I couldn't want you anyway

Almost every Tuesday the nameless Zimbabwean would come to deliver the free weekly paper. I'd make him a sandwich, grab some fruit, and come out to hand him the food in between the bars of the enormous black gate. Me in the prison of my own home, handing him what probably amounted to the only sure meal of the day.

In light of the recent wave of xenophobic attacks I wonder what has become of him. Moreover, what has become of us. What have we as a people chosen to be, in this situation? When do other people cease to be people? When does one think it is within your right to take two Ethiopians, lock them into a container, and burn the container down? How can any person not see another as sister, brother, mother, father, as someone worthy of life? This I cannot understand. 

In 2008, when the first wave of xenophobic attacks happened, I was also safely far away. I was a foreigner in a foreign country, deserving of necklacing simply for existing there if one follows the logic of the perpetrators. Now, again, I am far away, a foreigner in a country I happen to have a passport for. 

This hatred for another, an Other one does not know, is overwhelming. At this hour, the personal, the political and the public fuse into an aching in the night for something to be better, at least for a moment. In South Africa, locals are murdering foreigners just for being foreign. In the Mediterranean, 800 people escaping their home countries in the hope of a better life elsewhere capsize and die. In Johannesburg, my friend worries because her insurance will not cover a treatment she needs. In Switzerland, after a glimmer of hope another friend has had unnecessary complexities added to her life. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, my mother is dealing with her own mother, forgetful, demanding and impatient at 86. My sister is ill and we are talking past one another, if at all. I worry about having saddled myself with too much, about the work interfering with the thesis, but depending on the money earned for survival nonetheless. I worry about what will happen come September 1 2015. I worry what will come next. 

In this light, in this hour, darkness drowns out the light, causing negative epiphanies. Everyone worries mostly about themselves, perhaps it is time that I follow suit. I am reminded of the Steinberg article about how things don't matter enough here, because the everyday is not tinted with the presence of danger and risk in most of the things we do. If I don't finish the thesis in time, I can get an extension. If the move to wherever doesn't pan out, fuck it, I'll stay another month. There are back-up plans in place for everything. 

But perhaps it is exactly this sense of things mattering that am desperately looking for again. Making that sandwich mattered. Giving mattered. Today an acquaintance asked if I could organise some bread for him (I work at a bakery) and although I was not working today, I gave him the contents of our freezer (which amounted to 3 loaves, 15 rolls and some scones) for an impeding trip. I enjoy giving without consequence, I enjoy being able to help. But this, this was strange. This felt strange. This was not a sandwich. This did not matter, because although here I might know his name, this person is flesh not friend and the bag of bread an empty gesture. 

Ride

Three days ago HONY  posted about a boy selling cowboy toys because he really wanted a horse. As a result, the guy behind HONY started a crowd-funded campaign to send this boy and his parents on a Wild West adventure. I thought I could donate $10 (which would equal about R100 I think) because I live under the illusion of having more money than I really do and thought I could afford to help him have fun with horses. It would be a better investment than spending money on unnecessary things. 

But by the time I got to the indiegogo site, only ONE day after it was started, the project was already funded, and over-funded (460%) for that matter. In a world where everyone seems excessively focussed on the self, and what it could benefit most from, it is encouraging to see so many people willing to give a little bit to make someone else's dream come true :) 

Leisure Suite

Wrapping madness. 

I am going a bit crazy with my gift wrapping this year, but it is too much fun. Also, I recently went through all the stuff I own, and before throwing things away I am using them to decorate the gifts. As mentioned in a previous post, many of the readings that we had to read for class are being recycled as wrapping paper. How very eco, haha.

Staying with the whole recycle, save-the-planet, local-is-lekker aspect of this post, I found a few different local designers that offer semi-affordable gifts.

Wren design recycles flour bags, cement bags, corn starch bags, desiccated coconut bags, coffee sacks and antique linen grain sacks. Yes, if you were sensing a theme, basically they take bags and make them into more hipster-approved bags.

Then there are these cool notebooks by inspired by our country. In keeping with good hipster behaviour, I suggest writing your thoughts down in one of these whilst sipping something ending in -chino at Seattle Coffee Company and while your MacBook Air makes use of the free WiFi to download TED talks (coincidentally, brandchannel has an interesting article on SA brands mimicking overseas brands):

batch sells these cool bookends by Fanie van Zyl, as well as other designery-looking lights.

Scars on land

I always thought that when by body dies, they can take every part of it except for my eyes. But now, well, take it all. If someone else can survive and my brain is already dead why shouldn't they. Maybe there is an afterlife and organ-less I will be some kind of crippled zombie type. Who knows, perhaps karma exists and I will be rewarded for selflessness or something. All I know is that in that moment, what I was is never coming back, and if someone else can profit from life though mine ending, why not.

Almodóvar's Todo sobre mi madre considers everything from belief to sexuality to AIDS, and also looks at organ donation by starting with a mother losing her son and having to make the choice to donate or not.




If you want to become an organ donor in South Africa, please visit their website.

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. 

Give, and it will be given to you

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is an older lady that spends her days sitting on a camping chair, with a row of colourful plastic bags stretched out in a row at her feet. She sits on one corner of a four-way stop and I drive past her on my way to/from the gym. I have never seen anyone buy a bag from her, so I don't know how she survives. 

The other day, a new Mini was driving in front of me, and this tiny blond-haired child was leaning out of the back window. Suddenly the car stopped and in my rear-view mirror I saw the child stretching out its hand with a green apple in it and the lady from the corner running towards it. 

I have never thought about giving her food, because I don't know if charity is appropriate. I mean, if you are trying to earn a living by selling your bags, I guess you would prefer people to actually buy them than having to run after an apple from a car. 

It also bothers me when people give car guards money from their cars. Go up to the person and look them in the eye and put your R2 in their hand. Acknowledge them. The general population seems to want to ignore others who work menial jobs. I know a lot of people get angry about the amount of car guards one encounters and having to pay for every minute you park somewhere. It bothers me as well, because I feel one should be able to park in safety wherever one is. But if you want to give, don't do it condescendingly. 

What do I give? Hmm. I don't go to church, do I don't donate there. I'll give food or money to beggars on street corner. I pay car guards. I'll send an sms to one of those "donate R10 for rhino conservation"-efforts. There is a newspaper-delivery-man whom we will give a plate of food to if we're at home when he  delivers the paper on Tuesdays. 

I would prefer to donate my time rather than donating money which I do not really have. But one must realize that one is always more fortunate, still, than others. I live in comparable luxury. I have the privilege of  education, transport, shelter, a job ( sort-of) and there is always food in the house.

I could share more.