Let's go out with a bang!

Machu Picchu courtesy of TripAdvisor

I was a bit taken aback recently when someone commented that going back to university at my age was perhaps best left to the young ones, and that I shouldn't be cramping my daughter’s style. While my brain may be teetering close to overload, I am not quite ready to be put out to pasture. I cannot remember when last I have been so stimulated by what I am learning.

Last night I met someone, “my age”, who has climbed Kilimanjaro and hiked to Everest base camp. Next on her list is the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu in Peru. My friend, Kam, has also done the Everest base camp as well the Inca Trail.

I dragged myself away from my books to have a quick look on the internet which revealed that in November 2012, life expectancy in SA was said to have increased to 60 years from 54 in 2009, according to The Lancet health journal. In 2009 the South African Institute of Race Relations said that South Africans would not live longer than 50 years, and World Bank indicators in 2010 put the life expectancy for women in SA at 52.2 years. So it does seem that I may well be in my twilight years…

However, I am not getting depressed by this. Far from it. I am surrounded by inspiring women who are not letting age stand in the way of their goals. My friend, Mary, has just published a cookbook which she did the layout for and took the photographs; Alison, who, recently became a grandmother, has just returned from a trip to the Antarctic, has walked the Santiago and learned to speak fluent Spanish. There are numerous others who have changed track completely and re-invented themselves.

There are many mountains left to climb - let's go out with a bang!

In Remembrance

This morning I had to abandon my plan to read my book for African Literature while I was having a coffee at my local cafe. Not for the first time during the last two months I have simply wanted to weep because of what I was reading. 

This week we are looking at Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull,  her account of the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It's such a dark place that we get to when we look back at our horrendous past - oppression, violence, torture and death. I have not gotten beyond the first few chapters and already I am horrified by the stories that are being revealed. This is why I have been subconsciously been putting off reading this book.

A community should not wipe out a part of its past, because it leaves a vacuum that will be filled by lies and contradictory and confusing accounts of what happened. Krog writes bravely and sensitively about a horrendous past. 

For my Public Culture course I am looking at culture in Africa through music during the apartheid era. What could possibly make me want to weep when I am looking at music, you may wonder. I came across the story of Vuyisile Mini who composed the protest song, "Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd" or "Watch out, Verwoerd!". Mini was one of the organisers of the resistance and was arrested in 1963. When he refused to testify against his comrades he was sentenced to death. His booming voice singing that song could be heard by fellow prisoners just as he was about to be executed. 

Birth by Peter Harris, Tomorrow is Another Country by Allister Sparks and Midlands by Jonny Steinberg, have all had me wondering anew at the miracle which got us this far.  We are a deeply damaged society and we need to work hard at building that "rainbow nation" that Archbishop Tutu, who headed the TRC, talked about. As painful as it is, it is important to know our history, so that we may endeavour not to repeat it.