Hamilton and the Mystery Polony

I returned home after another trip to the Berg to find a mysterious package of Polony in my refridgerator. At first I suspected it may have been left by one of my recent PC volunteer houseguests.

Leanne? No probably not, doesnt go well enough with beer. Leena? A brief text message communication (“Did u leav polony n my frdge?”) revealed a serious Polony aversion on her part. And I knew Heather was ruled out since she never shops for her own food.

For those readers not familiar with this particular South African food product, allow me to provide some further information. Polony is a processed meat product similar in taste and texture to bologne. Also like bologne, its usually used to make sandwiches and is pretty much the cheapest “meat” option in the store. Technically I’d bet Polony doesn’t even require refridgeration due what in my estimation would be a near total absence of natural ingredients.

Polony is most often sold in a saugage-like roll, and for some unexplicable reason is served, grated, rather than sliced. It’s also bright pink. Sometimes Polony is used as a substitute for ham – like on a Hawaiian pizza I got once. Surprise!

After I crossed my recent houseguests off the list of potential Polony fanciers, I was momentarily baffled by the mysterious Polony deposit. Then the answer slowly crept into my mind….Hamilton.

Hamiltion is my landlady’s live-in gardner/watchman/handyman who lives in a little cottage on the corner of her property – a cottage that is sans fridge. Around Christmas last year I also kept a “chicken” in my fridge for Hamilton (it was actually a cornish hen, but these are unimportant details) because he is a very nice man and a good neighbor. He also has keys to my flat in case he has to “fix” anything while I’m at work.

Of the three different hats that Hamilton wears I would say that the gardener hat fits him the best. He’s always busily sweeping leaves and doing other garderning chores, and every day when the rubbish is collected, there’re always quite a few bags of yard waste piled outside that I assume he’s cleared away from somewhere on the property during the course of the week.

As a watchman, however, he’s slightly less effective. To any burglars he would be about as threatening as a Yorkshire terrier. Nor is he extremely vigilant. I usually have to call rather loudly several times outside of his little cottage if I want to get his attention. This is if he’s even home, since he’s often down at “The Shops” – by which he means the nearest Shoprite grocery store. Once in a while Hamilton borrows money from me before he goes to The Shops. He’s always paid me back though. I’m glad to know I can help keep him in Polony.

Handyman-ing is not his strongest suit either. He’s a bit of what could be termed nicely as a “space cadet”. About six months ago my shower stopped working, or rather slowed to a pathetic trickle. I surmised this stemmed from some sort of blockage in the pipe (I naturally imagined a gigantic cockaroach wedged in there) and Hamilton was called in by the landlady to investigate.

In the process of removing some pieces of tile, he managed to drill a hole through the drywall and into the pipe, so all of the water that should have come out of the showerhead gushed out of the wall instead, at waist level. Though this is an amusing story it didn’t make my blog at the time of the incident since back then I didn’t find the whole thing very funny.

Poor Hamilton, he felt really bad about the whole thing so I did my best not to appear extremely annoyed by the situation, although probably failed miserably. He had tried his best and he isn’t exactly qualified as a plumber – which was well known by my batty landlady – so as usual I tried to take out most of my frustration on her (see previous post “I need and old priest and a young priest”).

Anywhoo, Hamilton and I get along smashingly for the most part. Usually our conversations proceed as follows:
Hamilton: Oh, it’s HOT today.

Me: Yes, very hot.
Hamiltion: The rain, it is coming.

Me: Uh-huh. The rain is coming.

Hamilton: Ok. I am going to The Shops now.
Me: Ok. See you later.

It’s actually kind of surprising that Hamilton doesn’t ask to use my fridge more often. I guess technically he didnt Ask this time but that’s ok. I think his wife is visiting him this week (she usually stays at his other house a few hours away), so maybe he did a little extra shopping. Whatever the case Hamilton can be sure his Polony will always be safe with me.

My Boss is a Gospel Singer

My boss Dan is very involved in his church. He also enjoys listening to gospel music. I’ve been aware of this preference ever since we moved into our current offices and I’ve been able to hear his daily musical selections through our shared wall.

South African gospel does not really resemble American gospel very much. There some similar elements like singing about god and having choirs and other smaller groups of singers back-up a soloist…but for the most part the energy, harmonies and songs common to American gospel aren’t there. Also South Africn gospel isn’t in English.

What I didn’t know until recently is that Dan also moonlights as a gospel singer – he’s even part of a gospel group in his home province of Limpopo (which he visits frequently) along with his wife and three other ladies. I was even more surprised to learn that Dan is not only a part of the group – but is the lead singer – with his wife and the other ladies serving as back-up vocalists.

These new discoveries came during this week’s staff meeting when Dan announced the impending release of his self-titled (and self-recorded) gospel CD. I’ve been hearing it through the wall all week and I can honestly say its not half bad, considering it sounds alot like all of the other South African gospel recordings I’ve heard. It is a little weird though to hear him talking on the phone and then at the same time hearing his voice emanating from his computer where he plays his CD. Just a little bit more Dan than I’m used to!

Lights Out

South Africa has not quite perfected the inter-related puzzles of electricity generation and transmission. Part of the problem stems from the existence of basically only one entity, Eskom, which is responsible for both these tasks. Because its summer right now and everyone and their mother has their aircon blasting, Eskom is having trouble either generating or transmitting (probably both) enough electricity. Eskom’s status as a parastatal – a company that is partially owned and/or supported by the government – ensures that any improvements are slow in coming.

So they’ve turned to rolling power outtages, or “load shedding”, which is justified on Eskom’s website in the following terms:

“Eskom currently finds itself in a position where the demand for electricity may exceed the available supply from time to time. In order to manage the situation in the best possible way, planned supply interruptions may have to be carried out.”

During the past three weeks I, like many others in SA, have been subjected to of several of these supposedly “planned interruptions”. The best part about them is that they occur between 5-10pm, just when its starting to get dark and pretty much anything you’d be doing (other than of course sleeping) would require electricity. I understand not turning it off during working hours , but hello, what about during the middle of the night geniuses? Aren’t you people engineers!?

But no amount of load-shedding is going to solve Eskom’s tranmission problems. Pretty much every major power plant in the country is located in close proximity to Johannesburg. The power is then sent literally across the country, in two different directions, to reach the other major population centers of Cape Town and Durban. And alot can go wrong in 500-1000km.

This week’s loss in power does not seem to be a result of either poor generation or transmission, in fact I’m unsure as to the actual root cause, although I do have a theory. Here’s the scenario: I awoke last night around 2am to a loud crashing/smashing sound on the street outside, immediately followed by all the power going out. It kind of sounded like a car crash, so I assumed that some drunk had rammed into the electrical pole, and went back to sleep.

This morning when I left for work I saw the electrical pole in question laying on the ground across the street. It looked like it had just fallen over, taking with it all the electricity on the block – probably isolated to my block only as I noticed they had power on the other end of the street. There was no sign of damage anywhere on the pole from a collision with a car. There was also no charring consistent with being struck by lightning which was another possibility considering there was a bit of a rainstorm last night.

This leaves only one explanation – Ants – or more precisely unstable ground caused by ants chewing up and loosening all the soil so that the pole was no longer anchored and toppled over. As I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, KZN has serious ant issues. I think my neighborhood may actually be one gigantic anthill – there are so many of the little buggers.  Probably not the real explanantion but it at least entertained me on my way to work this morning.

But whatever the real cause of my lastest power outtage I can only hope that its resolved by the time I get home today. Leanne’s coming into Durban from her village today which is coincidentally one of the last remaining unelectrified places in the country. This can only mean that there’s drinking in my near future.

A Vegetarian’s Nightmare

I recently purchased and consumed, pretty much on my own, a rather startlingly large amount of Biltong. Which looks like this:

At least that’s how it looks while its hanging up to dry. After the meat is dried, and thus ready for consumption, it will be rendered into bite-sized pieces either by going through a sort of meat chipper or chopped using the much more fancy mini-meat guillotine.

Biltong is basically cured and dried meat, which is similar in some ways to beef jerky in the US, but in my experience it tends to be softer, chewier and less salty than jerky. Sometimes Biltong is made from beef but can also be made from kudu or deer-like South African equivalents. Pretty much any meat can be made into Biltong.

No South African shopping mall is complete without at least one “Gourmet Biltong” shop – like the one to which I was drawn to in Kimberley’s Diamond Pavillion shopping centre last month. My thought process pretty much went like this…

“I’m Hungry. What can I eat for lunch?”

“Mmmm biltong shop.”

And before I knew it I had purchased probably close to 1/4 of a pound of beef biltong, which I proceeded to carry around and eat out of an exceedingly greasy paper bag for the rest of the afternoon. Disgusting you say? Not so much in South Africa, they have a great deal of pride in their biltong and its a completely normal snack, they even hand it out on airplanes. Maybe eating that much biltong in one sitting is crossing the line, or could it just be a sign that I’ve been here too long?