Ignorance.

Three years ago, while travelling through Namibia, a very tall man took these photographs of a Herero woman, selling her wares next to the road. He brought me one of her lovely little dolls.

On saturday, racing through the boot sale on my way to set, I found these two beauties - judging by the fabrics used, from the seventies.

And finally, after seeing women dressed like this in Swakopmund when I was last there many years ago, receiving a doll and finding two more, I did some research on the Herero people.

This is not the place where I wish to rile against other nations, imperialism or colonialism. The history is there to be found by anyone who is interested. I was ignorant and now I know a little more.

I have been beset by a new passion lately - early 1900's African postcards. In my eagerness to explore, many collectors that I have come to know over the years have loaned me pieces from their own collections to study and scan.
Above, an old photograph of two Herero girls.

On my web travels, I came across the breathtaking work of Alfred Duggan-Cronin, an Irishman who worked in South Africa from 1897-1932.

And also some beautiful contemporary work by Jim Naughten.

Anthropologist Dr Lutz Marten said: 'Wearing the enemy's uniform will diminish their power and transfer some of their strength to the new wearer.

'This is in part assimilation to European culture, and also in part appropriation, a coming-to-terms with, and overcoming of history and the colonial experience,' he said.

Speaking about the clothes Herero women wear, he said: 'A correctly worn long dress induces in the wearer a slow and majestic gait.'

Johannesburg.

City of walkers. You can stand on any street corner for a while and  just watch the people passing by. People are walking and laughing and talking and carrying and pushing and pulling.

If it has wheels, you can move it.

You can rest in a doorway or follow the girls with their
bright sun umbrellas.

The colours. The light.

The thunder in the distance.

The swishing of a woman's skirt.

You watch and you listen.

You melt into the pot.

While we were out.

The past few weeks have been relentless. Long hours and constant demands, with every day bringing it's particular problems. Coming home - sometimes in the dark, to a moody valley.

Noticing that others had visited, I watered when I could.

Every week six days of sweating and swearing and heavy lifting.

Trucks full of furniture, smoke and mirrors.

Schools, churches, bars and hospitals.

We had very little time to ourselves.

A quick ginger gimlet, the stroke of a paw, trying to keep up with a glut of tomatoes - sharing them with the starlings. Glimpses of lives very different from mine.

I had to remind myself, sometimes, that I am very lucky.

While we were out, a beet grew and grew and grew.

A fairy tale beet, a show bull of a beet weighing in at 940 grams.

Head and shoulders pushing out of the soil.

Once slaughtered, yielding a slice of moreish cake.

The beetroot is there in every bite, dark and earthy.
Cinnamon and poppy seed.

It's good to be home.

Special powers.

Taken by a very tall man. Los Angeles 2014

 I've been wearing spectacles ever since I was a little girl of nine or so. At first, for reading the writing on the black board at school. For years I walked around in a fuzz, not realising that I needed to wear them all the time. Then, when I was sixteen, I got my first pair of contact lenses. Epiphany: the trees are not big green blobs - they are made up of leaves! And the boys have very hairy legs. (My mom remembers me telling her that)

I've always known my eyes are bad, but it was a shock to me when my optometrist told me that if I had been born in the middle ages, I would have a staff and someone would have had to lead me around - in fact, if my right eye was just a little weaker, I would be legally blind. Not in darkness, but without aid I saw only light, colour and blurry shapes. The long legged man often stands in the doorway and smiles at me - I know this because I hear the tiny kiss of the corners of his mouth. For what my maker took away in sight, I was compensated for with a fine set of ears.

 Last monday I went to see the Superman of corneas, Dr. Michael Attenborough. By a stroke of luck, I was bumped up to have PRK laser surgery on thursday - the waiting list is normally months long. It was over within minutes: the pasting of eyelashes with special curved tape, the flashing lights, the ice cold drops and a smell I'd rather not remember. Gentle words of encouragement from the doctor and the firm pressure of a nurse's hand on my arm the entire time.

I asked him a few days later what it felt like to bring such miraculous change to people's lives. He said that often it doesn't feel like work - in a case like mine, it's actually fun. Then he showed me some of the other work he's done - cornea transplants for people with cataracts covering the entire eye. He has special powers that man, and a very steady hand.

I can now read the teeniest little words on the eye dropper bottle. I've just done some darning and could thread the needle - piece of cake. Long distances are still settling in - there's a haze. But it's early days yet and just another lesson in patience.

The eyes can do a thousand things that the fingers cannot.

- Iranian proverb.

Sanell Aggenbach

Kismet.

January passed in a blur of commercials. There was the Japanese car... the comical bank robbery scenario, the hotdog van in the ghetto, the Russian woman pushing an empty pram, etcetera.

Then there was some kind of instant cappuccino. The packs guy frothing up cup after undrinkable cup... a beach hut, a rooftop, a beautiful architect-designed house hanging off a clifftop overlooking the city - so filthy I spent most of the morning cleaning it. Fans queueing to buy tickets to a concert, the Eurotrash beach bar, a record store... a coltish young couple on silk sheets.

And so on.

3 o'clock wake-up calls and leaving home in the ante meridian light.

Oh TVC: land of momentous minutiae.

I was feeling ever so lacklustre. As luck would have it, we managed to steal a week and hightailed it up the West Coast road.

Bless this old world, not so far away, where time is slow

and life's a snap.

I felt bad for forgetting to bring something special for the francolins, as they have a special place in my heart. (Just look at those feathers arranged like flower petals!)

 Nevertheless, they devoured everything we gave them - carrot, pepper, papaya, nectarine, lettuce, butternut peelings, avocado, tomato.

They will eat from your hand if you're patient.

A tortoise wandered into the yard one morning to drink some water. He submerged himself in the water dish until, worried for him, I set out some watermelon. He attacked it voraciously, eating skin and flesh alike. Eventually, he ambled off, smiling. The mousebirds came next, and the bulbuls. They followed their sticky feast with a bath in the dust. I understand why people become bird watchers. Small feathered comedians...

A puff adder lay peacefully beside the house the entire time. Even so, I wasn't brave enough to approach him. The photograph was taken by a very tall man.

We combed the beaches, we paddled the waters and we walked the marshes. The vegetation is a sweep of colour: pale acid green, coppery red, deep purple and everything inbetween. Tiny pinpricks of lilac flowers. We saw blue swallows playing a game: fly into the wind, hover with wings a-whir, then succumb and let the wind swoop you away. Over and over again.