Gimme A Dop

You probably know that South Africa produces some of the world’s most delicious wine. Vines have been grown in this area since about 1680 or so, dating back to Jan Van Riebeeck and the first Dutch settlers in the Cape colony. A quick 15-minute ride from our house is the oldest ‘wine farm’ in South Africa. (Wine farm, in case you were wondering, is South African for vineyard). The area, called Constantia (and seen in the photo, albeit not from Van Riebeeck's time), produced such delicious vino that it was the first wine from the new world sent back for the hoi polloi of Europe to enjoy.

The business didn’t stop with the European crème-de-la-crème, although they are still the biggest importers of our local juice. Wine is a big business here: South Africa is the seventh largest wine producer in the world and contributes about US$3 billion to the country’s GDP.

Aside from coining their own name for vineyards, South Africans even created their own wine varietal, Pinotage- a mix of Pinot Noir and Cinsaut grapes. It’s a little sweet for me, but I have enjoyed one or two glasses of the stuff on occasion. You can’t live here and not give it a sip.

To be honest, the real problem is not the Pinotgae, it’s the Savignon Blanc. And the lovely bubbles. And the delicious Shriraz. And the spicy red blends with Cabernet Franc and Merlot. It’s the inescapable fact that you can go into virtually any restaurant around Cape Town and order a fabulous, reasonably priced bottle of wine.

This is even more obvious when you travel around the rest of South Africa and see the lame excuses for wine they serve at restaurants. Johannesburg is cosmopolitan? Not when it comes to your average wine lists. Love the sun of Durban? You won’t love the sub-par wine. After one night out in either of these places, you’ll be begging to be back in Cape Town, drinking fabulous wine.

Considering the history of South Africa and the apartheid government, there is also a disturbing backstory about wine production – namely the “Dop System”. In Afrikaans, a “dop” is an alcoholic drink. Going back as early as the 1800s, those who worked on the wine farms were paid in wine. Sometimes, most or even all of their salaries were paid in drink - hence a system called the "Dop System". While I am sure many of you would not mind part of your salary in wine (in fact, I know it might save some of you quite a bit of cash throughout the year), it has created a disturbingly high incidence of alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome (the highest in the world in parts of the Western Cape) and tons of other negative consequences.

Since I don’t want you to have sour grapes about South African wine, I will tell you that the “Dop System” has been outlawed since the 1960’s and the post-apartheid government has been particularly outspoken about getting rid of it. Some say it still persists in areas of the Western Cape. A recent Human Rights Watch report said two farms in the area were giving their workers wine, but the industry has certainly cleaned itself up. Mostly they just exploit workers like any other farming industry in the world.

Apologies for leaving you as bitter as red wine left out too long.

Driving Me to Insanity

One of life’s necessities since moving to Cape Town is that I have to drive. After living in urbanity for the better chunk of the last 15 years, my driving escapades have been limited to the occasional rental in some far flung locale, the borrowing of a friend’s car or the occasional use of a Zipcar. Hence, I may be a little rusty in the applied vehicular knowledge.

If my rusty driving skills were the sole problem, this thing would be a cakewalk. Pile on the fact that people drive on the other side of the road, you sit on the other side of the car and parking on the sidewalk is not the sign of a drunk or insane person – now you can imagine my own personal hell every time I get behind the wheel.

But alas, I have no choice in the matter. Driving means doing the things I want to do in my life, so now I am a driver.

First, the wrong side of the road thing. At first I thought this would be the killer. But it’s fine as long as you keep shouting left to the left, right to the left to yourself as a reminder to keep you from pulling onto the wrong side of the road when turning. Problem solved. Circles; a tad more challenging but as long as there are other people there, you can just follow along. The only issue was a recent brief foray to the US when I became utterly confused at an empty street corner and had to think hard before deciding which lane to go into. Yikes!

So once I got the hang of the wrong side thing, I noticed all the other things… namely the roads. Ladies and gentlemen, we are not talking the interstate highway system – South Africa has yet to elect their own Dwight Eisenhower. Most roads are as wide as the sidewalk on Broadway near Herald Square but with the ludicrous expectation that two-way traffic will use it. Sure the cars are small, but c’mon! Spending a lot of time in reverse, rather than playing (but feeling) chicken.

Even parking in the driveway can seem like stuffing a sausage into the casing - see photo.

The parking lunacy doesn't end there. While driving last week on a beautiful scenic road (which there are no shortage of), I noticed that they had actually marked little white lines for parking spots on the SIDEWALK – which explains why everyone thinks it is perfectly fine to park pretty much anywhere they want, often leaving pedestrians to walk in the road.

But I have also noticed this flagrant attitude of “Fuck You” that comes from pedestrians. They walk right in front of moving cars, indifferent to the fact that a machine is barreling towards them at 40 miles an hour (will never get that kms thing, sorry). Overall, it's a very tense relationship but can you blame them? I mean the cars park right in your path!

Cars v. pedestrians. Same ‘ole war no matter where you are.

P.S. Haven’t even thought about riding my bike. Scared shitless for that one!

Lattitudes and Attitudes

Okay everyone... I guess I have some 'splaing to do. It's a long story, one I'll save for a bottle of luscious wine, succulent yummies and good lighting. Until then, I'll just attend to the matter at hand - blogging.

So, I have traded Buenos Aires for Cape Town, South Africa. The only thing they have in common, honestly, is their latitude. Buenos Aires is extremes... loud and Latin, sweaty and screaming, hectic and hungry. It's got a New York attitude replete with yellow and black taxis, culture spilling into the streets, and millions of people squeezed into a 132-story high rise.

Cape Town is the complete opposite.

Think blues. Cerulean seas, ultramarine skies. Mountains peeking over the skylines in any direction you spin. The only truly hectic thing aside from the asshole drivers (this is an upcoming blog post... I mean, they drive ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD... a topic begging to be deconstructed on this blog) is the wind. Pachamama got the last word in this place - the southern seas whip a wind for several months a year that can be more hectic than Buenos Aires' humanly induced insanity.

I don't want to give away everything that's ahead but just lay the marker down and promise to recommit to my first world white girl blogging. So thanks for coming back, lovely to have you.

What's In A Name?

A couple of weeks ago, NPR (the most fabulous news source that exists in the United States, hands down) had a story about your coffee name. This is the name that people give to themselves at Starbucks when ordering coffee as to be efficient and not have to spell out their name. With a name like Jill, of course, I don’t have this issue. Jill is perky, short, simple, and easy. That is until you get to Latin America. In Buenos Aires, my name would cause bewilderment equivalent to the name Rumpelstilskin anywhere else. So what did I do? Exactly what the chick in the NPR story did – when going to a restaurant and putting my name in, my restaurant alter ego – Julia – came to life.

In the US, for the most part, your name is your name. As that NPR story signifies, people react with shock and awe if you stray too far from your given name. Sure, we’ve got Joseph’s who become Joes, Jennifer’s who become Jennies. But radical departures are seen as just that – radical and inspiring of NPR stories that people talk about.

In Latin America, it is common for people to have a variety of names and naming customs are very different. In the northern parts of South America and in Central America, people often take their mother’s maiden name too. So you can meet a Maria Jamilla Ruiz Perez that is sometimes know as Maria Jamillia Ruiz P.

Another one you will encounter all over LatAm is people being called names that are not even among the litany of legal names they may have. Some of them sound obvious – Lau for Laura, for example. But other times, people use a name that has nothing to do with their other name – like Nacho in place of Guillermo. In Bogota, I even ran in fear from trying to see an apartment when I asked for Maria, only to be told there was no one by that name there. Turns out, Maria was just the name she used on email. Violeta was the name her neighbors knew her by. Me? At first I thought it was a tourist scam (Craiglist, while wonderful sometimes, can also be sketch city regardless of what city you are hunting in) but I eventually realized the naming customs were not what I was used to.

Today, I am just going by Jill and kinda liking it.

Five Things I Miss About Buenos Aires

I am sure you feel like you need an explanation.

Where have I been? What have I been doing? More importantly, WHERE am I? Well, I am in Washington for the summer, enjoying mi bi-hemisphericality (yes, it is a lifestyle choice).

While enjoying my blazing fast internet speed recently, I read a blog post from blogger Brendan van Son about all the things he won’t miss about South America and my first thought was that I had to agree with many of them. While life in Buenos Aires is different than in many parts of South America (ie you don’t usually have to worry about the lettuce there), there are still a tons of things he mentioned that I found myself agreeing with.

But in my nearly two months back in North America, I also find myself missing a ton of things.

So here it goes... Five things I miss about Buenos Aires:

1. My Friends. Wandering expat and porteños alike, I have an amazing and supportive group of friends in Buenos Aires. It’s not that I don’t love my friends in North America or the rest of the world (I love you all). Maybe it’s about me and the place I was in when I met my BsAs posse – I feel this wonderful connection, this ability to say and be myself unlike I have with many people I know in other parts of the world.

2. The loose concept of time. As one learns quickly in Latin America, time is a different concept in those parts. Latin time is a flexible, adjustable, whim driven concept. Planning? Pshaw! Por que? While at first this drove my type A self insane (getting an invite for a huge party two days before? Whhhatt?) , I have found myself frustrated with my overscheduled life (and the lives of others) since I am back in the north. Scheduling things two to three weeks in advance is the norm. "But hell, I could jet off to Paris in the morning", I think sometimes when putting something on my schedule a month ahead of time. I miss the whimsical nature of deciding today what I want today, instead of focusing on the future in the present.

3. New experiences. I am back in the city where I have lived on and off for more than a decade. Sure, there are new people, new places, new things happening everywhere. The US has changed more in the last two years than in the last two decades, but the changes are merely a raindrop in a storm compared to the rollercoaster life in Latin America. Maybe my standards have changed, maybe I am lazy, but I just feel like it is easier to walk around with my blinders on in a place that feels like an old pair of shoes.

4. Facturas. No, not my bills. Pastries. These are the most delicious, melt in your mouth snacks that induce an immediate gut reaction to run to the gym afterwards. They are sugary sweet and I love and miss them.

5. Speaking Spanish everyday. Some days I adored it as the rrrrr’s rolled from my tongue efforrrtlessly. Other days it was a nightmare – no one understood what the hell I was saying, I felt deaf, dumb and mute as people looked at me like I was a moron. But the struggle was delicious and gave me more confidence and sense of accomplishment than arguing with a Senator and winning.

Ok, now the nostalgia is killing me. Will just have to turn on some tango and read some Julio Cortazár for relief.

Re-entry

I realize that I haven’t been writing, giving you the delicious tidbits of my expat existence as you sit in your cubicle, daydreaming of escaping to some foreign land and then returning to online shopping or your annoying boss. The big news, folks, is that I have returned to the first world and the remains of my former life. This just means I am back in DC and living in my beautiful, extremely spacious (and extremely expensive) first world apartment replete with every modern convenience known to man. This is not really a permanent move but a strategic moment in the shift of the weather to figure out some stuff. Or for those of you new to the game - it is summer here in the north.

I have been about town a fair amount in the last week for meetings and other stuff, which means that I’ve been running into people left and right. People who look at me and exclaim, “Wow, you look great! How are you?” and then sometimes they ask again, filling up the awkwardness between us when I cannot tell some of them the same (some of you look fabulous, really) because the majority look tired and sallow from too many hours under the florescent lights, fighting the ego laced turf battles that define a large part of Washington life. I can’t decide if they keep saying this because they have nothing to say to me, feeling that I have detached myself too far from the matrix to understand anything or that they are so deeply into the matrix that they cannot even see a glimmer of light from the outside of it. Or maybe it’s true that the last two years of avoiding winter, struggling to find work, and living a life a little less predictable have all agreed with me.

Either way, some of these reunions have been a little bit painful. As I walk away, I often think about how lucky I am to have escaped. Now don’t get me wrong – there is another kind of comfort and pleasure that my friends are getting in that other life. Sometimes I wistfully dream of a day when I am not worried about a bank balance that is in a downward spiral that would rival the stock market circa September 2008, where I will live in the next few months, my lack of 401K contributions -- a life somewhat more secure than my somewhat (at times) precarious existence.

Ultimately, security is an illusion most of the time anyway- something we convince ourselves exists as to not feel like daily life is a precipice. Just don’t look down.

Weighty Problem

Note: Canadians and Europeans (sans Brits) will NOT find this funny. This is for true-blooded gringos who slept through math class in the seventh grade.

So the world here is in metrics. Summer temperatures swelter above 35 degrees, meat comes by the kilo, and car rides are in kilometers. Fine, fine. I am not a complete idiot, as I know that 32 degrees does not mean boots but rather sandals. I did struggle once with a cookie purchase, ordering 500 grams and lamenting afterward how it was just simply too many cookies to eat (ok, not really since I love cookies more than just about anything in the world and I was probably really happy to have that many cookies to eat).

Yes, those of us from the US are more accustomed to ordering illicit drugs in grams than our food.

This problem became a weighty one a few weeks ago when I decided to weigh myself. With a life stuffed with crusty pizzas, crustier empanadas, endless rivers of red wine and a cavity inducing sweet tooth, I could feel my pants cinching my waist like a corset. So I step on the scale before my workout and immediately freak out. What is the conversion again? Since the number was just in double digits, I knew it had to be at a minimum doubled. But then what? Add 5? Or was it really multiply by 3? Shit, shit, shit, I couldn’t remember. All I knew was that this number I did know had no reference for me – it could have been equal to 200 pounds, it could have been equal to 150, I had no idea.

Since I was at the gym while all this went down, I naturally did an extra 20 minutes on the elliptical so I could think about the unsolvable math equation. Or try to help with its unknown outcome. And then I tried through the powers of reasoning to figure it out from the weight machines that litter the gym, some of which have both kilos and pounds. Forget it. I was such a neurotic mess thinking I weighted 200 pounds that I eventually raced home to find out.

I opened my Mac, I checked the little widget and sighed with relief when it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. One kilo is 2.2 pounds, so it’s a little more than double and if you’ve a first world white girl (or probably any girl for that matter, especially here in Argentina where they sadly have the highest rates of anorexia in the world) you know that every pound counts. Which is why I don’t weigh myself too much – in kilos or pounds.

Photo Courtesy of http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/scale.gif