Funmi Iyanda

The market is 150 years old and there is talk of a remodelling into a shopping mall. From the colourful fruits, vegetables and grains display of Market Street, we walked into the corner of Julius Nyerere Street and the bovine market where, people sat on benches eating whole or parts of huge bovine heads with samp to my utter carnivorous delight. Others ate hollowed out bread loaves stuffed with beans and rice called bunny chow. From the bovine market, we … ( continue reading

My pilgrimage was over but l stayed an extra day in Johannesburg to buy meat. l like food, l collect food every where l go and don’t trust people who don’t like food. What else are they denying? So I had a pungent bag of premium Indian and Zulu spices with impepho stalks to ward off evil spirits around my food. I had filled up two freezer bags with prime game, lamb and steak cuts. l have highly developed taste buds. read more

I watched them storm onto the plane in a riot of colours and sounds. There was a powerful physicality about their presence, not only in the size of their bodies but in the piercings, the wild colourful clothing, and the hair. One head had a cheek with a blond braid attached to the ebony skin, another had a waist length jumble of dreadlocks piled high of the crown of a head right at the edge of his bald patch. They spoke fast, foreign and furious.

I was instinctively pushed back into my seat glad they were heading away from me toward the back of the plane as l surveyed the landscape of bland normalness in grey suits, beige dresses and coiffed hair seated around me. read more