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On Coming to Terms with Our Arseholery

~ susanhayden ~ 221 Comments

sa flag 4
Nobody wants to think of themselves as being a bad person. Bad people are ISIS fighters, child molesters, Shrien Dewani. They do horrible things which are blatant and obvious and talked about in the media. But in the last few months I have found myself in spaces where I’ve had to take a long and careful look at who I am in the world, the attitudes that have formed me and how I conduct myself in certain situations. And to say that it’s been an uncomfortable awakening is an understatement. Because many of you who follow my blog know that I’m relatively outspoken about race issues in this country. I have strong feelings about the socio-economic disparities and the white attitudes that feed them, and while I sit behind my computer screen in my nice study on the Atlantic Seaboard it’s easy to wax lyrical about egalitarianism and the way things ‘should’ be in SA. When I write these words, which I wholeheartedly mean, I can nonetheless distance myself a little bit from the ‘racists’ out there; convince myself that I am better than they are.

But the truth is I’m not. I am as guilty as the man who went up to my neighbour’s friend who was recently walking in a supermarket with his newly adopted baby and said, ‘oh look, a special little kaffir.’ The other man who asked a couple who have adopted two HIV positive children of four and six why they are ‘wasting their time.’ The inhabitants of the shop in the town of Oudtshoorn who openly snubbed our white friends because they walked in with their black baby daughter. I could go on and go – there are so many incidents of this kind of thing that happen all the time in this country. But there’s another thing too, and it’s this that I’m guilty of. The white arrogance and sense of entitlement that follows us wherever we go and is so ingrained we aren’t even aware of it. It’s the tone we adopt when the black teller is taking too long to ring up our goods (my ‘madam’ voice). It’s the secret panic when the pilot is black. It’s the us-and-them way we were taught, from the youngest age, to divide the world. This stuff is in our DNA, and the more we deny it, the less chance we have of making it go away.

I regularly hear white South Africans say the most outlandish things: ‘It’s just a pity when it’s the blacks turning on the blacks’. Blacks who? What homogenous entity are we referring to? My char? The heart surgeon at Grootte Schuur? Oprah? What does the council guy who comes to my door asking for R5 for his daughter’s netball tournament have in common with President Zuma? I can tell you: fucking nothing. I have more in common with Zuma than he does. We are both middle class South Africans with a big, fat sense of entitlement. Or, they say: ‘I’m not interested in politics and race relations.’ Oh, you aren’t? Could that be because you have a big house with a lawn and two cars and eat out a few times a week and go to Bali for Christmas? How lovely for you that you’re privileged enough to be apolitical. And for me. And for all of us who live lives of charm and delight, tweeting about SONA over a second bottle of Beaumont Shiraz because fuck sakes, this country is surely going up in flames in five minutes. Please pass the dip.

I don’t mean to be unfair and beat up on white people. Some of my best friends are white. We are all just human beings doing our best in a political situation which scares us to the very marrow. We love this country and – with good reason – are terrified of what the ANC is getting away with; what this recent malarkey means in terms of our constitution and our future. But we all need to do a big, fat audit of our attitudes and the racism we hide even from ourselves. We need to remind ourselves, daily, that our disappointment in our government has nothing to do with the countless black people in South Africa just trying to get by in a country where the structures of apartheid make basic survival a daily struggle. The legislative bit of apartheid might have ended 20 years ago, but it is not white people living in cardboard boxes beside the highway. For those countless people, apartheid is alive and well – only they have no hope of anything ever changing. For them, the cycle of poverty is as entrenched and ongoing as it’s ever been.

Let us make a point of remembering how incredibly privileged and lucky we are to live the lives we do in this extraordinarily beautiful part of the planet. Let’s stop sitting by passively and moaning to each other over skinny lattes about how messed up everything is. We – the ones who enjoy economic power as a birthright – must start speaking up for those who have no voice. And it starts with admitting our racism to ourselves and becoming acutely aware of how it plays out in the day-to-day; how, on subtle levels, it keeps the status quo in place because thoughts lead to words which lead to actions. Truth be told, we can be a stupid, obtuse tribe of people. The other day a young woman who belongs to the Neighbourhood Watch group I had to leave because of comments like hers said, ‘This whole black issue is such a crock.’ I mulled over her comment for days, and in the end I didn’t have enough words for that level of ignorance and myopia. And the saddest thing of all was that everyone agreed.

So, I propose this for each one of us who grew up during apartheid or at any point in this socially and economically segregated society and has been rendered a little bit mad as a result: we need to stand in front of a mirror, look ourselves in the eye and say, ‘I am a racist.’ Then we need to make a daily decision that we are going to challenge these stupid, retrogressive views which are based on nothing but ignorance and fear. In whatever small capacity we can we need to counter our arseholedom by doing selfless things, spreading goodwill and taking the hand of friendship black South Africa – against all odds and to my ongoing astonishment – holds out to us, its arrogant oppressors. Because we have the power to do so much good if we can look up from our iPads long enough.

The morning after the State of the Nation address I went to Clicks Pharmacy to buy Panados for the red wine I’d gulped down when the sound went off for the seventh time. I asked the (black) woman who was ringing up my things if she had watched the madness the previous night. She had. She started telling me how angry and disappointed she was in our government. Her colleague joined in the conversation. Their voices grew so loud a small crowd gathered to hear what they were saying, and they were much more radical in their condemnation of the ANC than I dare to be. They went on for such a long time I almost regretted asking, but it was a very important reminder for me – and I suspect for all the white people who stood there, listening – that we are on the same side. We all want fairness and accountability by the government and a president who is a leader and not a crook. We all want to live in a country where our children’s futures are secure. Let’s do what we can to stop the divisiveness that’s growing in our society like a cancer, and the first step towards achieving that is taking a long, hard look at ourselves.

Just Eat the Effing Sandwich

~ susanhayden ~ 54 Comments
Possibly the best (effing) sandwich I've ever had in my days - toasted ciabatta with crispy bacon, avo, melted brie and caramelised onions. It was from Motherland Coffee in St George's Mall. I still think about it.
Possibly the best (effing) sandwich I’ve ever had in my days – toasted ciabatta with crispy bacon, avo, melted brie and caramelized onions. It was from Motherland Coffee in St George’s Mall. I still think about it.

Before I sat down at my computer right now I made myself a sandwich. As in, put things between two slices of thick, fresh bread (real mayo, cheddar cheese, cucumber, tomato, rocket and a bit of chutney, if you want to know), and not flaxseed ‘bread’ or cauliflower ‘bread’ or ‘bread’ made from dried, ground psyllium husks (what the hell is that anyway?), but the kind we used to eat back in the day made from wheat and yeast. Pretty retro, huh? And while I actually sat down to work on something else entirely, the strangeness of sitting down to eat a real-life sandwich struck me enough that I changed my plan and started writing about that instead.

Because the thing is, three months ago this sandwich would have made me quake. I mean, it’s a carb, for the love of god, and everyone knows carbs are very, very bad. Very. And believing this to be true, I would have substituted the best part for, well, anything. More lettuce. Seeds. Those psyllium husks. Anything but eating the bread part of that meal because if I did I believed I’d basically be obese or dead or both within the week. But bacon was fine. Oh, chow down, sister. Bacon’s not a carb. Neither is chicken skin or steak or butter or coconut oil. All of these things? Hunky damn dory. But a slice of melba toast? Well, you might as well go in a dark room and mainline arsenic.

And I don’t know, in this age of information, how we human beings can still be so stupid. Okay, maybe stupid is harsh, but why we fall so enthusiastically, so uncritically for these fads and trends instead of just using our noggins and good, old-fashioned common sense. And I totally include myself in the idiocy because I have done every. One. Of. These. Diets. Looking, as I was, for the holy grail of eating – the key, the trick that would let me stop fighting with food and therefore myself. And I ate the eggs and forewent the toast (so yuck, right?) and turned down the banana in favour of the smoked sausage. I mean, does any part of turning down a banana make sense? Potassium. Fibre. Nature’s own pre-packaged snack food. Perfect. A lot perfect-er than that piece of processed meat.

Because actually sitting down to an entire sheep at one sitting is not okay just because you skipped the mash. Putting butter on your 500 gram T-bone isn’t fine because you had spinach instead of chips. It’s greedy and it’s stupid and it’s killing the planet. Do we even think about what it costs in energy terms to get that cow onto our plates? And putting that amount of fat and protein into our bodies just can’t be healthy. I refuse to believe it is. It’s one of those cases of if it sounds too good to be true, it more than likely is.

I’m not a dietician, but I write about food and think about food and eat food a lot. And, because it’s something that interests me, I read books about nutrition and talk to people who are dieticians and doctors and have made it their life work to help us be healthy and when I ask them what they think of Banting and LCHF the sensible ones shake their heads in collective despair. For sure, no question we were eating too much grain (thank you, marketing campaigns of the 90s). We don’t need all that wheat and rye and barley and the kak that gets added to it. But removing all carbs is extreme and counter-intuitive and, frankly, cray. There is no way a sandwich filled with avo and salad is worse for you than a three egg omelette with bacon and a half kilo of cheese. Or that the fat of the (probably hormone fed) steak is better for your body than a nutrition-packed sweet potato. It just doesn’t make sense.

The other day I was chatting to a restaurateur friend of many years – someone who runs a few of the most successful eateries in Cape Town, and who’s made a very good career out of feeding people. And we talked about trends and food fads and the future, he told me something that made so much sense. He said, on the way out are the days where people will sit down and gorge themselves on a huge piece of steak and this is because we are becoming more mindful of what meat really is and where it comes from. We want to know it’s from a reputable farm where the animals are treated humanely and not pumped full of drugs and rubbish. Quality is replacing quantity, and it’s about damn time.

Contrary to the greed that permeates our food culture now and has for some time, we human beings seem to slowly be gaining respect for the fact that an animal lost its life so we can have those pork chops for supper. And, what’s more, restaurant patrons of the future will be presented with a ‘Provenance Bible’ where they can see exactly where the food they are ordering was sourced – the meat, the fish, the eggs, the vegetables, the cheese. Transparency will become de rigueur and, with it, accountability and a growing interest in and awareness of what we are putting into our bodies.

And with that philosophy guiding us hopefully soon we’ll start to pare down; reduce our portions; order one plate of meat and share it amongst the table. In his words, we’ll go back to eating like our grandparents did – not endless sandwiches made from cheap government loaf, but a few slices of good bread baked with organic flour and natural ingredients, savoured and eaten in moderation. Fresh fruit and vegetables we’ve grown ourselves or bought at a market served raw or lightly seared. Fruit, nuts, home-made butter, organic olive oil. Happy food that our bodies recognise and know what to do with.

It’s okay to eat potatoes now and then. Few things in the universe are more delicious than a French fry. Just remember that they’re high in energy so don’t eat more than you’re going to expend. Have the odd plate of pasta. My god, it’s good for the soul. But mostly eat salad. Eat the stuff that comes in the best colours (not smarties). A little bit of meat now and again when you feel your body needs it. Because it’s not about how to get as much food down our throats as we can get away with and still look good in low-cut jeans. It’s about eating gently and living gently. And looking after ourselves and our environment. And saying no to factory farming – not supporting those mofos because it’s really not okay, the suffering that goes on there and that we all collectively condone.

So, having after immersed myself wholeheartedly in the madness of diets and weird eating trends for the past twenty years and having learnt many things from that experience, the ultimate conclusion I’ve come to is this: eat meat a little bit, but let it be special; a treat. Aim for a diet that’s simple and light on the body (and the soul). And when it comes to food (and life), practice mindfulness and humility. Stop all this radicalism and the weird, self-imposed rules like taking the freaking croutons out of the Caesar salad. They’re the best part. Banting gets it right-er because it’s about going back to basics, turning away from processed stuff and incorporating a bit of fat. But it’s too extreme. Cauliflower is not the truth and the light. There’s a middle road that I think we’ll get to when all this hype dies down. And what I’ve learnt from all of it is to eat the effing sandwich.

Get off Facebook and Talk to the Petrol Attendant Guy

~ susanhayden ~ 59 Comments

While apartheid ostensibly ended two decades ago, you’d have to be in all kinds of denial not to see how apartly (made-up word) black and white people still live, and it’s a phenomenon I alternately accept with a kind of soul-weary resignation and then sometimes regale against with all my heart because the fact that we don’t talk to each other lies at the very heart of this country’s ongoing problems. But because of this reality – my age, where I live, where my kids go to school – the only black people I encounter on a day-to-day basis are the ones at the supermarket checkout, the one bringing me my Americano and the guy filling my car up with unleaded. So, when I’m not feeling that I-can-t-make-a-fucking-difference-here-so-I’m-not-even-going-to-try feeling (usually brought on by reading the paper), I’m trying a new thing which is talking to every black person I get a chance to talk to.

Sometimes it will be the woman with the great weave at Sea Point Pick n Pay (there’s this drop dead gorgeous woman who sits there all day ringing up groceries and every day she is so glamorous and perfectly groomed she makes me feel like the bag lady); sometimes it will be the parking attendant – though, less often him, because I’m usually rushing somewhere – and often it’s the petrol attendant guy because he’s standing around, anyway, and you’re sitting there waiting will a few minutes to kill, and what I’ve discovered since doing that is that these micro conversations have probably changed the way I understand how people are feeling in this country.

The first time I did it was when Madiba was very sick and it felt like nobody was telling us the truth about what was going on and for weeks I was distressed and vaguely ill-at-ease. In the context of that shared tragedy it felt less weird to engage a complete stranger, and I put my skaamness about being white and in a fancy Swedish car aside and asked the guy what he thought of the whole thing. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember him telling me his family was from around the Qunu area and, as a young boy, he knew of the Mandela clan and was going there in the next while to pay his respects. Just hearing that was comforting. We shook hands awkwardly – me doing the formal thing, him doing that hand-clasp thing I’ve never quite grasped – but that part didn’t matter. We were just two grieving South Africans.

This week the guy I spoke to works in Green Point and, it as it transpires, he is from East London where I was born and my parents both grew up which means it’s a special part of the world for me and with anyone who comes from the Eastern Cape I feel an instant kinship. His name was Dumisani, and this is how our conversation went:

Me: Oh, wow, I haven’t been back to East London for many years, but I want to go soon. I want to take my mom and dad back.

Him: You’ll be surprised at what you find. It’s not like it used to be. I go back to visit my sister and when you come from Cape Town it’s like arriving in a different country.

Me: Ja, I hear that.

Him: I can’t understand, when people see how badly an area is being governed, they’ll still vote ANC. Look at what the DA does for Cape Town.

Me: Ja, but we’re still in transition. This stuff takes time. People vote for a party, not an individual. You can’t expect black people to vote for a white party.

Him: No. It’s been twenty years now. People need to wake up. The time of thinking like that is over. Who is serving you? Who is making your life better? These are the only issues that matter. I struggle. I do. But I’m providing for my kids, and they won’t struggle like I do. Their lives will be different. I’m teaching them to ask questions. When they vote it won’t be about what’s black and what’s white, it will be about what’s good and what’s right.

I didn’t really have much to say after that, but I thought about our conversation and I repeated it to my parents that evening over supper. Because we all still maintain this myth that there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, and all the time, when I can be bothered to pay attention, I’m reminded that there is just an ‘us.’ If this ship goes down, it’s the under-classes who drown first. We whiteys can still weasel a passport to New Zealand. Dumisani? Not so much. I don’t know this man from Adam, but I can tell you that he’s smart and hard-working and doing everything in his power to make a better South Africa for his family. Unfortunately, his ceiling of opportunity was low and standing around all day washing people’s windscreens was one of the few jobs he was able to get. But he does it with pride and enthusiasm and he has a plan and a purpose and I drove away humbled and with great admiration for that kind of can-do attitude. Because, god knows, we in our nice cars like to whinge.

So, the point, I guess, is that all around us all time are these little windows of opportunity for us to engage and get to know one another a little bit better. It’s just about putting your phone down and taking them. They’re there. And the thing is it’s me who drives away feeling better, feeling more connected and more hopeful about the future. Less of a stranger in my own country. I’m going to try to do it more often.

Café Manhattan

~ susanhayden ~ 21 Comments

cafe manhattan meat

I know a restaurant is my kind of place when the waiter shows you to your table, hands you your menu and asks you if you’d like a tequila. A tequila? At dinner, washed down with chardonnay? Obviously. Despite the fact that it’s a veritable stone’s throw from my house and an establishment frequented by many of my friends, somehow I’d never made it to dinner at Café Manhattan in De Waterkant. Which I realise, now, has been a big oversight on my part because it’s the kind of place you walk into, weary to the bone and bored senseless with the monotony of parenting and you remember, with stunning clarity, that you’re actually an adult who very much likes adult conversation and also wearing a leather pant and throwing back the odd shooter. In that order.

Within five minutes I’d cheered up so much I was barely recognisable to myself, and the evening was a joyful series of hurrah moments as I remembered important things like: I love that Cape Town has a gay district, and that I live a few blocks away from it; I love going out on a Friday night to places where children aren’t allowed, and I love talking to my husband while being plied with cold white wine and admiring the stylish, beautifully groomed young men who frequent this sexy eatery. The music is funky, but not obtrusive; the lighting is low but not seedy, and the service is friendly and attentive without you ever feeling harassed. And the prices are really, really reasonable. In fact, the burgers (which are huge and amazing) are cheaper than the ones we have when we go to that other place which does allow children. You know where I mean.

cafe manhattan inside view

Anyhow. I was in an American kind of mood, so to start I ordered the corn and Arborio sliders which come on a generous serving of tasty roast vegetables (v. yum indeed), and Per had the salt and pepper squid. Both were delicious. Then, I had a very hard time because I almost never order the chicken in restaurants – it feels like such a naff, fence-sitty thing to do, and anyway, chicken is lunch – but this one I couldn’t resist the sound of, being buttermilk-soaked, coated in Texan spices and deep-fried, Southern-style. The portion is so big (think KFC’s family bucket) even greedy guts me could only manage half. Only order this dish if you walked here from Kimberley. Then again, it would probably be very nice with mayo on government loaf the next day.

Per had a T-bone with two sauces since he was having commitment issues – chocolate chilli and chimichurri which is an Argentinian thing made of parsley, garlic, olive oil, oregano and vinegar and goes very nicely on beef and also on double-fried chips and onion rings and vegetables and your finger. (Personally, I would have gone for the triple cheese or the smokey chipotle, but I only get to boss him around so much before he tells me to settle down and face the front).

By the time we were done we were too full to speak, but had to try one of the fun milkshake flavours for dessert. He voted for chocolate brownie, but since I was writing the review that was vetoed immediately and we had the apple and cinnamon (you can also have peanut butter and marshmallow and lemon meringue – yum) and it was completely divine, served with a dollop of apple pie and two spoons. They also do fun and unusual-for-SA things like root beer floats, soft shell crab and pumpkin pie, but those delights I had to leave for another day. If it’s been a long time since you had a decent conversation with your partner or it’s been a stupid week at work or life is just unimpressing you hugely, comfort food in a cheerful setting goes a long way towards making the world bearable again. Pull in, order the fries and say yes to the tequila. You’ll walk out a new man.

cafe manhattan outside view

Café Manhattan is on 74 Waterkant Street, De Waterkant. Call them 021 421 6666 or check out their website http://www.manhattan.co.za/. They’re open for breakfast, and have a special Steak Knife Tuesday for when the weekend got really fun. The pavement tables are also good for an after work cocktail or seven.

Five Things I’ve Learnt About Fannies

~ susanhayden ~ 27 Comments

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One of my favourite places in Sweden, Ribersborg kallbadhus.

 

If you want to get rid of body image-related fiemies in a quick way, a very good place to start is a Swedish sauna. And it’s one of the reasons, when I lived here, why I insisted on taking South African friends saunering – even when they would really rather have done just about anything else than walk around buck naked amongst foreign strangers. Because, let’s be honest, we grew up with some mightily messed up ideas about nudity and our bodies. When I was it school it was normal to go into the toilet cubicle to change for P.T. lest – God forbid – your peers got a glipse of your bits. Never mind the fact that we all had the same damn bits. It was also school policy to run random underwear checks (seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up) to make sure the young women of the nasie had the requisite commitment to their country (or something) to wear the prescribed nylon broeks – in my high school these were maroon – which covered the tops of your thighs and went practically up to your navel. Because if you were voor-op-die-wa enough to wear Woolworths panties, for example, you were definitely on a slippery slope to moral decline, the kind which would end in an anarchy our country could ill afford.

So, we’d stand in a long line and someone (usually the P.T. teacher was given the unenviable task) would move down the line and lift our tunics to see which girls were committed members of the volk and which were contributing to South Africa’s moral decay. And amidst this Calvinist-inspired hysteria about the showing of skin, the only naked bodies we saw – aside from our parents whose privacy we regularly invaded – were the Scope girls with stars on their boobs and the odd, contraband porn movie from the seventies which was usually so grainy you could barely make out what anybody was doing. And it was from this deeply conservative upbringing that I arrived in Scandinavia and discovered the most interesting contradiction about this nation and ours. In South Africa, especially back in the day, it was quite acceptable to leave a party so drunk you had to walk with one eye closed, get in your car and drive home. It was also okay, at said party, to partake in any array of recreational drugs which – amongst certain friends, anyway – were used and exchanged freely. Sometimes it was as harmless as a joint, but I’ve been to a braai in deepest suburbia where caps of acid were offered on a saucer as if they were chips and dip until everyone was so high they stopped talking to each other and instead moved anxiously from room to room, in formation, like llamas.

But while this kind of heady licentiousness was kind of par for the course, don’t – whatever you do – take off your clothes. Because that’s bad. In Sweden, exactly the opposite norm prevails. While drinking even a little bit and driving is darkly frowned upon, and drugs are so bad they’re not even mentioned in polite company, you can feel free anytime to go starkers – and people do. Find yourself in town and suddenly the sun came out and you want to tan? Go for it! Discover you forgot to wear underwear that day? No problem! Nobody cares. And that’s the truth. And this is why the sauna experience is such an important reminder – especially for us women who manage to develop some very funny ideas about how we’re supposed to look – that bodies are just bodies, and while their shapes might differ, they are more alike than different. I remember the feeling of fear the first time my Swedish friend, Teresia, took me saunering, of having to strip down completely and walk across a sizeable changing room and into a sauna full of naked people. And then, when it got too hot, walking out with my bare bum facing everyone and strolling down a quay where, 50 metres away and in full view, naked men walked down their own quay and we all cooled off in the cold November sea before doing it all again.

And realising, with amazement, that I was the only one who felt uncomfortable. These women – old ones, young ones, bigger ones, smaller ones – were completely at ease with their physical selves. And nobody was perfect. Even the ones who were thin in clothes stripped down to reveal wobbly thighs, knock-knees and droopy boobs. But nobody cared. Nobody even looked. They chatted and laughed and sweated and swam and showered and lathered and bent down to pick up their water bottle without a moment’s self-consciousness. It was a beautiful thing to observe, and it changed the way I saw and felt about myself. Seeing these bodies in the cold light of day – zits on bums, stretched nipples, bony knees – reminded me that the perfection I demand of myself is unrealistic and unattainable, that nudity is not sexual, it’s just nude, and that there is a zone of self-acceptance you can enter if you choose. Not that I always get it right, but being amongst sisters who were that at ease with themselves meant that some of their togetherness rubbed off on me. I wanted to take the freedom I felt in that space and bottle it so that I could access it on days I felt iffy and like I didn’t quite make the grade. Instead, I will share some things I discovered which I think are important to know.

1. Most Women Have Outies…

Based on no scientific research whatsoever, I would say that less than 5% of women look like the ones in porn movies. So, please can we stop this insane trend towards standardising our fannies? There is no ‘right’ look. And, by the way, men don’t give a crap, they’re just happy to be allowed in.

2. …And Ordentlike Bushes

Ja, you get the odd landing strip but, for the most part, woman go au natural, true story. We’re bushy. A lot of us don’t even deal with the hair that creeps down the thighs. And while it’s not my best look, I think it’s fabulous that there are women who genuinely don’t care. So, while some of us walk around feeling slightly skaam about the fact that our lady topiary isn’t always as perfectly trimmed as it could be, it’s good to know that neither is anybody else’s. And anyway, who has the time?

3. At Some Point You Lose Your Pubes

The only Brazilians I encountered belonged to women in their sixties who didn’t really look like the type to be having crazy sex which led me to the assumption that the pubes went of their own free will. So, instead of waxing and shaving everything away, maybe we should enjoy the fact that we have hair down there. It means we’re not old. Yet.

 4. Fannies are Not Beautiful (and that’s okay)

 Neither are the bodies they’re attached to. Real bodies have bumps and stretch-marks; remove the Spanx and the Wonderbras and women have pot-bellies and hips and boobs that go south. Its okay. Life is not a freaking beauty pageant. And the people we try to emulate, the actresses and the models, are amongst the saddest, most messed up people alive. Let’s be strong and healthy and do fun, interesting things rather than worrying whether one labia minora might or might not be slightly longer than the other. It’s not what you’re going to think about on your death-bed which means it’s not important so don’t think about it now.

5. Fannies are like Feet

They differ from each other, but less than you’d expect. And when you see them a few inches away from your face they’re much less mysterious than we’re led to believe. They’re just a part of our bodies, and while they are used for sex it’s not like we have sex all the time. Mostly we just put them in undies and go do the grocery shopping. So let’s stop fixating, be happy we have one that works and get on with our lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diary of a Raw Food Detox

~ susanhayden ~ 29 Comments
So virtuous did I feel in the queue at Fruit and Veg City. I mean, TRY and find a samoosa.
So virtuous did I feel in the queue at Fruit and Veg City. TRY and find a samoosa.

Day 0

I feel blech. So awfully yuck. A kind of toxic, sluggish malaise has taken over me and I sleep too long and struggle to get out of bed in the mornings. Which is not me and tells me something is not quite right because I’m normally the energizer buddy. Though, I must admit, I haven’t been feeling energizer for a while. What I have found, as I’ve gotten older, is that there are certain foods my body really does not like, and wheat is the worst culprit. Within half an hour of eating that ciabatta I can feel my system regailing. It just makes me feel ill. And I have to face facts – that I was simply not designed to process grains. I don’t want to feel blech. I want to leap out of bed and feel amazing, and I know I can, and I know it’s about changing my diet. Which is not bad, but there is definitely too much toast and cheese going on. And coffee. And nachos. As I lie in bed, Enos under the belt for the huge sandwich I had at lunch followed by a steak pie for supper, I make a decision: starting the very next day, I’m going on a raw food detox. Just to see what happens.

Day 1
Since this has been a rapid decision I don’t have the right foods in the house, and breakfast has to be a small bowl of raw oats and sunflower seeds with apple juice. It’s been so long since I had anything as healthy as oats, I find the box crawling with small, brown goggas which I (not very painstakingly) pick out. I have my normal cup of filter coffer with milk and a quarter spoon of sugar because last time I did a detox the headache was so bad I couldn’t function. I SMS my raw food genie friend, Beatrice, and ask her if she has tips or tricks I should know about. She orders me to hot foot it to her shop, Raw and Roxy, where she hands me a cup of dark green, freshly pressed (not squeezed, there’s a difference) veggie juice which contains greens, the juice of two lemons and magical things things I can’t remember. It’s tart and delicious and tastes like it’s just what my body needs. This is followed by a thick, darkly red cleansing smoothie of sour cherries, berries, chia seeds, dates and about 100 other special ingredients to make me feel well again. When I get home I start to realize I feel odd – bouncy, sort of, and a bit hyper. I SMS Beatrice from the loo (where I’ve been three times in the last hour) and say it feels like the 90s and I’ve just had a line. I’m tempted to put on eighties music and have a shot of something, but I have to fetch the kids. She says she feels the same, having finished the leftovers of my various brews. I tell her her potions are powerful and that’s she’s the good witch of Woodstock.

Grapefruit is poofy, but it's got great cleansing properties, so make a mulch with banana and apples and you won't notice what you're eating. Those red things are dried pomegranate, mostly for show.
Grapefruit is not ayoba, but it’s got great cleansing properties, so make a mulch with banana and apples and you won’t notice what you’re eating. Those red things are dried pomegranate, mostly for show.

Day 2
I wake up feeling awake. And, bizarrely, not wanting coffee. I’m a coffee fiend, and nobody must even look at me before I’m a half-cup in. I go with it and make myself a cup of hot water with lemon instead. I fear the headache, but decide to listen to my body. I’m amazed at the difference one day can make, but I think my detox process was accelerated somewhat by yesterday’s potent elixirs. I’m a bit mood-swingy, alternating between feeling light and energized and a bit edgy and irritable. For breakfast I make a mulch out of grapefruit, apples, a banana, linseeds I’ve soaked overnight and a tablespoon of chia seeds topped with gooseberries and dried pomegranate. By 11am I can feel a headache starting in my temples. I’m not really hungry, but at the same time I feel like want to eat. I make myself a small salad of cucumber, mint and lemon followed by a huge salad of spinach, cauliflower, grated carrot and a lemon-tahini dressing. I’m thirsty and drink glass after glass of filtered water. By 4pm there is a Tokoloshe perched behind me where I lie prostrate on the couch intermittently smashing my skull with a traditional weapon. I understand why people lose weight on this diet. It’s only day 2 and already I have lost the will to live, never mind rustle up another bowl of raw vegetables. I whatsapp my husband and demand to know why I’m doing this. He says he has no idea but suggests I have another glass of water and go for a walk. Clutching my head with my free hand I drive to the promenade where I hobble along the walkway, squinting and whining quietly to myself.

Day 3
By the time I got into bed last night I had the most severe headache I’ve ever experienced. Meningitis has nothing on this. On google I discovered it’s because caffeine restricts blood flow to the brain. Go off it and the blood flows like god intended, but the change can cause pain of monumental proportions. No wonder I’ve been forgetting everything for five years – I’ve had no blood to the brain. The sensation is of a throbbing whoosh above my eyes which a head massage with peppermint oil only seems to make worse. I mean, peppermint oil? Morphine would be more appropriate. Realizing I wouldn’t sleep a wink and that the following day was not one I would survive without sleep in desperation I took a single Panado (I know, I know) and managed to get some shut eye. This morning the headache is better, but there. Insanely I have agreed to have four children to play today whom I’ll have to drag around the shops to find a birthday gift for a friend, I have people coming to install a fence and a gate whose unprofessionalism has been a headache all on its own and then my cousin who’s going through a tough time arrives with her two boys for dinner and a sleepover. And I have two big jobs due by the end of the day. I stand at the kitchen counter weighing my options. A day of agony or more Panado or a weak cup of coffee to slow down the detox process to more manageable proportions. I go for C. Within 10 minutes I feel right as rain, and I realize that that innocuous-seeming coffee I throw back all day long is one serious mutha of a drug.

Salad with cucumber, mint, carrots and sprouts, and a linseed cracker with avo.
Salad with cucumber, mint, carrots and sprouts, and a linseed cracker with avo. Not horrible, as lunches go.

Day 4
The headache seems to have eased up which I’m relieved about. I’m also immensely relieved that my mom is having the kids for a sleepover because I’m not exactly in Mary Poppins mode. My mood is still swinging wildly as I vacillate between feeling happy and light and so immensely furious I could murder somebody with my bare hands. I sit through two hours of ballet Eisteddfod rehearsal watching the other moms swig away at XL polystyrene cups from Vida E, and it’s not like I crave the stuff, I’m quite smug about the morning’s hot lemon water and fruit mulch, but I would like to feel a bit normal. I tell myself to be patient and that this misery will pay off. On the way to drop the girls I stop at Atlas Trading in Bo Kaap and buy myself the detox and kidney teas Beatrice recommended. I have my first cup at my parents’. It contains buchu, and no words can describe its foulness. It’s like sipping rancid grass flavoured with urine. I’ve started to feel bad. Like you do when you’re coming down with flu – aches throughout my body and funny, shooting pains in my joints. I google detox symptoms, and apparently feeling like you’ve got flu is normal. So that must be it. I spend the rest of the afternoon under a blanky on the couch, sipping my vile teas and sort of enjoying how sick I feel. I read somewhere that the level of discomfort you experience during a detox is directly proportionate to your level of toxicity. Clearly – despite a regular wheatgrass shot and boot camp class – I was a human version of Chernobyl. Who knew?

Day 5
The flu symptoms have lessened, but I’m definitely not at the point where I moonwalk to the bathroom. It’s foggy on the sea front and the lighthouse siren has been sounding all night. I read the night before (yes, I’m reading a lot) that a brisk walk can help alleviate the symptoms, so I dress warmly and head to the promenade, considering a steamy, cleansing sauna at my gym afterwards. Ten minutes into the walk I’m so exhausted I have to turn back. A sprightly 75-year-old eyes me pityingly as I hobble back to my car and return to the sanctity of the couch, sauna plans long forgotten. Come lunchtime, the rain is pummeling down and I can’t face another plate of grated carrot. I need something warm and soothing. I google a recipe for detox soup with ginger, garlic and fresh turmeric, reckoning that the badness of cooking the veggies will be outweighed by the goodness of the ingredients. It’s delicious, and immensely comforting eating something hot. I go to bed at about 7:30pm aware that the geriatric from the promenade is probably dusting off her dancing shoes and getting ready to go on the razzle.

Raw 'pizza' with smoked olive paste, avo, fresh tomatoes and basil
Raw ‘pizza’ with smoked olive paste, avo, fresh tomatoes and basil. Sooo tasty.

Day 6
Something quite astonishing (even through the pain) is the sense of clarity I am experiencing. It’s hard to describe, really, but it feels like the world has come closer, in a sense. Things seem more immediate – almost like there’s been a barrier between me and reality which has now melted away, and things have shifted into very (startlingly) clear focus. I don’t know how to explain it, and I’m the first one to pooh pooh all this talk of ‘toxins’ because, frankly, it’s immensely dull, but I suppose in the same way alcohol and drugs (like caffeine) alter our perception of things, maybe the nasty components of a so-so diet also fuzzy up our reality. In a very unscientifically proven way (then again, there are realms science can’t explain), I know I feel different, and it’s a good feeling and I want it to last. All the aches and pains have gone, and I’ve started to look forward to my morning lemon water and fruit. In five short days my taste buds have changed. Before, I couldn’t abide sweet things in the morning. Now, my plate of black grapes, chopped up naartjie with cinnamon and banana tastes completely delicious and I can’t wait to eat it. Go figure. There are a lot of salads happening, but you sexy them up with things like dried pomegranate, dried olives, good dates, fresh figs and, always, lashings of avo smashed up with lemon, cherry tomatoes and coriander. And I love that I can eat nuts and nut butter with wild abandon and not worry about the calories.

Day 7
So, this is the last designated day of my detox, only it’s not the last day at all because I like the way I feel too much. I’m light and clear in my head, I sleep well and wake up awake, I don’t crave coffee at any point in the day. I’ve learnt how easy it is to make my own linseed crackers (I like to add pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and organic coconut flakes) which I pop in the toaster instead of bread and have with avo or peanut butter. Instead of milk from a cow my nighttime drink is warm almond milk with a few teaspoons of almond butter and a swirl of raw honey. I love that I can eat as much as I want of whatever I want and that I still feel light and energized and, despite eating more or less non-stop have lost 3kgs in a week. And the food all tastes delicious.

This is a hard diet to follow 100%. It’s difficult to socialise and stick to it and boring to explain what you’re doing because everyone thinks you’re mad. And I refuse to be the person who goes to someone’s home and won’t eat the food they’ve prepared for me with love. Anyway, I like my meat and I don’t store iron well or absorb the kind you get from supplements so I need the odd rib-eye (with chips, because not having the chips is wrong on every level). So, my conclusion is this: I will continue eating raw indefinitely because it makes my body (and therefore, me) really, really happy. And my skin has never looked so good – I think it’s the high level of healthy fats. It’s kind of plumped up and glowy. But I won’t do it 100%, I’ll aim for 80%, maybe slightly more. At dinner parties and in restaurants I’ll eat what I feel like and give in to cravings, listening to what my body tells me because I’m a lot more in touch with it now. I’ve learnt about some amazing foods I’d never heard of and that I really enjoy (chia seed porridge is the BERRIES), and I know now how to eat filling, satisfying meals that don’t contain any part of a grain. I never get that blech, toxic feeling, and I’m happy to be off the coffee. It’s been an interesting experiment, and it’s kind of changed my world.

White People Can Eat Gatsbys, Too

~ susanhayden ~ 27 Comments
A steak Gatsby (she assured me you don't have to have the polony for it to be real).
Zulfa and our steak Gatsby (she assured me you don’t have to have the polony for it to be real).

A few nights back I started reading a Rayda Jacobs novel where she keeps referring to Gatsbys and I realised I’ve never eaten a Gatsby and it’s about time I did so I know what Rayda is talking about. So, I asked on Facebook where I can find the best Gatsby in Cape Town and some American friends of mine joined in the conversation and apparently in France it’s called an Americano and it’s made with burger patties instead of polony or steak or curry. But what was interesting was when I tried to explain how come I’ve never eaten this quintessentially Cape Town sandwich before, loving all things local as I do. And I kept starting and then deleting my comment because I didn’t know how to say it: that Gatsbys are coloured food and white people just don’t eat them. It’s funny trying to explain your country to foreigners and realising, anew, how mad it all sounds (how mad it all is).

But, that’s the gospel truth, isn’t it? They’re poor food; working class fair. We mlungus might go into a café that sells them, but we’ll buy a samoosa or a chicken pie and a can of diet coke. Not a Gatsby. And I started thinking about that and how, a while ago, I had to attend a conference in Bridgetown and we white people looked at each other in bemusement. There’s a Bridgetown in Cape Town? Who knew? Well, a lot of people, it turns out. The people who eat Gatsbys. Bridgetown is in Athlone, and while all the coloured people in the world will know where Camps Bay is even if they’ve never been there, the vast majority of white Capetonians will never go to Athlone. Unless they got drunk at Forries and made a wrong turn off Klipfontein Road and pooped themselves when they realised.

And it’s interesting how the apartness a lot of us grew up with is reflected in our food. Black people eat samp and pap; white people eat fish and salad. When I lived overseas people would ask me what South African cuisine was, and it’s an impossible question to answer unless you précis it with a summary of the socio-political history of our country. Because there is no ‘South Africa’ in the sense they were meaning. There are pockets of disparate people whose lives are vastly different in terms of what they can expect to achieve; the dreams they dare to aspire to, and the food they can afford to eat.

Strangely enough, the thing that helped me understand the Swedes I was living amongst was when I started cooking Swedish food. The food of a nation says a lot about their passions and preferences and who, quintessentially, they are. Northern Europeans might appear cold on the outside, but bite into a warm-from-the-oven saffron bun on a frigid December morning and you know, underneath their chilly façade, beats the warmest of hearts. And when we break bread with one another we also break through barriers. Which is, I think, one of the reasons I insist on serving chakalaka at braais. It’s my private little rebellion against the repressive norms of my apartheid childhood. (And also because it’s delicious).

And, I guess, what propels me to put my 68-year-old mother in a car and drive us to Miriam’s on Adderley Street on a Tuesday morning in search of the perfect Gatsby in lieu of our regular coffee. And I guess it’s about needing to step out of my own little pocket; trying not to be so precious and white all the time. And I don’t assume for a moment that ordering a chip roll will change the world; I just mean we must try and be mindful of where we come from and the assumptions we make, and that there are worlds of experiences out there and a wealth of lessons at our fingertips if we can remember to open our minds and our hearts to them. It’s like, if you take the courage to break through the boundaries of what you order for lunch, maybe some other boundaries will be broken down too in the process. I don’t know.

I invited my friend Zulfa along as she’d joined in the Facebook conversation and seemed to be a bit of a Gatsby expert, and every time I see her she reminds me of the time I went to visit her at her home in Athlone and, being the type who can’t find her way out of Cavendish square, naturally I got hopelessly lost. With a dead cell-phone and driving around aimlessly with two children in an area which (to my mind) could only be teeming with murderers and rapists, my anxiety increased about a hundred-fold when I realised I was being followed by a strange man in a car. Not only followed, but he was making hand gestures and seemingly trying to pull me over. While I tried my best to get away from him, my Toyota Tazz didn’t have enough power and for endless, excruciating minutes, I had to watch this man wave his arms as he threatened to bludgeon us all to death.

When, by some miracle, I finally found the right house, I was surprised to see the scary man from the car sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of tea. It was none other than Zulfa’s sweet, gentle giant  husband, Moegamat, who’d ventured out in a quest to rescue what could only be the lost and hysterical blonde chick. Shame. This is how mad this country makes us. I still cringe when I see him. But, back to the Gatsby: It was bigger and spicier and more delicious than even greedy-guts, curry-loving me had expected. And while I tried to eat it with my hands – never mind one hand as is the Muslim way – within three bites I knew if I didn’t resort to my knife and fork it was going to become a soggy mess. The steak was tender and flavourful, the chips were crisp and spicy and the sautéed onion tied it all together perfectly. It might not be the healthiest of meals, but some food is soul food and, when eaten while laughing and sharing life stories with people you love it becomes some of the best medicine in the world.

Six Mad South African Stories

~ susanhayden ~ 37 Comments
Yesterday on Camps Bay beach two guys selling cold drinks decided to have a go on our swing ball set. I wish I could have recorded their giggling and the things they were saying to one another (Djy speel kak! Slaan hom! Slaan hon!). One of those lost-in-translation moments.
Yesterday on Camps Bay beach two guys selling cold drinks decided to have a go on our swing ball set. I wish I could have recorded their giggling and the things they were saying to one another (Djy speel kak! Slaan hom! Slaan hom!). One of those quintessentially South African, impossible-to-translate moments.

With this trial going on and on and the awful Nkandla scandal and that book that’s just come out about the crisis our education system is in it’s easy to get a bit despondent and start thinking, fokkit, Hermanus, what’s to become of us, and when that happens it’s good to be reminded that, while we live in a country where the future is every part of uncertain, the flipside of this is that hardly a day goes by without something mad/funny/ridiculous happening that makes you laugh out loud or shake your head in dismay or be warmed to the bone with the kindness and resilience of human beings. And, after all, we are not here to experience perfection; we came to experience love and humanness in all of its manifestations. Here are some true stories gathered over the past twelve months.

The Blind Beggar and the Lotto Tickets

My mom told me this story over chicken curry a few nights back. She was standing in the queue at Shoprite to buy her weekly lotto ticket (‘if you don’t buy, you can’t win’, as my dad always says), and ahead of her was a well-dressed, blind beggar – really smart in a suit and hat, being led around by a young woman who helped him empty the contents of a plastic packet onto the counter. The cashier looked horrified and like she was about to protest but changed her mind and proceeded to count out R72 entirely in brown coins. There was not a single piece of silver in the mix. With the entire R72 the two of them bought lotto tickets. That’s called faith. Or something. I hope they got at least a few numbers right.

The Naked Rastafarian in the Garden

We don’t have a fence around our property, and a while back my kids called me and told me there was somebody in the garden. I went out to have a look, and there, washing himself at the outside tap, was a young Rastafarian homeless guy in his late twenties or so. He had Tresemme shampoo and a loofah. I went over to where he was squatting and said, listen, dude, I don’t mind if you need to wash, but don’t let the tap run for so long, you make everything waterlogged. He stood up and faced me, naked as the day he was born, and nodded that he understood, but the next day he was back, and then he was coming twice a day and it started to get on my nerves. My polite requests that he didn’t come quite so often fell on deaf ears, and eventually, after a couple of weeks, I told him not to come anymore, but there he was, twice a day, and I live alone half the time and the whole situation started to get a bit problematic so we took matters into our own hands and replaced the tap with one that has a removable top. You can’t turn it unless you have the top bit, and we put the top bit inside. The next time he came he stood staring at the tap in bewilderment. Then he climbed up the steps to our deck where there is a working tap, but where all of Green Point would be able to see him washing his bum, so he just stood there for a while not really knowing what to do. I felt a bit bad and went outside and said, sorry, man, but really, it was getting uncool. He shrugged and went off on his way and I haven’t seen him since. Shame. He just wanted to be clean.

The Lady at Fruit and Veg City

All this cancer everywhere really freaks me out, so I’m trying to feed us all healthy food, and the kids and I have a little game where we each have to make sure we get 7 servings of veggies and fruit a day, and it’s quite fun, actually, seeing how many greens you can squeeze into a sauce or a soup. Or, before supper, I give them a ‘starter’ now which is cut up apple and blueberries and cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks and the kids think it’s great, and I feel like a less crap parent. Anyhow, Fruit and Veg have nice stuff lately – fancy mushrooms and tiny baby carrots and fresh, interesting salads so I try and go there more, and as the cashier was ringing up my stuff and I was looking over her shoulder thinking of something or other, she suddenly stopped dead, looked me in the eye and said, ‘where are my manners? Hello. How are you, and did you have a nice weekend?’ I was surprised, but also not, because you do get that kind of thing happening down here. I told her I missed my husband but that I have good friends who kept me busy. She patted me kindly on the arm and said, ‘it won’t be long now.’ And I walked out of a budget supermarket feeling like the world is a kind and gentle place.

The Day my Mom Got Mugged

Arriving home at about 6pm one winter’s evening, suddenly a young man with a knife appeared at my 68-year-old mom’s side and demanded she give him her bag. She said, ‘I’m not giving you my bag. There is nothing in it of value, but it is of value to me.’ He started to argue so she ordered him to sit down where she proceeded to show him her near-empty wallet, her old, worthless cell-phone and the punnet of mushrooms she’d just bought at the Spar. She said, ‘I’ll give you R100 but you are not getting anything else.’ He agreed and went on his way. When she told me the story a few days later I didn’t know whether to be proud or horrified. I still don’t know.

The Honest Granadilla Lolly Guy

Those guys on the beach are so freaking annoying with their cooler-boxes of ice lollies (a lolly to make you jolly?) when you’re trying to read your Heat magazine in peace, but a few months ago I took the kids to the beach and, just as we’d settled, I spotted a friend 50 metres away. Too lazy to go all the way over there, I phoned her and told her to join us, which she duly did. About ten minutes later, one of the ice lolly guys approached us again, this time with a fancy new Samsung smart phone in his hand, and asked us if it belonged to one of us. In the process of gathering her things, my friend had dropped her R8000 phone in the sand, he had spotted it and was doing the rounds. She gave him R50. He probably lives in a cardboard box.

The Jolly Christmas Bergie

On High Level Road about around Christmas time I was on my way to work and a bit stressed and grumpy because when you have young kids trying to get everyone fed and dressed and out of the house on time requires great reserves of patience which is not my strong point, and as the traffic slowed down there, just to my right, was a bergie going through a bin, and while there is nothing unusual about this, what was unusual was that he was wearing one of those red, felt pointed hats with the flashing lights and he had the lights going full tilt while he sang ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ at the top of his lungs. While you might be sifting through the trash for your next meal and Christmas will probably be a bottle of something cheap and lethal, aint no reason to be a misery guts. Big lesson to us all.

There are some sick, weird f?cks out there – and 4 other things blogging has taught me

~ susanhayden ~ 60 Comments

Today as I looked at my site stats I noticed, by chance, that to date I have written 99 blogs which means that this one you are reading marks 100. And, while I was going to write about something else entirely, it feels like I should commemorate this round number in some way. And I think the best way would be to reflect on what those 99 blogs were like to write, and what they’ve taught me about people and about myself. So, here goes:

1. They are some sick, weird fucks out there parading as normal people

Sometimes I find myself in the queue at Checkers looking at somebody who appears to have it together and is just out buying rolls and wondering if it was them who wrote me that spewy, venom-filled missive about how much they hate me and my blog and that I should go away and die forever and also that I come from hell. There are some people walking among us who seriously need a hug and a therapist, in that order, because they are so sad and angry that they hardly know how to contain it. And illogical. And harbouring more bitterness than an aloe on the Swartberg Pass. And I try to remember that it’s nothing to do with me and all about them, but sometimes I can’t help being shocked that human beings can have gotten so damaged along the way. I mean, were they kept in a cardboard box and fed ants when they were children? And I think about how bad their lives must be, and I try to understand what drove them to this point, but honestly, I can’t. And then I decide to feel sorry for them and the people who have to live with them and move on.

2. …but many more awesome ones, so who even cares about the freaks?

Over and above the vast majority of people who like the blog and write nice things and tell me their own stories, a handful have contacted me personally and I can honestly say, over the past year or so, that they have become friends. Not just ‘friends’, but friends – people I would (and will) meet with next time we’re in the same city (I’m talking primarily to you, Mark, Tanya, Johan, Jennie). Good people, kindred spirits with warm hearts and happy energy. Who knew that would happen?

3. You’ll only ever please 80% of your audience

I can write the sweetest, most heartfelt and uncontroversial piece in existence and I’ll always have that one person who cannot resist being a schmuck and posting a snarky comment. At first it surprised me and made me question myself and what I was doing. Now I expect it and am even a little disappointed when I don’t get to spam at least one person a week. So come on, Trolls, don’t let me down!

4. Only ever write from the heart because people know the difference

Sometimes I’ll write something, the honesty and revelatory nature of which makes me shudder at my own out-thereness, and I press the ‘publish’ button with trepidation and worriedly wait for feedback, and then the reactions I’ll get will be so heartfelt and sharey as people seem grateful to have their own lives/feelings affirmed and that I’ve made it okay to speak the truth about situations they know all too well. Your audience has a sixth sense for BS, so don’t insult people. Having integrity as a writer means telling it like it is even when that notion is scary.

5. We are (much) more the same than different
Underneath it all – the cost of our handbag, the texture of our hair, the kind of school our parents could afford to send us to – we are like one person with minor, pretty irrelevant details. That’s my experience, anyway. I have 70-year-old white men and 18-year-old black girls reading and relating to my blog. Which is pretty surprising, but true. We all want the same things: to be happy, to be loved, to sometimes make sense of this life we find ourselves navigating without a compass. And if we could remember that more it would help us to be kinder and more forgiving of one another, and of ourselves.

Thank you for the amazing lessons you, my readers, have taught me xxxx

Olympia Café, Kalk Bay

~ susanhayden ~ 13 Comments

Olympia cafe outside sign

Once upon a time, when I was in my early twenties, I thought I was a hippie and signed the lease on an old house set against the mountain in Muizenberg with a pokey lounge and a lemon tree and a windy view of the sea. I imagined myself wearing sarongs, taking early morning swims and spending my days writing and doing hippie-type things. In reality, I spent most of that year on the side of the M3 waiting for my rusty red Cortina station-wagon with its malfunctioning fan-belt to stop spewing steam long enough to get me to my job in the city as I battled rush hour traffic and was perpetually stressed out and chronically late for work. Reality didn’t quite live up to the fantasy, and the following year I moved back to a flat in more manageable Tamboerskloof.

But I love that part of the world, and I always have. It’s so different from the rest of Cape Town and, despite its proximity to the city, Kalk Bay particularly has managed to retain a real fishing-villagey kind of feel. One of my favourite things about living on the that side of the mountain was breakfast on a Saturday morning at the Olympia Café, home of some of the best omelettes in the universe which, despite being enormous, they have the audacity to serve with fried bread. We took the grannies there for breakfast on Tuesday, and the omelette of the day was mushrooms, mozzarella, pepperdew, avo and pesto, and it was – as always – delicious.

olympia cafe inside sign

What I hadn’t realised, as we strolled up the road afterwards, was how many fabulous new places have opened up in the last while, and we made mental notes to visit all of them in the upcoming months. It’s done itself up, that main road, and if you’re hungry you really are spoilt for choice. And the new cafes are funky and interesting and command a great view of the street and its passers-by, but despite all the newness and the fact that it was mid-morning on a week day, Olympia was still full, many of its patrons chatting away to the waiters, obviously locals who were better at doing hippie-type things than I was. Just make sure, when you go there, that you don’t have lunch plans because the meals are substantial enough to last you until dinner.

As we meandered along, we noticed throngs of old ladies in head-scarves emerging from the station and making their way to the quay, no doubt to enjoy an early fish and chips lunch. Being incurably curious, I accosted a small woman passing by and asked her what was going on. She told me that on a Tuesday pensioners get to take the train for free. ‘From where?’ I asked. ‘ From where we live,’ she answered, ‘Mitchell’s Plein.’ And while she didn’t exactly lower her eyes, when she said ‘Mitchell’s Plein’ something subtle but significant passed between us – a hint of embarrassment on her part, as she confessed to the white girl in expensive sunglasses that she is nothing but a poor coloured woman from the sticks; the vaguest hint of defiance in her tone as she (rightly) assumed I know less than nothing about what she’s lived through in her 70 years on earth, and that she’s answering me out of politeness and that’s where it ends. For me, it was the ever-present longing to take an eraser and just rub out the details of our past like we used to do in Standard 3 when we made a mistake with our HB pencils; make it that it never happened the way it did so that I could just talk to a human being on the street without all that stuff hanging over our heads all the time.

Because, of course, when she was my age, she would have had to take a special ‘non-Europeans’ train carriage and when she got to Kalk Bay she wouldn’t have been allowed to go to a ‘white’ restaurant for a calamari roll and a coke and have a swim in the sea to cool off on a hot, Indian Summer’s afternoon. While I could – and still can – pretty much do whatever I wanted. And I know it and she knows it and all we can do is try to relate to one another as normally as we can now on a crowded, sun-strewn pavement two decades later and hope, eventually, we’ll be able to move on. Or that the new generation is so different none of it will even matter anymore. I don’t know what the deal is with the free tickets, but I think it’s a great initiative. These ladies were chatting and kuiering like it was nobody’s business. Tempting as it might be, we mustn’t allow ourselves to forget the newness of these freedoms. As we were leaving the Olympia Café, we stuck up a conversation with one of the locals who was polishing off the day’s special, about 70 chippolatas served with scrambled egg and mushrooms, and she told us they’re open till 9 o clock at night, are licensed and that the dinner time fare is just as yummy as what they serve in the morning. I believe her. We’ll go back soon to see for ourselves.

I forgot I was supposed to take a pic and started eating. The fried bread is served with pepperdew and aubergine dip. Very cheeky indeed.
I forgot I was supposed to take a pic and started eating. The fried bread is served with pepperdew and aubergine dip. Very cheeky indeed.