Katherine Graham's Blog, page 7

Letting rip with poofy pongs

I may have just penned a book called The Poofiest Pong, but trust me, farting was something that was frowned upon in our family. My father comes from good English stock, so I suppose the concept of passing air was, from a Victorian perspective, simply not polite conversation. If one of us kids ever picked up a yucky smell in the car, crying, “Ewh! Who farted?”, my father always used to say, “Jakkals ruik sy eie stert”, which translated from Afrikaans means, “Fox smells his own hole” (a common refrain of my husband’s). Simply put, it means if you make a big stink about a fart, chances are it came from your own bottom. That was usually enough to silence our howls and protestations.

So I blithely passed through my childhood and teenage years with nary a fart within windshot. Actually, that’s not quite true. We had a Doberman named Rudi and he did fart quite often. Ripe, juicy Epol farts they were, and it was quite useful having him as a scapegoat when you did occasionally baff at the dinner table. “Sies, Rudi!” you would chide, and Rudi would look up sheepishly from his spot curled up at the bottom of the stairs before drifting back into doggy dreams.

But coming back to the end of my teenage years, it was only at university that the world of farters opened up to me. I had a friend (who shall remain nameless) who was the only girl in a family of three boys and had picked up some unpleasant habits along the way, one of which was farting. She was quite unashamed about it and would often let rip. Her usual excuse was, “It just slipped out,” which I couldn’t quite believe, but then she did drink quite a lot, even by Rhodes University standards. Her favourite tipple was beer mixed with cider, known as snake bite, and she had a soft spot for droewors. It proved to be a potent combination and produced the most revolting stinkers.

Farts faded again from memory when I started working at the age of 21 and it was only when I met my future husband that I became reimmersed in the wonderful world of baffs. Now without being disrespectful to my amazing spouse, I must just say in his defence that he is a Graham and this Scottish clan are famous for their farts. Graham pongs really are eye-wateringly bad. In fact, so strong is the gene that both my boys are endowed with the same ability to make your toes curl with their farts, especially my youngest son.

If the Guinness Book of Records measured farts, I’m sure he’d be an equal match for the fattest, ugliest, haggis-chomping, whiskey-glugging Highlander. Not only am I the only girl in the house (apart from our ginger cat), I am surrounded by farters on all sides and I would consider it a rare thing indeed to go through an entire day without smelling a single baff. It’s got to a point now where I can even identify the source of the fart: like sniffing perfume or expertly tasting wine. Each member of the household has their own unmistakable hallmarks when it comes to farting.

The old adage, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” comes to mind, so after initially pooh-poohing (pun intended) the idea of farting, I relunctancly agreed to join their ranks. I am in the “loud but proud” category, which means I make a big noise, but not much of a stink. In fact, I found the whole topic so intriguing that I decided to write a book about it called The Poofiest Pong, knowing full well the appeal it would have for young children. The response so far has been great. Parents have told me how much their children have enjoyed the book and repeatedly asked to re-read it. That for me as an author is the greatest compliment of all.

And as a friend recently pointed out to me, farts can indeed be put to good use. They are packed with methane and are a great source of energy. Think of biodigesters, where all your poo ends up and which can be used to power gas stoves. In the case of The Poofiest Pong, Max finds a much better use for his brother Billy’s pongs – they harness their explosive potential to blast off into outer space!

I must pause briefly to acknowledge the skills of London-based artist Sylvia Carrus. Her illustrations perfectly capture the spirit of the book. She got the concept straight away – and through weeks of revisions, we finally arrived at the finished product. I hope to work with her again. She is a consummate professional.

So whether you’re a shy farter who sneaks off into the next room before anybody picks up your scent like Max, whether you’re loud and proud like me or whether you’ve got nuclear explosions that proceed from your posterior like Billy, always remember these wise words: “Better in than out”. And if you want your little ones to howl with laughter, recognising their own farting styles in the book, or if you want to find out what adventure awaits the two brothers after they fly off into space, you’ll have to buy yourself a copy.

The Meaning of Motherhood

Being a mother, like living in Africa, is not for sissies. Once you’ve survived the sleepless nights and constant feeds of babyhood, when they’re older you have to contend with balancing a thousand demands on your time – work, children, domestic chores, social lives, fetching and carrying, and still make sure your family are well fed and watered – not an easy task.

And if you run out of loo paper or forget that it’s dress-up day at school, who gets the blame? You guessed it. “Mom! Where’s my school jersey? Where are my scissors?” Mom is expected to know where everything is, to put things back where they’re supposed to be, to wash, fold and store clothes neatly away so that they’re ready for the next day when you need them.

Every so often I want to yell, “Stop! Get me off this treadmill. I need a break.” And recently, due to an operation, I’ve been forced to take things easy. In fact, I had to interrupt business-as-usual so that I could go into hospital for a procedure that was long overdue. The surgeon himself was amazed that I had put up with such severe pain for almost a year.

The reason? I just couldn’t bring myself to inflict that level of disruption to my family. How would they cope without me organising their lives, especially as my husband travels so often? Who would look after me while I recovered from the operation?Therein lies the problem of being a mother: the very thing we give our families and the thing they come to expect of us – love, nurture, care, oversight – is the thing that we often so crave ourselves. Who mothers a mother?

I have fond memories of when I was sick as a child. My mom used to bring me supper in bed on a tray, making me feel so loved and looked after. It’s that kind of maternal care – like a big snuggly quilt wrapped around you – that you miss when you’re making phone calls to get hospital authorisation numbers, madly scrambling to fulfill deadlines before you’re booked off work, fobbing off birthday invitations and school reminders so that you can finally put your own needs on the agenda and declare: “Mommy is not well. Mommy needs an operation. Sorry – Mommy can’t take you to your friend’s party or attend your school function. Mommy, too, is human.”

Fortunately I have been blessed with an amazing husband who has been such a star in the days following the operation, hanging up washing in the mornings and cooking in the evenings and organising lifts so that I don’t need to drive while I’m recovering. For his love and devotion, I am truly grateful. And my mother-in-law has been equally up to the task, making us a meal and having the boys round in the afternoon so I could have a rest in peace. It’s at times like this that acts of kindness are amplified in our hearts and minds.

A friend who has recently lost her mother told me that mothers are like the skin around us, encircling our lives and protecting us, and that you don’t notice it until they’re gone. I think she’s right. The picture the Lord gave me this year was of a draw-string bag, like the one that my boys use to stash away their Lego: that we, as mothers, pull family members’ lives together and contain them.

Think of glue or eggs in a baking recipe. Without eggs, the ingredients don’t bind together. Without mothers, the centre cannot hold, we unravel. Mothers soothe frayed nerves and kiss boo-boos better. Mothers encourage and admonish, they instruct and teach. Their work is so necessary and yet so undervalued.

How often do we feel sorry for stay-at-home mothers or ask them, “What do you do all day?” (as if they’re painting their toenails!). Their job may not earn them an income or much recognition, but they’re worth their weight in gold for all their labours. And creating a nest for your family is the job of all mothers, working or not, self-employed or office-bound, married or single or divorced.

This Mother’s Day, take a moment to thank your mom for all that she’s done for you over the years. Thank her for the good that she’s sown into your life, thank her for laying her life down so that you could grow and flourish, thank her for telling you the honest truth when you didn’t want to hear it, thank her for her encouragement and love, thank her for the countless times you didn’t thank her when you should have.

Think of family traditions you’d like to keep and those that should be ditched. As for me, I’m keeping the tradition of family meals around the table, but I think it’s time that mommy martyrdom should go the way of the dodo. We shouldn’t suffer in silence just because we don’t want to inconvenience our families. After all, we are also important.

The quote someone sent me the other day sums it up so well: “There are no perfect parents or perfect children, but there are perfect moments.” I had one of these moments this week when my four-year-old son gave me a little note he had dictated to his father. This is what it read:

Dear Mom

I hope your bum gets better and I hope you have a happy time with friends and family. I hope you have a pure heart full of joy and happy things.

Lots of love

Matthew

Here’s to many hugs, kisses, love and happy things this Mother’s Day.

Tell your money who’s boss

You’ve got to admire Maya Fisher-French. She gave up a lucrative career as a stockbroker to write about personal finance instead. It’s a topic that’s close to her heart, as you discover when you read her newly-launched book, Maya on Money, published by Tafelberg. As she says in the foreword, “How does [trading shares] pay off your debt or pay for your kids’ education? What really matters is how we handle our money on a daily basis.” And she has reason for feeling the way she does: at the tender age of 16, she lost of her father, leaving her mother to fend for herself and look after her children, as well as face a mountain of unpaid bills.

Just like her columns in the weekly newspaper City Press, Maya’s style of writing is conversational and easy to follow. No complicated jargon here, just lots of common sense. What I like about this book is that she doesn’t advocate a “one size fits all” approach. She recognises that some people are self-employed or don’t earn a fixed income. She’s open to the possibility that insuring all the contents of your house may be a waste of money. But she is conservative and realistic – as all seasoned financial advisors should be – and this means that the advice you’re getting is very good indeed.

The book is organised into seven broad themes: budgeting; saving, which includes having a “rainy day” or emergency fund; growing, which deals with investing; raising, which covers raising financially savvy children, spending (most of us are pretty good at this part! Although here she is really emphasising how to spend wisely and be clever with credit); protecting, dealing with insurance; and lastly, preparing, which covers your retirement plans.

Of course, nothing is stopping you from reading the book in any order you choose, which is one of its chief attractions. If something catches your eye, like “Can I afford to buy a house?”, you can skip ahead to that section. You can dip in anywhere you like and take out whatever nuggets you find useful. But obviously if you want to get a holistic sense of where you are financially, it’s probably a good idea to read the book from cover to cover.

Maya clearly knows her audience well: having corresponded with her Mail & Guardian and City Press readers for ten years, she knows the financial predicaments of South Africans from all walks of life: people who wonder whether they should inform the bank that their spouse has lost his job or not, husbands who dread telling their wives that they don’t have enough money to retire comfortably.

And while she is for the most part empathetic, there are times she can be she can be quite tongue-in-cheek, like in the foreword: “On my website Mayaonmoney.co.za, the two phrases that people search for most often are ‘forex trading’ and ‘debt consolidation’. This so accurately reflects the mindset of so many people – mismanaging their basic day-to-day finances and then hoping to solve their money issues through risky investments.”

As a parent, the part you might find most interesting is raising children who can manage their money well. Maya mentions an incident with her son, aged six at the time, who was convinced his parents were poor because his father was between jobs and she kept saying “We can’t afford this” and “We don’t have money for that”.

Maya had to sit him down one day and explain that they had lots of piles of money – some were for everyday expenses and some were saved up for when they were older. Just because they didn’t have money to buy toys from the daily expenditure budget didn’t mean they were poor. She even went so far as to show her son her bank and investment statements to prove it.

But she does admit she learnt a lesson that day: “Never tell your kids you don’t have money – rather say you don’t want to spend money on that as you are putting money away for other things. If you can’t afford to buy something that they want, encourage them to save up for it themselves.”

The strategy Maya suggests adopting towards your finances isn’t new: it’s what wise people have been doing for centuries. Save, be careful, set money aside for a rainy day, follow a budget, keep tabs on your spending. What makes this book different from others is that it’s specifically geared for South African readers, including comparisons of the services offered by major banks, it’s unbiased (she turned down sponsorship opportunities to keep it that way) and it’s very up to date.

If your finances are making you worried, you want to do something about it but aren’t sure what, this book is a must read. It will empower you to take ownership of your finances and proactively manage them. Viva a financially sound future, viva!

Published by Tafelberg, Maya on Money is available at most book stores at a retail price of R195.

I have a farm in Africa…

When you think of a bush lodge, the Karoo doesn’t automatically spring to mind. The Karoo conjures up images of windmills clacking in the midday heat, Ouma and Oupa sitting on the stoep sipping their coffee and dunking their rusks and sheep farm grazing about in the wide open veld. I know a little bit about this area and its desolate beauty as my mom grew up in Calvinia in the Northern Cape.

So when the invitation came to visit Samara Private Game Reserve, I was intrigued. Samara is situated near Graaff-Reinet, also in the Karoo, but on the Eastern Cape side. Could you superimpose African wildlife in the wastes of the sparse vegetation? Having accepted the invite and asked whether my husband could join me, I was about to find out.

There’s no denying that there’s something very special about this 28 000-hectare patch of earth. There are four different biomes to be found in the reserve and a vast population of game, including cheetah, wildebeest, buffalo, zebra, giraffe, kudu and eland. Then there are the smaller creatures that I’m so fond of, like warthogs, dung beetles (yes, dung beetles – don’t ask me why, but I have a soft spot for them) and tortoises.

There are tortoises everywhere – you see them along the dirt track that leads to Samara after you leave the tar road. (A sign at the gate says “40km – leave speeding for the cheetahs”.) You even see wildlife right from the verandah outside your bedroom. We saw a huge group of assorted antelope stampede past us in our pyjamas on our first night there, a surreal experience. (It was too dark to tell exactly what kind of buck they were.)

Of course, this is exactly what the owners Sarah and Mark Tompkins had in mind when they started the game reserve. (The name Samara comes from their first names combined and, incidentally, also means “God guides” in Russian.) Eighteen years ago they started buying up several farms in the area, with the aim of reintroducing wildlife and allowing the land to recover from the scars of human settlement. When you first glimpse the immense plains of the Camdeboo on an evening game drive, you understand how their lyricism could have inspired Eve Palmer to write her eponymous book.

We were fortunate to have a brilliant guide in Tendai, a Zimbabwean who knows his fauna and flora like old friends. I was impressed that he even knew the Latin names of birds and plants, and pointed out the familiar stars of the Southern Hemisphere. He is a real asset to the lodge and made our experience there truly memorable. (We’ll forgive you, Tendai, for getting the Land Cruiser stuck in the muddy river on Day One.) Who can forget how we tracked cheetah on foot on the second night drive, only to come face to face with a juvenile female who had just killed a kudu calf? What amazed me was that, after some initial resistance and hostility, she allowed us to watch her from 3m away, even rubbing her neck against a fallen tree trunk in much the same way that a domestic cat would have done. It was simply unreal.

Driving back to the lodge, a hush descended on the occupants of the 4X4. We were digesting the magnificence of God’s creation that we had seen that day, the plains teeming with game, the wildebeest frolicking about in their comical gallop, the white rhino in the warm glow of the afternoon light, and of course the cheetah showing off her kill. It had been an exciting afternooon and we were only too happy to huddle under our blankets and ponchos, letting the rocking motion of the Land Cruiser calm our souls in the inky blackness of night.

As a disclaimer, I must add that the weekend wasn’t only a media trip. Gavin and I decided to make use of the opportunity to celebrate our ten-year anniversary. We were also chuffed to meet a young couple from Port Elizabeth at the lodge who got engaged on the second night of our stay. (I heard “champagne” being whispered to the hotel staff and quickly realised he was about to pop the question.) So Samara was a fitting backdrop for romance, both for those of us who are already one decade into marriage and those who are just about to embark on it.

Lunch is served on the terrace. (Note the tortoise on the lawn!)

I loved the way the staff made you feel at home, like the old Victorian farmhouse might really be yours. They were friendly and welcoming, but never were intrusive or got in your way. Veronica was particularly warm, radiating honest hospitality, a true Graaff-Reinet gem. And the rooms, while stylish and elegant, were not over the top in terms of luxury and plush finishes. The true character of the old farmhouse still shone through. (Although who could resist a soak in the giant bathtub after a long game drive? Being on safari is such hard work, after all.)

We were sad to say goodbye to Samara. The opening lines of Karen Blixen’s book kept coming to mind, “I have a farm in Africa…” Waking up in the wee hours of the morning to catch our flight from PE, we were treated to the crowning glory of our stay at this unique game lodge: the Karoo night sky before sunrise, choked with stars, the Milky Way trailing her glittering gown, the heavens alive with three-dimensional, throbbing light. It was a spectacle that will stay in my mind’s eye for years to come.

The two articles I wrote featuring Samara will be published in the the May issue of Indwe magazine and the June issue of khuluma. For more info, visit www.samara.co.za.

The Sugar Wars

Photo credit: Ostia, Flickr.com

Sugar is something that most of us like nibbling on when we need extra energy or want to reward ourselves with a little treat. It’s the same substance that was considered such a luxury in Shakespeare’s time that it was desirable to be seen as having black teeth.

It all began last year when my husband Gavin decided to cut sugar out of his coffee and tea. In the mangled words of Armstrong: “A small step for mankind, but a giant leap for Gavin.” You see, my husband has always maintained that tea and coffee tastes better with sugar (just one spoonful, mind you). And he is a very self-controlled person. It’s not often that you’ll catch him dunking a Choc-kit in his mug of tea.

As for me, I have a proverbial sweet tooth, a tooth that occasionally screams out for me to satisfy its cravings (especially when it’s that time of the month). I also consider myself fairly restrained, but this is coming from someone who used to regularly polish off a whole slab of chocolate as a teacher marking children’s books on a Saturday morning. (How else do you tempt yourself to mark on the weekend?) Needless to say, there’s some disagreement in our house as to how much is enough when it comes to sugar.

Thankfully, we are fairly evenly divided down the middle. Samuel, my eldest son, is firmly of the view that too much sugar is never a bad thing. (He’s on my side.) Matthew, my youngest, has a palate for healthier food and would far rather munch broccoli and strawberries – in fact, any kind of fruit – than gorge himself on cake and sweets. He often leaves his dessert unfinished. (You can guess which side he’s on.)

So how will we ever reach consensus? What for me is an occasional treat seems to Gavin like overindulgence. I’m sure he’d be thrilled if I baked my own sugar-free bread (did you know that they put sugar in bread?) and made oat-and-raisin cookies instead of store-bought biscuits, but we both know that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Now, I am not a big Tim Noakes fan (our family being big carb consumers), but I do agree with him on this: most South Africans are addicted to sugar. And the evidence supports this view. About 6% of South Africans suffer from diabetes, according to the Centre for Diabetes and Endocrinology in Johannesburg, with thousands of people remaining undiagnosed. Clearly we are eating too much sweet stuff and we are starting to pay the price.

Photo credit: The Tedster, Flickr.com

Consider this: Why is there so much sugar in cereal, for instance? Or children’s yoghurts? And should we really give our children “neat” fruit juice? Surely it’s better (and cheaper) to dilute it instead. You should listen to the gentle persuasion my husband enlists to try to get the boys to drink water with their supper instead of juice. “Water is so refreshing and pure – it goes perfectly with food,” and I’m happy to say that the objections are slowing starting to peter out.

Perhaps I am an incurable sugar addict. I’m sure I’ll always want a bite of chocolate in the morning. But there’s hope for me. I’ve cut down on sweet treats in the afternoon in favour of fruit and I really am trying to be a good role model to my children – we often combine fruit with ice cream for dessert. I will keep trying to convince Samuel that there are wonderful tastes that he is missing out on – like tomatoes, courgettes, cauliflower and kiwi – and I’ll try to steer us both (the sugar supporters) onto the straight and narrow.

Photo credit: JV Virta, Flickr.com

But let’s face it – children need some sugar. (Dieticians will back me up here.) And anything in moderation is not bad. I love the way my children hand over their party packs to me straight away, knowing that I will dole out the treats over several weeks rather than let them eat them all in one sitting. As parents, we do need to keep a sense of perspective. What would a birthday party be without a generous serving of cake? (Incidentally, I went to a children’s party earlier this year where there was no cake and was greatly disappointed – not a single cupcake in sight.)

Recently I interviewed Professor Vicki Lambert of UCT about the Healthy Active Kids SA report she co-authored. According to her, our kids get a D score for their sub-optimal levels of exercise and healthy eating. She says Mzansi’s children eat too much junk food and are exposed to too much screen time, and should instead be climbing trees and playing outdoors. ‘We need to reclaim our neighbourhoods and bring back the days of riding bikes and playing cricket in the streets,’ she says. Phew! On that point at least, my husband and I agree.

Epilogue: For his birthday in January, my son received a candy cane stuck to his present. It has been hiding in the sweetie cupboard ever since. Today, after months of vacillation, I am happy to say that I threw it away.

The Rhodes Less Travelled By

Should he stay or should he go now? Photo: Ian Barbour, flickr.com

I remember my disquiet as I walked past the statue of Rhodes at the University of Cape Town for the first time. It was in 2003 when I was doing a postgraduate course to become a primary school teacher. Perhaps it was my Afrikaner blood coming to the fore and boiling a little. I did think, “Jislaaik! This is a flipping big statue to a man with such a questionable reputation.” Yes, the man was certainly great (whether for his good or bad deeds, he undoubtedly was a force to be reckoned with), but it is the situation of the statue – so central on the campus – and the fact that it towers down over the students who clamber up and down the stone steps around it, that really strikes you.

In fact, it’s quite unlike the statue of Rhodes in the Company Gardens which is quite puny by comparison. That statue is almost lost in a beautiful garden setting, you stare up at it, if you want to – or otherwise you’d most likely just walk past it without even a glance in its direction. No one is throwing excrement at that statue of Rhodes and demanding its removal – it is too seemingly insignificant for anyone to have noticed it, except the pigeons who for their own reasons have covered it with poo – but of course the one at UCT is a huge bone of contention.

No doubt you’ve read all about how fiercely black students are opposing that statue’s right to exist – and they do have a valid point. Even Max Price, the university’s vice-chancellor, acknowledges that the statue is not mediated by its surroundings in order for people to properly make sense of it. In a recent article in People’s Post, he says, “Many have noted that as it currently stands, the statue of Rhodes is unmediated by any critical commentary or historical contextualising. There is nothing to suggest to any passerby how the university situates itself in relation to Rhodes’ actions and their impact. At the very least, we need to engage with that.”

A little higher up Table Mountain, you have a memorial set aside to honour Rhodes, Rhodes Memorial, favourite spot for group gatherings, picnickers and wedding couples having their photos taken. This memorial, with its lion sentries guarding a path of giant steps up to a covered colonnade, is a lot more sensitively handled. There is a statue of a boy on a horse entitled Energy, expressing the abundance of that quality which Rhodes possessed, and again, it is not offensive at all. You are afforded an amazing panoramic view of the city and the fact that Rhodes donated the vast tract of land around the mountain, which is why you are able to stand there and have an enjoyable picnic, is hardly noticable at all.

Rhodes Memorial Photo: Darren Glanville, flickr.com

And let’s just give the man a tiny bit of credit – he did do some good for the country. He was not a saint, not by a long shot, he did fund and organise the disastrous Jameson Raid which tried to unseat President Kruger in the Transvaal, he also robbed the Ndebele chief Lobengula of his land (which I think is his worst crime), and he was a firm believer in the Machiavellian view that the ends justify the means, which of course is problematic. (For more about Rhodes, read the insightful book Diamonds, Gold and War by Martin Meredith.) But he was quite generous in his will, which is why the president is able to live at Groote Schuur (when he’s not at Nkandla, that is), why universities like UCT and Rhodes exist at all, why men like Bill Clinton were educated at Oxford University thanks to his scholarships. But he is a symbol of colonialism, there is no two ways about it. It was an ideal that he cherished, which today is completely reprehensible to most of the population, which is why UCT student Chumani Maxwele felt compelled to douse his statue in rather runny-looking faeces.

I don’t think we can erase the past. The past is ugly, it is difficult, there are bits that I wish I didn’t have to tell my children about – like the way the Khoi and San were treated, why innocent people had their farms destroyed and watched their children die in Boer concentration camps, why poor Cetswayo had to end up in Valkenburg after leading his proud nation in a war against the British that he never wanted to fight. History is full of tragedy, irony and bittersweet moments. And it’s impossible to judge someone based on the prevailing worldview of our current generation – that of democracy and secular humanism – when they subscribed to something that we cannot comprehend today.

Why would a soggy little island off the coastline of Europe want to take over the world and paint it red? Beats me. But that is what people like Rhodes believed, that is why wars were waged and rebellions quelled, why so many people in South Africa, India and elsewhere lost their lives. Today we look back on it and wonder why on earth it happened in the first place. I think Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa sums it up well when he says (quoting an article in the Cape Times): “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity. The government’s attitude and policy to all heritage sites – including statues of former imperialists like Cecil John Rhodes – is based on a national policy of reconciliation, nation-building and social cohesion … As a government that promotes a transformative national agenda, we also accept that the past cannot and should not be completely wiped out.”

When I was at Rhodes University in the late 1990s (now I’m showing my age!), there was a campaign to have the university renamed, so this movement to bring about transformation at universities is nothing new. The name that was put forward as a replacement was Ruth First – Ruth First University, which has quite a nice ring to it. I liked the fact that a woman was being honoured – I can’t think of any SA universities named after the fairer sex. But of course Ruth First herself was a deeply flawed individual, utterly devoted to her cause, which was communism, but rather lacking in the mother and good wife department, if you’ve read her daughter’s autobiography.

In the final analysis, every man or woman will fall desperately short of the traits needed to make him or her truly great and worthy of respect. Whether the statue of Rhodes should be removed or not is still up for debate. My own personal view is to get rid of it (anybody need a large doorstop?) and place something symbolic there instead, perhaps commission a local artist to do a statue called “Reconciliation” or “Freedom” or “Hope”. While human fraility remains, these qualities at least will endure.

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

When I was pregnant for the second time, part of me really wanted the child to be a girl. I come from a family of three girls. I am a girl. I understand girls. So it was natural for me to long for someone to dress up in pretty clothes, adorn with sparkly jewellery and whose golden hair I could plait. When I found out it was another boy, there was a momentary sense of “Ah…” While I was trying to overcome this muted disappointment, my wise mother gave me a book. It was called What Little Boys Are Made Of: Loving Who They Are and Who They Will Become and it’s filled with delightful 1950s-style paintings by Jim Daly of boys with torn pants playing in the garden with dogs and reading comic books.

That book was a godsend. It snapped me out of my feelings of being hard done by and woke me up to the reality that I was being blessed with a boy. The book reminded me of what I knew deep inside me already: Boys are wonderful. Boys are full of adventure and want to conquer the world. Boys are future leaders in the making. Boys love climbing and sliding and getting wet and dirty. Boys learn by doing, by experimenting, by trying. Boys are “nature’s answer to that false belief that there is no such thing as perpetual motion”. What an awesome privilege to shape a little life to become the kind of men the world so sorely needs – secure, confident, full of integrity and caring.

Of course, we all know the little rhyme that inspired the book in the first place:

What are little boys made of?

What are little boys made of?

Frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails

That’s what little boys are made of.

But the book is filled with other quotes too, like this one from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: “There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”

That certainly rings true. Boys love adventure and quests and heroes. I’m making sure I fill in all the blanks as far as children’s literature is concerned, especially those books that appeal to boys, like Tom Sawyer, Jack London’s Wild Fang, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Peter Pan by JM Barrie and the Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis. (If you’re looking for a good guide, try the recommended reading list at the back of Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden’s The Dangerous Book for Boys. This is also a great book for learning how to make paper jets and tree houses, by the way! And understanding the rules of cricket, Mom.) Right now I’m busy reading The Wind in the Willows with my eldest son Samuel and he is loving it. Toad is such a likeable, but rather silly character and his daring escape from jail as a washerwoman is at once ridiculous and heroic.

Last week I was at a children’s party and a mom was expressing her misgivings about having a boy (her firstborn is a girl). “I just don’t know boys,” she said helplessly. I reassured her that as long as she was willing to learn a thing or two about trucks, pirates and dinosaurs, she’d be fine. I can say quite frankly that I could not tell the difference between a digger, an excavator or a grader before I had boys (or a stegosaurus and a diplodocus either, for that matter). I didn’t know what a poop deck was or which side of a ship was port, starboard, bow or stern. And the learning continues unabated – a few days ago I added the word “halberd” and “truncheon” to my vocabulary (very important words too, if you’re dealing with castles or defending law and order).

In fact, you could say that my education into boyhood is only just beginning, with Samuel now six years old and Matthew four. By the time we’re done raising them, perhaps I could write a book about it. Or maybe I’ll just be gearing up for becoming a grandparent. Do you think it will be boys or girls? I wonder…

Blogging 101

 

When you think of the word “blog”, what comes to mind? For me, it’s an image of Amy Adams in the movie Julie & Julia, pouring her heart out into her laptop in between cooking the French recipes of her most admired chef, Julia Child. Or perhaps you think it’s someone who doesn’t really know what to do with their time, is at a bit of a loose end, who just writes random musings and posts them on the internet for fun.

But today I think the notion of blogs is changing. As more and more people consume content online, the need for physical magazines that you sit down and page through is diminishing. Instead, the same thrill of opening a nice glossy mag can be filled with visiting your favourite blog every day or perhaps every week. You can find out the latest fashion trends, cooking ideas or home décor tips on your favourite blogs. Or if those topics don’t really appeal to you, there are hundreds of other topics that people blog about, like gadgets and gizmos, the lore of writing, managing your finances – the list goes on and on.

As more people migrate from traditional media to online, we are feeling the repercussions, both internationally and in South Africa, more and more. In February I got to meet two local lasses who make their living from blogging – Lana Kenney, the woman behind LanaLouStyle, and Kathryn Rossiter of Becoming You. Held in Cape Town, the event was called Blog Boot Camp SA and was jam-packed with useful information about how to start blogging, from selecting a WordPress theme to monetising your blog. What I found amazing was how well attended the course was and how many other people are either blogging already or seriously considering wading in.

Some of the attendees at the February 2015 Blog Boot Camp SA. (Note the prominent goodie bag filled with amazing spoils!)

After the course, I contacted my graphic designer friend and asked her to make a few little nips and tucks to my website, like having a live Instagram feed at the bottom of some pages and including more about me in the footer. For those of you who visit my blog regularly, I hope you like the changes!

Something I’d really like to experiment with are photo-editing apps, recommended by someone I met on the course, and learning how to do collages, which always look so attractive. There is really is a lot to learn on the course – I think I need to go through my notes again to try to glean some more insights. One big “to do” item on my list is to set up a newsletter to draw more people to my website and let them know what’s been happening since they last visited.

Thuli cooking up a storm in her Mzansi-style kitchen.

About a year ago, I met a local blogger at a Zonnebloem wine-tasting function called Thuli Gogela. I was amazed that a blogger could be taken so seriously that she was afforded the same attention as the editor of True Love magazine, who sat alongside her. Thuli really is making huge strides and recently I saw that she has been asked to craft new recipes for Nederberg. Her beautiful smiling face and Africanness shine forth whenever you visit her blog. When I chatted to her, she gave me this advice: Blog regularly. Put up lots of videos (people love videos!) and host other celebrities on your blog to generate more traffic.

This ties in with the advice of Kathryn Rossiter, who says you should aim to blog every week, slowly building up to every day. She has two children and has cast aside all her paid freelance work to focus solely on her blog this year. Becoming You is an interesting mix of inspiration for mothers, hints for pampering and parenting, and updates about exciting events. She says she always wanted to work for a women’s magazine and – without realising it – that’s exactly what she’s ended up doing.

For me, blogging is a chance to find my unique voice and comment on ideas that matter to me – whether it’s books, the articles I write, my observations as a mother, whatever takes my fancy. I’m enjoying “finding my way with words”, as the header on my website asserts. I hope you enjoy this journey as much as I do.

Becoming a Bookworm

 

Every year on the first Wednesday of March, World Read Aloud Day calls global attention to the importance of reading aloud and sharing stories.

There are few moments I relish more than my weekly trip to the library. I love books – the smell of them, the feel of them, the feeling of anticipation as you start a new journey into another world, not quite sure what will meet you around the corner as you turn the next page. And it makes me especially proud that my two boys share my love for the written word. They seem to instinctively understand that a pile of books represents a passport to enter a host of different unchartered lands.

Yesterday’s visit to the library led me to unearth a fresh discovery – brand spanking new books, recently purchased and covered in silky plastic, with nary a date stamp in any of them! The librarian caught me oogling them and allowed me to take three out. (I could have taken the whole lot, but that would have been simply greedy! In the end, I thought I was quite self-restrained, like when you only buy three items of clothing at a fashion sale when you could have walked away with the whole store.) The title of one caught my attention and I knew it would be an instant hit with the boys, Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter’s The Dinosaur Who Pooped a Planet. (Yes, you read that right – pooped – as in the thing you do on the toilet. Clearly they have the inside track as to what will appeal to boys.) The other, I Am an Artist by Marta Altes, whom I have never come across before, has the most delightful, anarchic illustrations and I felt sure would resonate with my youngest son. The publisher Panmacmillan describes it as “the perfect book for anyone who loves making art – and making a mess!” And Julia Donaldson of the Gruffalo fame, who needs no introduction, has recently brought out a sequel to The Owl and the Pussycat, that classic of children’s literature. Her fluency in rhyming is quite astounding, one of the skills that I fear many modern children’s writers seem to have jettisoned in favour of sparse text and larger-than-life illustrations or they do it so poorly that you wonder why they even bothered. But Julia, of course, does it with aplomb, in the tradition of Lewis Carroll and other greats like him. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a story crafted in good rhyme, with the correct meter to match.

To top off my elation of discovering new books, I watched on breakfast TV this morning that today is World Read Aloud Day, a day when parents and caregivers the world over are encouraged to read to their children. Gcina Mhlophe, South African storyteller extraordinaire with her trademark deep-bellied voice, and Sally Mills of the Nal’ibali literacy campaign were being interviewed. They were espousing the benefits of reading regularly to children, how it fires up their imaginations and helps them create images in their minds. Gcina said it was her own granny who sparked her appreciation of storytelling, a love which shaped her into the person she was to become.

So here’s to creating a new generation of bookworms – children who don’t need the instant gratification of video games and flickering images on screens to satisfy their thirst for adventure. Here’s to swashbuckling and pirate islands, riding unicorns and befriending hobbits and fauns; here’s to children who love to find themselves in books and whose boundaries are expanded by the wealth of information they contain. This quote by Dr Seuss sums it up perfectly, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Eating the fruit of my labour

Lemon Tree by Moyan Brenn, Flickr.com

It is with great pleasure (beam, beam!) that I announce to the world that my children’s picture book, The Lemon Tree, which was longlisted for the Golden Baobab Prize in 2014, is going to be published. Woohoo! When I read the e-mail from Penguin Random House yesterday, I was stunned. All those months of waiting patiently and hoping and praying that something would come of it finally paid off. Praise God! It was such a precious moment of uninhibited joy.

When I first embarked on this journey of creative writing almost two years ago, I felt the Lord impress on my heart four Ps: patience, perseverance, peace and perspective. Those were the qualities that He wanted to work in me through this process of writing and attempting to get my work published. And now that I am about to be a published author, I can definitely see how necessary those four qualities are. And they are still needed every day – it’s a work in progress, I now realise.

Of course, I have already published two e-books on Amazon, Alfonso the Tooth Mouse and The Dummy Fairy, and those are still my babies and just as special to me. But The Lemon Tree will be my first book that is published in hard-copy format, something I’m thrilled about. Children’s picture books should be pored over – you should want to relax with your child at the end of a hard day by paging through a favourite story book together and discussing the images. “Who can see Goldbug?” “Why is the baby bunny getting so fat?” “Where is Lowly Worm?” (Richard Scary, BTW, is a genius at creating pictures that beautifully marry his text.) It’s wonderful seeing how children follow the storyline, grasp the characters and chuckle at the author’s sense of humour. Children’s picture books are made for enjoying together in a leisurely way, which is why hard-copy books are still preferable to e-books, IMHO.

And what makes this milestone in my career even sweeter is that the book is written specifically with African children in mind. I really love how the Golden Baobab Prize came about because concerned book lovers in Africa wanted more children to be able to read stories that were homebrewed on African soil – not just stories about foxes and badgers and daffodils (although don’t get me wrong, I love those stories too!

So, in case you’re wondering what The Lemon Tree is about, here’s the blurb:

“A rainy day is the perfect time to make pancakes, or so Gogo thinks, although would you believe there is no flour, eggs or milk left in the house? Lungi and Sipho are sent off to find the missing ingredients, making sure they take some lemons from their tree to distribute to their kind neighbours. A gentle tale with a slight twist at the end which perfectly illustrates the uniquely African concept of ubuntu.”

And at this point I must say a big thank you for my dear friend Ruth Odigie who encouraged me to enter the competition in the first place. Thank you, sweet friend, and for all those who stood by me and prayed for me – Gavin, Vicki, Nancy and Linda.

Now comes the slightly overwhelming bit. I’ll need to sign a contract, the publisher needs to find an illustrator and then – who knows? This is an exciting adventure which is just beginning to unfold and I am thankful beyond words that I’ve been invited along on the journey.