Friday of last week was another excellent food experience. It’s been awhile since Moloko (from the office) has tried to organize a welcome lunch for the 3 volcons (and yes it’s been over 1.5 months for me). We have finally settled on Friday being the date where we will head to Soweto for lunch as an office (and then not go back to the office/go back later).
After a bit of confusion in terms of who's coming back to the office or not and carpool arrangement, we finally set off for Soweto at around 12:15pm. Soweto is the South West Township of Johannesburg (and wiki defines it as a lower class populated urban neighbourhood). I will save the information on this neighbourhood for when I go on my tour here (It's one of those highly recommended, must do things in jozi).
Anyways, so we went to one of the neighbourhoods in Soweto to a restaurant called Sakhumzi which means "build a house". It was a buffet lunch and the experience was quite interesting. First of all, there was a giant tourbus of older japanese tourists who came in just before us. Hence the lines were jam packed with them (and to which some of my local coworkers mentioned that I look different than them - and I responded with, first of all they are a bit older, and that japanese usually are a bit fairer skin than I am because I go out into the sun and don't mind a tan). Then, there is one single table where you can get salads, veggies, and then the rice/samp and meat area. Nothing is labelled so I knew I was at risk of picking up something that was lamb. So when I took my first bite of what appears to be beef.. it was lamb. It was then damage control time and I tried extremely hard to isolate the lamb area on my plate (and gave away my lamb to a coworker, thank you for not letting me waste it). The rest of my plate was delicious and i ended up having seconds before I went for dessert (choices of fresh fruits, custard, ice cream and a cake).
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| Where we sat to eat |
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| Coworkers |
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| yes that piece right there at the top is the lamb that i had to give away... |
Lunch was extremely relaxing as we enjoyed good conversation and the sunny weather. There was even an entertainer (who is like double, triple or even quadrupl-y jointed who was entertaining us. He reminded me of the contortionists from Cirque du soleil minus the sparkly costume).
Apparently this Sukhumzi restaurant and surrounding area was put in for the World cup and that my coworkers were talking about how amazed they are at how this did not exist a few years back. After lunch we drove around a bit more (I was quite sleepy since I ate too much...) and visited the Nelson Mandela house on the outside and the Hector Pieterson memorial (He was a student who was shot as he protested for something and remembered as a symbol of resistance to brutality).
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| Me, Sipokazi and Moloko |
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| Hector Pieterson Memorial |
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| the famous photo |
Then we were off on our way back to the office. I've captured some pictures of the area (as it just looks so different)
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| These hills are the deposit of what used to be in the mines underneath the area. Apparently they are "remining" these deposit for the minerals inside with the newer technology - so you can see the side of this hill being "chewed" in |
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| A beautiful stadium that was built for the world cup, apparently nicer at night (potentially where cold play is playing this weekend) |
As the title suggested, this post is not all just about the Soweto lunch, it's also supposed to be on interesting names. Apparently because English is really just a second language for most people in South Africa (or even in Africa in general), it's somewhat like Hong Kong where people have their real name (in chinese) and in south Africa in whatever tribal language it is, and then they are also given an English name (sometimes later and not at birth). However, because of the cultural influence and just a way of naming kids here, you end up with some very interesting names ( Yes it was like the kid named Panasonic, and the one named Hose - because his parents could not spell Jose properly).
So some of the ones that were discussed as we were enjoying a drink at the Patio of Sakhumzi are:
- Godsend
- Compete (who was apparently a short little girl who wanted to make sure she does not get ignored)
- Innocent
- Polite
- Justice
- Nomatter (this is the best one i think!)
I'm not trying to make fun of these names but I think it'll be really cool if I can meet someone with these names during my time here. (justice's are more common).
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