Made it to Mid-term!

It’s been pretty quiet on this side of the blog front as I juggle student life with being the toilet fairy. This week we have been on vacation, NOT holiday, I must stress. At post-graduate orientation one of the professors informed us that it was called a vacation, because you vacated the university campus to go and work at home!

So indeed, here I am having a break, working on a short story, writing a 2500-word book review and sourcing images for another course.

Walking has kept me sane. I am out there at 7 in the morning doing eight kilometres three times a week, putting one foot in front of the other. It clears my head as I move through the neighbourhood and I often come back having mentally worked out an issue.

So many people are asking my daughter what it is like to have me on campus. For the record let me say that we hardly see each other and only share one lift. I promised that I wouldn't be hanging around on the Jammie steps with her. Anyway she is way too cool to worry about whether I am cramping her style or not.

Now if it was my son, it may be a different story. Although last week he took one look at me parked in front of the TV with a packet of chips and a mug of tea (comfort after a 3-hour workshop) and said, “You’re turning into me!”

I have survived the first term and am enjoying the breather. I have gotten over both the shock of the youth and the technology (well, sort of) and think that pretty soon I will be able to hold my own. Every day I come home in awe of how much I am learning. I feel so blessed to have this opportunity to be back at university. I even found myself wondering what I could study next, once this was under the belt...Okay, it was very briefly...

World Storytelling Day

World Storytelling Day logo designed by Swedish storyteller, Mats Rhenman

20 March is World Storytelling Day. It originated in Sweden in 1990 and has become a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling, taking place on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. The idea is to get as many people as possible from around the world to tell stories through the day and night. 

The theme for this year is "Fortune and Fate". Appropriately, I will be in class tomorrow, sharing stories about bulls and bullfights. 

My friend, Marlene Winberg, is travelling to the Kalahari Desert where she will be facilitating a two-day event with  indigenous people from all over the region. Visit her  website: marlenewinberg.com 

Let the stories begin!

Diary of a born-again student

Things are starting to settle down a bit around here. We haven’t had take-outs for supper this week...yet. In fact, yesterday getting groceries and preparing dinner seemed far more attractive than usual. Something familiar that didn't take much thought. I could just cruise through on automatic pilot.

Some days my head has felt ready to burst. A few days ago I sat down with a cup of tea and the Sudoku puzzle - anything that didn't need words. I'm starting to understand why my adolescent son communicates in grunts. With all that is going on with his body, plus school it’s all that he can do to piece together words for food or a lift.

Last night he was doing his Maths homework with a friend, via SKYPE. One of my courses is completely computer-based and has had me waking up nights with my stomach in a knot.  To address my technological inadequacies, I have found someone who is sympathetic to the challenges of the “mature woman” to do some computer coaching with me. 

After three sessions I feel like we have done some feng shui for computers and simplified matters. My daughter was greatly puzzled by the fact that he had whipped out a pen and paper to explain things to me, but that is exactly the level that I needed to start from. 

I have been telling the kids, much to their amusement, that I am going to be sooo clever by June...either that or I’ll be crazy! To put a positive spin on the stomach in a knot part, I am trying to convince myself that, come the end of the semester, I am going to be blessed with a six-pack – which is also one of my son’s goals in life. I am starting to notice a bit of regression on my part...

Queen of Queens

http://www.sactwu.org.za/events/55-spring-queen

This week as part of my Public Culture course, I visited the District Six Museum Homecoming Centre where they are running an exhibition of the Spring Queen pageant. The Spring Queen festival has  been organised annually by the women factory workers in the clothing industry since the 1970s. In June or July each factory chooses a Spring Queen who would then participate for the Queen of Queens title in November of that year.

My first reaction to the idea of a Spring Queen was of a demeaning beauty pageant, a cattle parade, objectifying women. It was an appeasement, a consolation, something to keep the “poor Coloured” workers happy. I grew up in the days when there was a white Miss SA and a coloured Miss Africa South.

I came away with a different perspective – one of unity among the workers, a diversion from the daily grind of working in an industry which is notorious for poor wages. Typically the women who work in the factories are single parents, often with a number of children. One of the workers who had worked at a factory which had recently closed down, related her experiences of the pageant.

“People see us as factory workers, and that is all you are worth,” she said. The pageant offered the young women an escape from reality, a fairy tale – “even for one day you can feel like Princess Diana”  - she told us. She used phrases like “very exciting and very beautiful”; “you feel like millionaires”; “an exciting and happy time”. There were opportunities to further a modelling career or a bursary to study further.

While she was talking, her colleague, an older woman, who had been sitting quietly observing, slipped me three photographs, slightly crumpled and dog-eared.  They were all of her in costumes, possibly ten or fifteen years previously. In one photo she wore an elaborate pink creation, looking indeed like a princess.

When I whispered my admiration to her, she smiled proudly as she put the photos back into her bag. In that moment I realised how much participating in the Spring Queen pageant must have meant to her. For a brief moment, someone had looked at her with different eyes.  She had felt special. She had been acknowledged.

The exhibition is on at 15 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town, until the end of February. The centre is open form 10h00 to 16h00, Monday to Saturday. 

We Say Enough!

Yesterday thousands of UCT students and staff marched in protest against the scourge of violence that has become part of our society. Marching does not seem like nearly enough to be doing but after witnessing the recent spate of violent crimes, I felt that I had to do something.

I was struck by a recent article in the newspaper which pointed out that a few years ago we were all shocked by the violent abuse and death of a young girl, Valencia Farmer, and yet here we are again in the same situation.

Carrying placards, mostly dressed in white, we marched and chanted, up from the middle campus to congregate on the Jameson steps on the main campus. When we were addressed by the vice-chancellor, amongst others, I couldn’t help thinking back to the struggle days. And, indeed, he reminded us that ordinary people had brought apartheid to an end and that it was time that we stood up again to bring about change.

We need to demand our rights, to make ourselves heard, to voice what it is we want the government that we elected to do. It is important to use whatever platforms that are available to us to get this message across and to keep up the momentum of what others are doing.

WE SAY ENOUGH. STOP THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

You may also like:http://saaray-livinginsa.blogspot.com/2013/01/stop-abuse.html

Cycling for Red Cross

RadiologyFM - YouTube:

'via Blog this'


You may also like:http://saaray-livinginsa.blogspot.com/2013/01/making-difference-cycling-for-red-cross.html

Surviving School

Do you know those Tom and Jerry cartoon images where Tom has stuck his finger into a plug socket and is bolted up into the air, every hair on his body standing on end? Well, that's how I have felt for the last ten days. 

At my very first lecture last Tuesday I thought I was in the wrong place! All around me students who looked 19 (but couldn't possibly have been since this was a post-graduate course) spoke with American accents and the lecturer was explaining elementary things like where District Six was and that the boxer in the black and white photo from the 1950s was actually Nelson Mandela, not Muhammed Ali.

It made sense when I realised that the course was being run in conjunction with Brown University and that there was a large contingent of exchange students attending. The clarity lasted about five minutes before we were being told about setting up websites, creating Tumblr accounts and joining a Face Book group. All this would be used to monitor and assess our involvement!

Later in the week I was in a lecture on African Non-fiction Literature. This time the class was smaller and there was only one American voice, but listening to these young ones talk, I had the distinct feeling that I have missed out on a few steps...like studying English language and literature...

We are a group of diverse writers in the Creative Writing seminars and I am sure that we will learn much from each other and the many established authors who we will be meeting during the course of the year.

 Everyone assures me that I will be fine once I get into the swing of things. I just need to find a way to channel the adrenaline which seems to be coursing through my veins, clearly my body has been preparing for flight. My brain, however,  has prevailed and here I am gearing up for the second week.