Braii Heaven

After spending most of our first weekend volunteering for the relief efforts, Team USA (Sanford, Sarah, & Ryan) set out for a weekend of exploration and fun in the “Mother City.” Here is a recap of the adventures:

Friday Lunch: African salad prepared by Asanda, a township favorite. The ingredients? Corn meal and sour milk. This will probably be the last time I ever consume African salad.

Friday Night: After two nights of salsa dancing training with Isabel and her “quick-quick-slow” gang, the moves were taken to the public for an evening at Fiesta (tapas, salsa dancing). Well not really… Sanford, who has become quite the salsa pro, got some dancing in. However, Sarah and I discovered from the previous night’s lesson that we should never be allowed to dance in public, and chose to enjoy the view from the table instead.

Saturday Afternoon: To the beaches with Heloise and Pauline! First stop was Muizenberg, the local surf spot and home to some amazing views of the town & water. Further south was Kalk Bay, where a stop for Cuban food was made. Through Fish Hoek and into Simon’s Town, a small beach village with tons of penguins roaming around the rocks and making very odd noises. All cameras were out of order, so only one shot of the penguins and scenery was obtained.

Saturday Evening: After a nice dinner at 12 Cambridge Rd., Sanford, Sarah, Heloise, Pauline, Antoine, and Ryan decide to stay in and draw miniature versions of themselves (on Flat Stanley’s.) For anyone not familiar with Flat Stanley, it is a little blank cutout of a person from a children’s book that you color and take pictures with across the world. Ginger Beebe, the first lady of Arkansas, gave them to each Clinton School student to take on their projects, with many blanks for sharing. Here are some of the participants and their flat counterparts (complete with Flat Stanley half-smile):

Sunday Afternoon: On Friday, Asanda told us that he really wanted to take us out for a day in the townships, and especially for braii at M’zoli’s Meat. Braii in South Africa means barbecue, and some research of M’zoli’s Meat turned up pictures of people sitting around tables eating from trays of barbecue. Sounds fantastic, right? What we had no idea about was the quantity of meat served on your tray. This is what our table of 7 ended up with:

Upon arriving and grabbing a table, you tell the meat counter approximately what you want. They then load piles of beef, pork, sausage, and chicken upon your tray and carry it to a room of 8 giant fire pits in the back. After, you are told to go across the street to a trailer to purchase six-packs of beer, and you sit in the sunshine all afternoon drinking beer and eating chunks of meat from the enormous barbecue platter. The whole block fills up with tables holding hundreds of people eating, drinking, dancing, and playing music. This was definitely not the most sanitary of eating experiences, and multiple meat comas were induced, but it was a truly awesome and one-of-a-kind day.

Sunday Night: Much-needed sleep.

Other fun developments of late:

12 Cambridge Rd. has a new mascot, Boots the Cat (he has little white feet.) Boots sits at our front or back door, depending on which side of the house we are making noise on, or in the closest window to where we are eating. Boots never leaves. Boots likes to run through our house when we don’t pay attention. Boots can also climb the bars on the outside of our windows to get in the top portion if it is open (about 8ft. high.) Usually a night of hanging out in the kitchen has about 3 occurrences where Boots must be forcefully removed, but we all still kinda love him anyway.

I have twice driven a car, and only once went down the wrong side of a major street (South Africans drive on the left side of the road.)

I hope all is well in your respective pockets of the world, more soon!

much love,

Ryan