Geography

Geography is on my mind.

We have been busy this week trying to pack and prepare  for our spring/"fall" break.  Confusing?  Yes, I agree.  Preparing for our upcoming African travels has reminded us of previous conversations we've had with our American cohorts about Africa...

When we first called our family and friends a year ago to tell them the news that we were moving to Africa, we were met with three responses.

Response One, mostly from the adventurous souls in our life: "WOW! Can I come visit?!" An excited congratulations is then followed by discussions of bucket lists and how they have always wanted to go to Africa. They must take advantage while they know someone there.

Response Two, mostly from family who will never visit us:  "Have you ever been there before?" These are the people who thought we would be eaten by lions within the first three months.  (Never mind that we were hit by a car.  No, I have not come even close to a lion bite.)

Response Three, mostly from the most honest souls in our life: "Where is Zimbabwe?"

Indeed we learned a lot about our loved ones and their geographical perspectives when we decided to move here.  Though Kurt and I were both raised being told that we could go anywhere and do anything, it was clear no one really expected it to happen. And when we first relocated to New York City out of the Midwest, there were a number of people in our lives who acted as though we had moved to a foreign country, unreachable on the other side of the world.  And surely we must have thought we were better than those we had left behind.

Of course, when Kurt and I relocated to the East Coast, we expected to find a NYC full of multicultural experts, able to ace any geography quiz.  In such a diverse city we were shocked and schooled to find that, although there were some globally savy people, there were also many city dwellers that could tell you twelve ways to get to Times Square, but could not point to the state of Iowa on a map. 

It taught us something we have observed everywhere we've gone since.  Perspective is a fascinating thing.  What is important to one person to know is irrelevant to another, depending on geography and a number of other crazy factors. And our perspective, therefore-whether it is or is not relevant to another- is surely no more or less valuable than someone else's.

As we continue making our plans for what to see while we are on this continent for the next three years, Jonas' developing perspective is on my mind.  Kurt and I both know a number of people that have no desire to travel outside of the US, whether they have loved ones abroad or not. And though we respect their feelings as we learn more about this crazy evolution called "perspective", our time abroad continues to remind me of one very important thing:  Never do we want our child to feel limited in his options, scared of what unknowns the world holds, or uninterested in the value of discovering other perspectives. If our travels do nothing else, we want to ingrain in Jonas a sense of adventure and possibility.

Jonas can go anywhere and do anything. Not just saying that, Jonas.  Seriously.

Stick with us and watch another African road trip unfold, starting this week...

Reasons We Love Africa

Unfortunately none are mine, but thought I'd share anyway. I love Africa...

Soooo tempted to call them...

Sadza

 

As we prepare for our first visitor here in Africa, there is one thing that HAS to be on the menu... Meet southern Africa's comfort food: sadza, also known as mealiepap, isitshwala, nsima, banku, ugali, or phaletshe.

 This popular staple of southern African cuisine is made of ground maize meal.  Sadza ("sud-zah") is cooked for over an hour, and has a consistency somewhere between polenta and the thickest mashed potatoes.

 

Cooking this dish alone will give you an appetite, as the heavy porridge requires arduous stirring.  It is a heavy, thick, bland mass that has slowly become one of my favorites at the dinner table. 

Sadza is most often eaten with an MSG laden sauce or meat/veggie dish in the same way rice is used in other regions of the world.  Though our household doesn't eat it this way, it is very popular as a breakfast dish with peanuts or peanut butter mixed in. It is also often consumed with milk and sugar in place of oatmeal or porridge at many Afrikaner's tables.

Here Jonas eats sadza dipped in a coconut vegetable curry.

 Sadza can be eaten with a fork, but it is most often eaten with the hands, balled up and then dipped into sauce.

Sadza is sold in giant bags, which can most often be seen carried on top of womens' heads as they walk down the streets of our city.  It is one of the most affordable foods in the country, and seems to be almost solely what most of the orphanages here are able to feed their children.

Love this bag- it's like the African version of reading the outside of a cereal box!

Meet Mazoe

Our blogs are back, though they will eventually be shutting down again during election time.

Fast fact:  The Coca Cola Company and Schweppes are huge in southern Africa.  So popular, in fact, that many people secretly reuse a can or bottle over and over, putting water inside of the used containers to project an image of style and class.  And while soft drink beverages like cola and lemon-lime soda are popular for image, there is one drink that is above them all in sales.  Meet Mazoe:

 

Mazoe is so popular here in our country that I would estimate 95% of the households here have it in their refrigerator at this very moment.  Made by Schweppes, the drink Mazoe (mah-zoe-ee) is named after a river and region north of us called the Mazowie.  Apparently some of the ingredients are grown there.

 

Though Mazoe comes in a variety of flavors, like raspberry, blackberry, and peach, orange is by far the most popular.

The drink is extremely affordable, as a two liter bottle ($3.00 USD) of the concentrate is then diluted with four times the amount of water to make the drink.

 

It tastes a lot like Kool-Aid. Children at the orphanage go crazy for this special treat.  Jonas loves to help me wash recycled water bottles from the school before we mix up batches of Mazoe to pour in them.  But he never drinks the stuff. It is far from the healthy side of things...

"when undiluted..."  Love it.

Currently advised to halt blog for a week or two.  

Catch you on the other side!

Just fine!

February Flowers

I realized the other day that my obsession for having fresh flowers in the house has been non-existent since moving to Africa.  It occurred to me that this is probably because we are surrounded by flowers everyday outside of the house.  Thought I'd take some pictures each month of some of my favorites.  Believe it or not, we have less this month than any other of the 8 months we've lived here... but you could never tell from these pics.  A picture link for the botanical lovers in my life:

https://picasaweb.google.com/cherijohnsondesign/FebFlowers?authkey=Gv1sRgCKP_l5Gj5bKYNA

Mango Madness

 

Just picked our last mango of the season yesterday. Sigh. And whew.
With just slightly less than 100 mangoes between our two trees, we had had a good amount of harvesting and cutting. Done.  As you are probably familiar with this popular fruit, I haven't gone into detail, but here are a few fast facts below:

 Many hundreds of named mango cultivars exist.  We have two or three different kinds in our yard; size and sweetness vary slightly between them, as well as growing season.

 

 Picking ripe mangoes is dangerous for anyone, as the oils from the leaves, stems, sap, and skin can cause severe sores and rashes on the skin.  If you have had poison ivy or poison oak allergic reactions previously, (Kurt and I both!) you are especially susceptible because both p. ivy and p. oak have a common ingredient to the mango plant: urushiol.  We've had our fair share of mango sores this season, despite always picking with gloves on.  Strong stuff!

Meet some kiddos from one of our local orphanages.  Here, like most of the Shona in my country seem to prefer, these guys like to eat mangoes like an apple, skin and all.  A sweet treat!

Shu-shu

Here is a newly discovered food I think I'll love once I find a good recipe... When I checked out at the market recently, they had run out of credit notes to give in place of change.  I quickly scanned the vegetables for something worth less than a dollar.  Here is the result:

Meet a vegetable with a hundred names.  Known as shu-shu or chow-chow (both pronounced shoo-shoo), to our country, the rest of the world knows this vegetable as xuxu, pear squash, cho-cho, mirliton, merleton, christophene, vegetable pear, centinarja, chouchoute, choko, pipinola, guisquil, or most commonly, chayote. 

Like so many unique locally grown produce here, I have found once again that the origin of this veggie is actually Latin America.  Shu-shu is a relative of melons, cucumber, and squash. The entire vegetable can be eaten, most often cooked.  It can also be baked, mashed, boiled, fried, raw, or pickled. Technically considered a fruit, shu-shu is famous for growing abundantly and being rich in vitamin C and amino acids.  Its unimposing flavor gives it little commercial value, but its willingness to grow means it can be found on many a family farm here in Africa. 

Some varieties are greener, but this is what we have in our country... a cream colored veggie inside and out.

We eat the whole thing, dark center and all.

(Odd shapes because I have cut some bad parts out.)

Here our shu-shu is stir fried until wilty but slightly crispy. Name aside, it is a very easy veggie. Jonas cannot hear the words without bursting into giggles.

Fascinated by the Complicated: Groupings

Understanding cultural differences between different groups in our country is one of the hardest things Kurt and I have found about transitioning to Africa. That's because although the Shona live intertwined in the lives of the white colonials around them, it is clear that some of their unspoken cultural understandings greatly differ, both from each other and, in turn, from us strange Americans. Throw in another tribe, the Ndebele, in the southernmost part of the country, and you have quite a beautifully complex patchwork.  Race and culture are hard topics in a place with such a background, and though it would have been helpful for you to have this info earlier in the blog, my perceptions have changed greatly as we have come to know our country.

Our capital city is what I’ll talk about because it is what I have been exposed to the most:  There are three main groups of people. White nationals, Shona, and foreigners. (There are also Ndebele people here, though in smaller numbers.) Here are some tidbits about each group. (Please keep in mind that whenever generalizing, some people will not fit into descriptions...)

-Foreigners seem predominantly from China or the British Empire, with a small population of the Americas and other African nations represented in the minority.) The leaders maintain strong and strange relationships with China, a country that has a great deal of economic influence and active investment here.  Even the military college here has been built by the Chinese, and not by the country itself.  Because of this, there are many Chinese immigrants working in the city and a good deal of Asian groceries and restaurants can be found.  Supposedly Chinese imports do not get taxed here; hence a large percentage of our products are Chinese in origin.

-“The locals,” as they are called so often that even my three year old refers to them this way, refers to white colonials whose ancestors moved to the country, in most cases, generations ago.  These colonial ties come from either British or Dutch (Afrikaaner) origins.  For a number of reasons, many of the whites that used to work or farm in the country have moved.  The top five places they have gone: Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Zambia (if they have wanted to continue farming).  Because so many locals have family and friends living abroad (some trying to wait out current situations), the ties of our country with the countries listed above are great. These connections are reflected in flight availability, imports, sports, fashion, and cuisine. This population is small in size comparatively speaking, but owns most of the country’s businesses and is by far in the upper tiers of the economic bracket. They have almost no political representation. When asked, most locals will tell you they stay here for the luxuries: raising children with swimming pools, housekeepers, gardeners, large square footage, boarding schools, and little debt.  It is extremely common for this population to fly to other countries on large yearly or monthly sprees for goods like clothing, electronics, housewares, and other luxury items hard to resource in the country.

-The Shona people have a beautiful language of which I am slowly learning pieces.  (In the meantime, our English is evolving into a strange muddled mess and my child comes home each day with more of a bend toward a local British colonial dialect interspersed with Shona words.)  The Shona people make up the largest population in the country, and strangely hold both the most political power but also make up the most povertous piece of the population. The most extremely wealthy citizens of the country (sort of like the 1% in America) are Shona. The poorest people in the country are also Shona. The population outside of our capital city is made up almost entirely of Shona peoples.  The extended family is important for this group of people.  A “sister” or a “brother” or any other family term used does not necessarily indicate a blood relation in the same way it is implied in English.  Because of often difficult living situations, family is family by choice here.  This population also has the highest AIDS and HIV rates of any in the country.

 

Okay.  So those are the Cliff’s Notes.  You have my permission to stop reading.

But if you want a teeny bit more background about the indigenous people here, here is some more information, mostly obtained from a Spectrum Guide of our country:

Intense and carefree, cosmopolitan and parochial, the vast majority of our country’s people stem from the great family of Bantu-speaking migrants who first ventured east and south across Africa some 2,000 years ago.

Iron makers and agriculturists, they settled on the Highveld, Middleveld, and Eastern Highlands and began the long process of establishing the distinctive Shona culture that is so much a part of the country today.  Their Bantu kin- the Zulu warriors of King Mzilikazi –did not arrive until the first half of the nineteenth century. They form the Ndebele, our country’s largest minority.  Despite their late arrival, there are many cultural similarities between the two Bantu-speaking communities, which together form an overwhelming majority.

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