RELATIONSHIPS

This weekend some friends and i got together. Before the meeting, we had all been feeling pretty depressed. I had been alone in my room for the past week with twitter and calls from home as company. Of course my friends and I try to see each other as much as possible, but we live poles apart and sometimes it is hard to even set up a lunch date we are just so 'busy.'

So this weekend, Friday to be exact, i get a call from my girl, its about 2pm and already i'm in bed :(. she comes down to 'save' me and before i can even say anything, she calls this our 'cheer up session.' she too needed 'saving.' within a few hours, our other friend joins us, and the mission for junk food begins:) 

We spent the whole weekend together, being loud and girly, stupid and crazy and singing along to some of our favourite jams ---> To cut a long story short, we had a great time --> WITH EACH OTHER!!

What is  the moral of the story?

As women of this age, we get so 'busy.' It is so easy to wrap ourselves up in our own projects and forget what matters. We have goals, dreams and work, be it school work or work in the 'real' world. we fall into the new age 'Powerful Woman' pressure and try to be independent beyond our means. It is great to be independent, to feel like we need no one and can exist on our own. But far greater, is being with those who matter to us, having those people who will come running just because of the tone of your voice. It becomes so easy to forget about these people, but after this weekend, my advice to myself, is to as much as I nurture my books, to also nurture my relationships...

POETRY!!

ah, this is my formal apology, have a technical problem that's been keeping me from my baby (blog) so I have decided to apologise with a lil poetry, hope someone/anyone out there still enjoys poetry,lols. this I wrote myself... some time back, have not had time to write, so in the meantime - - - here goes.

Seasons Change...

Spring
In the spring of our love
The sky, so blue
Gave our love a chance
The flowers, bright and cheery
Forced us to take it all in our stride
The growth, so sturdy yet delicate
Convinced us that we would grow too
So we whimpered daily
Facing our separate ways...

Summer
In the summer of our love
The heat seemed to keep us together
The rains, strong and rapid
Forcing a calming union between our bodies
The days, so long
Permitting us time to be together
For every night
We had to go our separate ways...

Autumn
In the autumn of our love
The leaves seemed to fall about us
Like pieces of our souls diminishing, separately
The trees so bare
Forcing me to see this love for what it is
The grass, now colourless
Compelling me to deal with our now isolated worlds
As we set out, on our separate ways...

Winter
In the winter of our love
The cold seemed to suffocate us
Leaving us, each craving space to exhale
The snow, so arctic
Forced a coldness between us
The days, mingy with their hours
Left us little time together
And we welcomed the chance
To go our separate ways...

And so the seasons changed
With the birth of our love in the spring
The climax in the summer
Deterioration in the autumn

And in the unforgiving winter
Our love died...

Life as a 'THIRD-WORLDER'

Being a politics and sociology student, discourse and ideology are terms that keep springing up on me. To the lay man, discourse means simply language, while ideology refers to a set of ideas. So i sat down and looked up these terms, respective of my chosen fields.

discourse: according to Foucault: discourse would be the acceptable statements made by a certain type of discourse community.---> (which then) refers to people who share similar thoughts and ideas. (WHO says they are acceptable?)

Ideology: The term may be used to describe the shared beliefs of a group of people, for example a nation, a sect of a religion, or a group of theorists

(At a more analytical level, these definitions may prove unsuitable, but for the purposes of my views, they serve well.)

Growing up as an African, in a world rich with culture, i have come to ask myself many questions. This is my Africa, this is my home, yet day in and day out, i am forced to perceive my world in a lesser light. When we are young, the world we live in is limitless, and offers us ALL we could ever need. As you grow older, you are bombarded with Western discourse and ideologies. These ideologies come at you from all sides, at a personal, political, socioeconomical, and even global level. There seems to be no way of escaping them, in an increasingly globalized world.

At a global level, we are coined the THIRD WORLD, the LESS DEVELOPED WORLD (LDC). Immediately this suggests that there are others before us, who are far ‘greater.' Knowing this we begin to settle into this mentality, we become individuals of the Third World. This is also aided by the academic discourse we are exposed to; it teaches us our weaknesses and failures as a continent, as a people. Unknowingly we begin to adopt these weaknesses and before we know it, we ARE the Third World; we begin to embody what it means to be a ‘Third Worlder’. Our dreams and hopes fail to rise beyond the label of the Third World as we fall into pre-supposed roles and begin to lose our intellectual freedom together with our agency.

At a personal level, as a female of this century; I am amazed at the number of things which have come to influence me. I am exposed to western media with all its discourse and ideologies in all its forms. I watch CNN, read Vogue, dream about the Kardashians and all i see is the greatness of the Western World, and in turn i am forced to think of the supposed weakness of MY world. I see models with never-ending legs, girls with such flat stomachs it is hard to believe they even eat. Black girls with silky hair, red pouty lips and smooth spotless skin, and more and more, i am forced to look at myself as a lesser being ---> “why can’t my legs be long enough, why isn’t my stomach flat like hers, why do my lips need constant moisturizing when I use red lipstick?” these questions come at me so forcefully, each one of them begins to feel like a blow.

Knowing the dangers of ideology and discourse, what changes do I impart on my THIRD WORLD?? What changes do you?

#prayforJapan

So being a complete addict to twitter; i thought since Japan's current natural disaster is the latest trend, there is something to say about it --->

I come from a 3rd world country; our natural disasters mainly consist of famine and drought, which although does not appear newsworthy, is something people die from every day. I see a crazy amount of people praying for Japan, mostly from SOUTHERN AFRICA and i am shocked at how ready to help and so well informed they are about these disasters. When it comes to OUR disasters, we seem to turn a blind-eye. Whatever happened to the old saying 'Charity begins at home' (now used literally)??

Don't get me wrong, Japan needs all the prayers and all the AID it can get. With an 8.8 Earthquake, i can only imagine what other natural disasters this is likely to trigger, how many more people will die, the displacement and at a more personal level, the pain of starting over without loved ones.
On a more hopeful note - God keep Japan ----> and Africa :)