Mama Jean: The Tiger

Mama Jean: Conquers Table Mountain

We walked from my house up through city streets till we reached the entrance of the national park. At this point my mom was asking me to check her pulse and telling me her fears of dying.

still, we relaxed a bit in beautiful deer park:

as we got further up, my mom was ready to demonstrate her tremendous strength:

by the time we reached tafelberg, the paved road that leads to the cable car, my mom was so relaxed that she was just whistling and strutting along:

some strange things we found along the way:

i had to have a moment of glory, too:

“Here we have met a Father and Son while walking on the top of Table Mountain. The Father had been born in Capetown, and they now live near the Silver Spring/Takoma Park border in Maryland, exactly where my brother Tiger lives. What a small world. The Father was saying he had not been to South Africa for 50 years, but you have to admit “South Africa has everything”. He was holding a salamander which he caught, so we took a picture of it, and them.”

our last overlook on the way down:

Mama Jean: Muizenburg and Simon’s Town

Mama Jean: Crazy Six Course Dinner

Mama Jean treated Libby and I to an amazing six course dinner at this crazy fancy place in cape town called Ginja. It was hilarious and fun to eat all these different wild dishes, over three hours time, and including some five desserts altogether…

this picture doesn’t nearly capture the grandeur, but the camera died before we could get more:

mama jean describes it best:
We did a six-course tasting menu, where you are brought smaller versions of more courses. I am proud to say that our table ordered a total of 5 desserts from our allotted 5 courses each. There was an “amuse bouce” ( a free bite of food from the chef designed to tickle or amuse the mouth or palate) of springbok, which is an antelope-type animal. I think it is more like a unicorn, and certainly not one of the foods God meant for us to eat. Yet, Libby and I split the 3 “palate-teasers”, and loved the preparation. There were also prawns with coriander “foam” and another sauce, eucalyptus ice cream, tuna (the best that Libby & I had ever eaten), a dismantled tiramisu, lemon dessert,south African cheese course, and more. We were there from 8:30 – 12:00, and we closed the place down as we waddled out of there.

Mama Jean: Kirstenbosch Summer Concert Series

Mama Jean: Morning Glory Comes

Mama Jean: Hout Bay

Mama Jean: Direct Action Center for Peace & Memory

district six:

Langa:

Trojan Horse Massacre Memorial, Athlone:

Crossroads, Nyanga:

Mama Jean: Meets Paul’s Mama

My friend Paul’s life has been basically terrible lately. He was out of work and without a really stable place to sleep for a couple of months. Then he finally got a job, and after his second day of work, he was brutally robbed and nearly murdered by a group of 12 thugs from the townships (south african blacks, some six months after the so-called ‘end’ of the xenophobic attacks). His sister was very ill, and needed costly treatment. So, their mother came down to Cape Town, with 20+ boxes of curios to sell here, trying to make enough money (after travel expenses, etc.) to bring back to her daughter. While she was in Cape Town, the sister died. The mother rushed home for the funeral, and Paul didn’t find out until after his mother had left. Crazy horrible times for this man.

We met up with Paul and went to meet his mother, at this basement where the wholesalers from Malawi locate themselves to distribute their goods to the small traders living here. We brought some home baked bread and a large photograph of Paul and I. She gave my mother the gift of a small wooden elephant and two large wooden spoons, out of her own profit. It was a brief, but moving, occasion.

Mama Jean: Bo-Kaap

We took my mom to dinner at the Noon Gun Tea House. It was a great meal, as always, maybe the best in town. We enjoyed the view from there in the evening light, and on the way home, we took a nice long wander through the city, noticing little strange things along the way…

a mural on a demolition site:

a dungeon:

a house, under repair, that looks maybe like it’s falling apart from the inside:

and a full-on haunted house…