Oh, the relief!!!!

If you read about the last time, you will understand the title of this post.

In the end, it took us eighteen months, probably around R2000.00 in instructor and test fees, four attempts and more stress than you can imagine. But finally, today, my son beat the giant that is the K53 test system and now holds an official South African driver's license.

Signs of the Times

One of my favourite genres for both books and movie is the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario. Deep Impact, The Day After (and The Day After Tomorrow), I Am Legend, The Day of the Triffids, and a hundred and one other sci-fi novels about the end of civilisation and 'what happens afterwards'.

But what would it be like if one of those scenarios were to play out in my life time? Even maybe within the next few years, maybe? When we look at what's going on in the world today, it can get a little scary. It can get a LOT scary, in fact. So what exactly is going on, then?

Population explosion - we're almost at 6,9 billion now.
Sky-rocketing food prices leading to people dying of starvation.
Sky-rocketing fuel prices leading to all kinds of knock-on effects.
Global warming leading to ....
Environmental damage that might be irreparable - deforestation, ozone layer holes etc.
Increasing amount and size of natural disasters - Katrina, the 2006 tsunami, the Burmese cyclone, the Chinese earthquake ....
AIDS

Where will it end?

Which Swinging Sixties Chick Are You?

You are Marianne Faithfull...

Congratulations! You are my heroine! A singer, actress, rock star girl-friend and all round beautiful person, you are also a poster girl for 60's excess. Due to your blond hair, big eyes and innocent appearance, you inspire chivalry in people- they want to take care you. In reality, however, you are strong and independent- you do not want to be controlled. You are ethereal and intense and people find it hard to know the "real" you. You are experimental and willing to try anything once. You are adventourous and people are drawn to your beauty and magical quality.

You like to be surrounded by beautiful things... clothes, literature, music, people and have romantic notions about drugs and decandent living. Sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, you started using pot and sleeping with girls at age 17, by 22 you had slept with 3 Rolling Stones, countless rock stars and were living on a wall, shooting up heroin. Times have been tough but you have survived, you have overcome many addictions and are still recording today. You have a strong soul.

Described as having the face of an angel and the best body in rock music, along with Keith Richards, you are something of a minor medical miracle!

Us and Them

In the days following the xenophobic outbreaks, the people of South Africa have opened the hearts and homes to those affected by the violence.

Refugee camps have been set up in at least five sites in the Western Cape alone, including one less than ten minutes drive from my home. A friend of mine has been volunteering there since the weekend, making food and distributing donated goods to more than 1500 people (a conservative estimate). Churches, community organizations and NGOs have all thrown themselves into the relief effort ... but there is NO official presence beyond a police patrol. No one is organizing anything - and we have the entire SA Navy just a few kms down the coast ...


And just guess where our President is? After a 'rare televised appearance' on Sunday evening in which he lambasted the 'shameful acts' - two weeks after the violence broke out, he has now flown off to Japan!!! He's gone to a conference called - wait for it - Towards a Vibrant Africa: A Continent of Hope and Opportunity. Unbelievable ... he can fly halfway round the world but he couldn't be bothered to take a trip to the townships. If this had happened in Mandela's day (which is doubtful) he would have been in the townships the very next day, talking to the people. He would have been on television soon after that, addressing the nation.

Do we really have to put up with Mbeki's non-leadership for another year?

Blog here has loads of info on the community reaction to the crisis, and see this amazing Slideshow too, from News 24.

From Shame through Helplessness ... to Fear

Today it feels like South Africa is teetering on the edge of major disaster.

About ten days ago, the so-called "xenophobic violence" started up north in the township of Alexandra in Gauteng. Since then over 40 people have died, some brutally hacked or burned to death by rampaging mobs. Over 25,000 foreigners - men, women and children from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia, Malawi, Nigeria, Ghana etc - have been displaced, their shacks looted and burned, forcing them to seek refuge in police stations and other community centres. Zimbabwe and Malawi have instituted official repatriation programmes, aimed at bringing their people back home. It is estimated that of SA's 49 million people, maybe 4 - 5 million are foreign nationals, some here legally but the majority illegally.

When it was all happening far away, up in the townships outside Johannesburg, like many others I felt shocked and ashamed that 'our people' could behave in such a barbaric fashion but still it seemed distant from my everyday life. But today that changed. We woke up to find that the violence was right here, on our doorsteps in the Cape. The local papers told of attacks on Somalian and Zimbabweans in settlements in and around Cape Town - of looting and burning and of thousands of foreigners being transported out of the area by the police for their own protection, as crowds wielding pangas, knives, batons and homemade weapons took to the streets.

At work, colleagues who live in these areas had stories to tell:

• A Mozambican who works with one staff member's husband was warned (not sure by whom) TWO DAYS ago to 'leave the area or suffer the consequences'.
  
• Another staff member lives over the road from a Somalian woman. A taxi arrived at the her door in the middle of the night, bringing her all the stock from her small shop, which had just been burnt to the ground.
  
• Tonight, as I was leaving work, the RN taking over from me was on the phone arranging to pay for two Zimbabwean friends of hers to be brought from their shack on the other side of the Peninsula to her house on this side, just to keep them safe.
  

At lunch time today, I walked through a busy mall and I looked at the faces around me. As a white South African, I am ashamed to say that I cannot tell the difference between any of the African cultures. We have 11 different official languages here and each group has their own society and culture. How then can I know who is from another country? And as I looked, I wondered who among those people was foreign and fearing for their safety, their lives? And I also wondered what I would do if I saw someone being attacked? Would I step up and say NO? Or would I keep quiet and skulk away? Where is the line between standing up for what you believe - and staying safe because I have a family who need me? What if the person being attacked was also a mom with a baby? What would I do?


Later on today, I mentioned these thoughts and found that I was not alone - many of us had had the same experience. And underneath all this lurks that other fear: we, the white people of South Africa, are also 'foreigners' in this land. The rallying cry of not that long ago was "Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer!"

According to BBC news tonight, the situation is calming down a bit. But there are too many unanswered questions and too much anger ... and throughout this whole thing, our "President" - the same wimp who said of Zimbabwe: "Crisis? What crisis?" - has been hugely conspicuous by his absense and his silence. He has not visited the hard-hit areas, he has not spoken out, he has not offered apologies to those who have suffered at the hands of the citizens of his country.

It's not over yet.

Why do we need stories?

What would life be like if we didn't have stories? That we need stories is evidenced by the shelves full of books in our libraries and bookstores and schools, and by the sold-out movie theatres that you'll find in every corner of every country of the world. We find stories everywhere - on the radio, in the lyrics of a song, in the words of the lady at the water cooler recounting her weekend away. But WHY do we need stories? I found a wonderful answer to this question here today, in an article by Jacqui Banaszynski. She writes:

I asked Pete (a journalist writing about forest services) last week to tell me why we need stories, and he sent me back a note which, he confessed, was wine-induced, and he said this:

“I need stories to know I’m not alone. That is reason enough. They tell me what we do and how we live and occasionally, if I’m lucky, they tell me why. There is a commonality to stories that makes us whole beings. Walt Whitman knew that when he wrote ‘Leaves of Grass’:

‘I celebrate myself,
And what I assume, you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.’”

There's more to it than that, I'm sure, but it's a pretty good starting point.

Grovel, grovel, grovel ...

Last night, I totally put my foot in it with my darlin' daughter.

A couple of weeks ago, she told me that she and her friend Lana* would be going to the library after school and Lana would be giving her some tutoring in Life Science. (Lana is a very bright gal!) So last night my gal says to me that today, after school, her friend Jo* (another bright girl) would be coming home with her to work on Physical Science. I was a leetle bitty distracted at the time (watching something on TV) and so I say: 'That's so cool, darling. I'm glad you've got such great friends to tutor you in all this stuff.'

A deafening silence ensues, loud enough to make me realize something is badly wrong. I glance over at her and see her staring at me in that teenagerish fashion - rolling her eyes without actually moving them - so I say: "What? What?"

"Actually, mom," she says, "I'm going to be tutoring her."

Luckily for me, my gal is a wonderful person and accepted my groveling very graciously.

** not their real names

A Nation's Shame

Today, I am ashamed to be a South African. The following story filled the front pages of all the local papers on Monday, and was on international news last night:

Flames of Hate
Residents laugh as foreigner burns in his own blankets

Picture by Halden Krog

As we made our way through the Ramaphosa squatter camp in Reiger Park on Gauteng’s East Rand, a woman’s words made us freeze in horror. “They are burning people down there,” she said.

I ran to the nearest police officer and said: “The locals say they’re burning a person at the other intersection.”

Officers leapt into a Casspir and a Nyala, and drove through the debris and barricades in the road.

I ran after them, with other photographers following.

Two hundred metres down the road we found the first man. He had been severely beaten and was semi- conscious. Police thought he was dead, but later realised he wasn’t.

About 25m from him a man was on his knees. There was a mattress covering him, and it was on fire.

He, too, was alight.

Police threw the mattress off him and kicked sand onto him to put out the flames. Another officer ran over with a fire extinguisher, pointed it at him and extinguished the flames. Other officers radioed for medical help.

The man was alive, but barely. He groaned, but he could not speak.

It was all over in 20 seconds.

There was a concrete pillar lying near him, splattered with blood. We can only imagine what was done to him before he was set alight.

The police stayed with him until the paramedics arrived, doing what they could . But residents gathered at the scene were laughing.

Kim Ludbrook, a photographer, admonished them, and we reminded them this was human being and that what had happened was barbaric.

Still they laughed.

The burn victim, whose name has not been released, died last night in hospital.

Original story and more links here.

I can't believe the level of hate that is on display here right now. These people are our neighbours, who have fled their own countries, often as refugees, to try and build a better life here. They often end up living in shacks in squatter communities, scraping a living by selling fruit and junk items on street corners, trying to survive and raise their children in a country where there is still some hope for some kind of future. And now this - so far 22 have died simply for the 'crime' of not being South Africans.

If Mandela were dead, he would be spinning in his grave at what his successors have done with his bright, shining dream for this country. Time and again, our so-called democratic government has failed its own people and now it has failed the refugees from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other African nations in turmoil, who fled here, seeking shelter and peace within our borders, and how found only more hate. And now, for some, death at the hands of an angry mob ...

I have no words, only deep shame and despair.

Quick Plug

This is probably my favorite online word game site.

The site was founded a year ago with the Original Game where players were given a two-part phrase describing both a person and something else. For example, a post may be 'He was like Stalinism: of Russian descent' or 'She was like a walled city: unnecessarily defensive.'

The player's goal is try to think of a more clever second part. For example, if the topic was 'She was like conditioning shampoo: multi-tasking', you might respond with 'always making promises she couldn't keep' or 'often found in hotel bathrooms.'

The site now offers seven daily/weekly games that foster abstract and creative thinking. Games are of the challenge and response type - given a clue, users come up with a creative response and then vote for the posts they think are really good - winners are announced when the next round starts.

It's a lot of fun for people who love word play and quite competitive too ... at present, I'm running second only to the legendary Beau - yeah, go me! LOL! There is also the opportunity to submit your own clever word game for inclusion ... mine is called Fictionary!

See you there?

Thoughts on Work, Writing and Life

Way back at the end of 1998, I left bedside nursing for a managerial post and in 2001, I moved on to an administrative post with a risk management company. When that job ended in early 2004, I decided that I no longer wanted to be in the nursing world. I'd originally trained as an RN at the suggestion of my father and for a number of reasons, had never pursued my love of reading, writing, literature, film etc, so when I found myself with a small retrenchment package and an even smaller pension payout, I took a chance and started freelancing as an editor/writer. I wanted a new identity for myself now that I was in my 40s and was determined to find it doing something I really loved - ie working with words!

In the beginning, I worked mainly on commercial projects - brochures, directories, newsletters etc. I was lucky to get quite a lot of work via a friend who is a successful graphic designer, but I struggled to find the oomph to go out and rustle up business for myself. We scraped by on my earnings and the various packages until early 2005, when economic necessity forced me to face up to the fact that I needed more money than I was earning as a freelancer if I wanted to survive.

I fought long and hard against the idea of doing relief RN shifts - going back to nursing felt just like 'failing' to me. In the end, with a great deal of unhappiness, I signed up with an agency and did some shifts in ICU and HiCare at a local hospital. I hated it - I felt stupid, incompetent, out of my depth and useless - but the money was more than useful! So 2005 to the end of 2007 saw me doing a combination of part time RN work and some freelance stuff. Some months were great and others were really tight, but we never starved and I never missed a mortgage payment either.

Towards the end of 2007, with my USA emigration process staggering along in fits and starts, I started reviewing options for 2008. This, the year in which I faced up to turning 50, had to be a year that meant something, in which I achieved something out of the ordinary to mark the event (and probably to prove to myself that I wasn't a failure / loser / ordinary etc ...) I decided to pursue a new qualification which I hoped would be useful to me in the US.

But none of that worked out - my house sale fell through meaning I had NO spare cash in the bank to fund a sabbatical year, plus there was a screw-up and I didn't get into the course I'd applied for. Major bummer all round. Think again time ... and only six months left before 50 showed up. In the end, it wasn't that hard a decision. I needed a regular income, I'd been doing relief work for the past 18 months with a LTC facility and they had an opening. I figured if nothing else, I could spend my free time writing properly again for a change, the way I used to do before I started freelancing. So by April the 1st, I started back in fulltime nursing.

Now here's the odd and very surprising thing: I'm happier and more at peace now than I have been in a very long time. It's not just the job, of course, although I have to say I am really, really happy there, for many different reasons (like the people, like the ambience, like the feeling that I'm good at what I do, like building relationships with my patients etc etc.) It's also living in a place that is much more 'me', it's coming to terms with the spiritual and philosophical issues that have caused me so much deep heartache over the last few years, and it's seeing my kids moving on and feeling secure and happy too.

So all that remains for this year is to get actually Write The Book. And get through July 6th in one piece ... anyone got any wonderful ideas on a unique way to celebrate a 50th?

Word Counters Union

The Rules: (copied from Aestril)

is an informal group of bloggers who have all agreed to write a certain amount of words on our creative writing projects every day and report on what we’ve written each day on our blogs. And to keep everyone honest and motivated, we also check up on one another frequently.

The ground rules
(Invented by Liz, adapted and expanded by Ing, copied by Aestril, and then copied by me ... )

1. Write at least 100 words every day on a creative project. Doesn’t matter what genre. Most of us – if not all, at the moment – write fiction, but the Union also covers nonfiction, as long as it’s creative writing. And no “banking.” If you write 1000 words today, you don’t get to take ten days off. It’s a hundred words MINIMUM per day.

2. The day’s word count to be posted by midnight Pacific Time. Some of us are in the eastern U.S., some in the West…and at some point (even if temporarily) some of us might be right smack in the middle. You’re welcome to treat midnight, local time, as your own personal deadline. But as a (more or less) official deadline, this gives us the best flexibility for folks across the States.

3. No fudging — and new words only. The words don’t have to be polished, but they do have to exist in some form other than our minds (a rough draft is all you need). Just planning a great piece of dialog or a cool scene in your head doesn’t count. We’re all probably great at that already. Words written on blogs don’t count (we’re writing books here). Crits given to other people don’t count. Simply editing doesn’t count. New content added during revision does count, however.

4. Doesn’t matter if it sucks. That’s why first attempts are called rough drafts. Editing can come later. It’s getting it from the head and onto the page that’s the real test. Flogging yourself doesn’t count. The idea is to write books, not to gaze lovingly at our navels.

5. No excuses! Well, okay. Dying is a reasonable excuse. But being too busy isn’t. Sickness? Only if you wish you were dying.

6. If you can’t update daily, say so. Whether you’re going on vacation or just someplace without Internet access (say, prison? The Gobi Desert? A Ukrainian hospital? Southern Utah?) say so before you go…and have the right number of words completed by the time you come home. This is vital, as it will keep you on track and prevent floggings from fellow union members.

7. Keep each other honest — be honest — and support your fellow writers. As Word Counters’ Union members, we post our daily progress in a prominent place on our blogs, link to other union members’ blogs, and visit them to keep up on their progress. If you miss your daily goal, your fellow bloggers will know it, and will verbally flog you (either on their blogs or on yours); if someone in your WCU circle misses the writing goal, you can — indeed, are obligated to — flog that person. One last thing. The most important thing. Probably goes without saying because everyone who has joined so far is great, but I can’t resist saying it anyway: be supportive and kind to your fellow writers. When asked, give honest criticism…but always give encouragement too (speaking for myself, I really need it).

Who can join?

Anyone. That’s the simple answer…and the only one, really. You can ask to join an existing group (there’s only one right now) or invite some blogging friends to form a new one. Whatever you want. Just abide by the spirit of the ground rules, that’s all.

How it started (as written by Ing)

“Liz of Real Joined-Up Writing came up with the idea when she got tired of all the whining I did on my blog about how I wished I had the time and motivation to start actually writing the novel that I’ve been contemplating for years. She came up with the idea (partly inspired by the concept behind National Novel Writing Month) that we would all write at least 100 words a day, and anyone who didn’t accomplish that would get publicly flogged on the other members’ blogs (or berated viciously in comments left randomly on his/her most current post).”

Why I'm participating:

Because I need the daily accountability (and the occasional kick in the butt) to keep me headed towards my goal of completing a full novel by the end of 2008. AND I love making cool new writing friends!!

Tomorrow ...

... will be blog-catching-up day. And word-count-completing day. And photo-blog-updating day. It will be. I promise. It'll also be the day I do the rounds to properly visit the blogs of all my new Word Count buddies ... looking forward to getting to know you!

Right now, though, I'm wrestling with jaw-cracking yawns and slitty eyes, so I'm off to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream ....

G'night, all ...

Tagged - Eight is Enough!

I got tagged by Kel to do the Eight is Enough meme ... so here goes with Eight Random Facts About Me:

1. I wish on stars. The kind of wish that starts: 'Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight...'

2. I love dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases, encyclopedias and books of facts about absolutely anything at all. The day I discovered Wikipedia was the day I knew I'd arrived in cyberheaven and I have since spent countless hours there, acquiring a vast amount of useless knowledge.

3. I don't wear any jewellery at all except a ring I inherited from my grandmother who died when I was 22.

4. I have had some serious star-crushes in my life. Can't remember the early ones too clearly (why do I keep thinking John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever? That can't be right ...) But as a fully-grown adult girl-person, the ones who've stolen my heart are Aragon (not Viggo), Josh Groban's voice when he sings Oceano, and of course, Heath Ledger, who 'had me at hello.' ;-)

5. My worst fault is that I procrastinate. Which is why I started this meme about two hours ago and it's still not finished!!

6. I really HATE FaceBook. In the same vein, I also hate parties which force you to stand around eating food you don't like and making inane social chit chat with people who actually interested in things like the color of your nail varnish.

7. I don't know whether this one makes me feel embarrassed or angry, lol. In my teens, I attended a very pentecostal church where the women were supposed to cover their heads during the 'time of worship'. So I wore something that looked like this:




8. I am both a slob and a perfectionist. I'll wear the same clothes for three days if I'm not going anywhere. But I hate leaving the house in a mess, so I make myself late by 'just quickly' wiping down kitchen counters and straightening things up before we leave.

Okay...now I'm supposed to 'tag' someone else. Let's go with: Julie and Eileen. These are the rules:

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag a couple others (the number is apparently up to the tagger) and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to read your blog.

Writing Buddies

I just got linked up (thanks to Kells) with an accountability group called Word Count Buddies.

Basically, you have to write at least 100 words per day or suffer a cyberflogging! With my personal goal of completing my new novel within the Big Five Oh year (ie by 31st Dec 2008), I need something to keep me focused on actually writing every day - and blog entries/emails/comments don't count!

So here we go. So far so good. They look like an interesting group of writers - thirteen in all. Hope that number will prove lucky for some, including me!

Redwood tree, CA 2004 - we all have to start somewhere ...