#Johannesburg

Back in the olden days, I often used this blog as a vessel for my grief and sadness. I went through a lot of tangible pain in the early 2Summers years – losing a partner to addiction, among other things – and the blog was one of my coping mechanisms. (You can find those old posts under the grief hashtag – scroll back to the early ones.)

JoburgPlaces, a downtown tour company that I’ve written about many times, recently introduced a couple of different city experiences that center around the concept of migration.

The JoburgPlaces Migrant Cuisines Storytelling Dinner is an epic evening at the Thunderwalker (formerly Somerset House) on Gandhi Square, in which JoburgPlaces guide Charlie Moyo explains the history of Johannesburg in terms of the multiple and overlapping waves of migration that have been happening since the city was founded 133 years ago. The historical overview is accompanied by a series of migrant-inspired food dishes cooked up by in-house chef Princess Bulelwa Mbonambi.

I love Limpopo and I also love African craft art. So when I went to Madi a Thavha Mountain Lodge – a lodge outside Louis Trichardt in far northern Limpopo that promotes the work of Venda and Tsonga artists – I was in heaven.

From the Melville Cat:

Forgive me friends, as it has been many months since my last update. I’ve been busy. For a while I was spending most of my time outdoors in an effort to escape the insufferable badgering of the Trixie, the Midget Fluff Ball Menace. She has grown larger and her harassment progressively more tiresome.

I’d never really considered signing up for MTN Walk the Talk with 702.

Even though I knew this is one of the most iconic events in Johannesburg with 55,000 participants, and even though lots of people told me it’s great, and even though the walk starts and ends around the corner from where I live, and even though I’m awakened at 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday (every single year) by the noise from Walk the Talk anyway, it somehow never occurred to me to participate myself.