Beauty Secrets

I've spent a lot of time lately writing about good deeds. I do think living in Africa has made me a more generous person. But good deeds don't fill up all of my free time. Not even close. So what does? 

I tried to calculate how I am spending my time using a 35 hour work week.  A few disclaimers. First, 35 hours isn't really an accurate starting point as Mr. Deep leaves for work at 7:00 a.m. and doesn't come home until around 6:00 p.m., so I am alone for more than 35 hours a week. I also didn't include things like taking a shower or washing the dishes, two things which I am proud to announce that I do every day. In addition, obviously every week is not the same and sometimes these categories overlap. For example sometimes I am shopping to buy something for a good deed. But enough explanation. Here is what I came up with.

For this post, I want to focus on the bright yellow triangle in the upper left hand corner of the pie. Because I spend a significant amount of time, sometimes more than four hours a week, getting worked on by professionals in an effort to improve my physical appearance. If you want to get technical about it, working out and beauty could be combined to create one giant slice of pie because I am only working out in hopes of looking better. 

Here are the details of my beauty activities and estimated amount of time spent on each in an average month.

1) Hair - cut, color and treatment. This takes about three hours every time that I go. I try to stretch it out and only go every four weeks but sometimes I go every three.
2) Skin - I get Botox every few months and I've started getting chemical peels which take about 30 minutes every month. 
3) Nails - has two subcategories manicures and pedicures.  Manicure is one hour every other week and pedicure is one hour every three weeks.
4) Waxing - eyebrows and other about 30 minutes per month.
5) I also "pull" with coconut oil every morning. This is an ancient ritual of swishing coconut oil around in your mouth for 20 minutes to remove toxins from your body. I think it helps whiten my teeth.

So clearly I have two serious problems. First, I am really bad at math so I don't know if my weekly and monthly activities correlate properly. I am sure that they don't. I could ask Mr. Deep (aka math genius) to help me with this but I don't want to bother him with such silliness and I also don't want to encourage him to calculate how much all of these activities are costing. Second, and perhaps most alarming, I am very self absorbed, shallow and superficial. And not just about my appearance. I mean I write a blog because I am positive that people care about what I am doing or thinking. And a lot of you are nice enough to act like you do. 

I admit I have problems. These problems didn't start when I came to Africa either. I was always bad at math and except for the manicures (reason explained below) and the chemical peels which are new, I used to get all of these treatments when I lived in the U.S. too. Except back then I had a job and so these treatments seemed far less glamorous and indulgent because I was cramming them in on a Saturday or after work rather than going for treatments during the day. Also, I was a professional. I had to try to look presentable. These days, having a pedicure while other people are working seems more selfish and more luxurious even though the actual process is the same. 

I am going to try to justify and explain the beauty treatments.

1) Hair - if I didn't color it I would be grey. I am way too young to be grey. I am not going to embrace being grey until I am either over 70 or too poor to afford to color my hair. It is likely that before I turn 70 all of my hair will fall anyway out from all the coloring and flat ironing. If you have been to my house then you know that my hair is everywhere, in our bed, on the floor, in Mr. Deep's food. Flat ironing, which I am not even going to go into in this post could probably get its own slice of pie in the chart.  I would embrace curly hair if I had good curly hair but I don't so I can't.

2) Skin - I want my face to glow. When getting a chemical peel you are supposed to say on a scale of one through ten how much burning you feel. I always say it hurts less than it does because a) I don't like to show weakness to the esthetician because I want to be her toughest client, the one that she tells he husband about at dinner, "this woman is tough, you should see what I put on her face and she didn't even flinch not like the other clients who come to see me" and b) because I want the strong stuff so that I can see improvement and get my money's worth. I'm pretty sure the last time they poured battery acid directly onto my face. I rated it a six. Even though a tear was running down my cheek. Now my skin is peeling like spring break in Florida circa 1983. I also get Botox in between my eyes every six months because I don't like having a "whatchu talking 'bout Willis" expression on my face at all times. Yes, I know it's botulism.

3) Manicures - I used to bite my nails so horribly that my thumb nails were severely deformed. I tired to hide them by making fists all of the time with my thumbs tucked in but some people still noticed. I remember one person saw my hands once and then said, "but you seem so normal." Good news is I stopped biting and now my real nails have grown in. If I don't get my nails done every other week with gel polish I will bite them again. Can't stop. Won't stop.

Pedicures - Two arguments, one I live in a warm climate so I wear open toe shoes a lot. Second, I run (clearly only as an effort to stay somewhat thin) so my feet get banged up and have calluses that need to be addressed. 

4) Eyebrow Waxing - I know George Costanza said "who cares about eyebrows" but properly groomed eyebrows can make your whole face look better.

5) Pulling with coconut oil- yes it's an ancient ritual but I don't care about that. I think it helps to whiten my teeth without harmful chemicals. I only choose to put harmful chemicals on my face, nails and hair. I am also fine with having a toxin directly injected into my face. But I don't want to put harmful chemicals into my mouth. That would be crazy.

Karma

I don't believe in karma. I also don't believe in feng shui, the healing power of crystals or aromatherapy. I do believe in astrology a bit because I am a Virgo and if you know me you know I am such a Virgo but that's where my new age beliefs end and my practicality begins. Practicality by the way being a central Virgo trait.

I remember when I was a kid I read a Judy Blume book and the main character in the book used to write in her diary every evening and she would grade her day. She only had one A plus day and all the rest were just average and graded as B's and C's. I don't remember much else about the book or even the title.

I mention all of this because I had an A plus day today. It was so wonderful that it almost made me believe in karma.

My day began when Justice, who I wrote about in this post, surprised me by coming to work with Christine this morning. I have not seen Justice since his last day of work for us at the end of September but I have been chatting with him over whatsapp. About a month after he left us, Justice got a job! He is now working security at some type of estate or housing complex. I didn't help him to get the job but I was able to help him with a few things he needed once he had the job. He told me recently that he wanted to come by one day to say hello and I guess today was the day. I was excited to give him some Christmas gifts that I brought back for him from the U.S.A. First, was a Yankees cap which he loved and second were some seashells that I gathered for him on the beach in Florida. Give most people over the age of seven a gift of seashells that you picked up yourself from the beach and they will be like what the F$%& is this? But I knew that Justice would really like them. And when I gave them to him Christine said it perfectly. She said "Justice loves decorations." And as much as he loved the hat, he loved the shells and he spent time looking at each one and said how beautiful they were and I knew that he meant it. 

We talked for a while and then he began cleaning my windows. The American version of me would have tried to stop him, telling him it wasn't necessary and making a big fuss about how he didn't need to work for free or running to the ATM so I could pay him, but South African version of American me just let him do it because I know he wanted to repay me for some kindnesses and this was his way and to stop him or pay him would have been rude. When I got home this afternoon and he and Christine had already left so I sent him a note to thank him for my gorgeous and sparkling windows and he replied, "you deserve good things." 

Also today, I spent time with Gift.  I went to his house and met his sister and his brother in law for the first time. They were so nice to me. I think a lot of cynical relatives in this world might have been confused and wondered what my motives for being friends with Gift might be. Am I some kind of recruiter trying to bring him into my cult? Do I work for immigration? Am I a sad and lonely housewife with wild fantasies about younger African men? If they did wonder these things or had questions about me they didn't let on, instead they accepted me as being genuine and welcomed me into their home, giving me a piece of corn on the cob to eat (called mealies here) and chatting with me for an hour. At the end of our visit they told me I was welcome to come back any time to visit.

I brought Gift some clothes and shoes from the U.S.A. When I gave him these items he acted like those people we have all seen on the publishers clearing house commercials. He was happier than any grown up adult I have seen in a long, long while and possibly ever. Later, he wrote me a note saying he was "so much more than the word happy" and that I was his "first friend of white." And I replied to him much like Justice replied to me, and told him that he deserves nice things. 

Finally, at the end of the day and I saw our neighbor from across the street, Brenda, standing outside of her house. We hardly know our neighbors except to say hello or to chat briefly if we happen to be outside at the same time. I needed to talk to her today because I had a timely question concerning what, if anything, we should do for the guards at our estate for Christmas.  Mr. Deep had suggested I ask her for input. We chatted for a bit and she asked me if we were going to be here for Christmas and what our plans were. I said we were just going to stay home and braai (grill.) By the way Mr. Deep and I don't really celebrate Christmas and we have have spent many, many Christmas days just making dinner at home and hanging out. We also generally don't give each other birthday presents or celebrate any holidays (except Thanksgiving which only involves making dinner) so it's not like we would be sitting at home sobbing, missing the U.S. and feeling suicidal but she of course doesn't know that. So once she heard we had no real plans she invited us to come over for Christmas. The American version of me would have been horrified thinking this poor woman really doesn't want us to come over, she is just being nice and later she is going to have to apologize to her husband for speaking without thinking and tell him she invited us and he will say, "dammit Brenda, do you even know their names?" But the South African version of American me said, "great what time should we come over" and wondered (briefly) if this is what good karma feels like. 

Justice at our house wearing his new cap. And yes, it totally matched his jacket. 

Bark

You're probably tired of hearing about my jet lag. Believe me, no one is more tired of the topic than I am. But good news! This post is only minimally about jet lag. 

It's funny the kind of thoughts you have when you cannot sleep. For some reason last week when I was unable to sleep due to my jet lag (officially last mention of jet lag for a while), I became obsessed with the idea of making chocolate bark. 

I am not really sure how or why this idea popped into my head. I am not much of a baker or a maker of sweets and I have never made chocolate bark before, but for some reason all I could think about for a few nights in a row as I was laying awake was chocolate bark, chocolate bark, chocolate bark. Important questions about chocolate bark were swirling around in my brain at 2:00 a.m. Such as, what kind of chocolate would I use? What toppings would I put on? Would I marble in white chocolate? The urge to make chocolate bark was so great that if I had had the ingredients in my house, I would have gotten out of bed and immediately started making it.

So on Sunday, the day after the shebeen tour, I made chocolate bark. If you don't know, chocolate bark is melted chocolate cooled on a cookie sheet with various goodies sprinkled onto the still soft chocolate. When it hardens, the chocolate is broken up into uneven shards. The great thing about it is it's really a hard recipe to mess up. You aren't really making anything from scratch. You're just melting chocolate and smashing up toppings. 

I followed this recipe from Jamie Oliver. It was a helpful recipe as it gives instructions to ensure the chocolate melts easily and smoothly. Melting the chocolate is really the only part of bark making where you could make a mistake. 

Melting the milk chocolate.

One last thought about bark and then I'll get to the pictures. While chocolate bark seems like a holiday treat, what I loved about making it was that no oven is needed so it is also a good treat to make during hot weather. You just have to store it in the fridge!

This is the milk chocolate I used. And below is the dark chocolate. 

This dark chocolate turned out to be really, really dark. I am not sure how many people would like it. Maybe I should have mixed a bar of milk in with the dark bars? Or maybe I just think the sweeter, the better. 

As instructed by the recipe I purchased grease proof paper to cover the cookie sheet. It worked perfectly. No sticking.

It's crucial that you taste the chocolate prior to melting it. If it's poor quality you need to know. It may take more than one taste to be sure.
  
Preparing to smash candy canes into bits and dust.

Candy cane dust

Toppings starting from top of photo - crushed nuts, crushed pretzels, dried cranberries, cinnamon and sugar mixture, crushed candy canes. Below is the melted and spread dark chocolate just waiting for toppings.

Milk chocolate with toppings added. Below, the finished products.

Bump Bump

Two things about me. First, I like always having some event planned for the future so that I have something to look forward to.  I have spent more than one plane ride home following a vacation thinking about what my next vacation could be. Second, sometimes I don't learn from my mistakes.

Me. At The Shack in Soweto

Mr. Deep and I returned to Joburg from our two week trip to the U.S. this past Thursday morning. Because I thought it was important that we have an activity to look forward to upon our return, before we left for the U.S., I arranged for us to participate in a shebeen crawl in Soweto on Saturday. 

The part where I don't learn from my mistakes comes into play because once again we suffered from serious jet lag. I was not able to fall asleep until 3:00 a.m. on Friday morning and both Mr. Deep and I were wide awake between midnight and 2:00 a.m. early Saturday morning. During this two hour period both of us also found it necessary to eat a snack because we felt hungry given it was dinner time back in the U.S. So yes, we were kind of a mess. However, if you are already feeling crappy and not at the top of your game, that might be the perfect time to go on a pub crawl.

Shebeen is an Irish word that refers to an illicit club that sells alcohol without a license. Most shebeens are now legal however the shebeen plays a significant role in South African history, which you can read more about here.  

You might remember I have written about Soweto before as we visited the area when my parents were here.  Soweto is the largest township in South Africa and is home to over 1 million people. A township refers to an area where black people were forced to live during apartheid.

The shebeen tour was arranged by a group called InterNations in conjunction with a tour company called KDA Travel & Tours. InterNations is the largest international expat community in the world and offers networking events and activities as well as tips and practical information for expats living in over 390 cities worldwide. Mr. Deep and I received a lot of advice from other expats both before and after moving to South Africa suggesting we join expat clubs such as InterNations as a way to meet people. We have been doing pretty well meeting people without joining any clubs but this seemed like a fun event and a good way to meet others who have relocated to Joburg. 

We met the tour guide and the rest of the group at a hotel in Sandton City and boarded our bus to Soweto. Mr. Deep and I were the only Americans participating. The other expats were from Germany, Italy, Cameroon, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Finland and the Philippines. There were also three Australians. Not to stereotype but I think Australians really enjoy a good pub crawl.  We didn't receive our itinerary in advance, which we were told was for our safety, so until the time we boarded the bus we had no idea what the night would bring. 

We were not really worried about safety but we did decide to leave our rings and nice jewelry at home prior to departure.

Once on the bus, we met our tour guide, Ngugi, pronounced Goo-gee. He assured us that going to Soweto and on the tour was completely safe and that we were in for a great time. He said that since Soweto is so famous and has so much historical significance that people there are used to seeing visitors and tours pass through frequently. He told us our first stop would be to have dinner at a place called Tinties. 

I don't know who Tintie is but s/he must be doing really well financially because we soon arrived at a small shopping center where every single store had Tintie in the name. There was Tintie's restaurant, Tintie's Supermarket, Tintie's butchery, Tintie's Pool Hall and Tintie's bottle store. The whole parking lot was full of people as were all of the stores and the restaurant. The parking lot looked like a tailgating party that you would see in the U.S. at a sporting event. People were parked and hanging out and just drinking and dancing near their cars. It was not a holiday or a special event, just a typical Saturday evening. There was also a DJ playing music in the corner of the shopping center. We headed to the restaurant where we somehow secured a long table like you would see at a beer garden.  I call the restaurant a restaurant but really it was more like a grilling pavilion.  It had a huge braai (grill) and guys were manning the fire and cooking tremendous amounts of meat. In order to have your meat braaied you first had to go and purchase it raw from the butcher. If you wanted beer or a drink (and of course we all did) you had to walk across the parking lot to the bottle store to get it. The bottle store was really more like a stand where the liquor and the seller were safe behind bars. To purchase a drink you had to wait in a line and then tell the guy behind the bars what you wanted. Mostly everyone was drinking beer which were huge quart size bottles. It seems none of the locals in Soweto wanted to waste time with a pint. In addition to buying a bottle quart, you could also buy a whole six pack of regular size beer. Liquor and soft drinks were also sold. In addition to not selling the drinks or the meat, the restaurant did not provide any plates, utensils or napkins (serviettes.) We were expected to eat everything with our hands. That is easy when eating a lamp chop but more difficult when eating the pap and prawn salad. Pap, you might remember from this post, is a staple food of South Africa. It is made from maize meal and is the consistency of mashed potatoes. The pap (pronounced pop) was served with a side of chakalaka sauce which is a very delicious cabbage and tomato sauce with a hint of curry. In addition to the lamp chops we also received beef and wors (sausages.) The platters that these meats were served on were the cardboard that formerly housed cases of beer.

Mr. Deep at Tintie's. You can see the guy hanging out and tailgating in the background. You can also see the giant quart bottle of beer in this picture.

A box of meat

Tinti has cornered the market. And as you can see below some signs say Tintie's and others say Tinti's. I don't know why.

Wors (sausages) 

Some hot coals

Not a great photo because the light is behind them but still had to post a pic of the guys cooking the meat.

Pap. It came wrapped in plastic on a Styrofoam plate. So I guess there was sort of a plate. 

One of our fellow expats walked to Tintie's supermarket and bought a package of serviettes but other than that that one creature comfort we all ate with our hands and without utensils or plates.

Following dinner, we stopped at a petrol (gas) station to use the bathrooms. We then headed to our first shebeen, called The Shack. The Shack looked like some one's house as it consisted of various rooms. The first room had a table and couches and seemed to be where the older men were hanging out. The next room had a pool table and seemed to be where the younger men were hanging out. The bar itself was its own room. It wasn't really a bar but rather a room full of coolers like you would see in a grocery store. A guy manned this room which also contained the cash register.

How funny I just noticed the guy in the Giants shirt.

Coolers of beer at The Shack

At this point Mr. Deep became interested in playing pool with the locals. Unfortunately we weren't at The Shack long enough for him to have the chance to play.  At the next bar, called the Sanile's Place, he immediately put his money down in order to get next game. It turns out there are pool rules that are very specific to Africa. The Africa bump bump rule means that if you are shooting and fail to connect with your ball (this would be a table scratch in conventional 8-ball rules), your opponent gets a "free" additional shot if he misses his next. If your opponent makes his shot, he still is able to use that free shot if he misses after that. I know what you are thinking. This rule sounds like a rule that was created specifically for the circumstance when a white guy appears in Soweto and wants to play pool. But Ngugi confirmed that bump bump is an actual rule. Mr. Deep did not win but he did make some friends in the process. The guys playing with him wanted to get a photo with him. Even one guy who had a mohawk and seemed more than a little intimidating as he was explaining the rules in a very animated fashion, became Mr. Deep's best bud while we were at Sanile's. Also at this bar, the actual bar was a counter with bars on it. To purchase a drink you had to go to the window and pay, similar to a gas station. Sanile's also had a DJ spinning tunes and lots of people dancing. While there were some women in these bars, I would say 90% of the clientele were men. Probably because women were too busy at home taking care of their kids. One of the woman in our group was a blond woman from Finland she got a lot of attention from the men. Ngugi told us on the bus that one guy at Sanile's offered him 40 head of cattle as a lobola for her. A lobola is a dowry or a price that a man's family gives to a woman's family to obtain the woman as his bride. That is the thing about Africa...one minute you easily forget you are anywhere exotic and the next minute someone is offering 40 head of cattle for a woman.

A selfie with Mr. Deep's new friends including guy with mohawk. Oh and I am promised that facial hair will be gone by the end of the year.

                                Lined up for beer at the window with the bars at Sanile's

We then moved on to our final bar called Sakhimzi. Sakhimzi was like any other restaurant or bar that you would find in any city. It had a ton of outside seating and the bar itself was normal meaning you could walk up and order directly without iron bars or having to pass any money through a slot. It was a nice place and we once again secured a long table outside. We met a guy named David and he sat with us and we played a game where he guessed which country we were all from. He didn't do too badly. It turns out he visited Chicago once when he was working as a salesman. The only thing that was strange about Sakhimzi was the staff were all wearing canvas jumpsuit type uniforms which made them look like they had just parachuted in. It had to be hot and uncomfortable and I clearly missed what about the theme of the bar led to these uniforms.  

The jumpsuit

Christmas decorations at Sakhimzi

The leader from InterNations named Nkuli with Ngugi, our tour guide.

Heta from Finland and David from Soweto

My Friend Gift

Written in New York City while sitting at a Starbucks. Yum. Starbucks.

This post is not about how I am gifted in the art of making friends. This is a story about how I made a new friend, named Gift. 

I met Gift a few weeks ago when I parked in the lot where he was working. I had parked there so that I could go for a run. As an aside Mr. Deep and I are training for a half marathon and running has been taking up a lot of our free time. In my case however running has has not been taking up nearly as much of my time as it should be. I have not been committed to my training as much as Mr. Deep has or as much as I should be. Anyway, on the day I met Gift I had finished running and I was standing by my car, drinking my water and concentrating on not throwing up when Gift came over and we started talking.  After a few minutes of chatting about the weather, Gift told me he was hoping to get a better job and he asked me if I knew of anything. I was impressed by his initiative because if you have ever looked for a job you know it's all in the networking. Gift explained that he came to South Africa from Zimbabwe three months ago and he said he does not have a permit to work in South Africa. He told me he has a drivers license and maybe even a commercial drivers license (sometimes it's hard to understand.) I promised to keep my ears open for him. He gave me his phone number so if I heard of anything I could let him know via whatsapp. We've been friends ever since chatting frequently on whatsapp.

Gift works as a car guard, which means to make a living he stands in a parking lot and guards the cars that are parked there. Car guards are employed in nearly every parking lot in the part of South Africa where we live.  Their job is to watch your car while you're inside shopping, working, eating or whatever. The car guards are not paid a salary and rely solely on customer tips. If that were not bad enough, what I learned from talking to Gift, is that the guards have to pay to work. Yes, you read correctly. Car guards pay a daily fee to some type of boss, a person who I think there is a special spot reserved for in hell, to rent the area of the parking lot that they are covering. Gift pays R25 per day so that he can guard cars. He told me that on a good day, if he is assigned to a busy section of the lot and if a lot of people are out shopping he can earn R100. However, I have seen the lot where he works and I would be surprised if he earns R100 in a day very often. Between the R25 he pays as his fee, plus his transportation to and from work, I estimate that sometimes he can take home about R50 which equals $3.50 USD. He said if it's a really bad day, and if a guard can't pay the R25 fee then the fee is added to the fee for the next day. 

Gift and the other guards stand in the hot sun or the cold or the rain for 12 hours a day watching cars, being nice to shoppers, loading packages into the cars for them, directing them as they back out of parking spots and hoping desperately that they come out ahead financially that day. He didn't say this, but I think that working as a car guard is also slightly dangerous. Not just because of the heat that they often have to bear, but because if a deranged criminal does want to steal cars or the contents of cars or rob people, the unarmed car guard is definitely no match for the criminal.

As I mentioned Gift came to South Africa from Zimbabwe three months ago. You will remember that I have written about Zimbabwe in other posts, about how the electricity goes out for 8 hours a day and how in many places no water comes out of the taps. South Africa certainly has many of its own problems (for example we recently had no water coming out of the taps at our house for two weeks) with its troubled and aging infrastructure, government corruption and 25% unemployment rate, but to people from many other African countries, South Africa is the land of opportunity.  

After chatting with Gift over whatsapp, I invited him to meet me for lunch on one of his rare days off.  When I offered to buy him lunch he responded that he had never eaten in a restaurant before and that he did not know how to use a knife or a fork. I could tell he was slightly embarrassed about it so I purposely I took him to a burger place (not McDonald's because I have my standards) but a place called Wimpy. I think it was a good first restaurant experience. We had a waitress and silverware was made available to us but we didn't use it. I showed him a little bit how to use the knife and fork but it was not a full and proper lesson. And to be honest, I am not the best person to be giving anyone advice in this area.

During our lunch I learned that Gift is 35 years old. Both of his parents are deceased (later through my research I found out the life expectancy in Zim is 56 for a man and 57 for a woman.) Gift lives in a house in Joburg with his sister and one other person. He pays his sister R1000 per month rent and he has his own room in the house. He normally works 7 days a week from about 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. each day. In the month that I have known him he has had two days off. 

In many ways Gift is just like my other friends. He likes making jokes, using emoticons on his phone and watching sports, mostly soccer, on TV. Liverpool is his favorite team. And he likes beer. Castle Light is his favorite beer. Communicating with him has taught me that I have a tendency to say a lot of things that are dumb. Well not exactly dumb but inappropriate for his situation. For example, when I told him he deserved to have a day off after working so hard for so many days in a row he was perplexed and reminded me that he has no choice but to accept the fact that although he was told he would have a day off, he didn't get it. When I told him that I was confident that he would get a better job soon, he asked me how I knew such a thing and then I had to admit that really I didn't and I was just trying to be positive and upbeat. 

When I told Gift that Mr. Deep and I were going to visit America for a few weeks, he asked me to tell my friends from America about Gift. He sometimes talks about himself in the third person. He said to tell my American friends that he wishes to visit their country someday but for now he is too poor.