Why we're petitioning the Nigerian High Commissioner to South Africa

Image source: www.realtimesmedia.com

I can't say I don't get it. A plane disappearing with more than two hundred people on board captures the imagination and conjures up images of scenes not unlike Life of Pi or an episode of Lost. It's mystery. It's sexy. More than two hundred girls from Chibok on the other hand... Where? Chibok. Nigeria. Oh.  It's Africa's biggest economy. Okay. I know. It's not so sexy.  Not a lot of mystery to capture our imaginations either:

1. These girls are of reproductive age. The African girl child at the best of times does not have adequate resources for sanitary ware and access to hygienic facilities to manage menstruation with dignity. It is unlikely that these girls are being kept in a pristine environment in the weeks that they've been gone. Things are probably getting really uncomfortable and really messy.
2. Boko Haram is allegedly trafficking them to be sex slaves. At $12 a pop even the most broke of the underworld's paedophilic sociopaths can help himself to some fine pickings.
3. Forced sex is usually unprotected. So we're looking at exposure to some of our regular garden variety STIs such as you know HIV, gonorrhea and of course ye olde syphilis! And because forced sex involves at least one very unwilling partner and because paedophiles are insane it can get very violent leaving victims with a little gem of a gift called fistula. Look it up. It's not pretty.

Violence against women is at epidemic proportions on this continent. The African woman is under attack and in my view the African girl child is the least valued person on Earth. Sign this petition. It's not going to Pretoria with a handful of signatories because the people I know are better than that. We refuse to be on the wrong side of history on this issue i.e. the side that did nothing.

Click here to sign the petition to Nigeria to step up efforts to get those girls back.

Basically, this is about love. This is about leading with love. This is about loving these young ladies and wanting the best for them. It's about putting out the energy of our love into the universe and sending it their way so that if there is a little girl who is curled up in some corner of some forest, shaking with fear and wondering if anyone cares, our love will ignite a spark of hope inside her. Hold on. Someone cares. This too shall pass. You will survive.

El fuego y el frío

You are

Like the scent of summer rain,
Like tears stinging my eyes.
Dry, cracked lips whisper
Into the empty silence,
"Set me free."
You who are my truth,
You who are the dull ache
In my head,
And the soft thud 

Of my heart,
Just like the rain, 

Cool on my skin,
Like smoldering coals

Under my feet,
You are hot and cold.
You are yes' s and no's,
Stops and go's.
Trace your fingertips along the scars
On my body and they all lead back
To you.

© Sandisile Tshuma 2014

Dancing in the water with Avicii

January comes with the usual promises to self to exercise more. This year I've had no trouble making good on my commitment thanks to my partners in sound, Avicii. Their album True is an absolute joy to work out to and besides the highly publicized hits like Wake Me Up and You Make Me I am totally loving tracks like Liar, Liar and Dear Boy. They provide the exact level of subliminal distraction necessary for physically getting in the zone and staying there.

P.S. I highly recommend swimming to those who, like me are allergic to sweat inducing exertion. Also, it takes care of your strength training and cardio needs in one fell swoop so you can quickly get it over with and go do something fun with your precious free time like reading a book or watching Grey's Anatomy.

London Grammar

This British indie pop trio is my newest musical discovery and I am absolutely loving their haunting sounds and beautiful metaphors. Their début album If You Wait has been playing on a loop on all my devices and the track Strong is the official soundtrack to my current state of melancholy. It's one of the most perfect songs I've ever heard.

Wasting My Young Years is an articulation of disillusionment encountered by young people who did everything they were supposed to be at the promise of a certain future but now find themselves living a reality in which that future has been snatched from under their feet because of the reckless and negligent actions of those who came before them. Now they cannot enjoy their youth as they struggle to survive and to make it worse they are regretful of having wasted their early youth on a formula that has proven to be flawed. I dedicate this one to the president of my country. Enjoy!

If indeed you are "difficult" to love...

Warsan Shire is a quietly insightful and honest poet whose poem below resonates profoundly and almost uncomfortably with me. This goes straight into my "big green forever book."

for women who are ‘difficult’ to love

you are a horse running alone 

and he tries to tame you

compares you to an impossible highway

to a burning house

says you are blinding him

that he could never leave you

forget you

want anything but you

you dizzy him, 

you are unbearable

every woman before or after you

is doused in your name

you fill his mouth

his teeth ache with memory of taste

his body just a long shadow seeking yours

but you are always too intense

frightening in the way you want him

unashamed and sacrificial

he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head

and you tried to change didn’t you?

closed your mouth more

tried to be softer

prettier

less volatile, 

less awake

but even when sleeping 

you could feel him traveling away from you in his dreams

so what did you want to do love

split his head open?

you can’t make homes out of human beings

someone should have already told you that

and if he wants to leave

then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange 

and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love

- Warsan Shire

Brain Food

I gave up television in December last year in the hopes that it would increase my reading capacity. Allow me to apologise in advance for not giving detailed reviews but in the interests of time suffice it to say I highly recommend the following books with which I've provided myself brain fodder over the last few months. 

The titles here have made me laugh, think, seethe with rage, cry and wonder and it would be unfair of me to withhold them from you just because I haven't the time to write brief blurbs on them as I normally like to do. So, know that these come highly recommended and trust me they're worth turning your back on the TV.

In no order of preference my reading list from Dec 2012 to June 2013 is as follows:

The Fault In Our Stars - John Green
Sigh. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I was left heaving great sobs of grief and joy. 

Brainwashed- Tom Burrell
You should read this if you are black. You should read this if you are not black. Made me think...

The Social Animal - David Brooks

Unputdownable! I gobbled it up in one weekend. This interesting read is yet another thread in the tapestry of ideas about what it is and what it means to be human.

The Timekeeper - Mitch Albom
A satisfying and heartwarming work of fiction. It's good to have one's heart warmed every once in a while and this book gave me a good dose of the warm and fuzzy feelings I needed to stock up on to regain my faith in and love for humanity.

Illusions - Richard Bach
Exactly how it's described on the cover is exactly how it is. I wish I had it as an audio book then I would play it all day so my head would always be in the right space.

Kill the Messenger - Maria Armoudian

Please read this. I beg you. Read this book.

How to be Black - Baratunde Thurston

Quiet - Susan Cain

Rumi's Little Book of Life - translated by Maryam Mafi and Arina Melith Kolin

Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo

The God Argument - AC Grayling

Interventions - Kofi Annan

Watch - Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

The Queen of Katwe- Tim Crothers

The Blue Sweater - Jacqueline Novogratz

Hallucinations - Oliver Sacks

Bad Pharma - Ben Goldacre

China's Silent Army - Uan Pablo Cardenal & Herbeto Araiyo

Stuffed and Starved - Raj Patel

Development and Freedom - Amartya Sen

Archetypes - Caroline Myss

Ghana Must Go - Taiye Selasi

The Story of a Nobody - Anton Chekov

A Good African Story - Andrew Rugasira

Haiku for Lovers - Manu Bazzano

GOD - Deepak Chopra

Open City - Teju Cole

The Universe vs Alex Woods - Gavin Extence

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Rumi: A Photographic Gallery of Inspirational Quotes - Faroosh Brock

The Strenuous Life,  Essays and Addresses - Theodore Roosevelt

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

The Silver Linings Playbook - Matthew Quick

The Zahir - Paulo Coehlo

Tribes - Seth Godin

Bossy Pants - Tina Fey

Messiah's Handbook -Richard Bach

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

I will do brief write ups about some of these as they are definitely worth a second mention and have had far-reaching impacts on my life. In the meantime though, what are you waiting for?  Get reading!

Enkosi

Never in all my life has linoleum held such a profound fascination for me as it did on my first time volunteering   at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital. As my eyes bore holes in the floor I found my feet shuffling uncontrollably while at the same time anchoring me to a single spot like a ton of lead.

This was a bad idea, a voice in my head announced.  I can't stand that particular voice in my head. She is a smug know-it-all who sounds like the narrator of Desperate Housewives and is only ever present when things are going badly.

She was right though. I am not a people person, I hate hospitals, am repulsed at the thought of germs and sick people and I am scared of real life children, particularly babies. I had no business being at a children's hospital and thinking I could be put to any kind of use. As one by one the other volunteers around me were assigned to various duty stations, some to sort through donations, others to play with sick children I became increasingly aware of the rapid and powerful thudding of my heart against my rib cage. I swear that traitor was trying to escape. My own cardiac tissue would have preferred to leave me for dead than witness the next few hours of what was sure to be a resoundingly disastrous attempt at doing some good in the world. Unbelievable!

The nurse handing out the assignments was nothing short of a force of nature. The magnitude of this woman was both terrifying and awe-inspiring like a raging weather phenomenon or an impossible geographical feature. She was massive and when her no-nonsense eyes locked with mine it became clear that I was doomed.

You. You're coming with me.

Oh heck no, I thought and slid behind a girl in front of me. There were only two of us left.

I realized she still had me on lock. Curse you skinny, short girl!

Tarryn, they are waiting for you in the garden. Wena (pointing at me) let's go!

As we walked through the corridors, me with my feet of lead and Sister Hurricane with the power of a gale force wind I began to nurture hope that perhaps I would be relegated to a windowless room at the back of the hospital somewhere and made to sort through old patients' records or some such innocuous activity. Anything but human contact would have been great.

We stopped walking. I looked up from the linoleum. A baby in a crib...barely audibly whimpering in a sea of soft fluffy bright yellow bedding. When I saw a pair of tiny feet clad in peppermint green woolen booties poking through the bedding I knew that I was done for.

The Hurricane handed me a feeding bottle.

The thing is, I- I -I don't really know how...

It's fine he knows what to do. I'll check on you later.

I gingerly offered the bottle to the baby.

Don't be silly. Pick him up and sit in that chair! 

Oh. Er. Yes. Of course. That's what I was about to...

Tsk! She was already gone as I lifted the soft mass of peppermint wrapped preciousness and then proceeded to freeze in mid air.

Do not screw this up. Do not drop the infant. What are you doing? Do not grip him so tightly, you'll smother him! Calm down. That's better. Everything is fine. Everyone is okay.

Little wrinkly hands reached up to my chin while hungry eyes drank in my apprehensive face and examined me closely. It felt like a moment between Gertie and E.T. I was definitely the E.T. Steadily the contents of the bottle were gulped down and as I looked into the eyes of this helpless human being who had trusted me, a total stranger, to provide him sustenance, I was humbled. I suddenly felt connected to the pulse of life and I was simply grateful to be a part of it. I marveled at him: such a beautiful, warm and peaceful baby...What could have brought him here and why was he alone?

Will my baby make it? said a frail, shaky voice breaking into my thoughts. She was tiny, drowning in what appeared to be hospital robes and she looked like a rag doll as she struggled to move her wheelchair closer to us. Her eyes were bulging giving her a look of bewilderment and her skin was covered in lesions while her hands shook uncontrollably. I immediately recognized the signs.

Is he all right? she whispered the words in Xhosa through her bright pink quivering lips. It wouldn't be long for her...

I looked down at him. His skin was the colour of savanna grasslands at sunrise in the dry season and as he stared up at me, oblivious to his impending orphan-hood he flashed a toothless grin that pushed hard against chubby, dimpled cheeks tinged with pink. Oh dear. It was my treacherous heart again, swelling against my rib cage and exploding with a feeling I cannot articulate...

I heard her lungs wheezing beside me. Argh! Why? Why, why, why was she asking me anyway? I wasn't a doctor, I was just a kid for goodness sake!

Yes, I mumbled.

You could at least have the decency to look at her... said the narrator of Desperate Housewives.

I turned and fixed my eyes somewhere in the middle of her forehead.

Yes, he will make it, I said hoping to God this wouldn't turn out to be a lie.

She sighed, Enkosi. I looked away.

Thank you? Why on Earth was she thanking me?

He likes you. Do you come here often? Her wheezing was escalating.

Y-yes. A lie.

Will you come back tomorrow?

Yes. Another lie.

Enkosi. 'Nkos' ibusise. (Thank you. God bless.)

Nothing wounds me as much as the gratitude of the poor and helpless. It pierces straight through my spleen and leaves my soul haemorrhaging guilt and a deep sense of failure and inadequacy. Because let's be honest. Can we ever do enough? Do we ever really extend ourselves as much as we could? I know I don't. I could definitely do more.

I do not remember what his name was. I don't even know exactly what he was sick with. If he did make it as I told his mother he would, he is ten years old this year. I imagine he can do fractions and decimals and loves playing soccer with his friends. I imagine he gets three solid meals a day and is happy and well adjusted. I force myself to imagine this because the chances are as one of over 2 million children orphaned by AIDS in South Africa, the alternative reality is far too dark and depressing for me to live with and actually be able to sleep at night.

Peter Pan, the immortal child. There is a statue of him at the entrance of the  Red Cross Children's hospital.

Video: Mary J Blige, U2 - One 

The Lost Years

I recently realized I do not have any photographs of myself between the year 2000 and 2007. Between people helping themselves to my prints and me changing laptops several times and losing data thanks to viruses even the digital record of my existence in those years is very sparse. Pictures are a great way of documenting one's life and are great for remembering what one was thinking or feeling at a certain point. While I do not really have much of a pictorial record I did find my "big green forever book" which is kind of scrap book I've kept since I was 14 years old and in which I have been recording the contents of my mind and the things that interest me over the years. The Lost Years is a timeline in which I have selected some of my writings from the big green forever book. I may not have visual evidence of what I was doing, with whom and what I looked like during those years but it does give a glimpse of what I was thinking about around and during my coming of age.

Photo credit:  CSU-Pueblo Today

The Female of the Species is more deadly than the Male...?

One of the pet peeves of people living in Africa is when ignoramuses from abroad ask if we have lions, elephants and other wild fauna walking in our streets. How silly, we think, we live in built up cities; what the heck would the animals eat? They don't even have any money to roll up at Mickey D's for a Big Mac or anything. Tsk! Or we might ask the ignoramuses if they have coyotes, moose or grizzly bears in their streets, a question which causes them to look at us like we are unbelievably dim-witted, following which they realize that we have been looking at them with that same look and thinking those same thoughts, then all is understood.

I must say though that in the quaint little town of Victoria Falls wild animals prance up and down the streets like they run the place and there is for the most part a resigned acceptance of this by the human community. It is very common to see little families comprising mommy warthogs and five or six baby warthogs hanging out on your lawn and foraging for grubs or whatever, or trotting around in single file with all their tails sticking straight up. It's the cutest thing. Then there are the baboons. Not cute. Some of them are almost as tall as humans and having found myself on many occasions crossing a street alongside one or window shopping only to notice a baboon next to me gazing curiously through the same shop window, I suspect they think they are people. Very hairy, naked people. Awkward. The thing with baboons that prompted me to mention this anecdote as the introduction to my post on women's rights is that they are incredibly mischievous and have been known to pick people's pockets or throw rocks at people and run away. Here's the thing though. Local lore has it that baboons don't attack any old Joe on the street. They are able to discern the weakest and least enfranchised among us and as a result, in a town crawling with people of all shapes, sizes and nationalities, baboons apparently almost exclusively attack black women or children. o_O

I have recently had an awakening about the status of women in the world and about the rights of girls and women. In the interests of full disclosure I must state that I previously had an aversion to the very idea of women's rights and I must shamefully admit, even children's rights. Eeek! I know, I know, what kind of monster am I, right? Let me explain myself. My problem with women/children's rights was in the fact that I did not understand the need for a distinction between human rights as articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and women's rights and children's rights. I thought to myself, 

Why do women and children need their own set of rights? Why does striving to achieve the basic human rights not translate to the needs of women and children being met, given that they are human beings?

I found it bizarre. It made me angry because I felt that defining a set of protections for women and children was discriminatory and set them apart as being lesser beings. Children are human beings in the early stages of development and so I could understand how they would need protection and how they would need a hand up in getting by in the world but women? Adult women? To agree to a convention that articulated their needs over and above the basic human needs would be to acknowledge that they were not the equals of men and I simply could not abide by this. I also viewed feminists and the few advocates for women's rights that I had come across as unfeminine male bashers and there was no way I was going to sign up to their ideologies. It was my sentiment that as higher mammals with such advanced brain function we should be able to do right by each other and respect each other in both directions: male to female and vice versa.

I do not appreciate male bashing. I consider it retrogressive and very unhelpful to the building of healthy societies and I definitely believe we should be doing everything in our power to reinforce positive masculinities. However, it is an unfortunate FACT that there is an extreme, excessive and alarmingly high amount of female bashing - oppression, abuse, discrimination, neglect and other forms of straight up misogyny - on planet Earth. I have always known how strong and powerful and capable women are, even in the face of the very worst circumstances but only now am I finding out just how bad those circumstances are today, right now, all over the world. It's shocking. My awakening to the real life experiences of women around the globe has been a long time coming and at this stage my understanding of the issues is quite tenuous and fragile but I am getting there. I intend to post a review of the stats on women and girls and and a brief review of the book I am currently reading entitled Half the Sky.  I love statistics. They have their limitations but they really help to make things  clear in terms of the big picture. I will also continue this series by featuring a few outstanding women and telling their stories. I also love personal stories because they make things more real and really bring home the issues. I hope to discover if indeed the female of the species is more deadly than the male. 

Woman and Girl | Diong

P.S The title of this post is taken from a poem by Rudyard Kipling which knowing myself I will probably have a good rant about one of these days.

A human being

Finding her here

I am becoming the woman I've wanted,
grey at the temples,
soft body, delighted,
cracked up by life
with a laugh that's known bitter
but, past it, got better,
knows she's a survivor-
that whatever comes,
she can outlast it.
I am becoming a deep
weathered basket.

I am becoming the woman I've longed for,
the motherly lover
with arms strong and tender,
the growing daughter
who blushes surprises.
I am becoming full moons
and sunrises.

I find her becoming,
this woman I've wanted,
who knows she'll encompass,
who knows she's sufficient,
knows where she's going
and travels with passion.
Who remembers she's precious,
but knows she's not scarce-
who knows she is plenty,
plenty to share.

-          Jayne Relaford Brown

I was chatting with a friend yesterday who has just discovered she is an underachieving, lazy loser and is elated, thrilled with this realization. It gives her drive, and purpose, and a starting point from which to carve out the next stage of her life. She is not alone. The reason why her realization struck a chord with me is that I am also awakening to this new level of self knowledge. I can’t tell you how many exclamation marks and “omg, me 2s!” were used in the duration of our lengthy IM session. We spoke about the fact that we are hard to please and often find ourselves dissatisfied with where we are in life no matter how well we seem to be doing on the surface of things.
It seems we have arrived at a stage where we need to have clearly defined values that we actually, genuinely live by. Take for example integrity. It is easy to tell oneself that one believes in integrity; by generally living unobtrusive lives that do not deliberately negatively impact someone else we often delude ourselves into thinking that we have this commonly cited human value. I can tell you right off the bat that after having Googled the definition of integrity I am confident now that I am way off the mark. I have been functioning using a map that was great for navigating through adolescence but can only leave me poorly equipped for adult life.
So here we are. I need a new map, a new set of rules. This is what growing up is all about: having a clear definition of who you want to be and then striving to ensure that she comes into being. It’s a process that requires self leadership and a spirit that is malleable and willing to change. Applying my mind to the issue of my values and the things I want to do, that are in line with my values, for example career wise,  I re-read an amazing book I bought a couple of years ago called Wide Awake by Erwin Raphael McManus. He says

Life is not a color-within-the-lines project;

life is a work of art.

You have to keep mixing colors,

creating new blends,

and seeing things in fresh ways.

You must be willing

to get paint

all over you.

Life is about growth. Growth

demands change. Change

Requires humility.

Sometimes you need to bring change;

sometimes you need to be changed.

(Wide Awake, McManus. 2008)

The poem by Jayne Relaford Brown is an affirmation of the process I seem to be undergoing. Looking back at the trajectory of my life thus far I am encouraged and challenged to be more, to be better, to throw fear to the wind and tenaciously evolve towards becoming what I hope will prove to be indeed, the woman I’ve wanted. I am up for it and I love it!

The Hermès Kelly bag: a case for compartmentalisation

I am not much of a girly girl. I don't get excited about shoes or dresses. I can't remember if I even own a dress; I may have a few skirts somewhere but I'm not so much of a girl's girl. However, I do like bags. 

Kelly bag: named after Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco,
a well loved actress. Image: www.portero.com

I probably don't like them as much as the next girl but I like them quite a bit. I get fairly excited around bags and anyone who knows me well knows why. Compartments. If it doesn't have lots of compartments and secret zips or pockets or partitions I am significantly less excited. Well to be honest I simply do not care for minimally compartmentalised bags. I find them quite disagreeable.


It's to do with order as opposed to chaos. I have a vague recollection of a lecture I attended during my student days in which it was impressed on me that compartmentalisation is a mark of cellular sophistication, a significant evolutionary feature. A smart cell has membrane bound organelles that perform their functions distinctly from the rest of the cellular contents with a timeliness and orderliness that enables adjacent cells to perform in sync and thus specialise as cell types, organs, organ systems and ultimately a complex organism. That's you and me. Complex organisms. 

Interior of the Kelly bag.

Boffins might refer to the spatiotemporal compartmentalisation of key physiological processes. The gist I got from the lecture was that everything should have it's place and everything should happen in the right place at the right time. You can't just have all your business happening willy nilly. Haphazardness in unevolved. It is only the rudimentary and unsophisticated organism whose processes are all mixed up, molecules all up in each other's space like vegetables in a sack... or keys, phones, purses, pens, wallets, cards, lipstick and a diary at the bottom of a handbag...I'm just saying. Ergo, to a functionality-focused-fox such as myself a vintage Hermès Kelly bag worth thousands of dollars is highly unimpressive.  Don't get me wrong I think they're cute, but no ma'am, I am unmoved. I say this with my nose decidedly turned up as if someone has just offered to buy me one (yeah, right) and I will not be made to acquiesce to such a base proposition.


I found a bag at a flea market. It comes with a little fair trade story about how this line of bags is made in rural KwaZulu Natal by a group of women that Western markets are supposed to feel sorry for and buy the bags as a sort of feel good, social upliftment activity, a clever way to minimise their guilt about their excessive and unnecessary consumerism. But that's a story for another time..;-) This bag is highly evolved. It has compartments galore: cell phone, mp3player, magazine/book, keys, even a separate space specifically for shoes. You know; so you can drive or walk and then get to work and put on your killer heels for that corporate ninja look. It's a commuting girl's bag. That's what the story said, not me. So I bought it. Because what can I say? I am a highly complex and sophisticated organism of a girl and a willy nilly lifestyle is not for me. I'm just saying...