i mean, how can you not love that, right? Coming home to Cape Town was an easy one. But leaving Oakland was also a less easy one than we may have thought. It was surprising to both tbV and myself just how much like home it felt to us. Which was great. And had a lot to do with the people and some of the places. Especially getting to stay for a month with Aaron [...]
i just read a really helpful piece by Brene Brown titled, 'Own our History. Change the story' which is focused on Americaland which has what feels like a completely different story, when it comes to present race issues, in many ways, but also some remarkably similar overlaps. Owning our stories is standing in our truth. It’s transformative in our personal and professional lives AND it’s also critical in our community lives. But we don’t think about history [...]
A further extract from the same chapter as the last one i shared, this one looks at the history that is taught and the need for young black men and women to have stories and heroes they can relate to: One writer makes the point that in an effort to destroy completely the structures that had been built up in the African Society and to impose their imperialism with an unnerving totality the colonialists were [...]
In my quest to continue learning South African history from voices other than those i grew up with i was encouraged to read, 'I Write What I Like' by Steve Biko. Not so much a story as a collection of letters and speeches, this book is really helpful as it contains real time words, thoughts and ideas from one of South Africa's great leaders written during the height of apartheid. The Catholic Herald had this [...]
A couple of weeks ago we had our Spaghetti conversation about race, location and boundary, which you can catch up on over here. Our friend Babs, was one of the guests who joined us and she had this reflection to add: A conversation about where you live becomes a conversation about your life, and in South Africa, becomes a picture of what the past means to different people and how it affects how we live [...]
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? ...No! It's Jonty! And with one scoop of the ball and full-on dive into the stumps, Imzamam Ul Haq was run out and Jonty Rhodes changed cricket fielding. For. Ever. Until that point i had kinda watched cricket a little bit and tried to pick a guy - Richard Snell - to be my guy. But to me it was this weird, alien confusing beast that kept getting [...]
My friend Dre, who shared some excellent feedback to Bob's first email over here, responded to his latest response in a comment but i asked her if i could rather share it as a post cos everyone should read this, especially but not solely, Bob. Dre for president!: Bob, you didn’t respond to MY post! *sniff sniff* I feel so left out! (kidding, I’ll be fine ;) But seriously, I do appreciate your response to the [...]
About two weeks ago i published an email from a friend of mine who is white, male, South African and presently living in the UK who had some thoughts, feelings, questions and frustrations about life in South Africa and some of the conversations we'd been having on here. i shared his email under the guise of 'Bob' and invited a few of my friends to respond, all of which you can catch up with over [...]
My lovely wife Val was of course the hostess for Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and she shares some of her thoughts from the evening: The idea is simple: gather good people around good food and good discussion and see what happens. So we did. We turned off technology and tuned in to people. It was messy and it was chaotic, it was painful and it [...]
Daniel was another of the guests from Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and he shares some of his thoughts from the evening: We need to learn to listen to one another. Such a simple concept, "I stop talking, you talk", but very hard to execute. On Friday, Brett invited me to a dinner with a number of other peeps from different ages, colour, [...]