pain

There are no words to explain the hurt and pain that lives inside my black body, a body assaulted in so many different ways that when I want to say why it hurts I have to pause, think and think again and then i drop into my intuition to discern the real cause of the pain. 

water and inequality in cape town

the inequality in the city of cape town is playing it's role in how we need to respond to the drought.

Yes there is a drought, yes we cannot afford to waste water, yes we need to live more consciously and move closer to living in harmony with mother earth, nature and each other. The effects of climate change are here, man-made or natural disasters, its happening and much sooner than predicted.

How we understand and respond to this situation requires thought and compassion living in a city where some households as a norm

• do not have easy access to water, they still have to walk to communal taps and backyard dwellers need to pa, often exploitative rates, for the water they use from 'landlords' 
• are on the drip system due to lack of payment of rates, rent, & services (essentially they already have access to limited amount of water per day

This contrasted with households at the other extreme

• who have taps indoors, swimming pools, huge lush and lavish gardens with irrigation systems.

between these extremes we have households who have access to tap water indoors.

The response to the drought is therefore demanding different actions from different people based on their economic standing and access to water.  It does demand of all of us to live consciously. 

indescribable

life's joys are only as uplifting as it's tragedies are low
in the absence of a meal
any food can taste delicious
being thirsty in the desert
elevates the value of water
and 
in the absence of your love
the heart ache is indescribable

Afrikaaps reflections

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to watch the Afrikaaps documentary film, directed by Dylan Valley, and to listen to EmileYX?'s inspiring reflections on the work as well as on his own life's work as part of our Pathways to Free Education event.  

I loved Afrikaaps since i first watched the theatre production at the Baxter.  Afrikaaps is a rich presentation of language as life-giving and culture as ever evolving. It captures the pain of the rewriting of history by the oppressors, the loss of language, the dismissal of a mother tongue as well as the erosion of self-worth. 

A big Thank You to the cast who are also wrote the script of the Afrikaaps theatre production -  BlaqPearl, Bliksemstraal, Jethro Louw, Moenier Adams, Emile YX?, Shane Cooper, Quintin Jitsvinger and Kyle Shepherd. This is such an important work, Afrikaaps takes the task of telling our own stories to higher levels! 

They expose the ridicule and racism that we all face when we speak and our accent, our diction and vocabulary does not measure up to a contrived standard. An accent that marks our roots as black and working class and deems us unacceptable in certain circles - as a learner in the film says we can say a few words and people will judge you as a gangster based on the way you speak.     

The story exposes the myth of Afrikaans / Afrikaaps as a language of the Afrikaner / die Baas / the oppressor as it excavates the hidden story of the development of Afrikaaps from multiple languages, stemming from the earliest spoken word by the first peoples San and Khoe, to Arabic, Dutch and other languages brought to the Cape by the many who came or were brought here. It illustrates the ethnic cleansing of a language, by the Dutch Afrikaner who literally deleted words from the dictionary, many of these words are still used today and considered swearing or simply not proper words. The story explores what it means when our children learn an Afrikaans language at school that we do not speak at home. 

Afrikaaps tells the story using music, drama and film.  It affirms the language, it's speakers and thus elevates our self-worth as oppressed peoples who were literally silenced by the devastation of our language.  

Do yourself a favour and get a copy of this dvd from EmileYX? or Jitsvinger or BlaqPearl ‘none but ourselves can free our minds’ 

grief, grieving

grief

grieving, sudden waves of sadness

surges of pain and trauma escape from my recesses

my eyes resembling a whale's blowhole

forgotten heartache surfacing 

triggered by the present

grief

grieving, no manners, no considerations 

unruly and out of hand or carefree and flowing

in this moment, it clears my mind and redirects it to ache

grief

grieving, arriving all mixed up 

losses so many it's hard to know who one is grieving today

just a flood from the pit inside reaching up, wanting to exit

grief

grieving, it's just there, all of it the sadness, the loss,

the empty heart space, feelings that overwhelm,

feelings that become misplaced and misdirected 

because so much has been lost, the loss, the longing, sadness

dialogue

we cannot sit in a process of dialogue

while militarised vehicles shout shutup! 

we would be making jokes of ourselves

Ain't I a woman - Sojourner Truth

Honouring the memory of Sojourner Truth, who spoke these word in 1851 and then I just had some kind of crazy experience in the cafeteria in 2017 and yes, these words still have validity.  A white man spoke over me while I was being assisted, put in his order. Then when he catches up with me at the coffee station where you have to pour your own filter coffee he wants me to pour his coffee. Just leave that there. 

AIN'T I A WOMAN?

by Sojourner Truth

Delivered 1851 at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

found this on http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/sojour.htm