Buckaroo Thandi

In my last post I talked about the diseases black people are supposed to be having that make it dangerous to live with us...I couldn't believe people believe this sort of thing BUT I heard the same exact line in the new movie 'The Help' this morning too! The movie is set in back-in-the-day-Mississippi and guess what? the woman who made this statement in Malawi was born back in the day in the US and her husband is from MISSISSIPPI!  Something went seriously wrong in Mississippi at some point and I know I'm not going there any day soon, thank goodness......

Long time no see, that must mean something good...that I'm busy again and back in the swing of things.  And I write again from a healthier mind, not rushing from one task to another!  This is good because now I can handle well the delicate discovery I made a few seconds ago, that according to a certain Mrs. Fern,  living in the same house with folks from my Stan can wipe out a whole race from another continent. Apparently, the memo was not passed on to my Greek and Taiwanese housemates, oh well! I think I would feel like the girl above if I ever met that Mrs. Fern ever again! (pic sourced from the web).

Hebrew men of old lay memorial stones Hebrew men of old said hello and goodbye often yet many stones they laid good memories marking the surpassing of bad ones.... ....Hansel and Gretel dropped stones they had said goodbye to their home and hoped to say hello again and the witch to whose home a visit they paid a way back they hoped they would find... and live to tell. People around my home liked stones to cook upon, to fence in the flower patch, to hold the door open to keep feet clean, to chase the dogs with... As we lay down this dream on this stone of the unknown may the memorial stones continue to be laid lest we forget how we got here may we remember where we laid the trail of stones so that we may always find our way back to goodness...to home may we always know which stones are good for cooking, for cleaning, for fencing in the flower patch, to clean our feet and to chase the dogs of life away So this dream is laid down for the moment will they laugh as

Neat, huh?  So, today I went up this dome.  About 110 meters high, should have been an easy conquest but I am a child of (some) of my people.  Yay, those same people who marveled at stairways at Mandala house and got dizzy with the height of 12 steps (+-)!!!  You can imagine that when I went all the way up the Carrilion it was more than enough for me.  I tried to inconspicuously hold on to Folkert and wondered if I would survive should one of us be a terrorist and threaten to send us plummeting.  Of course, the fact that I was the only Bantu there today did cross my mind...that I was conspicuous!  But hey, here is to me for doing something new, going up so high by choice and calming my fears.  Here is to you Folkert, Here is to you the dome!  Next time Eiffel??

Having had the honour of living for some periods in Manzini, Boise, Bremerton, Camden, Pietermaritzburg, Silverdale, and now just recently moved to a new city far and away from comfy Zomba + Lilongwe, I find that the world continues to be fascinating.  Places are so different yet the same.  People go to sleep and people wake up.  Everywhere. They go shopping.  Everywhere. ...and they speak loudly (or softly) on cell phones.  Everywhere...girls are sometimes mean to one another. Everywhere...and folks invariably use gmail, hotmail, yahoomail...you get the picture.  Yet gaps between wealth and poverty persist in showing us differences as do technology gaps, ignorance, prejudice, pride, trade..... ....be assured though, even though I´m here Iĺl keep to my ethos of giving commentary of the Malawian experience as I subjectively perceive it.  Fear not, I am not nor will I ever be the ´wanna-be expatriate-missionary-tourist blogo- DIARIST!!!!!

Ahem, I did pass the 'English as a Second Language' test. So, as it turns out, I CAN speak English. It turns out I CAN understand English after all, who knew? OK, on a serious note, it was not easy.  It was four hours long (and yet we hear that an adult's attention span is just under ONE HOUR!!).  It was pricey (the price was in US $).  It was away from home (I travelled the previous night to the city where I took the test) - I slept in (a very posh, as it turned out!) back packers (but the price was not bad at all).  I got lost, the police had to take me to the back packers after I wandered around like a vagabond for 4 hours (no one had any idea where Berea is :-( )  ....maybe the area was called something else the second before I arrived there...... The test was tough, I should call it an exam actually because it was a proper exam in every sense of the word. I had to think, listen, compose, comprehend, watch out for trick questions, block out noise from outside, not l

This is for you Judith (and any one else interested in TEBA ex-miners' news), following my last comment, here are the details that might be helpful regarding TEBA and ex-miners: Who:  any Malawian who worked in the mines under TEBA between 1970 and 2008 and didn't get their dues What: the SA government through debt collector company R&W, is squaring the bills outstanding; How: Malawian claimants should call or write to Credit Data, the company that has been commissioned to run the programme in Malawi (their number must be available in MW directory??) What is needed: Name, current addresses, contact number, date of birth and where possible, name of mine and miner ID.  Where miner is deceased, survivors can submit this details and claim. Bank account details are needed for R&W to deposit the money This information has been sourced from the Malawi Nation newspaper, Wed, 18 May 2011

forty years of mining migrations from Malawi to South Africa, it's finally pay day and I'm happy that these men did not risk their lives (under ground) and leave their families behind for nothing....Finally...something for the ex-miners to smile about :-)

Disclaimer-this is a subjective opinion and not a political statement. Let me admit, I had planned to boycott watching the royal wedding on TV. Prior to the broadcast last Friday morning, I kept myself purposely ‘out of the loop’ on anything to do with it. I had taken up the chant ‘why should I bother about a royal family I’ll never meet when I have my own king right in my own Ngoni nation whose title was stripped to the bare-sounding ‘Paramount Chief’? On the morning itself I woke up and found myself house-bound due to a mix of unforeseen circumstances and I thought…’what to do but turn on the telly.’ So, long story short I watched the entire thing (sans the private reception obviously). As I watched, several things became apparent. The first was the recognition of the multiple facets of my own subjectivity. As a child of the 80s, my memories took me back to my mother’s stack of ‘Royal Wedding’ glossy magazines filled with the Prince and Princess of Wales. Without cheating by l

Disclaimer: this is a subjective opinion and not a political statement ...I was sidetracked at 16, when news of Diana, by then LADY Diana hit Malawi. I was in a Catholic boarding school for girls at the time. We heard all the conspiracy stories as we counted the number of mangos in in the tree or was it during Prep time?...I believed some of them…even heard that some of her jewels had been donated to our school through a charity organisation. I pictured seeing my first royal jewels, I imagined huge orbs draped in gold... I got boils around this stage (don’t be disgusted, it’s part of the story) and went home to my mother to recover. My mother lived in a small town, Kasungu but wouldn’t you know it. A family in my neighbourhood had the VHS of Lady Diana’s funeral. I watched the tape with that family’s kids (they were watching it for the umpteenth time) and wept as Elton John sang the ‘Billy Jean’ song re-written for Lady Diana. In my teen Christian mind I was puzzled and afraid as I

Disclaimer: this is a subjective opinion and not a political statement ....So, here I was, an African, theology and development adult student, not the young Commonwealth child/teen. What did I think? Let’s make believe that I have four arms. OK? Here goes: on one hand, as a woman, I was mighty impressed by THE DRESS, I was impressed by how the bride and groom turned out (…they are my age by the way, so that was a touching experience), I was impressed by the formalities, by THE DRESS, the simplicity yet sophistication, the homily and of course, THE DRESS! On the other hand, as an African theology and development student, I was not impressed by the opulence that went into the whole thing. I read a few months ago a comment on a website (a habit I have since toned down on); a guy wrote with great zeal: ‘why do we think there is only one pie the world is eating from, there are many pies, the American pie, the European pie, the Asian pie….let the rich get richer…after all, it doesn’t

Disclaimer: this is a subjective opinion and not a political statement On the third hand I thought about Eurocentrism. It creeps up on you slowly, the fact that you subconsciously watch the parade of global royals with no interest until suddenly there is a European royal and suddenly you are like, ‘who’s that? Doesn’t s/he look wonderful…move over Prince of Benong Beng! I want to see that European, which European country did they say s/he is from?!’ I didn’t catch myself doing this until I was surprised to see two choir boys, one clearly from Asian descent and the other from African descent. And then it suddenly hit me, I was at Heathrow airport a few years ago and definitely there are Brits of Indian, East Asian, African origin aplenty! You get my point. On the fourth hand, and the last hand what impressed upon my mind a few days later is the question of Osama bin Laden. Of course, my African trees and sunlight don’t tell me much but I do wonder about what impact HUGE celebrations

Fascinating...I am required to take an all important English test next month. Don't ask me why, it has something to do with my not being a 'native English speaker'.  Well, I am a native :-p lol, some would say...and I do speak something... but I am definitely not English.  These are the times you wish the Queen would get a bit distracted from her grandson's wedding and wave her sceptre over my head pronouncing me English for a month. Wishes.... This takes me back to learning English back in the day.  First by rote.  I remember the teacher saying endlessly, 'Class, what is this?' and our response was, 'ZAAAAT IS A TROPHY!!' 'Again, class! What is this?' 'ZAAAAT IS A TROPHY!!' I remember graduating to Timve and Tsala at around age 8 after barely managing Reading for Some Purpose and Peter and Jane .  Timve's Big Shoe anyone? What about learning through song on the then only authorised radio station, Radio MBC?  'Good morni

How? Wrote lines and lines about whether it makes global economic sense to allow unlimited money to accumulate on 'talent' i.e. the who's who of the grammys and Oscars for example.  Celebrities of the US and UK have no ceiling it seems when it comes to endorsement deals, advertising deals, record deals, appearance fees, photo/story sales to magazines...the millions they get paid just seem to grow with every decade. Well, what I wrote just disappeared  into cyberspace, poof! just like that. Thank you net nanny for nipping my criticism of this new class in the bud. Do you suppose 200 years from now people will say: 'the 21st Century was characterised by a steadily growing class of the wealthy, the Celebrities!' Well now, that's a topic for another day, fare the well my recently snatched draft...

LOL, scrolling through my drafts, found this entry that never made the cut.  It's from about 3 years ago....! Thank God for Labor Day! I am exhillirated, especially after Easter came in March and we had the whole April with no break, man, this is cool. What am I doing today? top of my list, I'm going to the Sunshine Boutique AKA Bend Down Boutique AKA Flea Market (where the fleas at?) AKA Kaunjika ONLY IN AFRICA BABY!!! I'm looking for some basketball shorts, not just for training, but I think they just inflate my ego, remind me of yester year....don't know if I can chance a basketball jersey, need to work on my tri-ceps, you know with all the good nsima it's kinda hard to keep them in check. so to you all holiday/labor day celebrants, don't spend your hard-earned Kwacha drinking today..Carlsberg is already rich!  Meet me at the Sunshine Boutique. One Love! -----p.s.  remember the scary rope bridge on your way to the bend down boutique, and you had to pa

Folkert and I took the metrorail up and down Cape Town several times over the Christmas season.  Not only was it efficient transportation, it also provided for us time to chat, talk and discuss... So obviously, after several days a topic that was at the centre of our discussions on one of those train rides was the issue of race. How people were responding to us, how they were responding to ME walking with Folkert; how they were responding to FOLKERT walking with me!  After talking at lenghth, and me being secure that, racially, things are as they seem; our jaws dropped when an eavesdropper, a White guy might I add, walked up to us holding up a picture of his bi-racial girlfriend, 'You don't have to live in the past!  Look! This is my girlfriend for the past ... years.  Things were like that but you don't have to live in the past!' If my memory serves me correctly, he had tears welling in his eyes.  It happened to be his stop and off he went.  It really got us thinki

The first time I ever noted the frenzy over women's chest areas was in Swaziland.  The international media was fascinated by the Reed Dance, 'Women parade around like THAT?' they seemed to scream as they happily snapped away. But at my school in the middle of Manzini, Swazi school girls practiced for traditonal dance competitions dressed in what was normal for traditonal dances: bare chests and all.  Having read all the rants and raves about women and cleavages in Eurocentric literature and media,  I looked sideways at teachers during those traditional dance practices, hoping to see signs of, at the very least, embarrassment...but there was none whatsoever.  The teachers seemed to only be occupied with whether the girls were following the beats.  This puzzled me for years until another puzzle came along...African men's frenzy over thighs.  Whereever thighs were flashed around as I grew up, drama happened. Short skirts hollered at here, short-shorts criticized there,