9th to 23rd... cake, concerts and chrysanthemums

So my lovelies, I have not written for two weeks.. I know two weeks is a long long time. However it is all for good reason and I have pretty good excuses lined up. The first being that I am studying (or supposed to be studying) so ‘busy’ is my logo. Anyhow, the past two weeks have been hectic and not so hectic at the same time.

Last week.. lemme think.. what did I do?

I studied, went to eat Pesto at a friend’s house (lovely), cooked some fancy meals for myself, made some maandazi, joined a cell group, attended a training session, threw away my birthday flowers and got myself a potted chrysanthemums (figured it was much more durable anyway), went out for coffee with friends, worked on some docs for the NGO I have joined in as a director.. lots and lots of stuff done.

beautiful aren't they?

So, some explanations….

The maandazi? Well, I missed home and  ofcourse just coz I’m simply amazing. And I figured I was studying at home for the day so I could as well make maandazi while doing my readings. See photos about the process. They were good (according to my friends) and I even took some to visit my friend where we had the pesto. Now pesto pasta and stroganoff chicken (simply delish). In the end, I copy pasted the recipe and re made the same thing at home the next day. It was that good.

 

the maandazi.. :)

disregard the pink container.. the food tasted amazing

On Saturday we had training for the new post graduate council. Took the whole morning. That was just looooong. But I guess I learnt quite a bit about the university’s administrative structure and other cool stuff that we could use to help the law postgrads. So that was pretty cool; though a very lengthy sort of cool.

pretty fancy eh? that's what i thought

So I had signed up for a connect group from church. A connect group is a group of believers who live near you and who meet up in the week (for me it is Thursday at 8pm) and share and discuss the Word of God. So I think its pretty cool to have a group that keeps you accountable and something to remind me of who I am in the course of the week. So last Thursday we met and it was great. We were about 15 or so girls (they divide the groups into girls and guys) living in Obz and shared about the Bible being the Word of God and its relevance to our lives. You can learn quite a bit when you listen to other people sharing their experiences. So it was very nice. I didn’t get to do it this week though coz my friends and I had coffee a bit earlier and then we talked and talked and forgot about time.

So, my friends and I have started a routine of having lunch together on Tuesdays and coffee on Thursday nights. They are totally awesome people and they truly brighten my day(or night) and make me feel loved. It is a blessing straight from God having two brilliant ladies who love the Lord and are so kind and tender hearted.

Oh and summer officially ended, autumn set in, days have now become shorter and the night longer than it was, drizzle, wind and cold have all just descended in one big swoop. So had to do a minor shopping to equip myself.. so in with the boots and warm wear. I tell you, it was just like a major change.. and no it was not a gradual shift of the weather as it is at home. Just one day, it was summer and the next it was autumn. And Cape Town is just windy!! I was worried for all the thin people… don’t they get blown by this wind that makes me have to have a firmer grip on myself in order to walk a straight line? (laugh all you want but this is a legitimate concern)

None the less, the week ended on Sunday when I woke up late and had to do everything in a rush, got to church late, missed children’s church, it was just one of those days. But the afternoon was great. Had an excellent time with the Lord and that was refreshing.

So this week was pretty much work, work, work. With the minor events happening sporadically and having all my fun in the weekend.

choco-mint cake...don't you just wanna have a slice :)

 I baked a cake for my class (How awesome is that eh?) so, in my refugee class (which we have every Tuesday) we have established a rota that everyone in class is to bring some eats for our weekly lectures coz well it’s a 3 hour lecture and oh well, it’s just awesome! (also the fact that our class has like 11 women and 1 guy..haha… I think that is why that plan was widely accepted without a fuss) So yours truly gladly volunteered for this week and my oh my didn’t I have fun.  my friend had also volunteered so we were two and we had two cakes in class… I did the chocolate mint cake…(yes it was just as amazing as it sounds) and I am not being proud when I say everyone loved it. So yaay! (might I add just to be more truthful, I bought the cake mix and I added in the eggs and oil and did the baking)

oh and I learnt how to make the world’s best hot chocolate. A pinch of salt, half a cup of milk and half a cup of hot water, one heaped tablespoon of milo, 1 big dollop of ice-cream (I put 2) and you have yourself some yummy and very decadent... but it tastes heavenly!! All thanks to my awesome friend who taught me how to make it.

This weekend though was just packed. Friday I had my very first overnight at the student fellowship at CPUT. (and btw Friday was human rights day and it was a public holiday here in SA… goes to show how much import is put in human rights here compared to Tanzania) The overnight was just amazing! It just showed me how big God’s family really is and how there is so much to learn. Oh by the way the lesson was about faith. And you just gotta have faith in all you do inorder to please God. So no more worrying and thinking you have to have answers to all life’s problems, coz God has everything under control and as a prince or princess (that is who we are since we are the King’s children) you do not worry about whether you will have simple stuff in life while your father provides for each and everything… and more.

Saturday, stayed in and did work-ish.. and made biscuits.. they aren’t my finest creations but they are edible and people who ate them (apart from me) said they tasted good.

Sunday, went to children’s church (finally).. it was just amazing! These little precious ones just inspire me and bring me joy. I volunteered for the ‘tots’ who are 3-6 years and my oh my aren’t they the world’s cutest, smartest and most kind children! We had a little gentleman(about 4years or so) who called himself a cartoon character as his name and we didn’t know that until the mum came to pick him up and told us that wasn’t his name (fooled us all).. and we had a precious 2 year old who just a bundle of energy and couldn’t stop running, singing, jumping, and hugging everyone… if only I could carry all of that energy and channel it into my studies I would be Einstein. But truly truly, children are healing to the soul. This past week has been sort of low but being in children’s church just cured me. Just like that. Now if only I had a little bottle where I put all those rays of sunshine and open it up everytime I need…*sigh*

Then came the concert. Yes I went to a concert today actually. It was at Kristenbosch gardens which is such a beautiful place. And the concert was of Desmond and the Tutus (that’s the band’s name).. their music..rock-i think.. not sure I understood it but we did lots (a sum total of 5 minutes) of jumping and waving our hands.. but it was a beautiful experience.. being with friends, at an open air concert with lots and lots of other people, sitting in the grass with bags of crisps and sour jellies (our version of cheese and wine) and watch people dance, sing, kiss *wink* and just have fun. It was a beautiful time. now this deserves many many photos.

the gardens are just spectacular

angel's peak (popularly known as devil's peak but why on earth would i wanna call a beautiful mountain that God made, devil's peak??!!)

these aren't desmond and the tutus.. they are another band which was doing the opening... dont remember their name

the sun came out just for us :) it had been raining in the morning so this was a God send

the gardens filled up by like half way through the concert.

angel's peak covered in clouds (that's around 6ish going to 7pm)

Then I went with my friends to church. Now by now whoever is reading is like this girl is just doing too much churching. But I figured after the concert I wouldn’t really start studying so I might as well go sit for an hour and a half with other people of God in my friends’ church which is Jubilee. The message was amazing about how we are not to be stuck in a caricature of rigid people not open to change and so stuck up we can’t even relate to those surrounding us but to be like Jesus and love people where they are and draw them to Him. Which I found to be a very relevant talk and the preacher was so cool about it. Also I got a reminder about a book I am to write that I should get back to it. So y’all can prod me if it doesn’t come out by the end of this year. also, i learnt about this amazing ministry that is being done by the church. its called 'Beauty for Ashes'. it helps women offenders and ex-offenders and has half-way houses for them when they leave prison. the testimonies i heard could make you cry and thank God for this woman who decided to make a difference. i encourage all my readers (whoever you are) just to log on to http://www.bfa-ministry.org/ and if please pray for these ladies and all who are running the program, donate money and tell someone else about it. It begins with you.

Then we went out for sushi! Yaay.. that was on our bucket list (yes my friends and I do have a bucket list) since I had never eaten sushi before (and yes.. don’t gape… I just hadn’t). my overall view.. loved the prawns one.. with honey ginger and soy sauce.. though we had a salmon one… eish.. that tasted not so good for my taste buds. But yes! Now we can tick that off the bucket list. I just love having my friends… they transform the boring me into a social butterfly.. lets hope my books don’t hear that.

see how delish those look? the ones to the right are the prawns covered in cream.. decadent

Other than that, it is now raining and it is cold. Im not moaning or complaining (otherwise I will be doing that all through to September) it’s a perfect time to switch on my heater, drink coffee and get cracking on my books! I’ve got a test on Tuesday!

Byebye!!

Birthday, Dinner & Mzolis ... the Fun never ends

You guys I don’t even know how to describe how guilty I feel right now. The amount of fun I am having should be declared sinful for a person doing masters in Law.

*sigh* oh well… what can you do when life keeps throwing you these really nice moments? Swing at them with a bat? Not me! I grab them with both hands….hoping in the process I am not letting go of something more important.

None the less, today has been just totally cool! So, perhaps a brief background to today’s event is in order. On Monday was my birthday. And no, I won’t say how old I am. My Tanzanian friends had thrown me a pre-birthday surprise party complete with a cake and singing on Sunday. So sweet it was. 

cake no 1.... scrumptious chocolate cake

Monday, I had lunch with 2 of my friends and since I had taken the remainder of the birthday cake to school, my time in the library (yes I went to the library on my birthday) was spent rotating dishing out pieces, receiving hugs, prayers, kisses and random gifts. In the evening, I decided that a woman cannot claim to be emancipated if she still expects some things to be handed to her, so I went out, bought myself a bouquet of flowers... they are so beautiful they could make you cry.

see how they light the room.... you gotta love them

And a second cake. You may ask why buy another cake? See, my philosophy is that birthdays are meant to be celebrated with all your loved ones and show kindness in a way to thank God for the gift of life. So the second cake (red velvet…yummy) was cut up and personally delivered to all 9 of my kitchen mates and my other friends who had missed the first cake.

It is such a blessing to give than receive. However as we all know when you give you receive; well I got myself more gifts, prayers, hugs, smiles, blessings and well wishes. And by the end of the day I had had a full day. I just had to thank God for the day and pop into my bed with a nice movie. Surely, I had had a good birthday.

cake no 2... was in the process of cutting... right before spreading the love

Now in the course of the day (Monday still) while in the library I remembered we were to have an election for a new postgraduate law student council. So naturally curious I wanted to see who was in and how I could utilise the council to help me during my short stay at UCT. So when I went you can imagine my surprise to find only 2 people there. Apparently, students had not bothered to pitch up or nominate themselves for posts. So, after being convinced that serving students was not a bad idea and neither would it take so much of my time, I decided to volunteer and therefore was elected to become the new vice chairperson. Funny eh? How a birthday can turn into something else. So here I am, sporting a new title with responsibilities I know not of, with a dissertation and assignments and readings pending, and a booming social life.

Thursday was a great day. One of my friends who is now officially my twin by virtue of the fact that we are too similar in our ways and she is just an amazing person, had invited myself and 5 or so other ladies for dinner at her parents… oooh.. The pizza was good! The talk was even better! Got to know one very passionate lady who lives and breathes for women and getting them out of abusive relationships. Also got to relate to other assertive lawyer women about our expectations of men… I tell you, men beware! And when we do get married, those men who we marry will have deserved an Oscar. Woooohh…. I’m not sure if I pity these men or envy them...hahaha. Oh and I got a treat in form of a novel… i'm in heaven.

So as the new council, our first event was a barbecue normally called a ‘braai’ here and the very famous place for this is Mzolis.  Mzolis is in an area I would never advice anyone to go alone. Very interesting looking place with groups of interesting people hanging around. Even the locals themselves tell you that you can’t go alone and hold on to your belongings while you are there. But still it is the best barbecue place in Cape Town (or so I’ve heard) and so you just HAVE to go there.

they stamp you when you enter Mzolis... straaange!! they just grab hold of you and stamp you... what if you have like a skin irritation with the ink?

So that was where we took the law postgraduate students today. It gave the word fun a different meaning. (Oh and I need to get another word for fun... I am overusing it) we ate, talked, laughed, made friends, got volunteers to help out with future events, ate and ate lots and lots of finger-licking, tongue biting barbecued meat! Oh and of course we danced! I am starting to like South African music... no words, just upbeat rhythm… just makes you do a jiggy…. Those who weren’t joining me in shaking our booties were nodding and dancing in their chairs. Fun! Oh and I think I am getting better at this dancing thing. I have realised when you are bold and you smile, whatever you do is somehow validated.

see my point! meat meat and more meat! people even took doggy bags :) ofcourse that included yours truly

This evening people are going out. But that is where I put my foot down. Night life is scary and I am exhausted. Tomorrow is church and I will be hosting friends over for lunch. And since I slept at 5 in the morning, I need to catch some rest and get some work done as well. 

P.s... I wrote an article in the Citizen (Thank you Joe!!) about my mum… I would so love it if someone scanned it for me and posted it?

Big up to all the women in my life. I respect and love you. Happy women’s day!!!

now this was just epic. the costumes! this was right outside Mzolis... these 3 clad guys just had me astounded. i dont know what tribe or culture.. but they move in unison, dont speak , look serious with their club like sticks (reminds me of that movie of gwara gwara) and looking very much as if they own the place...!

Camps Bay

So before I make myself too comfortable and eventually sleep after what has been an eventful weekend so far, I ought to write…. Here goes

So today was f-u-n! well the afternoon part that is...pictures coming up soon..

Morning was class, and I got a rude awakening as to the amount of work that I need to get done in a short span of time and the expectations that form the bar that I should meet and exceed in my dissertation. It was enlightening and scary at the same time.

None the less, today’s entry is mainly about the afternoon. But it won’t be understandable if I don’t start from last night.

See, I attend a students’ fellowship at  nearby university (Cape Peninsula  University of Technology) and we meet on Fridays from 5:30 to 8:30. Works perfectly for me and it is a great place to experience and share God’s love and His Presence. None the less, the fellowship had organised an outing to the beach for this (Saturday) day. We were supposed to leave at 9am and return at 4pm.

Well since I had a lecture in the morning, I decided I could catch up with them sometime in the afternoon after I got done. So I asked my friend if she’d like to come with me to the do. She said yes and asked whether we could get other guys too. And ofcourse my mantra where outing are concerned is ‘The more there are, the better’

So after the lecture about dissertation writing, my friend ******** who is the best organiser and administrator I know, got our other friends (11 in total) and we set off.

It was exciting from the word go… we had 7 Kenyans, 1 Zimbabwean, 1 German, 1 South African and yours truly… (the reason as to why I am particular about the diversity is that with the numbers, you can see what language was being used the most but also that we got to hear so many dif

a photo from the road... you can see the harbor yonder

ferent things from every one)... Since now we were too many of us, I planned that we should go to the Fellowship’s outing and say hi to everyone and then set off to the beach.

Before I run off with the story of how the beach was just amazing and all that, I must say a thing or two about us going to say hi to the fellowship…. At first it was awkward seeing as I had come with 10 people none of whom knew what was going on (they just thought we were going to the beach straight away) and had taken them to a gathering who only 1 person knew I was coming with an army and who already had their own program going on. Well, u can imagine… there were like 3 minutes of frantic deliberations between the leaders of the fellowship of what to do, could they interrupt the program for a few minutes, what were they supposed to do with us etc. etc… however in the end, it was decided that we just say hi and we leave… so after those 3 minutes (which felt like an eternity) we went to the front and those guys of the fellowship just loved us.. they made us feel so welcome and gave us hugs, smiles, cheers, and were so exuberant until my friends who had started feeling abandoned and weird just thawed and felt very welcome.. I personally loved it. It just proved to me that God’s family is a large one with open arms for everyone and just as soon as you decide to step into them… aaahhh… it’s like your mum has just enfolded you in her arms. You are home.

sadly i could capture the reality of the rocks which we had to climb over...lol.. but you can see how beautiful the place is

Anyway... so off to the beach we went… it was exciting! One of the girls decided we should take a ‘short cut’ to the beach instead of going through the main road… at first that seemed like a good idea but after one of us fell, and we all got drenched by the crashing waves that were hitting the rocks we were trying so hard to climb… we kept asking ourselves.. ‘whose brilliant idea was this anyway?’ lol… some of us who were lazy and unfit (yours truly ;) ) had to have some help from the guys pulling us up so to as to get on the rocks. We had to watch out for shards of glass and also just resign ourselves that we were going to have an uncalled for shower despite the fact that we weren’t dressed for it. But it was just fuuuunn. Btw that beach was Camps Bay

As for places to eat, remember we hadn’t had lunch and it was 1500hrs, we started looking for places to eat. Now Camps Bay is an area where food (and everything really) is generally expensive… seeing as it is a beautiful (and posh) place to be. We went to the first place and food was averaging R100 (around $10). For our German friend, this wasn’t expensive… but as for me where at home eating in a normal restaurant, good food goes for Tshs 4500 ($3), this was exorbitant! Seemed like the other guys agreed with me and we were trying to explain to the waiter of that place whether they had ‘student friendly prices’.. haha… you should have seen his face… the answer he gave us is ‘You are at camps bay!’ looool..  so off we trudged on… hoping to find a cheaper place.. and so we did.! ‘Kauai’ serves excellent wraps and sandwiches for R36.90 to R56 which is a far cry from the fancy place we had tried earlier… after eating and a healthy debate about politics, marriage, homosexuality and polygamy which something that only lawyers can do (i.e. talk all at once, and loudly, and about everything and anything without really putting feelings into it although each making their case passionately) we left..

Now, something I have noticed in town is the road-shows that happen… kids and adults do dancing (complete with costumes and all) and sing and play street football and all… all by the side of the road…and the rest of us tourists gape, at times join in and of course take loads of photos… so we saw one of those today.. a  group of ten or so young kids ranging from 10 to 5 years were dancing, clad with green waist sarongs and chest thingi-s and a young boy was beating a drum. It was sooo riveting and stimulating I just had to go up there and shake my booty—haha.. it was fuuun! (though I do worry how much of my dignity I left there by the side of the road)..

Yhor (that is an expression people here use a lot to mean absolutely anything) just thinking about it makes me do a little dance.. haha… Today was just great! Can’t wait for next weekend!!!

oh and p.s.. we saw a wedding on our way out! the bride in a beautiful blue dress!