Ebola as a geography teaching tool
On a nonstop flight from London Heathrow to Cape Town last week, I had to sign a compulsory new form stating that I didn’t have any ebola-like symptoms, and that I would notify … er, somebody, possibly the Department of Home Affairs, though they didn’t provide any sort of literature for me to take with, […]
Mandela Day
Mandela Day has been an informal day of service here in South Africa for several years, where people are asked to contribute 67 minutes in “service to one’s fellow human” in honor of Mandela’s birthday. (One minute for each year of service he gave the country.) This is the first Mandela Day since Madiba’s death, […]
Mandela paralyzes Koppel
On the eve of Mandela Day, what more could you want than a genuine laugh with Madiba:
A story killed and resurrected
Throughout my years of freelance writing, there is one recurring situation that is genuinely tricky to prevent: the story that gets killed because the assigning editor leaves the publication. You might think that the new editor would be so busy trying to get up to speed that the last thing they’d do is kill a […]
The reporting for this story stinks
Move over, grass-fed beef. Insect-fed fish have arrived. Standing in a room of one million flies, my senses were at full alert. Each cage undulated with wriggling waves of the buggers, and the stench was powerful. Ostensibly all the insects were secured into compartments, but if even a half a percent were free, that’s a […]
Better successful than sorry
I grew up in the US, and to South Africans I sound, as I am told, “very American” (more specifically, as if I’m from the Northeast). But I have picked up some local South African/English usage, such as saying “sorry” when I’m not actually sorry at all, but want somebody to move out of my […]
Chicken stalker
For a forthcoming feature about food in Cape Town, I stalked this rooster for the better part of an hour.
Vote early, vote often
Recently, the conversation about whether journalists should vote or not came up again with some writer friends. We all voted to keep voting. The arguments I’ve read against the idea tend to hold up an idealized notion of an unbiased, neutral journalist, rather than making the case that democracy is no more valid than communism […]
Braai baby braai
With no fewer than five public holidays over the next three weeks (yep, that is one entire work week), South Africans are sure to be getting their braai (barbecue) on in a big way. It’s a distinctly local culinary tradition, and unique that it cuts across race and income groups. At my first braai invitation […]
Zakes Mda
For quite a few years, more people found my website searching for “Zakes Mda” than for any other term; this interview with him, originally published on the now-defunct Africana.com, has been cited in a number of scholarly works about Mda. I first picked up Zakes Mda’s novel She Plays With Darkness at the Grahamstown Arts […]
Hot designs out of Africa
Design Indaba always means discovery. A bunch of creative people from every imaginable field descend on Cape Town. For three days, they present talks about their projects, philosophy, and process; then local designers show their wares at an expo. As I have for several years, I covered the 2014 Indaba for Dwell’s website, first with […]
Oscar time
To say that I originally underestimated the reach of the Oscar Pistorius story would be a massive understatement. I heard the early reports on talk radio, and though I knew who he was, I didn’t realize how famous he was throughout the world.
Mandela, from Parliament and Prison
Reporting and filing two complete stories in one day is not the schedule I normally run on, but talking to people about the person who helped them clarify their purpose and vision is powerful stuff. I started out the morning visiting one of the prisons where Mandela was held–one that is still maximum security–for this […]
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