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Archives for January 2010

Johannesburg, Oh Jozi

Jan 20, 2010 by Ted Botha 1 Comment

The City in a Rosier Moment

Funny that my last entry was about the devastation in Haiti. Today I got an email about the devastation of Johannesburg. It was sent to me by someone who really seems to have an axe to grind. She lives in Johannesburg but she sees the need to send a mass email containing a Powerpoint presentation on how disgusting Johannesburg looks. The title is something like “And This City is Hosting the 2010 Soccer?” and the photographs, all fuzzy-looking things that could have been taken a decade ago, are a hodgepodge of decay in Yeoville, downtown, and Braamfontein.

How nuts is that? If you hate your city so much, if you have such a huge grudge, why not just leave? Why spend all your time creating a Powerpoint presentation saying how awful it’s become? Why not spend that time doing something constructive instead, like fixing it up? Talk about wasted energy.

As a major fan of Johannesburg, I always feel personally insulted by these assaults. I have spent the better part of my life abroad telling people that Johannesburg/Joburg/Whatever It’s Called Today is one of the most overlooked attractions in South Africa. Some people might call that wasted energy, but I honestly don’t believe anything good comes of bad vibes, bad intentions, and badmouthing.

It often astounds me that the Johannesburg publicity association, if there is such a thing, doesn’t do something about its image. Where are the I LOVE JOBURG T-shirts? Where is the I HEART JOZI campaign? Those are small things, but they could do so much. Remember, in the 1970s and 1980s there were many parts of New York City people wouldn’t go to, it was so crime-ridden. Graffiti covered the subway cars. People were so depressed about the place, it’s hard to imagine today.

When you have your own residents sending out sabotage emails like the one I got, it’s time someone in the city council did something to tell the world that Johanesburg might have its problems, but it’s nothing that cannot be fixed.

Filed Under: New York Blog Tagged With: johannesburg, publicity, travel

My Haiti Story

Jan 15, 2010 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

Sans Souci Palace, Cap Haitien

Sans Souci Palace, Cap Haitien

I went to Haiti about eight years ago for Conde Nast Traveler magazine. Yes, I was pretty surprised about that too. Haiti has never been a glossy-story kind of place. In fact, the only tourism this country ever seemed to get in the past few decades was visits by cruise ships that anchored off a small secluded and fenced-off beach in the north, where visitors couldn’t spot a town or a road. The only Haiti they saw was a dozen palm trees and a few women selling trinkets on the sand. But the feature I was meant to be working on wasn’t about gloss but about the various foreign communities that had settled in the Caribbean over the centuries. Some Poles, believe it or not, had come to Haiti in the 18th Century and had stayed on. I also had to visit the Jews who fled to the Dominican Republic during WW2.

Hotel Oloffson

Hotel Oloffson

I couldn’t wait to get to Haiti. This was the land of voodoo and Papa Doc Duvalier and where Graham Greene had written The Comedians, based on his stay at the legendary Hotel Oloffson. But it didn’t take me long to see that Haiti even eight years ago was screwed. And that’s a nice way of putting it.

I’ve traveled to many parts of Africa, but I had never seen such utter degradation and unhappiness. The streets of Port au Prince – even though there were some terrific buildings behind the decrepitude – were beyond terrible, and those of Cap Haitien in the north were even worse. I felt more unsafe walking in these cities than I have anywhere else. The people, God bless them, were possibly the most unfriendly I’d ever met.

On the trip north (one very scary flight in a battered plane, where some of the passengers carried on talking on their cell phones during take-off and for a long while thereafter), we flew low enough to see the terrain below. Except there wasn’t any terrain. The trees were virtually nonexistent, and the hills and mountains had, after countless rains, been torn away and eroded. It was just the saddest place I’d ever seen.

On the drive to Sans Souci Palace outside Cap Haitien, my taxi driver told me he wasn’t going to vote in the upcoming election because his vote didn’t matter. It was all so pointless, life in this place. And then we arrived at San Souci, a gorgeous structure you might have found in Europe, built in the 19th Century by local monarch King Henri I. Above it was the magnificent Citadel. There were all kinds of fabulous canals and tunnels linking them once upon a time, but not long after King Henri’s death the lands were divided up, revolutionaries fomented violence, and civilians saw the island slip and slide all the way down until they thought there was no further to go. The king himself committed suicide, as did his heir, and in 1842 both palace and Citadel were severely damaged by an earthquake.

Now it’s taken yet another tragedy for the world to focus its attention on a place that seems to have been built on tragedy. If anyone is orchestrating all of this – the slew of catastrophes that have befallen this place for the last two centuries – they have a very strange sense of humor.

Filed Under: New York Blog Tagged With: cap haitien, citadel, graham greene, port au prince, sans souci, the comedians

Chez Ted

Jan 13, 2010 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

My melktert Looked As Good

My Melktert Looked As Good

Every now and then we expats in New York get it into our heads to not only cook but to cook South African. In a city where people eat out rather than in – everyone has a drawerful of takeout menus – cooking for yourself (let alone for others) is a major happening. Last time I had people over, I decided to give them a taste of boerekos. They brought the Mulderbosch and the Goats do Roam, both of which are plentiful here, and I gave them bobotie and Malva pudding. I mentioned this to a friend in Cape Town, who reckoned snidely that South Africa doesn’t have a cuisine and anyone who puts raisins in mincemeat is daft. Well, I must tell you the guests couldn’t get enough of either dish. This time I treated a different batch of people to tomato bredie and milktart/melktert. After I’d figured out where to get lamb knuckle in New York (and what to call it – shank), I was away. The guests brought Thelema and, yes, more Goats do Roam (the best-known South African wine around), and by the time the evening was over there wasn’t a morsel left. So much for bland South African food! If I had any sense, I’d start a restaurant specializing in Cape Malay/Boer food in the heart of Soho. In the meantime, everyone will have to come to Chez Ted. Lekker eet!

Filed Under: New York Blog Tagged With: bredie, goats do roam, malva pudding, milk tart, mulderbosch, restaurant, takeout, thelema

The Chihuahuas Have Landed

Jan 8, 2010 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

Taco Bells Mascot

Taco Bell's Mascot

If the numbers are anything to go by, chihuahuas – a.k.a. the mascot of fast-food chain Taco Bell – are the most favorite dog in California. Or least favorite, in this case. In California’s dog shelters the mini pooch is the most prevalent breed. But in a new rescue operation, chihuahuas from those West Coast shelters are being shipped around the country by the ASPCA, and fifteen just landed in New York City, the perfect place for chihuahuas, the Society says, because the dogs can fit in a handbag to be toted around (even on the subway) and are perfect for small apartments. Arf!

Filed Under: New York Blog Tagged With: aspca, dog, taco bell

How Good is ‘The Good Wife’?

Jan 6, 2010 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies

Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies

Every couple of years – maybe every decade – a TV series comes along that makes you go, ‘Wow, so that’s why I bought my TV.’ Proof: The Good Wife. This CBS series stars Julianna Margulies (she of the dark hair who made her name on EW with George Clooney) as the wife of a high-level political official who has lost his job in a scandal – sleeping with a hooker – and spends most of the series in jail awaiting trial. The naughty husband is played by Chris Noth, Mr. Big in Sex and the City. Julianna, a mother of two, has to go back to work at a law firm, where she becomes involved in cases that sometimes draw her husband’s scandal into the story, but mostly  rely on fancy footwork, good storytelling, and fabulous acting, especially by Margulies, who is totally believable as a mother and wife who manages to think straight even when she has no idea what she feels for her cheating husband, and the razor-sharp, extra-sexy Kalinda (Archie Panjabi), one of the most watchable characters to come along in, well, a decade.  Watch here, and get addicted… watch?v=TM12U-vrTrQ&feature=PlayList&p=D3FD3E1D93D5795D&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12

Filed Under: New York Blog

About Ted

Ted was born in New York and grew up in Japan, South Africa, and Washington, D.C. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, and Outside. His books include Apartheid in my Rucksack, a personal account of discovering Africa as a white African; Mongo, Adventures in Trash, where he follows the people in New York City who collect what others consider garbage; and, with Jenni Baxter, The Expat Confessions, about South Africans abroad. His latest book, a nonfiction thriller about a forensic sculptor titled The Girl with the Crooked Nose, comes out in January 2012. His novel, The Animal Lover, is on Kindle. He is a swimmer and a runner, and has done his share of triathlons as well as long-distance swims in South Africa and New York’s Hudson River.

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