#Africa

Last weekend I attended the Brixton Light Festival (hereafter referred to as the BLF) for the second consecutive year. I wrote a comprehensive post about the BLF last year, so in the days leading up to this year’s event I thought maybe I wouldn’t need to write another post. Ha! I was wrong.

Regular readers of this blog know that my boyfriend, Thorsten, is an architect. You might not know that he is also an artist, and he recently created a beautiful series of prints portraying historic monuments in our home suburb of Brixton.

I’m obsessed with Joburg thrifting (see here, here, and here) and the more I shop second-hand, the more I realize it’s almost never necessary to buy new things. There are so many great places in Joburg to shop for used clothing, furniture, jewelry, shoes, housewares – everything you can imagine. The quality is usually better than buying new and the prices are cheaper, even for amazing vintage stuff, if you’ve got some patience and know where to look.

I’m struggling to figure out how to start writing this post because I’m struggling to figure out how to explain koesisters.

The koesister ranks among South Africa’s most iconic foods, right up there with biltong, boerewors, chakalaka, and milk tart. Koesisters are vaguely like donuts, just with a different shape, flavor, and texture. (So maybe not that much like donuts after all.) The koesister’s identity is further complicated by its close relationship to the koeksister – same word except with an extra k in the middle, but possibly stemming from an entirely different root – to which the koesister is similar, but different.

About a year ago, as I wandered the halls of the Turbine Art Fair, an annual fair featuring the works of emerging South African artists, I stopped short in front of some poster-sized pictures by John Phalane. The pictures portrayed maps – mostly Joburg maps – drawn in riotous rainbow colored pencil.