Designed/ to keep me discreetly/ neatly in the corner

Whereas Pretoria is a well-trained dog, with its neat city grid and orderly street signs, Johannesburg is a constantly changing beast, a chimera of (all) sorts that breathes fire and continuously threatens your comfort zone. It is exhilarating though, crossing the border of whatever is familiar and heading to a place where the guide fuels the fear by telling you that if you stray, you will get robbed. Even the four security guards lined up in an orderly fashion in front of an office building smile when they say we should watch where we are going.

I don't know if we looked like victims because we were in full tourist gear (think backpacks, cameras, tickets for the hop-on-hop-off bus and a twinge of fear) or because our whiteness made us stick out like gulls in a sea of seals. Fear gains power if you are in an unknown area and have heard of its dangers. Hell, we live in South Africa, anything is dangerous, so I think most people just get on with their lives. If violence wants you, it will find you. All you can do is not be stupid (as in don't go into dark alleys, don't dangle your 7D from your neck, don't flash your Rolex), and find a little courage to remind you that most people are just like you and have no desire to rob or harm you. And for the few that do, well, we'll cross that bridge of trauma if/when it plants itself in our path.

We went to Joburg because a friend is here from Mexico and it seemed like a good excursion. We went up the Carlton Towers to see all of the city at our feet; we saw the Oppenheimer Park and the old Rissik Street post office; we marched onwards to the Johannesburg Library and peeked inside the Rand Club. Then we caught the bus to the Apartheid Museum (more on that in a future post). Afterwards we tried to get into the Origins Centre at Wits, but they were really unhelpful so we headed to the Wits Art Museum with the exhibition of Gerard Sekoto's work currently on show. Finally we went to Constitutional Hill and returned to Pretoria exhausted.

Most noticeable however were all the signs and graffiti. When you reside in suburbia it is all homes and fences and lawns, so to see some colour was one of the best parts of the day.

At Constitution Hill, the Bill of Rights is carved into the door.

Metal plaques with words from the South African public, who were asked to pen down their hopes and ideas in 2004. 

I am folded and unfolded and unfolding/ I am colorblind

On Saturday we went to the Holi One festival in Johannesburg, re-named the We Are One festival in order to avoid any religious associations. After the photos from the Cape Town version were released, the Joburg concert sold out in hours and the 3000 supplementary tickets that were released a week or two later also sold out within a few hours. The whole thing was very hyped up. I was expecting cool music and everyone dancing in clouds of colour whilst have the best time of their lives. because that is what the pictures made it look like. 

I was even worried what we would do afterwards, as the festival started at noon and ended at 8PM. I really shouldn't have worried. We were somewhere else before the sun even set because the whole festival was just so damn boring. Yay, yes, on the hour everyone would gather and throw their powder into the air, but the hour spent in between was such a damn waste. 

Either you spent it hiding in the shade somewhere, or queueing to get something to drink, or queueing for food, or queueing at the toilets. I realise it is the first time this concert was held in SA and things is bound to go wrong. However, it makes sense only to sell cans and not decant every glass bottle into plastic glasses because as soon as someone throws powder, you can either choose to drink chalk or throw it away. I mean, most drinks are available in cans, so the organisers should just have ordered everything in cans and saved on the plastic cups. 

Also, the DJs were bad. I'll admit to being no electronic music expert, but have attended more than my share of EDM events, so if in five hours you're there you cannot find one tune to dance to something must be wrong. And it wasn't just me. After the three minutes of throwing powder and grooving to half a minute of Indian music, everyone would wander off again and leave only those drunk enough/high enough not to care on the dance-grass-floor. 

I told a friend that the photographs only capture a moment in time, that they only show that second where you were actually having fun and posing for a new profile picture. It feels as though We Are One was more a case of We Want To Make Those Absent Jealous as everyone spent their time tweeting and posting images to FB instead of dancing and celebrating a really pretty day. 

Afterwards, we went to a friend's new apartment, which was the highlight rather than throwing colour and waiting. 

Anyways, here are some images. They really are fun to take, but as a whole the festival was not worth the hype. If you decide to go, choose to go as a photographer and protect your gear, or get wasted and hope that next time, they'll hire better DJs behind the decks. 

Baby, you're a firework

Yesterday we joined the Joburg Photowalkers for a date in Old Chinatown because of the Chinese New Year celebrations. Last year we went to the Nan Hua temple in Bronkhorstspruit where the festivities were on a much larger scale.

Last year, it was so much fun. This year, I don't really know. It was loud, messy, disorganized and more for 6-year-old boys than for adults who value their eardrums. The festival was held in one corner of Commissioner street, but in comparison to the vast amount of activities and stalls at the temple this was rather disappointing. If one wanted food, one either would have had to book a table at one of the restaurants beforehand, or one had to queue behind 200 other people. When our hunger did finally overcome our desire not to stand in that queue, there was almost no food left, which meant we paid R30 for rice with a splash of that fake reddish sauce and a ball of chicken hiding in a corner of the Styrofoam container.

The event's flyer announced that there would be a large fireworks display at 21.00, but for the three hours before that random children and old men kept lighting crackers and other bang-sounding things. Initially it was fun, but after the 20th cracker explodes on your leg or next to your ear you really want to make a piñata out of whoever threw that thing and beat the living shit out of them. Then people had the brilliant idea of lighting their floating lanterns, which just ended up crashing into the crowd. And people don't like balls of fire floating towards them.

Although the final fireworks were an hour late, they were spectacular. The sky lit up the way the eyes of a 15-year-old girl  would when she gets asked out by her crush. Only it was 50000 better. Somehow the Chinese also really really really really really really really like Gangnam Style, so after numerous attempts throughout the evening to get the crowd to participate by dancing to the song, the organizers also orchestrated the fireworks to match Psy's hit.

I think it is worth going once, but would rather recommend whatever Nan Hua plans for that year. This was overcrowded and baldy organized no matter how brilliantly the night was lit up.

Sex tea, anyone?

OMGITM Supermix 38

It is 4AM and I am sleeping on the back seat of a moving car, heading home. It has been a great night, very unexpectedly so. A friend won four tickets to EDMfest, but initially I didn't even know what EDM stood for. As I know now, it's Electronic Dance Music. Thank you Wikipedia.

People have been re-pinning the quote "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone"(Neale Donald Walsch) all over the Net, and EDMfest definitely falls into that stepping out of my comfort zone. I mean, it was House/Trance music (I might be wrong, it might be some subcategory of these). I was expecting that repetitive bullshit that SABC1 and 5 FM keep playing as party music on weekends, the kind that loops the same beats without any variation for 10 minutes, the kind that I cannot listen to. But this was pretty damn cool.

The entire fest took place at Nasrec, next to Soccer City, in one of those halls that look like an airplane hangar. It wasn't excessively full, so everyone had enough space to move and see the four hott (yes, hoTT) dancers shaking it in smaller and smaller outfits on stage. There were lots of beefcakes walking around shirtless, and as the night progressed, even the not-so-buff gentlemen were uncovering themselves. I didn't really get the shirtless thing, because a) it wasn't so cold and b) anyone with a needle could deflate those muscles in a second, but it was fun to observe. The ladies were also not wearing much: it felt like being at a beach party with people wearing too much glow-in-the-dark facepaint and building intimate relationships with glowsticks.

I am unsure of how we managed to stay til dawn because none of us was extremely into this kind of dance music, but it was a surprisingly good night.

I've got to take it on the otherside

Mondays are exam days. Every Monday for three weeks. It's well spaced, so there is enough time for some partying in between the studying. Yesterday evening Town Hall in Joburg celebrated their 2nd birthday, and we were eager to have a little fiesta with them. And by fiesta I mean excessive amounts of tequila and music.

In our eagerness, we pre-bought tickets online and made sure to arrive at a respectable time. It's about a 45min drive to Joburg from Pretoria, so this party had to be worth driving to another city for. But in our naiveté we were sure it would be.

Instead of dancing like a maniac or profiting from the open bar, however, we stood outside in a queue for more than two hours. I left my coat in the car because I thought, Hah, we'll just walk through the door with our little pre-bought tickets, and then you don't want to sweat like a gorilla with your coat inside. Mistake of the night.

I don't know how a venue can be this badly organised. I assume that owner/manager/whoever works there knows approximately how many people can fit inside, and then they can decide how many tickets can be pre-sold and sold at the door. So how the fuck do you keep about 150 people standing outside for the evening, when all of those people had pre-bought tickets? The tempting bass-sounds that kept pumping though the walls weren't helping either.

At around 23.00 they closed both doors. Then they reopened them to say that only those with tickets could enter. Problem was, everyone had tickets. We stood around for a while longer and then decided that even if we would get it, it would probably take another hour, and by then the dance floor would be so packed that one would be unable to move, and the open bar not worth it. Our original plan was to be there at 9ish and leave at 1ish, so this was not worth it. Refund please.

Anyways, so on our way home there is this Maxi's that is built over the highway. Real classy. We thought it was a 24h-open joint. It wasn't. Another fail for the night, another disappointment in my going-out career. We got some Milo at the Maxi's that was open (the one next to the petrol garage, not the awesome one over the road).

In the end we were home by 1 AM. It was as though we had gone out properly, but we were neither inebriated, nor sweaty, nor were our clothes smelly from condensed bodily odours and cigarette smoke. This night was a luremus, and no one was left satisfied.

Paper Aeroplane

Soft sunlight falls over the city, as though it were a late Free State afternoon and not an early winter's morning in Mzansi. The buildings are carefully folded origami, God playing Tetris badly with their arrangement. Row upon row of trains like tiny pieces of Lego. I try to spot the Nelson Mandela bridge, but we are already passing over Ellis Park Stadium. When the FNB Stadium appears, tiny from this height, I poke my neighbour and say: "Look, it's Soccer City!".

The silly man only replies that the one in Cape Town is prettier, and that we'll pay for these stadia for years. How can you not appreciate the view, Mr Suit? Johannesburg is saying Welcome Back, and you fail to acknowledge her beauty.

You see, I came home, yesterday. It was only one week, but it felt like time had stopped; it felt as though I had been given a time-out from my life just for a week. Here, the news regarding Zuma's painting was still the same, I had missed nothing at the university, and all the people were still exactly as I had left them.

But Paris also felt like going home.  I still know my way around. I still know how to surf the metro without holding on or falling. I still know where to get what I need. Seeing my friends again felt like I had seen them only yesterday, not two years ago. Getting on the plane back here felt like coming home and leaving it at the same time. Sure, Paris is not where my family is, where the house I call home is, where most of my friends live, or where I feel like I know every corner. But that city is not a stranger to me either. It is like being a perpetual tourist and being perpetually home-less at the same time; it is feeling a sense of belonging to more than one city.

You're going back

We went to the Neighbourgoods Market today in down-town Johannesburg. On the website it states that "the market reflects our commitment to urban regeneration and the goal to revive and reinvent the Public Market as a civic institution. Market-goers can expect to find an assortment of goods from local artisan producers, purveyors, gourmet merchants, specialty cooks, regional farmers + estates, as well as a selection of local designers". We had previously been to the market in Cape Town, which was wonderful, so I had some high expectations for the Joburg version.

And it is also very cool. The emphasis here is on cool. All the hipsters descend on a very select corner of the inner city, clad in their coolest attire (skinny jeans, plaid shirt, Ray Bans for the gents, and some kind of This-is-meant-to-look-like-I-just-threw-it-on for the ladies), sipping smoothies or Moscow Mules and eating sandwiches that cost R60. I mean, it is a nice atmosphere and it is fascinating to watch everyone, but man, it is a pretentious get-together. No one would want to live in the area, because the inner city is not exactly the safest place, but come Saturday, this is how the mostly white upper-middle class cures its (political and real) hangover.

Look, the market is great. Everything looks supertasty and all the products are high in quality, but I don't know how much it contributes to "urban regeneration". The people from the surrounding area can by no means afford to shop there. I mean, who can pay R50 (€5) for a miniature slab of Honest Chocolate? This market is more about personal indulgence for the rich than it is for one to do one's weekly grocery shopping at. Go for the atmosphere and to observe how the slickest of slick are glued to their sunglasses, but stop at the Pick 'n Pay for your milk and bread.

After the market, we headed to the Johannesburg Art Gallery, which is just around the corner, but seems to be situated in a completely different world. We were driving through almost empty streets when suddenly there were people EVERYWHERE and we were in the bus lane. It was funny, scary and interesting all at the same time. Whereas at the market it is 95 % white and with financial resources, we were suddenly stuck in streets where it is 99% black and with low incomes. It was a strange contrast.

The gallery is next to the Joubert Park, where people and trash overpower the lawns. Beyond the fence, however, there was almost no one in the museum. It hosts the largest art collection in Southern Africa, larger even than South African National Art gallery in Cape Town, but the throngs of people outside did not seem interested at the visual information at their disposal. and entrance is free, so there is no real excuse not to go and have a look. I wonder if there could not be some way to integrate the park's visitors and the wonderful works present in the museum, preferably in a way that could be income-generating for the area.

I'm home now, but today was just fascinating: within minutes, we had gone from an elitist market to streets overflowing with people to an empty gallery. Such a weird and wonderful place, Johannesburg.

Now and then

Johannesburg 1886 via the Museum Afrika archive on A postcard a day from Gauteng

Can you believe in roughly a century the veld has become a sprawling city? I'm a Pretoria girl and to me, Johannesburg is big city living : a scary place of sensory overload. Every time I have to drive there the roads confuse me ( I like paper maps and not GPSs), the people drive more aggressively and somehow one always ends up in Hillbrow. If Joburg is the cool, dangerous older cousin who comes by once every few months for a braai, Pretoria is the ordered family throwing the braai and making sure everyone has a drink in their hand. I know these streets, I know the backroads to avoid traffic jams, I know where to go for a party and where to go to just chill. I am a snor-city lady and although Joburg seems super-exciting and like a more interactive place, I think Pretoria has its highlights as well. The city of gold is not the only coolkid on the Gauteng-block.

Johannesburg Skyline at night by Keith Miller