Teepee For My Bunghole

I wrote something a couple of days back and lost it due these wonderful internet connections we have in Africa. Not that it was a good post. I had nothing much to say and just felt obligated to write something. Much like this post.

It did have a great title though but I think I’ll save that for a post that doesn’t waste a few moments of your life.

 

Yeppitee doodah. I’ve managed to lend a camera and took some shots of the Voludier (no idea how to spell that properly) boat where I’ve been sleeping. The owner returns Friday so I’ll have to move.

Also I’ve uploaded some pics of the boat I’m working on and going to Cape Verde with – the Haldebert. Thrown in is some pics of the bay from the boats.

Everyone has to eat and I, like the rest of the world, feels that one might as well eat well. Part of the pleasure of travelling is encountering new cuisine though it’s not always palatable. But let’s not dwell on that. Rather let me say that people like to eat good food and generally tastes aren’t so completely different so that most kinds of food people make is good to eat.

I still get cravings for chocolate con churros sometimes. Out of the blue it will strike me that most the wonderful taste in the world to eat at that very moment would be the deep fried dough pastry, crunchy at its outside ridges and filled with warm running chocolate. Or Marrakshi tangia.

I still remember at the surf school when the mom of one of the gromits dropped off the amphora-like pot for us to eat. Boumediene took the pot with an expression I couldn’t decipher and watched as she left. Then he went inside to get some plates and came out to dish. He opened the top, looked inside and smelled. He looked up at me, smiled broadly and said: “You know? It’s the best of days when you have tangia.”

Morocco had lots of dishes that were usually for special occasions. Other days you mostly had tajine and variants thereof, it was good eating nonetheless. Couscous I don’t like too much when I eat in South Africa but in Morocco (where it takes over 5 hours to make) I can eat it by the bucketful. One of the best parts of staying at the surf school was that people were always keeping celebrations there and making food that Moroccans eat on special occasions.

In Mauritania, you eat meat. In the northern parts, it’s mostly camel meat which isn’t too bad. The basic dishes are tasty generally but you tire a bit of all the meat (specially for a former semi-vegetarian like me). For variety you go to the Malian restaurants (for stews or rice dishes) or to the Western restaurants. They have great hamburgers, especially when after coming from Morocco where the Moroccan food is great but the foreign food they haven’t quite got the hang of.

Onions get used a lot in Senegal. Yassa poulet, yassa viande or yassa poisson (yassa chicken, meat or fish) is almost on every small restaurant’s menu. It’s good but when made well it’s fantastic but I’ve only raved about yassa when it was made at someone’s home. One noticeable difference in Senegalese food is that it’s a lot hotter than the countries before. Luckily it’s usually because of a homemade chilli sauce on the side so you can decide how much (or how little) you want to add.

The usual plates of the day in Senegal is thiebodienne (there is no correct way of spelling that) and maffe. Thiebodienne is a rice dish with vegetables and topped with a couple of pieces of fish. Great but the quality varies so that you never know if it’s going to be good or great. Maffe is a meat stew in a peanut sauce. Good also. Both are better if you can handle the very hot homemade chilli sauce (although in general always ask for a miniscule amount of sauce).

Which brings me to where I am now. The food in Dakar is of greater variety and the small restaurants also have stews. Meat and veg, calamari, beans, etc. Also, one of my compatriots just happens to be a fantastic Japenese cook and she’s been in the cooking mood lately. Sushi – glorious sushi at the sushi party the other night. Also Japanese pizza and several fantastic meals have been prepared in the last week or so. After the monogamy of the last few months cuisine, the variety is hitting the spot dead on.

I miss food at home also of course.

By the way, toilet paper sorta sinks.

Life goes on here in the Hann Plage, CVD. After painting and also fixing the fibre of the hull we got the boat into the water but there’s quite a bit still to do. We have to put the new cross beam thingie on the mast and also put back a lot of winches and other fittings. The inside needs a slight redesign so we’ll be cutting and fitting some wood. There’s some other little stuff do to but also stuff we’ll (or actually they’ll) be leaving for a later time.

Like the engine. I just found out today that we’ll be going to Cape Verde without the engine working but apparently that’s not a biggie. I also found out that the toilet on the boat doesn’t deal well with toilet paper. Guess which issue gives me sleepless nights.

The day of our departure keeps being put back but I’m okay with that since I’m learning new things working on the boat every day. Lipfi put his Motorbike in the paper so we’re leaving later to give him a chance to get it sold. Lipfi and Mina’s mission has been to drive a car down from Europe and sell it in Africa. They sold it in Mali and then bought motorbikes to sell in Senegal. Lipfi says he made money on the car but lost on the motorbikes. The next part of their mission is to fix the boat and get to Cape Verde and sell the various clothes and beads they’ve been gathering along the way (things from all over Asia and Africa). Also run a sushi restaurant on the boat.

What my mission is, I don’t really know. My aim has mainly been to get to Cape Verde and take it from there. I might end up pitching in and helping Lipfi and Mina and making some money (I might be doing Japanese massage if the market presents itself and I learn the skills in time). I might end up getting a ride on a boat to Brazil (I have one open offer with some Swiss people already for approximately the week after I arrive in Cape Verde). I might end up living in Cape Verde and just chilling there for a long while.

I dunno. But a life without aim isn’t always aimless.

Very few people know that Nina Simone stayed in Bokaap, Cape Town for a part of her life. When my friend Richard Ismail still stayed in Bokaap, I’d sometimes pop around to his house and talk about all things literary and listen to her music. Richard had known her well and sometimes his eyes would add a twinkle to his everpresent smile and he would pause to soak in the melody.

I never quite got the story between him and Nina Simone but he did promise to write a book. Sadly it’s a book I will never get to read. On Saturday, Richard was heavily assaulted in his Woodstock home. Yesterday he passed away.

Richard was the ultimate patriot. After being heavily involved in the Struggle, Richard was stoked by the New South Africa. He loved where we were going, the new government the new energy. His cafe in Adderley Street was for many years the lifeblood of poetry in Cape Town. When his cafe closed, the Monday poetry sessions moved to the Armchair Theatre in Obs and Richard went on to become the managing director of The Big Issue magazine. Here he spearheaded the recent Homeless Football World Cup that took place in Cape Town.

On a personal note, Richard was responsible for me considering my writing on a more serious level and I used him as a sounding board for my scriptwriting. We had big plans but that was Richard. He had big plans for everyone, the whole South Africa, and he had the faith in us and the willingness to help us make it happen. Always with a smile on his face.

Goodbye my friend. Cape Town’s creative community has taken a blow, but I hope we still live up to your hopes and dreams.

Eid al Adha is the Muslim celebration of the pilgrimage in Mecca tied into the time God ordered a guy to sacrifice his son and he was about to and then God changed the guy’s son into a sheep at the last moment. Here in Senegal it’s called Tabaski.

Normally you can sacrifice a sheep and one third has to go to you and one third goes to your family and one third to the poor. Here everyone eats mutton for Tabaski (rams) and I dunno if it’s the sacrificial lamb, so to speak, but there sure were a lot of them around as I walked about the day before Tabaski. I was expecting to have a quiet day the next day – maybe go to mosque and then back work on the boat but, as Lipfi and I walked around, we ran into a guy, Cedou, that he you knew and we were invited around for Tabaski lunch. I took the opportunity to use Lipfi’s translation skills and find out what time Eid prayer was the next morning. Did I have a bubu? No, I replied, is it a must? Promptly I had an appointment to meet Cedou the next day at his house, get a bubu and go together to mosque.

The next morning I was in my bubu certain that I was depriving a circus of its tent but stoked to be in traditional wear nonetheless. Like the Eid salaah in Mauritania after Ramadaan, the gathering was outside in a clearing rather than in a mosque. It was nice, invigorating experience and went back to Cedou’s with him feeling… well, high on life.

Back at Cedou’s, he told me that its time to change back to my other clothes and we chilled for a bit and Cedou went inside to do something. Well, I thought to myself, the bubu is off so that must be it, that was great and I now I can go back to the boat. Cedou came back in and made me realise that I needed to respect the day and that I absolutely ccould not go work. So I chilled, wondering why the day was so important but we had our bubus off.

Next time Cedou stuck his head in the room he motioned me to follow. We came to the lane where two guys were holding a sheep, whose throat they had just slit, over a pit for its blood to drip into. The first sheep had already bled most of its blood out and was lying to the side. Cedou motioned for me to take the hind legs and suddenly it dawned on me why I wasn’t wearing the bubu.

Yep, next we hung the sheep up from a tree and Cedou, me and another guy skinned it. Then it was chopping off the legs and putting the meat parts into one bucket and the insides into another. Next sheep, same thing.

Then the other guy went off to butcher the meat pieces and and me and Cedou were put on intestine patrol. If I ever have to butcher a sheep myself I’ll just throw the intestines away. Believe me it’s a shit job to clean the insides and I mean that literally. Luckily, I just had to pour water over his hands every time Cedou finished cleaning a part but I did have to dodge droplets of all sorts of stuff lots of times. Even more luckily, we got called away for the first of meals and I sorta avoided the rest of the insides story.

The first meal was the ribs barbecued. The second meal was little delicacies of liver and kidneys. The third meal was legs. The fourth meal was a meat and onion stew. Of course there breaks in between of tea and other people coming around and the ladies and kids doing their hair and getting all flamboyantly dressed up and Lipfi, Mina and Hugo arriving and teenie siestas. I’m glad I didn’t stay for the night meal because according my calculations we’d run out of the less freaky parts of the sheep to eat. Anyway the family was getting all primed for going around visiting the neighbours (and eating more mutton) in their finest.

It was a good day. That night was New Year’s Eve and some boat people had a supper at CVD that I ran into because I needed to get to shore to take a shit. A comparatively Western pleasantly bland experience but they did have fucking good chocolate cake and other desserts.

Then it was off to bed again, wondering what the new year would bring because last year was special and I hope this one is too.