Milk Tarts II

Well, I finally did it. Surrounded by an out-of-control Connecticut winter and the promise of another snow storm, I finally took the plunge and made an attempt at our favorite southern African tea-time goody in honor of a little Zimbabwean tea with friends: the Milk Tart.  I've talked about these tasty treats before; though seemingly common, they are a special taste of southern African cuisine that we simply will not allow a little ol' thing like geography to get in the way of .

Well loved and made with easily accessible ingredients, these tarts quickly became a familiar flavor in our African household.  Known also as a "melktert," this gentle, custard-like pie arrived in South Africa via Dutch Settlers in the 1600s. The family recipes that create these treasures can be considered family heirlooms in their own right.

 Here's my own personal recipe I have whipped up. Though not 400 years old, it does combine the best characteristics of three milk tart recipes and a little trial n' error into one delicious dessert. Do give them a try to bring a little South Africa into your kitchen.  Five year old assistant for hire!

 

Milk Tarts- This recipe makes 36-40 muffin-sized tarts (Wow, that's a lot of tarts! Halving the recipe works well, too!)

Crust

10 ounces butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

5 1⁄2 cups flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

scant 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon almond extract or vanilla

Filling

4 1⁄4 cups milk

3 tablespoons butter

4 tablespoons flour

4 tablespoons cornstarch

3⁄4 cup sugar

3 (beaten) eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

To sprinkle on top:

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

For crust: Cream butter and sugar.

Add eggs, then flour, salt and baking powder.

Press dough into tart/muffin tins that have been buttered and slightly sprinkled with sugar.

Prick the shell of each tart all over with a fork and bake for 10 minutes.

No further baking is required.

For filling:

Melt butter in pot on stove, then add flour and stir in to make a roux.  Poor in 4 cups of milk and keep stirring. (Use other 1/4 cup of milk to dissolve cornstarch with.)

Once milk is boiling in pot, add cornstarch/milk mixture. Mix well. Add remaining ingredients (sugar, eggs, and vanilla), stirring well.

Whisk until custard thickens a bit.

Spoon into baked shells and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

Place the tarts in the fridge (or freezer to speed things up!) to solidify and then serve.

  

The key to a good milk tart is having a good sprinkler.

Yum!  Enjoy!

The Color of Cassia

There is no bloom like the eternal bloom of Zimbabwe's cassia tree. The bright yellow seemed to follow me everywhere during my years in Harare, though few locals could actually tell me the name of these gold treasures.

Known throughout Zimbabwe from the northern banks of the Zambezi to the Limpopo River of the south, researching information on this tree can seem confusing...Confusing, that is, until it becomes clear that there are two very distinct types of cassia that grow throughout the country.  The ornamental varieties found in cities and in yards grow into large trees that tower along-side other ornamental beauties.  But the critically endangered native cassia, known as a small tree or bush, normally occurs in Zimbabwe in the bush and Save Lowveld on river-bank sand dunes and islands.  While the habitat of the native cassia is under attack from the over-cultivation of its habitat, it remains an easy plant to identify and thus save if the inhabitants of these areas became educated about its fragility.  It's not hard to spot these showy, flowering plants, which brighten the country with flecks of cheery yellow year round.

A harvest celebration under blossoming cassia trees? What could be better?!

African Sweet Potatoes

Perhaps I'm inspired by the plethora of root vegetables always around US groceries at this time of year. Or maybe it's the chilly weather that makes it feel like the season.  Or perhaps I'm just craving one of our favorite dishes from our Zim days....  'Tis almost the season to start harvesting these terrific tubers once again!

Meet a vegetable that is out of control in Zimbabwe: the sweet potato.  This crazy plant could just about save the whole country... for a few months anyway.  These giants can grow to well over a foot long and are abundant beyond belief.  Last year our first harvest tackled about a twelfth of the sweet potatoes plants growing in our garden... and we filled a large laundry basket!  My housekeeper, Ziwone, taught me the key to keeping these veggies fresh for a long time: never wash them!  Keeping the dirt on their outsides makes them last in a dark pantry forever....

 
It is a terribly arduous task. Digging up sweet potatoes is no joke and usually requires a long pick-axe or hoe.  Here Jonas tells Kurt where he should be searching for these goodies.  You can tell sweating Kurt appreciates it.


The easy part is replanting sweet potatoes, though.  After the potatoes are dug from the ground, the greens -no matter how torn- are simply covered with a little dirt and watered; they will grow a whole new (always larger) crop the next year!


(Above) my sister Caryn eats a plain, boiled sweet potato during our harvest celebration.  Typical Shona eating involves few ingredients.  Cook a potato.  Eat a potato.

The sweet potato of Zimbabwe is different than any other potato I've ever eaten; it is like no American potato, for sure.  Full of excessive starch and rock-hard white flesh inside, this potato took my child from loving to hating "sweet potatoes" in one taste. I admit that I hated them at first, too.  Even when cooked until they are almost liquid, they maintain a dry, chalk-like texture that can be hard to swallow. Then we realized we just needed some great recipes that did not treat them quite like the potatoes we were used to, and boy did we grow to love these monsters.  Below is one of our favorite recipes, which we often made over the campfire (not required) when our ZESA/electricity went out:   (Check out how you can make them in America, too!)

African Sweet Potato Pancakes

3 eggs

½ cup millk

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 ¼ cup flour

2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon dried thyme

12 oz of finely shredded African sweet potatoes

2 onions, sliced very thinly or finely chopped

Salt and pepper to taste (~3/4 tsp salt and ¼ tsp pepper)

Mix all ingredients together well.  Place in a hot shovel, skillet, or pan that is greased with either butter or oil. Allow first side to brown before flipping.  Brown second side.  Eat as a savory pancake: plain (my favorite!) or topped with sour cream (creme fraiche in Africa) or plain yogurt. 

Note: Give it a try even if you can't get African sweet potatoes... This recipe is great when you use American sweet potatoes and leave out the thyme, or when you replace the African sweet potatoes with a starchy white potato (Idaho or Russet) instead!

Yum!

Running on Rumors

It was with a sense of horror that my sister emailed me recently, "What the heck?!!! Is this for real???"

Below her questions she had pasted a link leading to a Zimbabwe Today headline about Disneyland Vic Falls. I, too, was horrified and clicked to read an article about the future of Victoria Falls that included a great deal of commercial venue/mall space/Disneyland-like theme areas.  But here's the thing: In Zim you cannot, cannot, believe everything you read.  Without the same responsibilities of free speech and truth-telling journalism as many other countries enjoy (and I do realize the irony of this, as my lil' ol USA is actually pretty horrible about this, too) Zimbabwean papers are notorious for creating tabloid splashes out of their headlines, dramatizing coverage, and printing the most bizarre stories first.  Imagine that what you see in the tabloids of your First World check-out counter is the only news you have available.

 A friend of mine recently posted a Zim-written article on Facebook.  Like nails on a chalkboard, I read the headline and saw the source.  It didn't matter if the underlying argument was true or not; it was a gross moment to read it and observe the lack of sources, recognize the lack of research, and count the large number of errors in just one little piece of writing.  It was as though I had just gone to correct a high school student's attempt at a news article.  I wanted so deeply to explain to her that when she treated this piece like a legitimate news source, it just encourages and supports a gross way of "informing people."

Still, where do people get their news?  What do you do in a society in which it is easy to question every single piece of information dangling on the wind??

News is a complicated thing in a place run by word of mouth.  In a country in which official press releases are few and assumption and rumor run the gamut, fear and chaos often tell the story.  What is not in the papers is often whispered behind walls and doors, and often evolves into different conversations according to the race of people doing the whispering.  The rumor mill of Zim is a full-time business.  It feeds fear and makes it an undercurrent in every business and home.

The rumor mill used to drive me crazy; my first weeks in Zim were spent in horror as the small circles I came to know revealed their gossip craze.  It was hard to handle and harder to discern fact from fiction until I realized that this is what happens in a society that is never fed the truth.  Like ever. And suspects that everyone, from the government, to the other race of locals, is out to get them. And please note, this is different than in many other countries in which we have research, studies, factual evidence, demographics charts, tables, and statistics.  This is a place in which a stat is considered true if someone bothered to make it up.  Many other countries are challenged in their inaccurate reporting and press issues, but in this situation I am referring to a place that has little statistically to back up any conjecture.

And yet we come back to the question: HOW do people living in a place like Zim get legitimate news? Without analytical research to back up a number of claims made on the situation of the country, its politics, and economy, narrative takes the place of number.  People's individual experiences become much more important to current conversation.  As American anchor Brian Williams could recently tell you, the challenge as individual narrative becomes relevant is how to control stories from turning into snowballing rumor or over-exaggeration for the sake of convincing others.  That I don't have an answer to!  

One of the reasons my blog is fluffy at times is that I refuse to write about something I don't know enough about. I have sooo much to say about politics and culture and the fascinating details of how anthropologically these things play out in a racially segregated system.  But I can't imagine crossing the line into conjecturing what I don't know.

The horrifying thing to me always is that thousands of people, educated enough to read but not quite savy enough to discern or fully identify inflammatory sensationalism (sometimes I fall into this category, too!), read newspapers without a background knowledge of understanding that sometimes the press does not present things in the most transparent way. It's a beast of a subject, whether in a democratic First World nation or in a tiny political entity run by dictatorship.  In all senses, truth is a tricky thing whether we put it in the hands of giant syndicates or our neighbor's neighbor's ear. But tying it to a fear so deeply rooted that it sleeps under everyone's bed/mat? Well, welcome to Zimbabwe!

PS: I get asked about articles often; for the sake of this blog post I just picked the most innocent news topic possible as an example.  If you're curious, here was the article my sister asked about, followed by a piece of my response to her: http://zimbabwe-today.com/2015/01/business/american-investor-to-invest-460m-for-disneyland-vic-falls/

"I do think it's a matter of time before they ruin Vic Falls.  That said, I hugely doubt it would be an actual Disney thing.  I wonder of that guy was just throwing the term around as an example or if he was serious, because the rest of the article never said anything about talks with Disney or anything related to it.  But YES, they are going to build up the falls. 

I think the complication to come -and soon- and what makes me so so so thankful to not be in Zim right now that all signs are pointing to the return of the Zim dollar.  The government is starting to reprint coins and from there, it will only be a matter of months before Zim dollars will be the forced currency... and then everything is down the drain again. People are very skeptical of its success, and it could put the economy to a halt again.  So we'll have to see.  I have no doubt Vic Falls WILL eventually be heavily altered by investors, but most of these giant projects have huge patterns of stalling and delays (there were two projects sort of like this in Harare that are still ongoing). 

The other factor is that Zim has laws about ownership having to be at least 51 percent black Zimbabwean, so it complicates things greatly.  Large companies like KFC have tried to come in in the past and have failed because there is too much "white ownership" to be legally operating in Zim.  So I am doubtful Disney would ever be there under those race based rules.  But other investors?  Yes, if they fit the qualifications... unfortunately these race policies never seem to be in place when China wants to buy things, it seems on the surface anyway pretty much just white Zimbabwean/European/American owners that get pushed away with these policies.  But I could be wrong, as I don't know all the facts- just the whisperings of the locals on this one.  My guess would be that a Chinese company will be heavily involved rather than an American one in Vic Falls investments... But in South Africa?  I could definitely see a Disney happening there eventually....

 This website (I'm familiar with it) never has a lot of facts going with its stories.  It's a rumor based paper, as so many are in Zim.  And there are truths to be found, but a lot of it is not total accuracy...  Just pat yourself on the back you have already seen the Falls when it was a little less spoiled!!"

On the Lunchtable

One of the things my child misses most about Africa:

"Getting peacocks off the lunch table!"

Random Pieces: Toilets in the Rural Areas

It was the little things that signaled a sharp shift in reality for me when we first moved to Africa.  One of my first earliest memories on the continent is seared into my brain for just such a reason: I remember running out of our new house to get the gardener after he had just welcomed us and then  left to go home.  It couldn't wait until tomorrow: I had no idea how to use the toilet. As he probably did many times after, he thought I was crazy for sure.  

People talk all the time about the different pieces of culture, language, and nature they find in their travels, but sometimes just the little things related to infrastructure can remind a person they are in a new reality.  

Here stand a row of "toilets," as they are called.  If these toilets look like they are in the middle of a field, that's because they are.  They belong to a large rural school a kilometer away. What is a kilometer for a student to walk for the bathroom when they have already walked 15 kilometers to get to school?

Except for that Halloween my junior-high self somehow thought it would be a good idea to dress up like a Puffs Kleenex box, here is the most unattractive picture of me ever taken. But it's pretty much one of my only pictures of a Shona "chimbuzi" (toilet).  Set away a few dozen meters from the rest of the homestead buildings, the toilets at many Shona homesteads are separated by sex.  For men it's "varume," and for women, like above, it's labeled "vakadzi."  These bathrooms are literally a tin roof on top of a flat cement slab with a hole in it. Soap and water sit outside for hand washing.

Normal but Bizarre Licenses: Radio

To remind you, we were talking about "normal but bizarre" in Zim.  To continue my explanation that started two days ago regarding licenses, here's a little reminder of where we left off:

In Zimbabwe, one must own a radio license if owning a car, and a television license if living in a home.  It does not matter if you actually own a radio or a television. You must have a license anyway. The problem is that when the tax-man or woman approaches you, the tax must be paid on the spot... immediately or the fine is sometimes up to four times greater than the actual tax and then the task of paying the fee involves police stations and standing in line at a number of department windows to get your name off "the list." The prospect of not paying is actually quite burdensome.

The car-radio license, though cheap, was a bother. Our car did not have a radio, but still showing an officer that at a police stop was no valid argument. We had to pay like everyone else.

At times you could purchase a six month license.  At other times, the country was only selling three month passes.  Always a person's car was checked for the sticker at police stops.  The licenses for car radios were sold in the post office (my one attempt took six hours of line-waiting before the office simply closed on the angering crowd and said we would have return another day) and large parking lots by random people with clipboards, able to give you a ticket for not having a license if you did not approach them first to ask to buy one.  Awesome.  The problem was, at times the country ran behind ("they ran out of money," the rumors always said) on printing the license stickers, so often a person could be looking for a license for months at a time, needing to know when they were suddenly available to purchase one and then doing so immediately before coming onto a police stop.

Such was just my luck last year, when I searched for a new radio license for over a month.  I pulled up to a police stop just two days after unsuccessfully scouting out a license.  The police officer spoke harshly to me, explaining that I could buy a license from him for thirty dollars, or receive a twenty-dollar fine plus then be obligated to buy a license before being able to drive again. Someone was making his own rules, but I bought the license there and went on my way.

A few short months later when we again needed to purchase a radio license, I decided to play it smart. I pulled up to a woman with a clipboard in the parking lot of a place called the Chase Shops and opened my window.  I requested two licenses, one for now, and one for three months later.  "That is not legal," she had told me. "The stickers on them say they are only good until April."

I thought for a moment and then clarified. "Yes, but it's already mid February.  So really I'm only buying one for the next month and a half?" A new license-seeking headache would start again before I knew it.

"It is not my problem that the licenses were not available until this week. You can also choose to not drive for a month and a half."

And this is how I spent my time in Zim.

Normal Yet Bizarre Licenses: Television

I am inspired by what my friend Beth, still in Harare, recently called a "normal yet bizarre experience" in Zim. Bizarre is true.  But I think I'd replace the word "normal" with "typical."

The experience is an example of a number of things:

-how one is kept busy in Zimbabwe running around to fulfill sudden, often changing, requirements,
-how the country tries to seem highly organized by charging taxes but then has no way to carry-out the system fairly or appropriately,
-how individuals doing official business often take the position as a blessing to make up their own rules and have their own little piece of power,
-and how people assume that if one owns something then that person must have a great deal of money at their fingertips.

What am I talking about? It's that time of year again... Beth recently had a run-in with the television license company and it gave me flashbacks of my own experiences dealing with this headache each January.

In Zimbabwe, one must own a radio license if owning a car, and a television license if living in a home.  It does not matter if you actually own a radio or a television (which we didn't during our last year). You must have a license anyway. The problem is that when the tax-man or woman comes a-callin' the tax must be paid on the spot.  One must pay immediately or the fine is sometimes up to four times greater than the actual tax, which makes for a hefty fee and a huge run-around to get one's name and address off the list of non-payers! But it's sort of a good luck, bad luck thing, as some years your street may be entirely forgotten by the tax collectors.

Last January when the gate rang and I picked up the speaker to see who it was, I was less than enthusiastic to find out it was a television tax collector for the ZBC (Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation). Okay; I'll admit it, I may have just tried to pretend I was the housekeeper and said that "Madam" was not home.

"The household will automatically receive the fine and a ticket then," I was told.

No dice.  I went out to the driveway to have a conversation over the fence.

As I stood on our gate box and looked over, I knew immediately from the fluorescent vest, receipt book, and clipboard, that the man was legitimate and ready to collect, immediately. After some back and forth about the fact that I did not have fifty dollars lying inside my house at the time, the man made it clear that the alternative was the fifty dollar license fee, a fifty dollar ticket to be paid at the police station, and a twenty dollar fee to be paid to him for having to write the ticket.  Hmm.  That was a new rule...

Zimbabwean citizens often assume that if one owns something or lives in a house then that person must have a great deal of money at their fingertips.  Because a large percent of the population does not use a traditional bank but instead carries their valuables on their body, it is expected that a person well off enough to own something requiring a license will always have money on hand.  I found this little assumption to be quite inconvenient a number of times, and always when talking about tickets and licenses.

When told I had no money lying around the house, the man suggested I drive him to my ATM. (Oh why was my husband never home at the right moment to deal with these things?!) I had to get the gardener, Shoman, from the back (on his day off, no less) and ask him to go in the car with me to feel a little safer as I took the tax collector to the bank.  (A beer is always promised for these kinds of things.)  The collector was very nice -albeit extremely inconvenient- until we returned home and I went to pay him. That's when he realized the machine had only given me hundreds.

"You expect me to have fifty dollars of change on me?!" he had guffawed in disbelief.

This from the man who expected me to have fifty on myself for a television I did not own when he was the one collecting money. I clenched every piece of my insides and thought for a moment.

This time Showman saved me; offering to walk the collector to the nearest set of shops to get him change.  I knew this would be incredibly difficult, as finding a person with two fifties would not be an easy thing.  Shoman came back an hour later, receipt in hand and a fifty in change. I owed him more than a beer, that was for sure!  The tax collector was no where to be seen,which made me wonder if he'd ever made it back to my neighbors'.  Probably not.

Oh, do you see why I never like answering the gate?!

My Discomfort With the "Expatriate" Title, Explained

Though it is less about Africa specifically and more about being an American living abroad, I appreciated this recently written article by Ann Jones, pasted below. It is fascinating to feel the shifting waters on how those around the world view Americans, simply by listening to the questions foreigners ask when they learn one is American. As I now spend my last few days as an official expatriate (a term I admit gives me the heebie-jeebies in a number of weird ways) for a while, here are some questions I've heard oodles of times, and some questions I've often asked myself!

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/13/have_americans_gone_crazy_partner/

The Giant Rat

http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=03-P13-00025&segmentID=7

Well, the good news is that the animal eating all of our garden grown vegetables was not a gray rat.  The bad news?  It was a giant rat.  

No really.  That’s not my own adjective or nickname.  It’s a giant rat.  That’s the species that took over my yard, gardens, and comfort zone. (I am sure there is some sort of Princess Bride “Rodents of Unusual Size” joke to be made here, but that would make my husband way too happy and I don’t want to encourage him.)

After something began gnawing our tomatoes and eggplants in large ways, with scratch marks on each side, I approached my gardener.  "It's a frog," he had said. Yes.  Same gardener who I caught standing in the garden, hose in hand, watering plants in a rainstorm.  Oh, I miss Shoman.

So... call me crazy, but I wanted a second opinion. It was the perfect time for one; that afternoon an exterminator was being sent to the house after a large something had gnawed a hole right in the side of our house and could be heard overhead scurrying around at night.  The exterminator was to come, confirm that the animal was not inside at the moment, and then we would promptly have the wall patched to keep it out.  My totally humane plot to rid our house of critters.  Well, aside from the unavoidable lizards and flatty spiders that donned our walls around the clock. 

When the exterminator came, I approached him about the vegetables.

It was definitely a giant rat.

The giant rat is an animal commonly found in tropical and subtropical areas.  In Africa, there are two species: the Gambian pouched rat, and the giant pouched rat.  These omnivorous critters love to live in old termite mounds, forests, and thickets... and our yard was perfect.  With a thick bamboo grove next to our largest veggie garden, and a large abandoned termite mound on the other side, they were in heaven.  And probably setting up shop for the long haul.  Known for their enthusiastic breeding capabilities, the giant rat is considered a dangerous invasive species that can hoard so much food in its mouth (hence the pouch name) that at times it cannot get through the door of its home upon return.  There have been reported cases of these rats killing babies and the elderly in South Africa, so though they look cute, they are not to be messed with. 

The exterminator had joked with us, as the giant rat is prized as a sought-out food in a number of African countries. Why didn't we just consider them part of our farm?  We could have a braai (South African word for barbeque) every day when they really started reproducing!

I am all for letting animals live and let live. But that was one day I put down my ASPCA card down and asked the exterminator to help us.

Thank God neither of these pictures are my own…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1393836/Giant-rats-eat-babies-South-Africa-townships-separate-attacks.html

A Weight Off My Shoulders

I pretty much have something ridiculous to admit every day of my life. Today I have something weird, bizarre, and maybe just a teeny bit disturbing.  I have been carrying the inside of a toilet paper roll around with me since Africa.

Yes, yes, I know.  Eight months.  Three continents.  My husband likes to remind me, too.

I have a weird habit of writing down random thoughts and notes on whatever strange writable item I can find on a moment's notice. In my last days of Zim, as I zipped all over town wrapping up odds and ends of my African life, the bus names I collected ever since arriving never went unnoticed.  Until the day I left, new fun and festive ones were always showing up thanks to some fabulous African entrepreneur's creativity.  I'm only sorry I didn't get pictures of any of these. Here are the last of my bus names, which I admit are written on a toilet paper roll I would really like to get rid of before continent number four....

Not Guilty

Singing the Song

Physical

Cherry Car

Fab Fab

A Weight Off My Shoulders

Commander Joe

Chocolate Tastes Better

So I Get Lost

It Tasted Fine

Zebra Adventures

It's Okay

Good Medicine

Finally letting go of the toilet paper roll?  Priceless.

I Take It Back, Trial Separation Over

Difficult?  Difficult is trying to give up this blog, as it’s kind of like the final nail in the coffin of admittance that I no longer live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.  It’s difficult when my readership continues to rise, despite my month-long break from writing.  It’s difficult when I realize that a world suffering from environmental issues, terrorist violence, and scares like Ebola needs more than ever to educate itself about other cultures and far-off places.  And it’s also difficult when I continue to read news about my former country of Zim and want to share my thoughts about the systems of corruption and renewal we saw over and over and over during our time there.

So I’m taking back what I said in my previous post. Perhaps it was my own personal second-guessing, saying to myself, "Who am I to have a blog about Africa anymore??" And perhaps it was the self inflicted deadlines and not the blog itself that left me feeling like I should give things up rather than to pull a slight bit back.  I wasn’t producing the amount I personally had in the past and so I threw the baby out with the bathwater. Much. Too. Hastily.

 So I’m making a new promise. I’ve stayed away from this blog for a month with great difficulty, and I’m done with the trial separation. I’m not giving up this blog; but I will admit it just won’t be as actively kept-up as when I lived on the continent.  This time around I won’t give myself deadlines, or make promises about how often I will post.  But when I find things relevant to African things I find fascinating or know a lot about, or when I feel like sharing a piece of my history, or when I recognize yet another way my Zim experience has flavored my own personal evolution, I promise to spend time sharing it with my readers. 

I’ve been doing a lot of job hunting lately, as well as showing friends around our (temporarily) European lives. It’s helped me to put into perspective things that I know and skills that I have.  Thus far in our new but very temporary Spanish lives, I have to admit it. I want to hang my head in shame when I think about how we’ve accessed a new culture here in Europe verses during our time in Africa. My limitations in my new life have revolved around my digestive needs (still battling that lil’ African stomach illness 20 months later), monetary restrictions, and linguistic frustrations.  And at the same time that these failings of mine have been highlighted, I have been able to recognize that I can be proud of what I learned in Africa. 

I can say that I learned a great, great deal about Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique over the last few years. More than most of my counter-parts in the same situation, I dove head-first into the cultures around me, tried new foods, enjoyed incredible adventures, and shared a part in thousands of stories currently creating new paths on what used to ridiculously be considered a hopeless continent.  I know my southern Africa.  And the piece of my heart that does not care about political safety or the comforts of a thermostat or proper healthcare or my child’s formal education will always live right there on its plains. So "who am I to have a blog about Africa??" I'm a girl who knows a thing or two, and, most importantly, is ready to keep learning.  That's who.  You won´t find me giving up as easily next time.

After looking at the wonderful world of cubicles and commutes, I’ve decided my dream job would be for someone to call me up and ask me to personally give them a tour of southern Africa.  I would do it well, and comfortably, and safely, and with a true knowledge of life outside of the colonial bubble that is most of tourist-made Africa.  Any takers? 

If you’ve ever wanted to go to Africa but don’t know how to make it happen, let me know.  If you’ve ever wanted to be connected with a legitimate African non-profit but don’t know how, let me know. If you want me to tell you what my first hand opinions are on some of the biggest needs of southern Africa, let me know. And in the meantime, while I desperately consider how we can eventually return someday-somewhere, I will keep Africa alive in my heart and at the top of my blog roll.  Stay tuned - whenever I decide to post again.

I Wish I Had Time to Tell You

A very smart person I know once told me that one of people’s biggest problems was that they didn’t do math properly; it’s impossible to keep adding things to one’s life without taking something else away.  As I look at my slivers of free time, torn between wanting to spend every second with my child and husband, just getting in a little more sleep, investing in future projects, and the two hundred other things on my list, it has become apparent.  Maybe it should have been apparent when I had a housekeeper and a gardener and still wasn’t always finding time to brush my teeth before noon.  Maybe it should have been apparent when I had no job and still couldn’t find the time in my calendar to go to the doctor when I needed it.  Maybe it should have been apparent when I had a kid in school for half days and still couldn’t manage to do that exercise regimen I always told myself I’d adopt if only I had a few hours to myself each day.

I never have enough time. And it’s because I have been terrible at doing my math.

Almost every white local I knew in Zim made their opinions of my family clear often; I really should be having more “white babies” if I could at all help it.  What a terrible shame that my son had no siblings.  In a land of large families, something was terribly wrong with my family according to Zim standards.  My response was always a long and complicated one, but needless to say, it always involved wanting to be able to provide my best for my existing child, who I didn’t know how to care for with the same level of competent care if I carried on with more children. 

“Oh, that’s simple,” I was responded to during the last time I discussed the matter in Zim. “You don’t take anything away from the first. Your love, your patience, etc, stay the same. It’s just time that you lose.  You just have to share your time more.  Easy.”  As if time was not already one of the most valuable, rare things in my life. 

It was, however, an easy thing for a Zimbabwean to say. This Zimbabwean’s math was influenced by the fact that she sent her children away to boarding school at five. Oh, and also she had never had any of her five children without also having three housekeepers on hand to help with nannying.  Sharing my time more, it is clear now that from my Spanish surroundings I have work, a child at home full time, and no staff, is tougher than ever before.  It’s no longer possible to share any more of my time without losing the quality of my ability to be a mother.  Or a human being. 

Time is a more precious commodity than I can express.  But lately I haven’t been acting like it.  And though I’ve said and thought over and over about how much I value it, the truth is that recently I’ve been adding a lot and taking away nothing… except quality.  And presence.  And energy.  It’s time to start doing my math again.

I should clarify that I am desperate to keep this blog.  It’s one of my last connections to Zim.  And I still have oodles to say.  And thousands of pictures to show.  I still serves its purpose in sharing the continent with those who have not experienced it themselves.  And it allows a number of Africans to commiserate on what they love or miss or want to change about their homeland.  It’s been wildly more successful than I ever imagined and now I feel a certain amount of obligation to keep it going.

But I need to start doing my math.

Here is what I wish I still had time to write about: the malaria thing, the recent farm take-overs in the Save Conservancy, Clean Water vs Harare’s City water, the never ending bloom of Zimbabwean cassia trees, the spread of the magical acacia tree canopy, and the craziness that is the giant millipede called the chongololo. 

I wish I had time to discuss with you the complexities of a Zimbabwean white minority that is more economically powerful than the black majority but has no political power, a fascinating anthropological study in the making. 

I wish I had time to discuss our experiences with the 2014 elections, the burning orange flowers of the flame tree, all the different uses of thatching, the craziness of police stops where window-smashing often occurs, the rules of the road around the pres. mansion, the fragility of the Zimbabwean electrical grid, the how-tos of surviving being passed by the pres. motorcade, the rows of toilets that line the countryside next to rural schools, the oodles of hospitable places we’ve stayed, how gardeners and laymen often grow and paint one long fingernail to be used as a tool, and the giant rat (it’s a real thing, which we actually had in our yard- look it up!). 

I wish I had time to tell you about “The Big Five” and “The Little Five,” the miniature size of parking spaces and how there are only a handful of car brands that make it into the country, what the Harare Airport is like and how it used to be before Zimbabwe made itself into a political pariah, what The Great Dyke is, and how children’s names and ages are often changed in orphanages to make paper-work easier.

I want you to know about Chiboku (the homemade street beer that often includes fermenting the likes of pieced apart animals, weeds, and car batteries, and is said to age a person five times faster than regular beer). 

I want to tell you about the Rhodesian Ridgeback, the out of control rumor mill that runs the country when the papers do not report truths, the loveliness that is The Farmhouse in Chimanimani, the endangered wild dogs of Zim, the awkward transition of renaming things back to Shona after having colonial names for a hundred years, the Shona totem (an inherited personal symbolic animal indicating familial lineage), the endangered rhino, a crazy assortment of encountered bugs, the taste of an African cucumber, and the future of a people who cannot seem to let go of the past. 

If you want to know more about Zimbabwe beyond this blog, these are great but tiny places to start.

Stay tuned for one more, last post on some of the things I have learned from Mother Africa.  And in the meantime, know that I am grateful to those of you who followed our journey through these last few years as we awkwardly but enthusiastically embraced this amazing continent we will always consider a piece of home.  It's been humbling to have readers follow our thoughts and adventures, and it is truly with sadness that we finish before the story feels entirely told.  The late and great Maya Angelou once said, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Have us over for a cup of Rooibos sometime; we'll tell you anything more you want to know.

sunset photos by friend Lucy Fisher

For questions, comments, that cup of tea, or better yet a personal tour around southern Africa, contact us at: cherijohnsondesign@gmail.com

Africa, Uncolonized

It's been one of those months in which a lot of unexpected "what ifs" have popped into my life.  While I'm busy dealing with my own, here's a little "what if" I found fascinating...

Click here for this new perspective on African colonialism: Africa, Uncolonized: A Detailed Look at an Alternate Continent

Africa Doesn't Need (Dumb) Volunteers

Loved this!  Thanks, Global Citizen.  

Simple Silver

I'm not mad at Africa for many things, but I could have done without the loss of my husband's wedding ring.  It now sits under the waters of a lake just outside of the village of Ruwa in northeastern Zimbabwe. It was more of a sentimental loss than financial, as I quickly found out upon entering Zim that there is nothing foreigners love more than buying silver while in the country. Silver is remarkably cheap -startlingly cheap- in this part of the world, and many tourists love to jump on the opportunity to buy their loved ones shiny precious things during their visit to southern Africa.

My husband's original wedding ring, purchased while we were still in school, was no giant expenditure.  At only a few hundred dollars, we thought it was already an affordable piece of jewelry, given the fact that it was intended for all of eternity and whatnot.  Imagine my surprise when three year old Jonas and I went to pick out a new ring for our anniversary later that year and found out that, despite buying one of a higher quality, the ring just cost us... thirteen dollars!  Shh, please don't tell my husband.  They weren't kidding.  Cheap, cheap silver...

Coca-Cola, Taking Over Africa One Street at a Time

I have mentioned before that the status symbol of having Coca-Cola is great.  If ever we wanted to treat our staff to something special, buying them a few liters of Coke was the ultimate. Notorious for indicating wealth, it was common practice in Harare for people to carry used Coca-Cola bottles around with them, typically filled with water, but giving the appearance of having means.

If I would have started collecting pictures of Coca-Cola ads when we first arrived in Africa, I would have had thousands by now.  Coca-Cola pervades Africa.  (Ask anyone if they know what a Pepsi is and they will give a blankly confused stare.) And because Delta Beverages is happy to make signs for other companies that sell its products, you can find it on the fronts of hotels, supermarkets, restaurants, butcheries, stadiums, street signs, stores, investment companies, and even a few churches.  While I may eventually put some elbow grease into writing a blog on how the Chinese appear to actually be taking over Africa, Coca-Cola is a very, very close second...

Broom Cluster Fig

Want to see a crazy tree?  Done!  Meet the strange broom cluster fig.

Known for its dense, spreading crown, the broom cluster fig tree offers popular puddles of cool shade for animals and people alike, from the northern-most tip of Africa all the way down to the Cape of South Africa.  But the best part of this fast-growing African tree is its crazy look.  Though they seem like warts, these fig clusters not only grow on the tree´s upheld arms- they actually grow on the roots sometimes, too!  

Some indigenous African people have long-held beliefs in the magical powers of this tree, and use it in religious ceremonies and celebrations. Its notoriously soft white wood is often used for making drums, and its inner-bark is a popular rope-making material. The milky sap is also known to treat throat ailments and boils.  But everyone´s favorite?  

Its fruit!  The figs are ripe and ready when they turn an orangish-red!

So many figs, but no fig newtons.  Sigh....