Disclaimer: Although there exist exceptions to all types of generalizations and stereotypes, they remain exceptions; therefore, until the exceptions stand out to the extent that they defy the rule, the majority determines the actuality. That being said, I am grateful to know some anomalies who also happen to be my friends who are exceptional beacons for their communities and countries. Moreover, this article is at best a prologue to a possible research paper in need of further substantiating research.
read more »South Africa, with or without the awareness required by majority of its citizens on this topic, is silently defining who is an “African”…
These two articles are befitting the age old discussion: what does it mean to be an American…
and what I discovered this time around in S.A.: what does it mean to be an African…given the xenophobia against Africans from other countries…
Africa 2009: Identity, Citizenship, and Nation Building by M. Mawere
and from the Christmas 2009 Edition of The Economist:
Going to America: The Greatest Strength About America Is That People Want To Live Here
read more »En route from Jo’burg to LA with a two day stay in beloved NYC, so technically from NYC to LA, I picked up the Christmas Edition of The Economist. Outstanding variety of topics. This one stayed with me probably because the timing was, personally, too appropriate!
Beware, then: however well you carry it off, however much you enjoy it, there is a dangerous undertow to being a foreigner, even a genteel foreigner. Somewhere at the back of it all lurks homesickness, which metastasises over time into its incurable variant, nostalgia. And nostalgia has much in common with the Freudian idea of melancholia—a continuing, debilitating sense of loss, somewhere within which lies anger at the thing lost. ... read more »
I have picked up a new friend to spend time with on Sundays in Jo’burg: the newspaper, Sunday Times.
One of my favorite columnists is a woman named Pinky Khoabane.
On Sunday, November 15th, I read her short but bold piece titled “A Pandemic of Body, Mind, and Soul” which rightfully calls people to have a deeper dialogue regarding the AIDS pandemic in Africa, specifically South Africa. You can check out the article here: A Pandemic of Body, Mind, and Soul. “Awareness” is no longer the primary issue–then what is?
Below were my thoughts after reading the article:
Dear Ms. Khoabane,
Do you have any friends? No, I am not being facetious. Do ... read more »
Viladah (Arabic for birth)
So I had a near death experience. What follows is not the usual how you should make the most of every moment in life because it may be your last (I have never known how else to live even prior to this experience), or life is precious (learnt that when I was six and saw a flock of sparrows carry the limp sparrow which had fallen from a tree), or there is a God after all (I could comfortably communicate with a Higher Being before I was taught how to pray in any language), or I had an epiphany (I am introspective enough to have one a day). Below is merely an ... read more »
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