STORIES FROM MY HEART

My daughter, Imani, has been spending her holidays with her grandmother and cousins. The school break is rather long so it was only fair that she takes a break from me and her nanny to spend time with her relatives. So the house, is too quiet, too cold, and too adult. I call her ever so often to hear how she's keeping, but this morning she broke my heart. I asked her about when she wants to come back home, and in her sweet voice, she says' I want to come back when you will have more time to spend with me at home" she went on to say " when are you taking leave? will they let you come home early in the evenings?' She spends weekdays with me and most weekends (Sunday) with her dad, so we have Saturday to be together, and that's hardly anything. Is there another way to strike a balance? After we ended the conversation I sat in my car and re-played it, over and over again. I am a working mum, a single one at that, like many other women out there, but d...

“Bring back Nelson Mandela, Bring him back home to Soweto, I want to see him walking down the streets of South Africa…” As a young girl watching Sarafina for the first time, I thought that white people were the devils children, and Mandela was Jesus. I sobbed as the family gathered around a relative’s living room watching a VHS copy of the movie that ran on Broadway in 1988. That was our baptism into the realities of South Africa’s apartheid regime. I wanted to be Sarafina, most girls my age did, and I remember wondering if I could convince my parents to change my name to Sarafina. She was bold, she was beautiful, she was loved, and in many ways brought to our little hearts the wretchedness that was South Africa’s black , white and colored’s policy. And then Mandela became my addiction, I wanted to know everything about him. Lucky for me, my father collected books, magazines and newspapers. An avid historian, I remember the countless times he told me stories about Mand...

Necessary Distractions.... The danger of a single voice begins to stalk me But, Will I find stillness within distraction Did I, blindly crush and instead create destruction? Dare I stay blind when truth is deep and in a single voice, unknown ? I see you, but inside dark shadows house your heart I feel you, outside a brave face inside a bewildered soul I hear you, loud and laughing but whimpering inside I touch you, burning with fire but burnt out and ashy inside Dare you stay blind when truth is deep, and perhaps known? Necessary Distractions in the eye of the storm Stillness and quiet Is perhaps what that loud whistle calls Until you read the writing on the walls of your heart, And I mine Perhaps a fluttering butterfly was all I was On a journey that shouldn't end at your door Listen to your truth first And I will follow, away or towards But perhaps you shouldn't close that first book so fast.