Mountain view

I was out in Mitchell's Plain last week, visiting one of my partner organizations. I spent some time stomping around their permaculture garden in Rocklands, which is leafy and leaf-smelly and really just oasis-esquely amazing. The organization has an organic mushroom project, where mushrooms are grown in hundreds of plastic bags, in access-controlled incubator rooms. All very X-Files. I peered through the glass walls at the rows of bags on rows of shelves, not having the correct head gear, foot gear and overalls to go inside. Unsurprisingly, it smelt less than fresh. Project staff have ambitious production goals for the future, hoping to harvest 200kg of mushrooms a month. I tried to imagine what 200kg of mushrooms could look like and created an fairly unpleasant Dr Seuss meets set-in-space-made-for-TV-movie picture in my mind. But that's not my point here.

We drove back to the southern suburbs via Baden-Powell Drive, stopping at the side of the road so that Will could buy dried snoek from a couple of guys behind a trestle table. I love Baden-Powell Drive. It's so close to the ocean that the sand dunes literally blow across the road. Driving west, you see the whole of False Bay, mountain backdrop-included. That's my point.

I was busy in Nyanga yesterday, and there peeping out from between roofs and under electrical wires, just a smidgen of a peak, just a hint of a mountain. Look, it's not the same view that I had when I was living in Gardens, in that flat that looked over the top of Gardens Centre. There I was so close to the mountain that I couldn't see Devil's Peak, the Table and Lion's Head all in one go. But hells, it's still a mountain-view. And it's somewhat comforting to know that there are some things big enough to transcend the distances between the here's and there's of the city.

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