No Man's Land

Like I said, the other day I went to a photographic exhibit. I expected white walls, red wine and people standing around in muted silence, careful to look contemplative but not to utter any real opinion of the work.

This place, exhibited at somewhat of an in-between space called Mein Haus am See (My beach house?) , was full of hip-looking people wearing Ray Bans, skinny jeans and untamed hair. Many girls opted for jeans shorts over dark tights and with little booties. I probably shouldn't be too judgmental of people who are all trying to look like an individual and yet somehow all end up looking alike. It is just interesting to note how cool kids everywhere stick to the same trends, whilst believing that there is an individual culture, an spin that each one puts on their outfit that will set them apart from all the rest.

Seeing the actual photographs was a bit of a mission since the photos were hung on the wall and there was a labyrinth of Sperrmüll couches in between me and said wall. I'm guessing the point of an exhibition is to actually see the work, but here one needed a telescope to really view the photographs. 

Luckily, Photocircle, who hosted the entire thing, is more an online platform where one can look through the work of numerous photographers and then, for a reasonable price, order the works in various formats and sizes. A percentage of the proceeds goes to a charity of your choosing and then you get sent you new artwork. Especially in an age where tourists go around snapping pictures of everything that moves (or doesn't), this project aims to give something back not only to the community whose image has been appropriated but also to the photographer. Wonderful. 

Here is an explanatory video:

On Photocircle I could also have a closer look at Kevin Russ's work, and it makes me want to jump into my own camper van and drive across the USA. Have a look:

Street Bison

Cloudy Horse Head

Umpqua Rays

Winter Horseland

Anderson Lake

Rocky Mountain Moose

Sunrise Forest

A time for giving

Since returning to Pretoria on Friday after driving for three days ( we had to fetch our grandmother in Jeffrey's Bay and then stop over on the farm in the Free State where she grew up to see my cousin) the focus has been on preparing for the Christmas celebration. We celebrate on the 24th where the family will go to church, have dinner together and then spend the rest of the evening opening the presents. This year, just my family celebrated on Christmas Eve, and then we had guests for the 25th. 

Today was the first day of rest. But because my grandmother likes to keep busy, she was rearranging my mother's cupboards and therefore my sister and I did the same with our rooms. When cleaning up our closets we also clean them out and decide what can be given away and what we will still wear. I have a lot of clothes and shoes and bags and scarves. I have a lot of stuff. Even if I gave half of it away, I would still have more than enough. We take our old clothes to the farm or my mom will donate it to people she has met while on the road as a tour guide who can use it. 

It is very difficult for me to grasp what it means to be poor. We are not rich, but we have all that we need and are privileged to have received an excellent education. But seeing people on the streets begging or the farm workers who have not had the same opportunities, I wonder if South Africa will ever be able to establish its society as mostly middle-class with only a small margin of poverty and excessive wealth. Perhaps the greatest sin of Apartheid is depriving the majority of the population of a decent education. Thereby, there are entire generations who have not expanded their knowledge and their view on the world, and they can also not instil a desire for improvement in social standing. No one wants to be poor, but it seems that most people also don't have the means or the knowledge to escape it. 

I read a German article about a social experiment where the journalist and an actress went to the town where the richest people in Germany have settled and disguised themselves as beggars in order to see if the rich will give to the poor. In the article it is cited that testing by the american psychologist Dacher Keltner, professor at the University of California, showed that the expectation by the poor to be helped by the rich is in fact misconstrued. The richer a person is, the less likely they are of donating. 

Charity is fine if the press is present and the charity on a different continent, preferably in a third-world country like Pakistan or Uganda or Colombia. Also, it seems that poorer people are more inclined to giving because there is a better understanding of the situation and a greater sense of "helping one another". 

I wonder if we are desensitized by being confronted by poverty every time we stop at a traffic light or if it makes us more aware of our own privileged status. Whilst in a township, one of my mother'S tourists turned to her and asked how long they still had to endure being there. Do we at some point see the poor as less deserving, as not hard-working, as lazy, as not deserving of what we have? If rich people instil their children with the same values where money and power trump empathy and compassion, it is no wonder that the world is in a state of chaos. I believe we have lost a sense of being interconnected, of caring for one another. We live in a selfish world and it is no use denying that I am selfish, too. In some way, I could probably be helping all the beggars on the streets or the people that ring our doorbell. 

Perhaps that is a resolution for 2012. Helping more. 

57th percentile

I am a person that achieves. Not necessarily top of my class or best at something, but I like doing well. I guess everyone does. We like knowing we can do something better than others, that we are not just average and mediocre and that somehow, this being good at something enhances our individuality. Perhaps our achievements and talents are what set us apart from the other 7 billion.

English is not my strongest subject. At school I loved it because the ways of language made sense to me and it was enjoyable to learn. Now, however, English as subject has become tedious. I don't want to read Middlemarch or Portrait of a Lady. There is nothing in those words for me. 

Emma was great fun. I previously saw the BBC TV series with Romola Garai and the book was more fun having a specific image in my mind. It was therefore quite a surprise to get (only) 57% in my assignment. Normally, I do the assignments and I check that I answered what was asked and I move on. This was a punch in the face, a big red letter screaming at me :" HA! you underachieving shell of a person!" Somehow how I see myself is still always linked to how I achieve academically.

Sure, admittedly marks do not constitute a personality, but with a bad mark comes a lower average, and the lower average in English brings down my average in general, which could impact the amount of scholarship money I receive from the university for my degree. The better I do, the less I pay. So perhaps the disappointment is threefold: the work was not as good as I thought it was, my talent for English isn't either, and this will reflect badly on the amount I will have to pay for tuition next year ( since it is my mom who pays, it is even worse). 

There was a girl in school with me who always went to the teacher if she thought she could get just one more percent out of an argument. Even if she had 98%, it was not good enough. I also went to talk to my lecturer, but more to find out what I had done so that in future I could do it better. There are times when fighting for marks is the right thing to do, but here it was more of a learning curve. I still think marking is a subjective thing in the humanities, because it is hard to give the reason for each percentage. But I must admit my own mistakes. Also, there is no use in crying over spilt milk.

Now, after that lesson learnt, is another remark I have to make. 

Giving. 

There is a monstrous egotism that lives in people and they choose to feed it instead of combating it. Why would you give your old clothes to your cleaning lady, ask her to sell them to people living in poverty, and then still ask her to give you half of the profits? I know, you bought the clothes originally. But by now, you will not wear them any more. If no one would take them, you would probably throw them away. Furthermore, you have already replenished your wardrobe, I don't really see why you cannot just give your clothes away? 

The same goes for Matric Ball dresses ( = prom) . Mine was supposed to look like the one Catherine Zeta Jones wears in this ad: 

Needless do say, it didn't. 

But perhaps now someone else could use my dress. I won't wear it again. 

So if you are in the same situation, consider donating your ball-gowns to The Princess Project. I am unsure if they only take celebrity-owned ones, but that seems a tad silly. I mean, it is not as if SA has a lot of celebrities. 

Bride & Co has a similar idea in Johannesburg, so if you are in that area, you could drop your dress with them. 

Maybe I am a hypocrite. My dress has been hanging in the closet since 2006. I wore it once to Halloween. But I've never gotten round to donating it. However, I do clean out my closet about twice a year and get rid of everything that I haven't worn in a while. As in a year or three, not a month. Our cleaning lady takes the clothes and I assume she keeps what she likes and either sells or gives away the rest. I don't care. I am not wearing them any more and if someone else can use them and profit from them, that is my charity for the day.