Exam-phobia

This morning I did an "exam". Actually it was an open-book quiz that I received via email, had an hour to complete and then return. In my head it took on the proportions of an "exam". And that word strikes fear into my heart, in the same way that Pavlov's dogs salivated at the ringing of a bell!

The quiz was the final requirement for the Magazine Journalism course I have been doing The SA Writers' College. I have enjoyed each module with its accompanying assignments, and have produced a 1800 word article about the World Children's Prize, so was feeling a sense of accomplishment. The fact that it was an online course made me feel even better, more with it (do people still say that?), like I had further embraced technology! Nevertheless, I allowed myself the slightest sense of panic at the idea that I would be put to the test and have to prove myself.

No matter that I did this test in the comfort of my peaceful study which looks out on to the garden and played music in the background, my sympathetic nervous system went into overdrive, getting ready for who knows what. In my technophobic defense I have to say that I did not trust the fact that this had to be done online and that I would have to rely on email to submit, but it was definitely that word "exam" that did it. I could feel that old familiar sensation creeping up the back of my neck, the sense of doom and the heaviness hanging over my head.

I think it harks back to school days where we were trained to regurgitate what had been taught in class and, woe betide, if you did not give it back exactly as it was expected. Yes, much to my children's horror, I did have the odd teacher who thought they could put the ruler to better use on parts of our bodies. I remember working myself up into quite a state on the eve of exams and then, many times wanting to kick myself for not doing as well as I could have.

It was only much later, post-university even, that I managed to enjoy the learning process and take assessments more in my stride. I have enjoyed doing courses in everything from neuro-developmental therapy to yoga teacher training and aromatherapy. I have enjoyed the sense of achievement along with the stimulation and really, the assessments at the end have not been the bogey they used to be.

I feel hugely relieved that I have completed the quiz. I know that I have done well in the assignments. As always, it seems almost pathetic that I could waste all that energy. Seems there is still a bit of exam-phobia left that needs to be exorcised!

Driving Lessons

My daughter turned 17 earlier this year and getting her learner's licence is one of the highlights of her year. I find myself in one of those ambiguous parenting moments - where you realise with pride, that they are growing up but fear what the next stage brings. She is very excited at the prospect of soon being able to drive and as I drive around the neighbourhood I see more and more of her peers navigating the streets with the red capital letter L firmly stuck on the back window of their parents' cars. It is a big mark of independence and very exciting to be able to take yourself where you need to be.

Her boyfriend recently got his licence and he is raring to go. Which has posed new challenges in the parenting game - do I let her go off with an inexperienced driver, who is dying to show off his new skill? He has won many brownie points by saying that he did not think that he would let his daughter be driven by a newly-licensed driver. 

Wearing of seat belts has always been non-negotiable for me with my kids and they rarely protested at having to be put into a seat and be buckled up. As an occupational therapist I experienced the effects of head injuries as a result of motor vehicle accidents. In recent years we have had uncomfortably close experiences with serious, and fatal, car accidents involving young students. 

In South Africa, you can legally start to drink on the same day that you get your driver's licence!? I thought that this was peculiar to us, but after a quick research, discovered that except for the US, it is pretty much the standard. In the US you can get a driver's permit at age 16 but the legal drinking age is 21, which makes sense that they get to master the skill before they have licence to do anything stupid. Here, at the age of 18 when kids are in the last year of school and ready to prove their independence, they are given permission not only to get behind the wheel but also to go out on the town and party. This coupled with the fact that they think they are invincible, is a potent mix.We all know that it is not only up to how you drive and I think that SA drivers leave much to be desired. As for the taxi drivers...enough said.


When Sandra Bullock accepted her Oscar award earlier this year, she thanked her mom for "not letting her drive in cars with boys when she was 18" - you can call me Mrs. Bullock. 

The Right to Write

Many of us have a secret book, just waiting to be let out. Like my friend who started writing a journal while she was pregnant with her daughter and then it grew into her writing to her daughter. She dismisses it by saying that her daughter will probably be the only one to ever read it since she is "not a writer".

I love writing. I love books that invite me to write in them, and writing on the first page is the best part. I love the smell, the sights and the feel of books. And the right pen is essential! I am always starting journals and then run out of steam halfway through and start another, with a supposedly different theme. I have done the gratitude journal a la Oprah Winfrey, the travel journal and also kept journals where I have poured out my deepest and darkest secrets - I often worry about those, as I fear someone will find it and all may be revealed - but it gives me such a sense of release and clarity to let it all out. Actually, sometimes burning the pages can be wonderfully freeing!

Reviewing these journals is empowering, as it can show how far I have come, and how much I have learned. When we write things down, they become concrete and real. When we write out deep and dark thoughts, they lose some of their power. Sometimes it just helps to complain or work something out in private. 

I have recently completed Julia Cameron's, The Right to Write, in which she says that we should write, because it is human nature and likens writing to meditation or prayer. A few years ago, while convalescing from an operation, I worked my way through her other book, The Artist's Way. In this book she recommends "morning pages" as "the primary tool of creative recovery". Morning pages consist of three pages of longhand writing which literally act as a brain drain. It involves simply moving the hand across the page and writing whatever comes to mind, first thing in the morning. Nothing is too petty, silly, stupid or weird to be included. If you can't find anything to write - write that! According to her, morning pages teach the logical brain to stand aside and let the artist brain play. 

I have been doing that on and off over the last few years and I can definitely recommend it - it is almost meditative and gives me insight into what is going on in my life. It is also hard to complain about the same situation morning after morning, week after week, without being moved to do something about it! It also helps to get rid of the negative stuff that clogs up my brain and makes space for more constructive thoughts. 

Writing about our experiences make them count and we don't have to be published to be called writers. Even if it is only our sons and daughters or ourselves who read what we have written, we are all writers. 

Mamma Mia, Dragon tattoos, Hornets Nests and Fire!

Sweden seems perfect - ordered, free and fair, things work. Sweden must be one of the few countries that I have visited where people really know about SA and apartheid. Over the last few years we have established strong links with some of the people through conferences on environmental issues and children's rights. Recently, we have become involved with a children's project started by two Swedish women in one of our townships. 

Stockholm is beautiful - it is known as the Venice of the North - thousands of islands, trees, people fishing in the lake in the middle of the city, skyscrapers next to mediaeval buildings on cobble-stone streets. On a recent visit I found myself thinking that I might be able to live there for a while, that is, if I could convince my inner African violet  to survive the winter. I watched the Swedish film, As it is in Heaven, four times (OK, maybe the fourth time was a bit too much) and bopped along with Meryl Streep to the ABBA (famous Swedish export) songs in Mamma Mia.  

So what it is the point of this little ramble? I have just emerged from reading the Millennium trilogy books by Stieg Larsson, a Swedish journalist who wrote the three books and died of a heart attack at the age of 50, soon after delivering the manuscripts to his publisher. The books have become a phenomenon, already being made into Swedish movies, with Hollywood versions soon to follow. 

These are not the kind of books I would normally buy. However, I found myself being sucked into each consecutive 500+ page tome (the third one is more than 700 pages), after being proudly handed them by a friend from Sweden. I was feverishly reading whenever I could, although I confess to needing a break between each book to read something "normal". I was slightly shell-shocked after each book - I had been exposed to the dark underbelly of the society, detailing human trafficking, espionage and prostitution. In spite of being a little distracted by the very foreign-sounding Swedish street names and places, I found the writing easy and the pace exciting - I wanted to know what happened to the "most unlikely heroine" I have ever read about.

So now I find myself wondering how much of this is in fact truth or a creation by an author who had experienced some of the danger and intrigue as a journalist known for his outspokenness against neo-Nazism and the like. How much of this darkness is really being covered up by a facade of perfection? Certainly the grass is never completely greener on the other side, but the book has succeeded in rocking the boat and making me wonder.

Of Black alumni and other apartheid memories

The recent invitation to the launch of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Black Alumni Association, has me thinking about my time at UCT in the early 1980s. 

My fondest memory of my grandfather, who was  a delivery truck driver, was of him coming home, his pockets jingling with coins, which were to be deposited into the little money box in his cupboard for my "education". By the time I was ready for university, he had saved enough to pay for the first year of tuition. Being accepted at UCT engendered mixed emotions in me. I was the only person in my class at school to be accepted at UCT, (not many students from my year did in fact go to university) and I was proud to be the first person in my family to make it to university. But this was tempered by the humiliation of having to apply to the Department of Coloured Affairs for a permit to attend a "white" university. I was granted permission on the basis that the university for "coloured people" did not offer the course I wished to study. 

To say that attending UCT was a culture shock, is putting it mildly. In addition, I was based on medical campus which was known to be more conservative than the main campus.  Out of a class of 25, there were three of us who were "not white" and only two people who had blazed the way before us, as the first "non-white" occupational therapists to graduate from UCT. The only "white" people I knew were the Irish nuns at my school and one or two teachers who had passed through. So there we were, like flies in a jug of milk!

I think the general feeling among "black" students was that we should do what we came to do (be educated) but not engage in the "normal" life of university since our acceptance there was not normal. For example, we were discouraged from using the university cafeteria since we weren't generally able to eat in whatever restaurants we wanted to. We were also discouraged from participating in sport since how could we play normal sport in an abnormal society?

I cannot say that I experienced any overt racism in my class - we were a small department and generally got on well with each other. There were many parties at student's houses which, in itself, was almost schizophrenia-inducing since it was by no means normal for me to be socialising with "white" people. There was one girl who I became quite friendly with and I spent a lot of time at her house which, ironically, is about 5 minutes from where we now live, in a previously-"white" neighbourhood. However, I was shattered when she and her family  returned from their holiday in the US and reported that their American family was so impressed that their daughter had "a little coloured friend". Those words were like a slap in the face, like I was some kind of novelty. 

Going about the day to day life of becoming an occupational therapist was also fraught with the intricacies of apartheid SA. When it came to clinical practice in the hospitals, we were not allowed to treat "white" patients. In my third year I was posted to a very difficult placing in a psychiatric hospital which I struggled with - however, I could not be placed in the relatively easier ward that my fellow students were going to in the general hospital, since the patients there were "white". 

In spite of these obstacles, I graduated and was offered a job at the hospital that I dreamed of working at. I spent almost fifteen years loving what I was doing as an occupational therapist. I have two friends from university who have travelled the paths of studying, working, marriage, motherhood and more over the years with me. Both of them are still working as occupational therapists, one in the US and the other here in SA. From time to time I bump into other alumni and it is always good to catch up. 

I do believe, though, that my time at university could have been so much more, and I could have embraced much more of what such a prestigious university had to offer, if it were not for the times we were living in. I'm not sure that I want to be part of the Black Alumni Association. I'm not sure what it is hoping to address - a support for all of us who have bitter-sweet memories of our time at UCT? Perhaps there are some "white" alumni who would also like to be a part of that healing?

Look at us now!

A little while ago I read an article in the newspaper about an archaeological finding in SA that has been hushed up since the 1930's. The finding is thought to be about a 1000 years old and includes gold artifacts and glass beads from India, proving that the early inhabitants of the area must have been established traders. The finding was suppressed because it was contrary to the Apartheid policy that Africans were uncivilised.

Sometimes out of the blue, I realise just how oppressed we were - how controlled every aspect of our lives was and how successful Apartheid policy was in controlling us. We don't realise the miracle that democracy is, that we have overcome the brain-washing of more than 40 years to be where we are today. Certainly, the Apartheid curriculum for the "Department of Coloured, Bantu or Indian Affairs" did not allow for any independent thought.

I was thinking about this after helping my daughter edit her History essay a few days ago. She was to discuss "the impact of internal and external factors on the economic challenges of post-colonial Africa" - quite an interesting discussion ensued about the social and political factors following the independence of African countries from European colonial powers. I am constantly amazed at the subject matter they cover at school these days. I am not sure how many of us realise how much more progressive the school curriculum has become.

A year or two ago she had to design a protest T-shirt for an art project - not so long ago being in possession of such an item of clothing would almost guarantee arrest! And it is not only during Art and History that they are being enlightened. They read literature by African writers, study Human Rights in Life Orientation (we are one of the few countries who do) and the eugenics of race in Biology. My son at junior school is similarly being encouraged to hear both sides of the story and to think for himself. He is certainly not learning the same version of the colonisation of the Cape or of the Zulu war, that we were forced to learn. He learns Xhosa as easily as he learns Afrikaans - no baggage attached.

Imagine the possibilities if we had all been given the opportunity to stretch our minds, to know and to understand. When I was in Sweden for the children's rights awards, Magnus Bergmar, the founder of the WCPRC, told me that he thought that "an ongoing humanisation of every new generation is necessary for any sustainable development." We need strategies for a better world, he went on to say. I know that we still have much work to do, but I think that we are moving in the right direction and that our children are going to be better humans who will make a better world.

Spanish anyone?

I am blogging to avoid doing my Spanish homework. I have been listening to some audio exercises and wondering whether it is actually possible to learn a new language without immersion. I am slowly entertaining the thought that I should gracefully depart from the class. Perhaps my brain is too slow for Spanish - why do they have to talk so fast? Do we speak English at the same speed? I can make out some words and understand the gist of the conversation but then I get lost on the specifics. If I have to say so, I am not bad with reading and writing but conversation makes my palms sweat and my heart race. 

Why am I learning Spanish? I always wanted to learn a foreign language and presumed that it might be French since half of Africa speaks French. But I fell in love with the Latin energy on a visit to Cuba via Madrid a few years ago. It was April, spring time in Madrid. Everywhere you could smell the new beginnings in the air, everybody was waking up from a long winter. Couples of all ages were spilling onto the pavements to sit and chat and drink coffee. I liked the European-Moorish mix that was evident in the city, in the art, architecture and even in the food. We spent a few days exploring on foot, the many plazas, the markets and the museum, taking a break in quaint cafes and restaurants. 

Cuba was a total onslaught of the senses - the people, the music, the food spoke of passion. Women in sexy, brightly-coloured clothes, sashayed down the streets of Havana to the rhythm of the salsa, girls looking like brides, celebrated their 15th birthdays, boys played baseball wherever there was an open space.  The joy of having survived a hurricane was tangible. Young couples were courting along the Malecon, parts of it recently rebuilt after Katrina.  There was a "devil-may-care" attitude born of the knowledge that at anytime a storm could wash away your home, your life. 

On our return, I decided that Spanish was the language I needed to learn because I was definitely going back to Spain and Cuba someday. Before I knew it, I had found a teacher and opened a door to a new culture and history. I have become more aware of Spanish movies, food, soccer and, of course, Rafael Nadal. I love learning Spanish most of the time but I have been tempted to throw the book at the teacher, on occasion. I revelled in the Spanish victory in the World Cup as if I were Spanish myself, and renewed my determination to learn the language.

There are many benefits to learning a new language - meeting new people, eating different food, trying  a dance class (although I have discovered that I have two left feet in any language!), apparently keeping Alzheimer's at bay. It's a great ice-breaker when you meet a native-speaker and you just seem to be a little more interesting when you say you can speak another language. Oh well, back to the homework!