last supper

Kourtney leaves on a jet plane tomorrow. the two of us had an abnormally good time together. no food int he house so we went out to eat, not realizing that everything is shut down on sunday nights, except KFC and SPar, the omnipresent grocery store. THere is a qwikSpar, superSPar, or Spar on every other corner in South africa. Its like starbucks in he states. So we went to spar and got stuff for fajitas. we didnt have enough cash for Mexican spice (a blessing in disguise) but I was a bit worried on the way home about how I was gonna flavor the chicken with no sofrito and no adobo. I ended up using garlic and ginger, brazilian peppers, crushed red pepper, salt and pepper. and then out of desperation I added a splash of a mystery spice called simply "mints" that definitely wasn't just mint and a bunch of Italian spice mix. Its really difficult to find individual spices in this country. In the grocery stores, spice sections are dominated by spice mixes like "fish spice" or "curry" or "braai spice" or "mexican spice". Ive become an expert in mixing these unidentifiable mixes in different proportions to fake different flavors. Basically I rely really heavily on garlic and ginger. The mixture, time of addition and thus the degree of cooking of just those two ingredients can give you 1o or 15 base flavors to build from.
Despite the lack of appropriate spices and the downright awful tortillas, the meal was extraordinary. We had springboks to commemorate the occasion.
The funeral yesterday was a difficult experience. It involved sitting in a frigid church for 3 hours while 3 preachers switched off shouting at the top of their lungs into a maxed out PA system in a language I didn't understand. I'm sure it would have been difficult even if I had known what was being said. If that had been all it would have been simply unbearable but lcky for me there was singing about every 4 minutes.
Unprompted as far as I could tell, one particularly gifted woman would pop up and lead the mourners in song during a pause in the sermon. Though I didn't know the words, songs gave me an excuse to get up and shake off the blanket of sleep that would inevitably creep over me during the sermons. By far the most memorable part of the service was the actual act of burial. Everyone was huddled together around the grave in the midst of a freezing dust storm. After the last words were said and the final songs were sung, after the flowers and the handfulls of dirt of the family members had been thrown on the casket, all the men removed their jackets and set to the task of filling the grave. They, we would shovel push or throw the dirt with everything they had for a few minutes until someone came to offer help. It seemed futile at first as the wind would carry away the dry dirt before it entered the grave. The dirt itself was made of dust and chunks of concrete.
Voete comes back to work this tuesday and Ill be glad to have her back. She's really cool and its really a joy to be around her.

tons of meetings tomorrow. I am dropping Kourt off at the airport and picking up Alex, the next intern at noon. Id better get some sleep.
go well, y'all.