fun out of me), had some interesting convo's, and ate a delishsies samp and veggies lunch.

While enjoying my post-lunch stupor and waiting for the afternoon workshop to begin, I paged through the Vukani, as one does. The Vukani is the sister newspaper to the Tatler; the community newspaper distributed in the southern suburbs and the one that ends up in my "recycling" every week. The Tatler is filled with stories of grannies hitting a hundred (in age, not any kind of sporting activity), and vacant houses being vandalized to the ire of local residents. The Vukani is filled with stories of service delivery protests, scandals involving teachers and pupils, and sangomas* who make muti* for gangs to be successful. And on the topic of sangomas...

The personal column of the Tatler has pictures and promises of busty and acrobatic women, offering a range of sex-related services. The personal column of the Vukani looks a little different:

Pictures and promises related to, well, a range of sex-related services. Anything from bringing back a lost lover to penis enlargement....

Sure, the aesthetics may be a little different, but really, the male obsession with sex, from the leafy streets of Rondebosch, to the sand and smoke of Nyanga, leans toward the universal.

* Herbalists falling under the very loose label of "Traditional Healers"
* Medicine