Coast and countryside

Enjoy the best of both the beach and the bush

As a proud Gautenger and Kruger Park junkie, the first thing you notice about Makhasa Game Reserve is the sea sand. The diversity of habitats that make up the 2 000-hectare reserve is undoubtedly one of the reserve’s biggest drawcards for locals and visitors alike. There’s the lushness of the lala palms, acacia thornveld, broadleaf woodland areas, sand thicket habitats and a pristine sand forest area, reminding bush lovers of just how close they are to the ocean and making for easier animal tracking because the soft sand retains tracks for longer.

Each of these five habitats ensure that the daily bush drives are the furthest thing from monotonous, and they are also all home to different animals and game. Ironically for a reserve situated within the iSimangaliso Wetland

Park on KwaZulu-Natal’s beautiful Elephant Coast, Makhasa boasts three of the Big Five (white rhino, buffalo and leopard) but no elephants or lions.

Not that you miss these two animals much, mind you. Game rangers James and Corné enthusiastically traversed the entire reserve for us, letting us triumphantly tick off buffalo, giraffes and rhinos just a few hours after first pulling up to the lodge in our Ford Fiesta 1.6 Sport.

And speaking of ticking things off your list, there are over 380 bird species in the reserve (including the African Broadbill and Pinkthroated Twinspot) and many visitors descending upon Makhasa come for these little creatures alone. Rosy-throated Longclaws and Eastern Nicators aside, however, the major advantage that I see twitchers having is that they can do some of their spotting from the comfort of the shady wooden desks surrounding their chalets, because frankly, any excuse to retreat back to the luxury and comfort of the chalets is a welcome one.

There are only six private thatch roof chalets in the entire reserve, all of them well hidden from one another and accessed via a private path and thick leafy canopy overhead. Understated elegance greets you at the door and follows you

throughout the airy high-ceilinged chalet. The first element of the chalet

that caught my attention was the shower, which is partly indoors (the

top half is open air) and boasts a beautiful rain shower head that literally

sprouts out of a gnarly piece of wood.

This kind of natural detail is echoed throughout, in the beautiful bright colours of the linen and the African animals embroidered on the cushions, for example.

With the glass sliding doors wide open, your feet stretched out across the crisp bed linen and the chance of seeing a red duiker or nyala ambling past your window, an afternoon nap suddenly seems like a waste of good game viewing opportunities.

Should you need to revive your senses however, a lingering shower and kerosene lamp guided path that leads to a three-course boma bush dinner should do just the trick. The exclusivity of the accommodation at Makhasa (and the limited numbers of guests that can stay there, even at full capacity) makes

for a thoroughly personal experience, complete with educational game rides (and the option of going rhino tracking on foot with one of the rangers) and stories of incredible sightings around the fire at night.

Reluctance to leave the place is rather inevitable, but take heart in the fact that a feeling of utter relaxation will accompany you home.

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Friday 30 September 2011.

Enjoy Makhasa Game Reserve and Lodge (Hluhluwe) and Coral Divers (Sodwana Bay) for the ultimate bush-beach escape.

■ The Bush & Beach full package includes six nights, six meals, five dives and three game drives for only R2 100 per person (save R2 490).

■ From Thursday to Saturday, stay at Makhasa Game Reserve and Lodge for three nights, six meals (dinner, bed and breakfast) and three game drives

for only R500 per person per night.

■ Offers valid until December 16, 2011.

■ For more information contact the central booking office on 033-345-6531, email info@makhasa.co.za or visit www.coraldivers.co.za/www.makhasa.co.za.

Rural women and rugby

Pass the ball backwards and pay it forward

As rugby fever grips South Africa and keeps the nation glued to their television screens during match time, a craze of a different kind is kicking off on the sidelines. It’s called the Touch initiative and it is Thurlow Hanson-Moore’s (of the  social brand agency The Win Win Group) brainchild. While he was conceptualising  a cause related campaign for his clients from the  waste management company EnviroServ, he came up with the innovative idea of making rugby balls from recycled materials.

Two months of product development and prototype testing later, and the result is a funky and very authentic looking rugby ball. The exterior is made out of old billboard material, the interior out of old plastic bags, sheets and bubble wrap and the only non-recycled material is  the lace-up detail and the eyelets.

In order to make the recycled rugby balls and at the same time create employment opportunities, the Touch initiative partnered with the job creation NGO “Live”. Using Anglo Coal’s community centre at Goedehoop Mine as a starting point, it wasn’t long before Live founder Russel Porteous had Joanna and various other ladies from the surrounding areas stitching and sewing away.

It wasn’t all plain sailing, however. Initially Porteous admits that he didn’t realise Joanna didn’t speak  English, and the result of his explanations and requests was in fact a perfectly square rugby ball.

He realised that a little bit more of an explanation and a set of templates and patterns would go a long way. Once the basics were in place and the ladies had had a few practice rounds, they were churning out balls perfect for any impromptu game of touch rugby.

“The idea of rural women and rugby is such an anomaly, but it creates   an interesting energy at the same time,” explains Hanson-Moore. “Balls are beautiful things. Give someone a ball and they play with it, so what we’re  doing is using the  balls as a way to break down the barriers between people at a time when we are all so polarised.”

Just last week Friday Porteous visited the ladies at Goedehoop and walked in to find two of them wearing Springbok rugby jerseys for “Bok Friday”. Others were wearing EnviroServ t-shirts that had previously been handed in, showing  just how much they had come together as strangers and formed a community and team of their own in a mere matter of weeks.    

The 1995 World Cup is a perfect example of how a sport can bring a divided nation together, and the way in which these Touch rugby balls are forming bridges between various communities is no different.

  

Each ball costs R50, with R30 of that going directly back into the community and the balance contributing to Live’s operating costs.

This article first appeared in Weekend Vibe in The Citizen on Saturday 24 September 2011.

For more information and for dates of Touch clean up days (where plastic for the innards of the balls is collected, followed by lessons on how to play touch rugby), visit The Touch Initiative on Facebook. To order balls, e-mail hosia@winwin.co.za or call 072-288-9088.  

Spicy seduction

Learn how to make your own thali platter and feast on the rewards 

You know what they say about too many cooks being in the kitchen? Well, it’s rubbish. More than 10 of us crammed ourselves into Karma Kooking’s cosy kitchen with the sole purpose of whipping up as many succulent starters and juicy main courses as we could, and the end result was a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach.

The tasting was the  reward at the end of a few  hours in the kitchen.  First off, to introduce us to the art of Indian cooking – more specifically cooking thali platters (several  contemporary North Indian dishes served and eaten simultaneously) – was Karma restaurant chef Zara Karmali, who started with a quick “Indian cooking 101” on some of the most widely used spices that  give Indian food its flavours, colours and aromas.

Alternating useful tips (such as the speed with which mustard and cumin seeds burn and spoil in hot oil) with information about the spices that many of us throw so haphazardly into our curry pots, Karmali had us smelling and tasting the spices before they came near our pots.

She taught us that turmeric, for example, is often overused by amateurs and becomes quite a bitter addition unless used in moderation. Rather than for its flavours, this vibrant yellow spice is favoured for its anti-inflammatory properties and the golden hue it casts on the rest of the ingredients bubbling away beside it.

Probably in response to expressions of over-saturation  and rumbling tummies, Karmali quickly went through the must-know information and got us started on the chopping, dicing, measuring and frying that lay ahead. Those that thought a pinch of extra spice here and there wouldn’t make a difference were proved very wrong.

In fact, if we walked away with any understanding of Indian cuisine it was the fine balance of flavours that complement one another and do not overpower and burn the senses. “Spicy food doesn’t necessarily mean hot food,” cautioned Karmali throughout the day.

With the odd helpful hand or reassuring glance at an over-boiling pot, all of us journalists succeeded in plating up a rather impressive array of delicacies. As far as starters went, Wicount general manager Natalie Du Preez’s potato koftas definitely secured the position of class favourite, although the decadent butter curry and green chili goodness of the methi mushroom dish certainly redeemed the potential for the main courses to impress.

Literally wrapping up the day with a crash course on folding and filling chilli chocolate samoosas, we all left Karmali’s kitchen inspired and ready to tackle the same dishes in our kitchens.

This article first appeared in CitiVibe on Monday19 September 2011.

Dine in Indian elegance at Karma Restaurant in the Pineslopes Centres Fourways for half price, and learn to cook your own delicious thali platter, all for R198. The regular cost of this Karma Kooking course is R450. Visit SA’s popular social-buying site www.wicount.co.za and sign up today. This deal expires at midnight on Tuesday September 20.

Beach bum bliss

Delightfully unpretentious and pretty close to paradise

 

Picture the communal bliss depicted in Alex Garland’s now-famous The Beach and you’ve arrived at something very similar to the laid-back atmosphere that permeates the picturesque Coral Divers resort in Sodwana Bay.

First prize is, of course, the pristine beach and the colourful reefs that crown this part of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park coastline, but when it reaches the time of the day for a little downtime, the cosy log cabins that are dotted around the Coral Divers bar, restaurant and reception areas provide all of the creature comforts your heart could desire.

Lazy  loungers on  shady  wooden decks beg for a cup of coffee and a good book, while the outdoor en suite shower and crisp white linen gently  hint at that holiday staple  – the afternoon nap. Should the soothing seclusion start to wear off, then the bustling  Coral Divers communal areas are bound to provide a welcome distraction. Divers and dive masters are constantly popping in and out of the dive shop, checking their gear and chatting to anyone who will listen,  while other guests who have taken an afternoon off from the ocean are likely to be found  enjoying  the refreshing fresh-water swimming pool and outdoor restaurant area.

The accommodation options at Coral Divers vary from camping and safari tents to standard and en suite log cabins. Similarly, the catering options include a plentiful breakfast and dinner buffet or an undercover braai area in the boma for those who have chosen self catering. The result of this easy ebb and flow of activity is a thoroughly relaxing atmosphere – guests are encouraged to come and go as they please (breakfast, for example, only ends at 11am, so if you choose to sleep in nobody is going to judge or hurry you) and tailor their diving and other outdoor interests as it pleases them.

A day out on the ocean will take the wind out of even the most avid party animal’s sails, so after the 7pm dive meeting (this is when  the following day’s dives are planned, and more importantly perhaps, stories and sightings of the day are enthusiastically shared in any and all languages) most guests stick around for another cold beer or two at the bar and then make their way pack to the comfort of their cabins or campsites. 

Coral Divers has all of the best features of a good backpackers venue (good company, good venue, eclectic and hippy-ish decor) but with none of the dodgy stories sometimes attached to such places. The only unpleasant part of a stay at Coral Divers has to be the departure. Just three short days spent at this charming establishment will   bring out the beach bum in the best of us, and as we reluctantly set the GPS and started to make our way, even our ever-nippy Ford Fiesta 1.6 Sport seemed reluctant to pull away and leave the breezy sea air behind. 

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Friday 16 September 2011.

Enjoy Makhasa Game Reserve and Lodge (Hluhluwe) and Coral Divers (Sodwana Bay) for the ultimate bush-beach escape:

*The Bush & Beach full package includes six nights, six meals, five dives  and three game drives for only R2 100 per person (save R2 490).

*From Monday to Wednesday, stay at Coral Divers for two nights, three dives for R450 per person or three nights, five dives for only R600 per person (this applies to tented accommodation, upgrades are available)

*Offers valid until December 16, 2011

*For more information contact the central booking office on 033-345-6531, e-mail info@makhasa.co.za or visit www.coraldivers.co.za / www.makhasa.co.za.

Cathartic cycles

Filmmaker Djo Tunda Wa Munga on art’s ability to heal trauma

Delivering a keynote address on the weighty topic “Can The Arts Heal Trauma?” is no easy feat, making it impressive that the jovial Djo Tunda Wa Munga started off with a light-hearted remark that had his audience laughing within the first five minutes.

“Personally, I think that the relation between art and trauma is obvious,” states the DRC-born filmmaker in a soothing French accent. “Look at many of your famous artists – Dostoevsky, Michelangelo, Victor Hugo, Nietzche – all of these guys, they had problems,” he says to an entertained audience, before elaborating on the journey that artists take to understand themselves and how that healing is then often transferred to the audience.

Besides famously saying that “A director makes only one movie in his life; then

he breaks it into pieces and makes it again”, French filmmaker Jean Renoir also said that he makes films for only about five or six viewers. Building on Renoir’s

quote, Munga uses his own personal experience as a filmmaker to describe

how artistic texts have a “story underneath the story”.

After finishing his studies in Fine Art in Belgium, Munga went on to join the National Film School of Belgium and spent a few years working in the European film industry. He moved back to the DRC in 1999, however, because it felt like the right thing to do.

“When I started working in the DRC, I realised that the country and its people

needed help. They had come through the worst times, and I knew that I could use film to help people reveal themselves and their own identities, so I started

officially organising training programmes and doing a lot of social documentary,” he says.

This is where the Renoir quote comes in. Munga says that it’s only once the creative process on his side is over, and he starts working with production teams, actors and collaborators that he understands what the real essence of his stories are. An actor will pick up on an underlying theme’s significance, or comment on a part of the story that Munga wrote subconsciously, and slowly the pieces of the puzzle of why he wrote that specific story start to take shape.

Taking it one step further, Munga also says that it’s only once he has grasped this, only once the healing within himself occurs, that the healing can then wash over his audience .

“I discovered film by accident when I was quite young, but I wasn’t conscious that I was healing myself. It’s only now, at almost 39 years old, that I realise my work helped me with problems; helped me to wake up in the morning,” he confesses.

Munga describes the creative cycles that his artistic drive would bow to as follows: boredom with “normal” life, getting depressed, isolating oneself and losing oneself in one’s own dreams and creativity and then responding

to the need for a release of some kind.

“We’re making films, but at the deepest levels we are also helping ourselves,” he explains. “How many times do you find yourself reading a book, for example, and suddenly you understand something really personal; you understand something that has happened to you or that relates to your own life, even if it’s not in a direct way?” Munga asks.

“I think that through the journey that the artist has, by struggling with himself, the healing that the artist receives is transferred to the audience through his story,” he says. “And in that transfer, what he has understood,

the audience also understands.”

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Wednesday 14 September 2011. Photos courtesy 2point8/Delwyn Verasamy.

Djo Tunda Wa Munga’s keynote address about the arts and healing trauma took place as part of a series of talks and interventions last week called Über(w)unden (Art In Troubled Times), hosted by the Goethe Institut in Johannesburg.

Moments of change

Joburg Art Fair featured artist Paul Emmanuel adds yet another intricate layer to his ‘Transitions’ project

Five years ago, Paul Emmanuel exhibited Transitions, a mammoth artistic undertaking examining ritual and rites of passage through five drawings hand incised into exposed and processed colour photographic paper and an award- winning film 3SAI: A Rite Of Passage.

Later this month, at the Joburg Art Fair, he will  debut his  second (and much anticipated)  body of work entitled Transitions Multiples. It’s been a long and immensely satisfying journey, building on an underlying personal theme that Emmanuel says presents him with endless artistic inspiration.

“Everything is related, I cannot get away from that,” he muses. “I’m fascinated by my own personal history, my own personal placement in my country, where we sit in the rest of the world, and also the collective history of where we find ourselves doing what we’re doing.”

As with his drawings, Emmanuel’s lithographs see the artist working reductively (this time in the manière noire – “black method” – printmaking technique), scratching  nuances of light and shade out of a pitch black surface. As with all of Emmanuel’s work, the message is directly linked to the medium.

In the case of the  five lithographs, each one of which  consists of three images that have been glued together to form a  triptych, working from dark to light is a means for Emmanuel to explore his fascination with the darker side to our nature.

“In South Africa, and in the rest of the world, we live in the shadows of certain things that come  from our past, and the way we step forward into the future is coloured constantly by those darknesses, by those things we have to own up to and embrace.”

The medium of film too presents the artist with an opportunity to extend and play with the theme of time that so haunts the Transitions project.

“Film is a very powerful medium for what I was doing, because it’s a time based  and so much of what I do involves the element of time,” Emmanuel  explains. “I love film  because it allows you to map change, you can see before and after, in a single gesture and  the speed of film allows you to play with changing the meaning of an event.”

Emmanuel gives the example of the army head shaving scenes he has captured in his award winning film 3SAI.  The minute he slows down the action of head shaving, it changes the meaning; it goes from this indifferent production-like head shaving which is dispassionate, to something that becomes sensual and quite dreamlike.

There is a common photo-like quality to Emmanuel’s drawings and lithographs that speaks to his obsession with capturing images and moments of change. In Transitions Multiples the artist takes this engagement even further, using his impressions and multiple images to talk about the idea of the collective, and becoming either part of or lost in the system.

While Emmanuel basks in the honour of being the FNB Joburg Art Fair’s featured artist, he also has two shows in the USA this month: Transitions which is showing at the prestigious Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and Transitions Multiples, also showing at Goya Contemporary in Baltimore.

Paul Emmanuel is a featured artist at the FNB Joburg Art Fair (www.joburgartfair.co.za) from September 23 – 25, where he will debut his second new body of work entitled Transitions Multiples.

This article first appeared in Weekend Vibe on Saturday 10 September 2011.

Creative chaos

William Kentridge takes to the stage and explores the concept of the division of the self 

9/10

SHOW: I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine by William Kentridge

VENUE: The Market Theatre, 56 Margaret Mcingana Street, Newtown, Johannesburg

There’s complete silence as an already captivated Joburg audience watches William Kentridge pacing the stage just before he commences his world famous lecture I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine. Not only is it the opening night of the two-week series of live performances  Refuse The Hour at the Market Theatre, but it’s also the very first time that Kentridge has performed this lecture  in Joburg (it was first  presented in SA at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town in 2008).

The clock strikes eight, the lights dim, Kentridge stops reading his notes, looks up sharply from behind  his glasses at the audience and launches into a passionate retelling of the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol’s short story, The Nose.

Gogol’s story about a man who wakes up one morning to discover that his nose  has detached itself from his face and walked off to achieve a higher rank in society is itself based on Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1928 opera The Nose, and using both of these source texts Kentridge extends the themes of the division of the self and the terror of hierarchy to create a theatrical monologue that is both thought-provoking and full of humour, as well as moving and somewhat tinged by nostalgia.      

      

At one point in the monologue Kentridge alludes to the piece’s Dadaist undertones, saying that as the artist his job is not to make sense, only to make the drawings. He also casually throws away pieces of his “script”, later picking them up and reading lines and paragraphs at random, creating an air of chaos and adding to that sense of the nonsensical that the Dada movement was renowned for.   

 

I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine is in many ways Kentridge’s exploration of just how much of the outside (supposedly rational) world we need lodged with all of us, and he does so using comical background videos of himself (some of which even boast two digital  video Kentridges pacing behind the “real” Kentridge, further driving the concept of the divided self forward) and beautifully llustrated and edited projections that fuse  artworks, paper silhouettes and old Soviet film snippets to add layers of meanings and possible interpretations to this already intricate monologue.

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Friday 9 September 2011.

Refuse The Hour is a two-week programme of various live events at the Market Theatre until September 18. Visit www.markettheatre.co.za for more information. Tickets available at the theatre, from the Goodman Gallery and Computicket.

  

Playing presidents

Two great minds spar it out with a war of words

To play the parts of former presidents FW De Klerk and Nelson Mandela is no easy feat, but before they could even think about the mammoth responsibility that would rest on their shoulders the minute they stepped onto the stage,  Eric Nobbs and Owen Sejake had to get their heads around the intense legal arguments in The Prize Of Peace’s weighty script.

Sejake jokingly calls the back and forth dialogues an “intellectual gymnasium”, while Nobbs  says that director Clare Stopford and writer Les Morrison’s ears must have burned in those first few days of rehearsals. 

Jokes aside, however, both actors say that they feel honoured to be performing such a well-researched script, one that has been carefully compiled from various books and texts and rare face-to-face interviews with De Klerk himself and Mandela’s lawyer George Bizos.

When Nobbs met with De Klerk, he laughingly confides that the former president’s only request was not to play like the “apologist fool” Michael Caine did, but from the start of rehearsals, the cast and crew decided not to have Nobbs and Sejake mimic the accents or gestures of the real people.

“The script is factually 100% correct, but because all we have are their public speeches and so on,  we still don’t know how they would have behaved in private. So in honour of them, we decided not to try and give them mannerisms that they don’t have,” Nobbs explains.

Ultimately it is words, dialogue and great themes that still ring true today that give The Prize Of Peace its power on stage. For Sejake, the power of the compromise that De Klerk and Mandela strike resonates today in terms of a need for the new leaders to “go back to the basics”.

“I think we’ve lost that connection with our ancestors,” he says. “We are intellectualising all of our arguments and we’re not going to the root cause; we are not looking at what we could have achieved if we all agreed to disagree.”

Nobbs echoes Sejake’s sentiments, saying that South Africans should see the play to see how the compromise that De Klerk and Mandela found within themselves has been somehow lost over the last 17 years.

“Despite all of the fights they had, they still stuck it out and   kept pushing forward,” he says. “That’s really the miracle, that none of these two men let their egos take over. They always kept the goal of a better South Africa in sight. And I think our present government needs to realise that it’s not about me, or Zuma or Malema, it’s about the people,” Nobbs says.

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Wednesday 7 September 2011.

The Prize Of Peace is on at the Old Mutual Theatre on the Square (www.theatreonthesquare.co.za), Sandton, until September 24.

Boil and bubble

A working day’s worth of brewing and a lesson on the  beginnings of ‘liquid bread’

For the beer enthusiast, a trip to the microbrewery at SAB’s Training Institute in Kyalami to try your  hand at brewing beer feels something like how Charlie must have felt visiting Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Reading about the brewing process will never compare to a day spent in the brewhouse, getting your hands dirty and seeing just how your ice-cold Castle is made. In the space of an  ordinary working day you can watch, smell and taste how the malt, maize and water is heated up in the mash tun (two to three hours), passed into the lauter tun to separate the wort from the grain (two to four hours) and finally doused with just enough hops pellets before being heated and boiled in the wort kettle (one- to two-and- a-half hours) to finally produce  a delicious, aromatic “hopped wort” that is ready for the cellars.

The theory behind the various biological processes that make beer such a thirst-quenching and aromatic indulgence was very entertainingly bolstered  along the way  by the tales that SAB trade brewer Kate Jones told us about the amazing journey that beer (or “liquid bread”, as it came to be known  because of the similarities that the brewing and baking crafts shared) has travelled over the ages. 

Beer brewing today is a huge global business, but it actually has very  humble beginnings. The earliest written record of beer dates back to around 3 900 years ago,  with evidence of a Sumerian tablet displaying a recipe for beer. The recipe  was written  in the form of a poem praising the patron  goddess of brewing “Ninkasi”, but Jones went on to explain that beer is actually believed to have first been brewed in Neolithic times, between 8 000 and 10 000 years ago, when man moved from a hunter-gatherer nomadic existence to a more settled agricultural lifestyle and started cultivating cereals.

So how did the first beer come about and who exactly do we have to thank for it?

“A fortuitous accident possibly,” says Jones. “Some barley grain would have been wet, it would have sprouted and germinated and  then  been dried out,  ground up and mixed with warm water to make some kind of gruel or broth,” she says. “A naturally occurring wild yeast in the atmosphere would have settled into this liquid and started a spontaneous fermentation.”

This drink would have been a very crude and different brew to what we’re used to today, but it was nevertheless the prototype for the lagers and ales that we know and love today. As Jones humorously and rightly pointed out, the person we have to thank is really “the first oke

who looked at it and said ‘that stuff’s bubbling but I’m still going to drink it’.”

A day in the brewhouse is a crucial step in the brewing process, but certainly not the last. Cellar processing time is anything from 18 to 28 days, which means that once it has been sent over to the packaging hall and bottled,  my very own brew of Castle Lager should be arriving at my office any day now.

All in a hard day’s work...

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Friday 2 September 2011.