Shopping Shopping Shopping

Oriental Plaza
I met Colleen at her house on Saturday morning (3rd June), and she and I (and Brody) went to Oriental Plaza for non-specific shopping. Remember that here in SA when people say “Asians”, they’re usually referring to East Indians, and that’s true of the word “Oriental”, too. Oriental Plaza is a mall, but it’s sort of open-air, like an Indian bazaar, and it is full of imports from mostly India (I did see a shop called Dubai Designs). You can find almost anything you want here – clothes, shoes, linens, cookware, jewelry, etc. Those of you who have been with me to music festivals know that I have a penchant for hippy swag, and this place is full of it. Gauzy, fun printed dresses, pillows with sparkly things, bedspreads, purses, incense, etc. I’ll go back to Oriental Plaza for that kind of stuff, but also for fabrics. I finally bought a Nelson Mandela kanga! (A kanga is a colorful piece of cloth that African women use to wrap around themselves. In some countries, like Zimbabwe, it’s worn on top of regular clothes, usually to keep your regular clothes clean when you’re working around the house or traveling on a chicken bus. In Zim, they called them “zambias.” I think in east Africa, kangas are usually a whole outfit unto themselves; you’ve got the wrap-around cloth, plus a matching piece to wrap around your head.) There are quite a few curtain stores in Oriental Plaza, and I saw some stunning fabrics. Maybe I’ll take some with me whenever I move back to the U.S. My dining room on Clairmont Avenue in Birmingham could use some curtains…

http://www.orientalplaza-fordsburg.co.za/index.htm

Artists under the Sun
Last Wednesday, I had lunch with Feng-hua Wang in Pretoria. She’s a Chinese-American who is the Information Resource Officer for Southern Africa. She’s based in the Information Resource Centre in the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, but she visits U.S. embassy and consulate libraries in several Southern African countries, evaluates them, makes recommendations, and gives training sessions and workshops. We met briefly at Liasa last September; she had just moved here from her last post in Nairobi, Kenya, where she was doing the same thing for East African countries. She invited me to join her and another American woman at an art show at Zoo Lake here in Jo’burg on Sunday morning. It was a beautiful, sunny day, though a bit chilly, but perfect for walking around looking at art. The artists were almost exclusively painters, and there were some very nice works there. I found out that the show is there the first weekend of every month, so I didn’t make any big purchases but instead will hold off until I’ve been here awhile and have seen more things. I did buy a little bitty watercolor of two African ladies carrying things on their heads. Some of you may know that I also like to collect small watercolors that are representative of places I’ve visited. I have ones from Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Beijing and Hanoi. This small one will join the collection in my hallway on Clairmont Avenue. I may also start a collection of African ladies carrying things on their heads. I already have an oil painting that I got in Zanzibar, and now the small watercolor. And I saw another acrylic painting at this show of women carrying bundles of sticks (firewood) on their heads that I liked an awful lot. But I’ll wait a bit…

http://www.artistsunderthesun.org/index.htm (not a very good site)

Rosebank Craft Market
After the visit to Zoo Lake, Feng-hua and Traci Mell (a political officer in the U.S. Embassy; she works with refugee programs; her previous post was 2 years in Pakistan!) didn’t need to get back to Pretoria right away, and we were close to the Rosebank Craft Market, so off we went. This is a huge craft market that’s held only on Sundays and public holidays on the rooftop of a mall in Rosebank. I didn’t realize just how huge it is, or I would have planned to spend more time there. As it is, I’ll have to go back. It will also be an excellent place to take visitors who want to buy presents or goods for themselves. There is all the usual crafty stuff that you see in many markets (bead work, wire work, masks, dyed and painted fabrics, caftans, wooden bowls, spoons, etc.). There’s also a largish section where you can get cheeses, dried spices in bulk, biltong (dried meat, like jerky but better; comes in beef, ostrich, kudu, and other game meats), olives in various kinds of mixes, cakes, pies, bagels (bagels! They didn’t actually look all that good, but it was amusing), and then a food court with Thai, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Portuguese and African foods. I had some beef with pap (pronounced “pop”; same thing as sadza in Zimbabwe, ugali in Swahili-speaking countries, nzima in Malawi – a cornmeal porridge kind of like polenta from Italy only lots thicker) and tomato gravy. I couldn’t eat pap every day, but I do like it every now and then, and it’s no fun to cook.

http://www.craft.co.za/index.htm