SA: My Digs (the Princess)

I could not stay in the dorm for the duration of my stay in Johannesburg, so after the conference ended, I moved around the corner to a fancy-schmancy hotel. With a currency exchange rate of 1 dollar to 10 Rand, it was actually affordable on my student budget. Plus, I had not been able to find anything else in the neighborhood of Parktown, dominated as it is by Wits University, and I had not trusted the public transit options to move to a different part of the city. The breakfast buffet was not too expensive, and I learned only after my arrival that the hotel’s shuttle bus wasn’t included, as one expects in North
American hotels. Lunch and dinner I scrounged from various places.

My room was in the pool house. Unfortunately, I was visiting during Johannesburg's one week of spring, so the weather really wasn’t warm enough for swimming until my very last day. The chic digs didn't keep me from washing my laundry in the sick and hanging in on the railing, though! Built in 1896, the main house was at one time the home of Lord Alfred Milner (1854-1925), Governor of the Cape Colony. Parts of the mansion have been renovated, but others are under protection for their historic architecture. The grounds are beautifully decorated with fountains and sculpture.

Like yesterday's post, the food photo for this post is also from breakfast. I had something different every morning, beginning with a German repast of yogurt, muesli, fruit, and bread with toppings. One day, I tried a traditional British meal: baked beans, grilled tomatoes, creamed spinach, and kippers (smoked salmon). I skipped the fried egg and sausage, but it was still too savory a morning meal for my tastes.

SA: My Digs (the Pauper)

I stayed in two very different places during my Johannesburg trip, which I've designated "pauper" and "princess." Here is the first of the two. For the conference, I rented an efficiency dorm room in a gated university compound. My building was named “Stimela” for the train that brought blue-collar workers from around southern Africa to work in the diamond and coal mines. It was a short walk from the conference venue, and several of us graduate-student types trekked over together morning and night.

The kitchen came stocked with pots, dishes, and utensils (mostly one of each). On the counter you can see my new blue gel heat/cold pack, which I was able to boil on the stove and re-use on my aching back. The bed had wool blankets on it, which I needed the first couple of nights, because I couldn’t figure out how to work the room heater under the window.

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you are probably familiar with my fascination with everyday technology. This is what a wall outlet and plug look like. I had done a little research before my trip and learned that South Africa uses M-type plugs. At the airport in New York, I tried to purchase an adapter but was told my “universal” adapter would work. It didn’t. So on my shopping excursion the first day I made sure to find one at a convenience store.

This was breakfast every morning: mango juice, yogurt with strawberries, a hard-boiled egg, and a wheaty roll. I had bought a small jar of Marmite to wet the roll, figuring it was an authentic local food. Spreading it before I tasted it was, as a friend would say, a poor life choice. What a vile, wretched, smelly “food” product! It was so gross that I had to scrape it off the roll in the picture and dunk the bread in the yogurt the other mornings. I don’t know how anybody can stand the stuff. I left the jar in the cupboard, hoping the cleaning lady would want it. Blech!

SA: The Conference

Editor's Note: This is the second in a series of posts about my trip to South Africa. You can find the first one here.


The organizers of the conference I attended at Wits University are trying to develop infrastructure for the field of history of medicine in southern Africa. The conference drew an international group of participants, most of whom work on African topics, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, cancer, hospitals, and traditional healers. The keynotes were outstanding and many of the papers excellent. My favorite was from an American graduate student in public health, who pointed out that epidemiologists studying HIV in South Africa tended to import population categories from North America and Europe, namely “men who have sex with men” (MSM). However, that label is not used among the general population there and does not fit their actual behavioral patterns, so he was urging the epidemiology community to re-examine its terminology. I thought it was a great example of the practical usefulness of the humanities to the medical sciences.
 
“Wits” is the recently shortened moniker for Witwatersrand University, the most prestigious institute of higher education in South Africa. Its original Afrikaans name reveals that it was once a university for whites. Today its student body is racially mixed, the professoriate less so, reflecting a generational gap in the training of non-white scholars and a distrust of historically white institutions. Indeed, at the planning meeting the day after the conference, there were no black Africans and only a single Indian, a genial psychiatrist who sat next to me. He and I talked about integrating more exposure to medical humanities at all stages of medical training and practice. In South Africa, they have a universal curriculum, so this group just needs to find a way to made it on the schedule. Unfortunately, there is talk of decreasing the course length from 5 to 4 years. In the US, every medical humanities program must be tailored to each medical school, so there is more academic freedom but less transferability.

Exploring the campus on my first day; Hillbrow Tower in the background.

Since food and nutrition are hot topics, my panel was scheduled for the main conference room and was video taped. A third panelist had had to give her paper early and leave for the States again, so our panel of two started a half hour later than advertised. That was good, because by the third day of the conference, people were straggling in on the mornings. Nevertheless, we had a good crowd. I thought it went quite well, although most of the questions were directed to the other speaker, an anthropologist working through a new way of thinking about food and digestion.

Gorgeous view, back-lit photo

One particularly nice feature of this conference was the organizers’ efforts to expose us to local culture. One night we attended the close of an exhibition at the Origins Centre of art by Colin Richards (1954-2012). Richard's unwitting participation (as an anatomical illustrator) in the cover-up of the highly suspicious death of Steve Biko in 1977 while in police custody profoundly changed him, really opened his eyes to the politics of art under apartheid. He did beautiful and sometimes quite critical work until a fall cut short his prolific life. The conference attendees had fancy hors d’ourves while the director of the institute interviewed his wife, Penny Siopis, who had put together the exhibition and is herself an accomplished artist.

The next night dinner was held in the Adler Museum of Medicine at the medical school. It had a thorough exhibition on the history of HIV/AIDS as well as artwork inspired by the epidemic. There were also more traditional objects, like a doctor’s kit, scalpels, and an iron lung. Most of that was cleared away for all our tables—and a Japanese xylophone player.* Above on the left you can see some of the display cases, in the background the musician, and to the right the tables filling the museum. They fed us well in general, but the formal dinner was particularly excellent: in addition to salad and dessert, the main course was salmon and asparagus on mashed potatoes. Unfortunately, on account of me cooking for myself and eating the rest of my meals at the conference, I didn’t get to experience much quintessential South African cuisine the first few days.


Several of us went out for drinks after the conference ended; I finished off someone’s thin-crust pizza (lead photo). Dear Husband wants to know why I won’t eat pizza in the Northern Hemisphere. Maybe he has to get me drunk first? Ha--good luck with that!


* If anyone could tell me the correct name for this musical instrument, I'd be much obliged.

SA: To South Africa and Back

Editor’s Note: The fall semester really got away from me this year. Between traveling, writing deadlines, committee work, auditing an East Asian history of science course, and recovering from all those things, I never found the time to write about my week-long conference and sightseeing trip to Johannesburg, South Africa, in early September. Finding some time over the holidays (between editing Chapters 2 and 3 of my dissertation) I have finally composed a series of posts designated SA in the title. They are back-dated to appear on the blog when they “should” have been published, but I will still receive any comments you leave.

One of the more sensational details about my trip to South Africa was my travel schedule. On the hottest day of the summer, we drove four hours to the airport--without air conditioning. The ride was made marginally more tolerable with a Sherlock Holmes story or two. Having dropped off a friend to help his brother move, and unable to tolerate the thought of more traffic, Dear Husband and I left the car and took the lightrail the rest of the way to the airport. We had hoped to eat dinner together, but there was nothing on the near side of security, so we said our good-byes. On the other side I bought dinner (and helped a German-speaking traveler!)…and talked to my father on the phone for an hour while rain delayed our departure. Three hours later, the plane finally took off. I got to New York at midnight, took a cab over to Queens, and crashed for the night. There was evening and there was morning, the first travel day.

Young and Old Nelson Mandela
Mural at Freedom Square, Soweto

The next morning, after breakfast and on my way to the hotel shuttle, I pulled a muscle in my back. It was so bad that I could hardly stand at first. I swallowed some pain killers and with the help of the shuttle driver made it to the airport, where I was handed over to the wheelchair brigade. I just didn’t think I could handle a suitcase, my heavy backpack, and taking off my shoes. And yet, when we arrived at security and they found out I was (technically) ambulatory, the TSA officers asked me to stand in one of those scanners! I always opt-out on principle, but even if I didn’t, I do not think I could have gotten my arms over my head.

Past security, I asked the the guy pushing me to stop so I could purchase a heating pad from a massage stand. It was one of those snap-activated gel packs that I could wear under my shirt once I boarded. I was the first one on the airplane, got help stowing my bags, and then settled in for a looong flight with my new heating pad. You see, there are two options for getting to Johannesburg: one is a “direct” flight from Washington DC through Dakar, Senegal, the other a 15-hour flight direct from NYC. Other graduate students warned me away from the former, however, since something could always go wrong once on the ground, so I opted for the former. The ticket even turned out to be slightly cheaper.

You might think a 15-hour flight would be intolerable, but I did not find it so. When flying to Europe, it always seems that by the time the plane has ascended, the stewards have served dinner, and you’ve finished your movie and are ready to sleep, there are only a few short hours until they wake everyone up for “breakfast” at 4-fricking-30 in the morning. I’m forever sleeping through breakfast and having to ask for a cup of orange juice while I inhale my yogurt and croissant during descent.

With such a long flight, there was plenty of time for watching a couple of movies, doing some work on my laptop, and getting a good night’s sleep. Well, it would have been a good sleep if my back hadn’t seized up when I changed position every couple of hours. The greater danger than lack of sleep though was dehydration. That’s a long time to be breathing filtered air and to have one’s skin exposed to it. So the stewardesses came by twice with bottled water. I took but didn’t drink it, not wanting to have to get up to pee on account of my back. I stayed in my seat the whole time, and my back felt better for the rest, but I was dry as a leaf and had to drink extra water once on the ground again. There was evening and there was morning, the second travel day.

At O.R. Tampo International Airport*, wheelchair services dropped me off at the Gautrain station. The Gautrain (pronounced “How-Train”)--named for the province of Gauteng ("How-teng")--is the “lightrail” that runs from the airport to Johannesburg and the capital of Praetoria. From the picture you can see why it reminded me of the newer German S-Bahn trains. Because the trains to other parts of the country, like Cape Town, have a reputation for not being safe, I stayed close to Jo-burg.

* Oliver Tambo was Nelson Mandela’s law partner, a fellow freedom fighter, and long-time president of the African National Congress.

I had planned to take a Gautrain Bus to my dorm, but it turned out those don’t run on weekends. Not entirely sure where I was going, I asked a tourist bus operator for instructions. He pointed me in the direction of the main campus, suggested I ask again at a shop or restaurant, and cautioned me not to talk to men on the streets at all. I asked at several different places, finally coming across a security guard who was also a student, who used his badge to let me onto the campus.** I asked around again to find the campus shuttle that would take me to the dorms. It worked like a charm, depositing me in front of another gated compound. Once I had gotten settled in, I took another shuttle to a local mall for groceries and other things. There was evening and there was morning, the third travel day.

** Most properties in Johannesburg are enclosed with fences. This is a relic of the crime wave in the 1980s and 1990s. Locals assure me it has abated, but nevertheless I had been warned to leave my best jewelry (i.e. diamond engagement ring) at home. Fences are not common in other parts of the country.

I’ll tell you about flying back in this post, too, since there only thing to say is that the return trip was less comfortable, since it required a red-eye flight from Johannesburg to Frankfurt am Main. The flipping airline never turned the lights out, so it was difficult to sleep, even with a sleeping mask. I generally don’t have too many problems with jetlag going from Europe to North America, but that is because I am used to waking up from a good night’s sleep in Germany and then flying all day. Not so much this time. However, I did manage to watch both of the new Star Trek movies and an original Star Trek episode, so at least I was in a good mood for all my tiredness. DH met me at the airport, and we drove home to conclude another two-day travel adventure.

Critical Game Analysis

In this, the first and last edition of Graduate Students Who Have Too Much Time on Their Hands, I thought I'd apply skills I've acquired graduate school--like critical race theory, post-colonial studies, and feminist theory--to some of the games Dear Husband and I like to play when we can scrounge up a free hour and some friends. I call it Critical Game Analysis (CGA).

Editor's note: Don't take this (too) seriously--I'm mostly poking fun at how graduate education can warp the minds of the young and impressionable. (Have I ever told you about my spontaneous analysis of artificial Christmas trees and "nature" during my first winter break in grad school--no? Phew!)

We're playing here after a cookout to celebrate AC and JW's
wedding. It was the first time JW had played, and she
whooped us all!

First up is "Mexican Train" dominoes, a favorite after-dinner past time in my family with a racist name. To play the game, each person tries to get rid of their dominoes on their own personal train; if someone can't play (even after drawing from the bone pile), then his/her train is "open" for other players to add to. The "wild card" in this game is a train that's always open...it's a free ride...it's the "Mexican train"--get it?

DH and MK^2 kindly model my second, crushing victory
that night. I only had the single 2x2 green tile left in my hand.

Next up, Blokus, a present from Dear Husband's parents: It's kind of like a two-dimensional game of Tetris for up to four players and with more complicated spatial rules. Each player tries to use his or her set of tiles to take up as much space on the board as possible, preferably while blocking the other players' progress. It's like the Race for Africa for your dinner table: suitable for teaching the basics of settler colonialism to kids ages 8 and up! Once you've put your pieces down, defend encroachments on "your land"; after all, it was just a blank gray board when you got there...



Finally, there's Jenga, a perfect model of patriarchy. I mean come on, have you ever seen a more phallic game design? It just keeps getting taller/longer and--as radical feminist theory would suggest--more riddled with holes and structural weakness until, at last, the whole edifice comes crashing down on itself.

To what other games shall we apply Critical Game Analysis? Imagine the Critical Game Analysis possibilities of the game Othello--or a queer theory approach to Chutes and Ladders! I am thinking of starting a quarterly journal, or at the very least an annual conference for the "study" of this vibrant and vital field...

Dissertation 1.0

Today I delivered the first version of Dissertation 1.0! At 307 pages, it is the longest piece of writing I have created myself. My undergraduate honors thesis clocked in at 5 chapters and 125 pages, while our book, Individual and Collective Memory Consolidation, is as long as the diss, but there were four of us. This model of The Politics of the Table: Nutrition and the Telescopic Body in Saxon Germany, 1890-1935 comes with an introduction, five chapters, and two introductory essays. Front matter (abstract, acknowledgements, preface, and table of contents) included free of charge. It ships without Chapter 6. If you would like to have Chapter 6, please order Dissertation 2.0, due out next March. Conclusion still in Beta.

Summer Tastes Like Citrus

Despite being in the final push to finish the first draft of my dissertation, I took a night off this week to play hostess for two friends, both graduate students. BB, TT, and Dear Husband hit it off smashingly while I was busy in the kitchen whipping up two fancy courses with a fruity, citrus theme.

The entree was a recipe from a college suitie, Treasure Island Chicken. She wrote it for 4 chicken breasts, but I wanted to use the whole chicken I had. You will also need one can of pineapple slices. For the sauce: 1 1/2 cup pineapple/orange juice, 1/4 cup butter, 3 tbsp flour, 3 tbsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 dry mustard, 1/8 tsp ginger. I just use bottled spicy mustard. The cinnamon is what makes it smell delicious while it's cooking!

The bottom of the pan is yellow from the pineapple
and lightly concealed sauce. So good!

Preheat oven to 375F (or 400F for a whole bird--from this one's blackened knees, you can see that 425F was evidently too high). Line a baking dish with pineapple slices, distorting them slightly to get as many in as possible. Place chicken on top, skin side up. Butter and salt the skin if you like. Bake (uncovered) about 30 minutes, or until juices are nearly dried.

Meanwhile, combine all the sauce ingredients in a pot over low heat, stirring assiduously to prevent clumping. When sauce is thick and smooth, smother the chicken with it, then lick your fingers. Wash your hands! Now decorate the chicken with any remaining pineapple slices and put back in oven for at least 30 minutes. Check carefully that the meat is cooked through before serving it.

Just add green salad. Pic from BB.

Treasure Island Chicken is good with ribbon noodles, but I served it with brown rice boiled with a little saffron and some frozen peas (add those near the end). This was the second time we tried this very colorful side dish, which I will claim to have invented until someone proves me wrong. Just try to time it so that the rice finishes while the chicken is resting, or else the peas will discolor.

For dessert we had watermelon cucumber slushies made with coconut water and lime juice and garnished with fresh mint. YUM! These would be good with a liquor of your choice; Thug Kitchen suggests substituting part of the water for vodka "if you want to take tomorrow off too." Wink, wink.

General hilarity courtesy photographer BB.

Frau Doktor Doctor wants to know what you're whipping up in the kitchen to extend the summer just a little longer?