Neighbourgoods Market & Museum Africa

 Happy March, everyone! 

To open today's post, I thought I'd share a photo of my favorite lemon growing outside the kitchen window. It's a little funky with it's own style, and the setting sun cast fun shadows on its quirky shape. 

Jonah's off on another field trip in the Eastern Cape, so I offered to host a visiting American grad student for a couple weeks. Julie, her supervisor (who is staying at a local B&B in Melville), and I went down to Braamie to take in the Neighbourgood's Market scene. We've mentioned this place once or twice in our previous posts, but it changes frequently, so it's worth mentioning again. 

The egg's benedict with bacon looked so tasty today. I was surprised to find that instead of the normal English muffin, they swapped it out with a hash brown. Well played, Benedict's!

This is a new installment from when we first started visiting. I hope this stall hangs around for a while.

Jonah and I tend to follow this guy and his wife around various Joburg markets. The Polish Meat Guy is not to be missed, the kielbasa is nothing short of delicious.

Instead of the usual African vegetarian dishes table, spices abound! From your ever-popular Biltong Spice to the almost-to-hard-to-pass-up cardamom pods. Heaven in bags. I'm currently kicking myself for not stocking up.

Cumin, Garam Masala, and Biltong Spice, oh my!

Here's a view of the Market just getting started. We arrived just as the bell rang to let the anxious hipsters & yupsters rush to get their "flat whites with warm milk, no sugar, extra foam, please."...Yep, as soon as that bell rang, I was also striding to get in line for a strong cuppa Joe.

Champagne glasses were all set up with bright red raspberries, just asking to be enjoyed with a slimy oyster!

The tart table was almost too much to pass by. These are my favorite kinds of tarts and are next on my 'to-bake' list. 

How fun are these little tagines?! Each one offers different type of hummus. I should have taken a photo of the tagines and the purveyor; his glasses were super trippy.

Only at Neighbourgood's can you find the Ultimate of Wooden Frame Sunglasses. 

Amanda, the sunglasses on display were calling you.

After jolling around the Market, Julie's advisor was keen to check out a photography exhibit currently on view at Museum Africa. So we hopped into the mighty Getz and set off across the Nelson Mandela Bridge. The exhibit, Rise & Fall of Apartheid, was moving and presented many images that I still have to work to wrap my mind around. It is truly hard to believe that such a beautiful and generally happy place was riddled with turmoil within my lifetime.

The building is essentially a large warehouse located in Newtown. The vast open space consisted of four floors to explore. Some of my favorite exhibits I neglected to get photos of, but displayed clippings from recent newspapers, often featuring sangomas and the Tokoloshe. They provided a bit of comic relief after a more sombre glimpse into South Africa's history.

Welcome to Lion Country. This exhibit struck me as odd. First because it's a bar. In a museum. And two, it's not really jiving with the flow of things. It was a replica of a bar that used to be in Joburg. According to SAB WoB (in a previous post), there were over 200 bars in Joburg's CBD. Apparently, this was one of them. Perhaps it was there to prepare you for the sobering journey you were about to take.

This exhibit was excellent. The photographs caught the expressions, the feelings, and the trials of that time in South Africa's history. The majority of the photographers were South African, and many of the photographs depicted every day life. 

Here's a brief example of the exhibit. The photographs were arranged in rows along walls in a large open room with a number of free-standing walls. It didn't feel right to take lots of photos, so instead, I wandered around for a couple of hours learning more about South African history. Throughout the exhibit, different sections portrayed different decades. In these sections, timelines were listed out, which was extremely useful to contextualize the history within what I know about US history. It really started to catch me when we got to the 90's because I was cognizant of reality by that time in my life. 

Wits was one of the first Universities in South Africa to be an open institution with a policy of non-discrimination. The Wits community protested strongly when the government enacted the Extension of the Education Act in 1959, which forced university apartheid. Wits worked to maintain its open policy in the face of severe consequences. These photos were taken during those protests and demonstrations on our campus. Despite the irritations I feel when dealing with some things at Wits, these photos, among a number of others, made me proud to be a 'Witsie'.