Saying Goodbye to Madiba

I remember clearly the day that the world watched as one of the most influencial leaders in the world took his first steps as a free man in 27 years. It was 1990 and I was 8. My parents called us in from our garden to watch on the small, grainy TV with "bunny ears" that we had on the farm. They said that this was a moment in history that we shouldn't forget. Watching Nelson and Winne Mandela walk hand in hand with fists raised high on national TV was something so unique and different to me that I remember feeling slightly nervous of what would happen next and I now, as an adult, know that I wasn't alone. What ensued was beyond what anyone could have imagined. The unparalleled forgiveness, kindness and courage that he displayed is a shining example for us all and is what has made this country what it is today. Or at least, what we strive to be.

6 Years later I was lucky enough to see Madiba in the flesh. Our school concert band accompained a thousand strong choir made up of learners from all the schools in our area. I will never forget the resounding sound of the beautiful voices and words that raised the roof that day like a victory march. Idonga se Jericho was the one song that even made the floorboards shake! Reading up on the song now, it seems that it was a reference to the fall of Apartheid - no wonder the floorboards got a good stomping ;-)

On Friday we as South African's woke up to the news that our fearless leader, Tata, had left us. Many had once again feared this day. Naysayers predicted that this day would be the undoing of all the good that has taken place since '94. The father of our nation may have left us in spirit but I can't but help believe that we are stronger than the doomsdayers predict because the memory of him will live on in our hearts and minds for decades to come.

Goodbye and God Bless Madiba - thank you for all that you did for us.

Keep Calm and Blog On

If this blog was my child, then it would well and truely be a delinquent by now with the amount of neglect I've inflicted on it! I went on leave for a week mid-June and basically haven't returned to blogging since. Here's a quick catch up of whats happened in the past month:

- Had a good friend visit from Australia with two of his mates and got to play tourist / tour guide for a little while in Cape Town, drank lots of wine and ate even more food, made new friends and watched him jump of Blaaukranz (with a bungy rope of course) 
- Drove home (about 13 hours), had some great family time with my family as well as my man's (have I mentioned that he has the cutest nieces and nephews of all time?!) then watched my beautiful cousin get married and drove back to the mountain (24 hours of driving happened in the space of 4 days!)
- Lots of change at work...new boss, new team dynamic, new projects...blah blah blah
- My oldest friend got engaged! Was so exciting to meet up with the happy couple for breakfast directly after he popped the question!
- Visited Franschhoek for my first ever Bastille Day - lots of fun
- Watched some rugby at Newlands (and plenty of it on the telly)
- Went on diet...more on this to follow in subsequent posts I'm sure
- Generally vegged out in this cold and gloomy weather

So now that I'm all caught up, I'm hoping to put the past "blog-free" month behind me and get back into the swing of things. I anticipate that I'm going to be needing the thereputic release that it provides me in the coming weeks ;-)

There is no place like home

Although for the past (almost) 3 years Cape Town has well and truely been my home, there is something special about the place that you call home - especially when it's as unique as the Lower Albany area! In a little over a week (8 days to be exact #excitedmuch) we'll be making the long drive home for a couple of days in the good old Eastern Cape.

The 10 / 12 hours being couped up in a car with plenty of padkos (my mom taught me well), my man and our unique mix of music will well be worth it. We'll be cramming as much time possible with both of our families during our 2 and a bit days there. I'm also looking forward to great biltong, a Nanaga roosterbrood, the famous lime milkshake which is the saving grace of slumtown and the upright piano waiting for me at my parents house.

And then of course, there is the reason for the season - my little cuz is getting married and no one loves a wedding more than I do (even if it's another one to leapfrog me *winkwinknudgenudge*) No seriously, no one deserves a special day more than this special lady. I love and respect her enourmously and will no doubt need a couple of tissues to keep the tears at bay!

No Pain, No Gain... Now SMILE

Today I truely am smiling a BIG smile...and not only because it's Friday. When I was a kid we went to our beach house (my happy place) every holiday and all of my cousins and I loved to go up the beach on bakkies (they were allowed on the dunes back then!) We would then try to dig the tyres into the sand, hoping that the bakkie would get stuck and we would then have to come to the rescue and push it out...so random I know! One day when we were far up the coastline with family friends I was digging up a storm and knocked my front tooth out by hitting it against the rim the bakkie formed around the tyre. Our family friend, 9 months preggers at the time (she gave birth 2 days later!) raced me back to my parents and all I can now remember about the long drive was thinking that I really hoped that she didn't give birth with just me in the vehicle with her!

Why am I telling you this really random story?! Well, I obviously got my tooth fixed back then and although it lasted about 24 years, it wasn't the prettiest fix seen to mankind! Last week, with much pushing and prompting from my mother (thanks mom!) I embarked on the painful process of repairing and improving my two front teeth. It took 3 dentist trips and 2 trips to the dental technician (most of these very painful) but today I can SMILE and be confident about it! The "no pain, no gain" saying really is true. So I'm celebrating this Happy Friday with a big, straight toothed SMILE :-)

Keep Calm and LOVE, South Africa

One of my very first blog entries was Keep Calm and Love South Africa. This time (prehaps aptly on Valentines Day) I'm putting the comma after love and before South Africa, because while we as South African's are all very good at loving our country, we aren't all very good at loving our fellow South African's (well at least not those who look different to ourselves.) We need to learn to LOVE. To love one another, to love our diversity, to love those who challenge the norm, to love the new things that we see on a daily basis.

Let me start by saying that it's taken me a long while to write this post. Even longer to post it. It's not only that heavy of a topic, but also something increadibly close to my heart...literally ;-)  Let me establish some facts up front:

- I LOVE this country

- I LOVE that not everyone is like some of the the people I decribe

- I LOVE a man that has a different skin colour to myself 

Back to the very beginning: I was born in 1982, into the height of the Apartheid era in South Africa and grew up in a small farming community in the Eastern Cape. I grew up initially attending our farms pre-primary school where I could play with my slightly older best friend, Veliswa and eat cheap digestive biscuits and drink warm milk fresh from the cow during break time each day. I learnt my nursery rhymes, numbers, days of the week, vowels, colours etc all in Xhosa.

At some stage and for reasons that I either can't recall or weren't explained to me at the time, I moved to the local English pre-primary school, where all my new friends were white and the quality of the tea time biscuits was slightly better. Around the same time my mom had to explain to me that Veliswa was no longer allowed to visit me in the afternoons to play, as her dad (who worked for my dad) now considered her grown up enough to help her mom cook in the afternoons. Her dad had also told her that the sea would "swallow her" if she went in it when she came to our beach house with us, but that another whole story! Our daily play dates ended and I was devastated.

Skip forward a few years and I remember the first black kids joining me at my "Model C" farm school. The parent body had taken a vote - Yes or No (as it was known back then) and they, collectively had decided to move with the times and allow non-white students into the school. Of course there were proviso's: the parent body had to hand select the students (and their parents) who "passed an interview." Enter Wendy, Elroy and Kiran...I still remember them all clearly. I was fascinated by them, because they weren't white like me, or black like Veliswa. Kiran and Elroy spoke Afrikaans - which, other than my obsession with American TV shows we were forced to watch in Afrikaans (unless simulcast on the radio) I had not heard before. Wendy spoke perfect English and perfect Xhosa.

My mom explained to me that Wendy's parents loved each other very much, but because of the rules that the government had put in place, they had not been allowed to get married before she was born as it would be illegal. I remember being sad for them, but also intrigued about how this all worked and how they were somehow "outsmarting" the system by having Wendy and only now being allowed to get married. The 30 minute drives to school, on horrible farm roads, undoubtably felt even longer for my mom as she patiently explained Apartheid's laws to me, her views on it all and how things would hopefully soon change.

They were my first exposure to a mixed race couple and I remember them both very clearly.

I want to say that I've always felt more comfortable with Black people, but prehaps that's too strong a statement. Generally, I find that I'm more accepted by people that I meet who are Black and as a result feel more comfortable around them. This being said, I was lucky in that I attended a boarding school where I was exposed to many cultures, races, languages and religions. Living side by side with people so different and yet so similar to yourself is a surefire way to open your eyes to just how alike we are and yet, appreciate the uniqueness that we all have.

 Fast forward a good few years and I find myself about to embark in a relationship after years of being single. Being the over-analyser that I am, I have a lot to think about: am I ready to open up again? Do I trust him? We're great friends but can I see this relationship being romantic? If I do, and this goes all the way, as I would want any relationship at this stage in my life do, am I ready to be in a mixed race relationship? I know my parent's views, but would this extend to me, their only daughter? Am I ready to have mixed race kids that won't look like me or have straight blonde hair?! I'm sure that you can imagine how busy my mind was for the week that I left my most amazing man stewing in anticipation over whether or not I'd reciprocate his now-voiced feelings. 

Ultimately there was no choice for me - I was too far down the road with him. I couldn't imagine my life without him in it. And deep down I knew that all the rest would be ok too. We were (and still are) so similar in so many ways that ran more than skin deep that I knew that the risk was well worth it. And anyway... I really do love cute dark kids with crazy afro's :-)

Fast forward a year and while driving home from our one year anniversary dinner, we turned on the radio and listened as Eusebius McKaiser (author of There's a Bantu in my Bathroom) asked the question on his evening talk show: can the number of mixed raced couples one sees nowadays in South Africa could be an indicator that we are moving past racial prejudices of the past?

The callers reponses were varied but generally positive. I'm not entirely sure that I agree. Yes - generally people are accepting if they know the couple or if they live in more "liberal" areas. What saddens me is that there are still people out there like the lady I encountered recently at a pub. Sitting at a table not even a metre away from me, she stared at me holding my man's hand discretely under the table, while telling her friend to look at us, claiming loudly "it's so disgusting." What I find disgusting is that she not only had these thoughts, but then voiced them...and loudly to boot! I tend not to be affected by the stares (because to be honest I stare at mixed raced couples too as I'm still intrigued by other people "like us") but hearing such narrow minded views trying to tarnish my love for someone based only on skin colour did hurt.

I've rewritten the account of this incident a few times now as the first couple of drafts were very angry and may or may not have included sentiments along the lines of : "Get with the times... or leave. Plenty others have and you are welcome to join them in Australia. This is a reality that you will not escape, a reality that will become even more present in your life as the years go on - prehaps even someone in your family (heaven help them!) will also find true love housed in a skin colour your don't approve of. But ultimately, this is a reality you won't escape so get with the programme ok?"

The reality is that we do all live here...and as much as I'd love to, I can't banish people like her to Australia (#joking!) I suppose that we just need to try and open the minds of those who share her views and foster a culture of acceptance and love in our societies.

One lady calling into Eusebius' show spoke of having been in a mixed race relationship for over 20 years and how those around her still notice the looks that her and her husband get, but she no longer does. I hope that it doesn't take me that long because I'm in this one for the long haul...

Keep Calm and Watch Dirty Dancing

If you are anything like me, and pretty much live for the weekends, then today is indeed a HAPPY DAY!! The slog of the week and all it's mundainity is soon over and we are free to do as we please for a full 64 hours (yes...I did the math!)

This weekend promises to be especially cool as my aunt is here dropping my cousin off at university for the first time....oh to be young and fun and experience O Week all over again! Being a "refugee" from the Eastern Cape, it's always super cool to have some family around to show of our beautiful city. So the next 64 hours will no doubt be spent eating out, drinking out, market shopping (I'm keen to try out Blaauwklippen Vineyards Sunday Family Market), engagement parties and last but very much not least, a trip to Artscape with the girls to watch Dirty Dancing. Not only was this one of my favourite movies growing up, I seem to recall that I had my first kiss (*CRINGE worthy moment of note*) while dancing to the Dirty Dancing sountrack ("She's like the Wind" to be specific!) Regardless,  I can't wait to see "nobody put's Baby in the corner" on stage.  

 Happy weekend!

Keep Calm and Travel On



Where I've been...

I recently saw on a friends Facebook status the she was leaving her home province for the first time ever (in her mid-twenties) and I was amazed. I was lucky enough to travel abroad for the first time (by myself!) when I was 12 years old. My brave parents put me on the plane in Johannesburg (my first time there) and off I went to England for a 2 month stint on a boarding school exchange programme. While I'd love to say that I adored every second of it, the intense home sickness I experienced would make that a terrible lie. I did however relish the opportunities I had to travel around the country with teachers or school friends parents. It was then that the travel bug bit.



Where I'd love to go...



Since then there have been a few more trips - always to short and always to too few places! Every year I crave a new adventure outside of our boarders, but obviously this is not always possible. And so I thought I'd put together a Travel Bucket List so that when the stars do align (those stars being: Annual Leave, Enough Money and No Other Responsibilities) I'll be ready to hop on the plane!

My Travel Bucket List:

> Vietman - has been at the top of the list since I was a child - I'm not entirely sure why!

> Cambodia - joined the list after my special friend Margs planted the seed a few years back

> India - prehaps "Monsoon Wedding" romantisied the place for me slightly but never the less...

> Anywhere in Africa...but particularly Ghana, Kenya, Botswana - as soon as I stepped out of the plane and set foot on Tansaneenen soil (albeit in Zanzibar!) I felt as if I'd never truely been to Africa (cue whiney American accent) despite having lived on the continent all my life. Ghana in particular holds a particular tug on my heart

> South America - Aside from Asia I'm not sure that there are many places in the world as different to what I know as you'll find here

> Spain, Croatia, Greece - Having pretty much travelled Europe flat on three occasions the only real regrets I have are not being able to see these three countries

And Japan might just make it's way onto the list too given that it's my favourite persons dream destination!



Keep Calm and Go To the Sea

When I was young, we only ever referred to our beach holiday house as "the sea" - as if it was the only sea out there. To us it was! And so as today draws to the close a rather interesting, hectic and emotionally draining work year, I bid farewell to these four walls and cannot wait to go to "the sea" next week.

The plans are few, but the food and fun will be plenty. Books will be read, sun will be soaked in, wine will be drunk, catch up convo's will be had, boardgames will be played and table tennis contests will be won (by me of course!) and the laptop will remain firmly shut with the cell phone of course not having any receiption....these are the best types of holidays which make the 9 hour drive to get there well worth it!


Now just to ask the weather gods for no wind and cloud free skies and all will be perfect!

Keep Calm when Remembering Rhodes

#rhodesmemories was recently trending on twitter much to the dismay of other univerisities alumni who replied on twitter asking where all their memories were?! As I read through the hundreds of tweets, I had mixed emotions remembering the the days that Wordsworth would decribe by his famous phrase "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times."



Many of us took years to part with our overalls



I sometimes get asked by the students I meet if I could rewind the clock and go back, would I or is the working world better? Its a tough one for me to answer. So many of my greatest friendships grew during these crazy 4 years - through thick and thin we supported each other through break ups, let downs, tragedies, growing up and finding ourselves. Without some of the tougher times, prehaps these bonds would have been less durable, and so if that's what I can take from them, I do it gladly.



Boatraces...enough said

Some of the funnier tweets recalled how every year, we as Rhodents celebrate like we've won trivar (invarsity games against NMMU previously know as Trivar because of the now nonexistant participation of UFH) although we never do.  Other stories told of Smuts House, a guys res, and their firedrills where often there were more females than males present! Many retweeted that prospective parents, after reading all the trending tweets, were intercepting their childs RU acceptance letters and burning them...I'm not sure that I blame them.

At the end of the day, be it the best of times or the worst of times, they were times that defined me - definate us as friends. I look back now and write it all off to growing up, learning about life, making memories that will never be forgotten and having (now) hillarious stories to tell of how it all went wrong along the way. Here's to keeping calm when remembering Rhodes!

Keep Calm and Pass the Exam

A few days ago I was on the UNISA website, searching for a course to challenge, motivate and stimulate my rusty old brain. I had decided that studying something would be the answer to the rut that I've found myself in career-wise, a stepping stone towards the long-term goal I've set myself of working in a relatively unrelated field and doing something as far away from the corporate world as possible.

And then this morning I went to wish the candidates writing their final CA exam luck and saw their drawn faces, nervous smiles and tense expressions and all of a sudden, the idea of studying further seemed FAR less appealing! After a minimum of 7 years of studying, the fate of these candidates will be decided today - will they have a CA(SA) designation behind their names in a years time or not?

I remember my final exam in the Rhodes sports centre like it was yesterday. The nervousness of knowing that if it didn't go well your plans for the future would be delayed by a year and while returning for a 5th year as a Rhodent would not have been the worst thing to happen, the idea of spending any more time in the sleepy town (with no Woolies Food store or decent clothing shops) was at that stage less than ideal!

The jury is out for now on my further studies, but I'm thinking of all those who are now 45 minutes into their papers in that cold UCT sports centre and wishing them the best of luck. While there is always next year, no one wants the pain of repeating all the hours of study put into preparing for this big exam - so here's hoping that the guys can keep calm today and pass the exam!

Keep Calm and Overcome the Sunday Night Blues

I live for Friday evenings through to Sunday afternoons at the moment. And while Monday's are by no means my favourite days of the week, at least they aren't as bad as Sunday nights. Prehaps it's the anticipation of the week ahead being worse than the last, or knowing that while I've got sunkissed skin from the weekend, I'll soon be stuck back in an office while the sun and fresh air taunts me from outside.

More likely, I think that the Sunday Night Blues that developed in my boarding school years have never quite left me. Anyone who had to make the long drive back into town after an amazing time at home - eating good food, sleeping in your own room, catching up with family and friends - will know what I'm talking about! My brother used to call it the "dirty laundry feeling", knowing that once you were back in hostel, back to reality, you'd have to change all your linen (a true feat for a 9 year old kid - duvet covers proved an enormous challenge for those tiny arms) and sift through that smelly laundry from the past week to tick it off on the laundry list!

And then there was Chapel...the 3rd compulsory service of the week...in our formal wear. Getting those blackmail stockings on over sunburned legs, still hot from the summer temperatures and sticky with chlorine, was never pleasant. My grandfather used to say that he went to Church enough during his boarding school years to never have to go again (this didn't go down well with my Gran!) While I might not agree fully with Grandpa, I'll avoid the Sunday night service at all costs.

Other depressing things to avoid doing on a Sunday evening definately include watching Carte Blanche (the music alone is enough to make you want to slit your wrists), eating any form of pie (King Pies in particular were always on the menu at school on Sunday nights) and wearing anything other than your PJ's from early afternoon onwards.

Now that the Sunday blues are over for this week, I'm off to conquer Monday morning...

Keep Calm and Go Coastal

One of the greatest gifts that my late-grandfather left our family was a 'cottage at the sea.' A little short of 60 years ago he decided to build a beach house, on what I believe to be one of the most beautiful stretches of beach that the Eastern Cape coastline has to offer, Kleinemonde (affectionately known as Kleinies.) Ever since that our family, like many other farming families in the lower Albany, has religiously moved to Kleinies for every Christmas break and most Easter holidays. The cottage itself is nothing fancy, but that's the beauty of it. It's been the setting to some of my cousins' and my fondest memories - and is probably the reason that we are as close as we still are.

Everytime we have a chance, we reminisce about the time when: our uncles rather under the weather friend fell off the balcony; the boys hid cane and cream soda in the bushes and after it baked in the sun all day, they consumed it with hillarious concequences; we brought our first boyfriends / girlfriends to stay and the cousins weren't always too welcoming of the outsider; Grandpa would shout "batman" to the boys because he couldn't remember who-was-who and desperately wanted his whiskey; we would sneak to bonfires, before Kleinies had a bar; we'd run around in circles following seagull prints thinking it was the Easter Bunny; the parents insisted we lie down on our beds for at least an hour after lunch, in silence, before we could hit the beach again; we had to go door-to-door to collect money of the annual sports day; we had a Mexican New Years and tequilla with the adults - enough said; we annually attend Christmas Church 'under the trees' and how no one there says Happy Christmas but rather "Happy Happ" or "Happ Happ." These are just a few of the amazing times we've shared there and hopefully there will be many many more.

And so when much of St Francis Bay went up in flames on Sunday and everyone's first response was "well at least they are only holiday homes" I agreed until I had a chance to think about how I would feel if that was our cottage going up in smoke and taking with it the reminders of my happiest times. While it would have been in no way better had the houses been permanent residences, I don't think we can dismiss the sadness caused because they weren't.

Many in today's environment can no longer afford the luxury of a beach house and so now, even more than ever before, I count my blessings and thank Grandpa for his gift, a gift that will continue to bond us as a family and help to build even more amazing memories.

St Francis Bay Fires - 11 November 2012

Keep Calm and Listen

One of my earliest music memories was, after hours of listening to the radio or casette tapes on a long car trip with the family, asking my mom why all of the lyrics of songs related to love. I seem to remember that her reply was something along the lines of "because love is such a beautiful thing." Not being entirely satisfied with her response, I decided that I knew better and told her confidently that one day I would write songs about butterflies!

Thousands of hours of piano lessons, band practices, choir rehersals, marching band treks and music theory classes later, I'm not sure that I ever did compose anything even remotely relating to butterflies, but the seed was planted and the love of music grew from there. I find my emotions so connected to the music around me - wake up to a upbeat, major key and I'll be in a good mood all day. Get me started in my favourite minor keyed balade and I'll be in meloncholy mode from there on out! No matter the style, no matter the artist - put a solid base line down, interesting layers on top and lyrics with depth and you'll have me as a fan.

My current obsessions, amongst many others, are:

• Imagine Dragons (On top of the World)
• Band of Horses (The Funeral)
• Of Monsters and Men (Little Talks)
• Lana del Ray (Ride)
• Mumford and Sons (Babel)
• Bjork (Dull Flame of Desire)
• Rodriguez (Cause) Side note: Searching for Sugarman is a MUST SEE doccie