Month: February 2014

Categories
Life

Stories

zumiThere’s a Zulu man who canvasses houses here in Hilton to ask for money. On Saturday he appeared at our gate, where he claimed he needs funds to buy a school uniform for his daughter.

The man, Bhekumzumi Sydney Zimu, 47, has appeared from time to time at my partner’s door for the past eight years. He’s a fixture in the neighborhood, you might say.

“Where is your daughter,” my partner asked Zumi, who had told us his daughter is in the eighth grade.

“In a boarding school in Willowfontein,” he answered. “She’s in grade 12.”

“I thought she was in the eighth grade,” my partner said.

“My older daughter is in twelfth grade,” Zumi said.

Zumi said the eighth grader attends school on a scholarship that leaves him responsible for her food and uniform, which he said he hopes to buy at a store in Pietermaritzburg.

My partner called a Zulu friend, whom she asked to speak with Zumi for the purpose of investigating his story. If it checked out, my partner and I discussed the possibility of driving him to the uniform shop, where a uniform sells for about $5 (U.S.). That would be one way to determine if he’s telling the truth.

Zumi talked with the friend for about four minutes then handed the phone back to my partner. His story was difficult to assess by phone, according to the friend, who recommended that we advise Zumi to come by the office where my partner and her friend work. There the mostly Zulu staff could assess the truth of his tale.

My partner relayed the decision to Zumi. She wrote out instructions to bring a letter from the school that identifies the daughter by name and attests to his being her father.

note

Zumi said he would do that. Then he began, in his limited English, to tell us about a job he had in Hilton with a man who died. The man’s wife would not continue Zumi’s employment because she had never met Zumi and could not verify his story, he said. Without the job, Zumi needed money to finish putting up his house, which has unfinished walls he says.

We’ll see whether he shows up at the office. In the meantime, my partner is withholding judgment. “He rolls out all kinds of stories,” she says.

UPDATE: As of February 28, Zumi has yet to appear at the office.

Categories
Travel

In Cape Town, sunshine and half a woman

surf_jumpTwenty eight degrees in New York City. Body-temperature breezes here in Cape Town. It’s 7:00 p.m. as I type this and golden sunshine covers the city.

Earlier my partner and I visited the beach at Camps Bay. “Grenadilla lollies,” called out vendors hawking frozen treats and cold drinks in the 90-degree heat. We played beach tennis, which we punctuated by dashing into the waves to cool off.

Our weekend started in the city’s Sea Point section, where we attended Shabbat services at Chabad of Cape Town. We arrived at 6:30 p.m., about a half hour early. While we waited we met one man, a local who looked to be in his early 30s. “I’m here because my friend in Joburg tells me that Chabad is the place to meet women,” he said. “There are only seven Jewish women my age in Cape Town, and I’ve dated four-and-a-half of them.”

The half remains a mystery. Upon hearing that the service didn’t start until 7:00 p.m. the man announced plans to scope out another shul, started his silver hatchback and drove off into the evening.

Some other images from the weekend…

bookshop

lunchstreet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Sports

Amakhosi4Life

panoramaKaizer Chiefs is a football club that plays in South Africa’s Premier Soccer League. The Chiefs, league champions who sit atop the standings, came to Pietermaritzburg on Tuesday to take on Maritzburg United.

Thanks to friends Rachel, Sipho and Sandile, I had the thrill of being among the roughly 12,000 fans who packed the bleachers to watch Maritzburg host the Glamour Boys, as the Chiefs are known. Most fans who filled the stands seemed to be decked out in the black and gold colors of the Chiefs, who happen to be the most famous team in this football-crazed country. Chiefs are the South African equivalent of Manchester United or the New York Yankees.

Now I know why Chiefs fans invoke the mantra Amakhosi4Life, which uses the Zulu word for chief to make a point about loyalty.

Along with the action on the pitch, I loved being surrounded by the Chiefs family, which includes Sipho, who blew his vuvuzela in unison with other horn-toting fans. Rachel and Sandile cheered for Maritzburg, which scored within the first minute and battled the Chiefs to a 2-2 draw. The contest “was perhaps the stadium’s finest football match in recent years,” columnist Lloyd Burnard wrote in The Witness, the local daily.

As for me, I feel lucky to have been part of the crowd on a 80-degree summer night under a waxing moon in a lavender sky here in the Midlands.

Categories
Home

Everyone to the table for this pasta with marinara!

My partner, her colleague Rachel and I set out recently to make marinara after reading a recipe in the Times that reminded us of sauce we craved. Rachel, whose great-grandparents were born in Italy, volunteered to make pasta, which added to the fun. What follows are the steps we followed to create pasta with marinara that we loved.

Spoiler alert: Never rinse cooked pasta before adding sauce.

Rachel’s “Grandma Style” Pasta

INGREDIENTS

3 cups of flour

3 eggs and 3 egg yokes (6 eggs in total)

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons of ice water

PREPARATION

1.    Pile the flour on a dry surface; hollow out a crater in the center so that the mound resembles a volcano.

2.    Pour the eggs, yokes and olive oil into the crater. Be careful to preserve the wall of flour that surrounds the liquid.

volcano3.    Add ice water.

4.    Mix the ingredients in the crater. Use your fingers to make a mixture of egg and olive oil.

5.    Start to pull flour into the slurry slowly. “Have faith,” says Rachel. “It will turn into pasta.”

6.    Combine the ingredients – flour and slurry – completely to form dough.

dough7.    Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let stand at least 30 minutes. “The longer the better,” Rachel says.

8.    Cover the counter with a liberal dusting of flour.

9.    Cut the dough into six pieces; each piece should be roughly the size of a deck of cards. Dust each piece with flour.

cards10.    Roll each piece until paper-thin. “You should be able to see your hand through it,” Rachel says. Add flour liberally as you roll.

rolling11.    Cut each piece in half widthwise. The halves determine the length of the noodles.

cut12.    Fold the noodle-length piece of dough in half, then in half again, before cutting (see photo below). Cut into ribbons about a quarter-inch wide.

cutting13.    Cover a baking sheet with wax paper. Cover the paper with flour.

14.    Lift and unfurl the ribbons of pasta. Place the ribbons onto the sheet so that they form nests. “What I like about nests is that you can portion them,” Rachel says.

photo(5)15.    Cook immediately or leave uncovered overnight. Freeze the pasta if you don’t plan to cook it within a day.

COOKING

1.    Fill 3/4 of a large pot with water. “The bigger the pot the better because you want to give pasta lots of space and lots of water,” says Rachel.

2.    Bring the water to a rolling boil. Add salt liberally. “Salt like it’s the sea,” Rachel says.

3.    Drop the nests of pasta into the boiling water. Stir pasta to avoid clumping. Boil for between 1 and 2 minutes, checking roughly every 30 seconds to determine the pasta’s firmness.

sauce4.    Pour about half of the marinara (prepared according to the recipe in the Times) from the skillet into a large preheated bowl.

pasta5.    Remove pasta from water and transfer directly into the marinara. Do not drain the pasta or place it into a colander. Toss the pasta together with the marinara until coated well, garnish with ribbons of fresh basil and serve.

Tutti a tavola a mangiare! (Everyone to the table to eat!)

pasta

Categories
Asides Home

Morning Glory

cheeriosCheerios made the news recently for airing a commercial that shows a little girl in a biracial family use the toasted whole grain oats to win her dad’s heart. I mention it because I’ve longed for the cereal since arriving here in South Africa.

Walk down the cereal aisle at a grocery store in Kwa-Zulu Natal and you may find Cheerios, but the oats somehow lack the flavor of Cheerios one finds in the states, where they’re manufactured by General Mills. Nestle makes the South African version at a plant about 37 miles north of Pretoria, according to BakeryAndSnacks.com, a trade publication.

Meanwhile, the Cheerios sold in the states have changed. Though the whole grains that go into Cheerios always have been free of genetically modified organisms, General Mills announced in January that the cornstarch and sugar used in the cereal are now GMO-free as well.

The change, which occurred over the past year, applies to original Cheerios. Eliminating GMO’s from other types of Cheerios, including Honey Nut and Apple Cinnamon, would be “difficult, if not impossible,” a company spokesman told CNN Money.