Nonqaba said ...

We vote for political parties that promise a few items on our voting list: health, jobs, living wages, farmers’ subsidy, that sort of thing. That has been going on for years. Therefore, it was a big surprise when the Green Party, which is synonymous with safeguarding the environment took 32.7 percent of the vote in the Toronto Centre by-election, in October 2020. Annamie Paul is the newly minted leader of the Green Party. Marci Len, took home 42% of the vote on behalf of the Liberal Party, which is hobbling along because it lost its majority status in the last election. ONE ITEM POLITICAL PARTIES The Green Party’s win forced me to do some homework. Is it possible to vote for a ONE ITEM political party, just the environment? The by-election took place in a COVID-19 year, but we can’t say for sure that it prompted Annamie Paul’s leap. Other factors must have come to play. Paul is the first black woman to head a political party in Canada. The Liberals had their own dirty linen in public w

Spike Lee has been called proud bc he knows what films he wants to make and how . She’s very proud. It depends. Negative vs positive. The negative sees the positive as proud. I came across a new word some months ago in a book. The character says, “Niki is very prideful.” Fine. Niki is full of pride I suppose. You call Niki proud. She’s not. She has self-esteem. She knows that there are things she cannot change. She also knows that there is nobody who will look after her interests. We have marriages, relationships, friends, co-workers, followers but nobody will sacrifice anything for you. They only take. Pride is self-preservation, especially in relationships and at work. Boy meets girls. He says I love you, the only passport to get to where he wants to go. He arrives there. After a few months he gets tired of girl, finds another one. A girl who knows her worth will walk away, not leave ten phone messages everyday, or destroy his career on Twitter and Instagram. Walking away is top of t

Blessing Egbe's movie One Room, starring  Rita Dominic. We never appreciated the symbiotic relationship between home and work, until now. We are marooned at home and we are miserable. The kids are disturbing us while we work (on Boxing Day?). They are messy and noisy, spouses want us to take a bath, walk the dog, do laundry and other things we don’t do at the office, workshop, factory, construction site etc. All this leads to resentment or the realization that we don’t like the people we are married to or live with. Space aggravates matters. The apartment is too small for five people; neighbors are banging the wall because we live in a semi-detached; the small house has no veranda or backyard; or we live in a trailer park with music blaring 24 hours. The Pandemic and Rich People We are not handling this lockdown very well because we feel boxed in. Rich people on the other hand have the space alternative. They have his and hers study, the music room, guest rooms, the library, the co

Photo Credit: online pic. The middle class home has a lot of electronics, for him and her and separate ones for the kids, but kids love playing with their parents and it’s still the best teacher. Try playing restaurant at home, since you can’t dine out. Most restaurants are on lockdown by government decree. Where do you start? Determine how much they know. Some kids are used to restaurants. They went there as toddlers. Reluctant or eager serving staff perched them on high chairs. Other kids are used to sitting in the car while parents lean out of the window and place orders through a speaker phone. Doctors and dentists have their own protocol, so do restaurants. This is what you can recreate during the make believe. One thing you don’t have to worry about is the kitchen. It’s right there. Question for the kids, what do we need? The answers will surprise you.   1.  The menu. 2.  Designing the menu. Give them printer paper. 3.  Allocation of roles. Who will greet guests and hang their co

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada was born on the 25 th  of December. They call birthday born day  in South Africa.   It comes  from   ‘usuku loku zalwa’,  in Zulu, one of the languages spoken in that country .   COVID-19 Press Briefings How old is the Prime Minister? Canadians play hide and seek in their heads instead of taking in the grim skating marks, the pandemic is scratching on the nation. Facts and figures. Unfortunately, that is television’s downside. We tend to look at the person’s eyes, clothes and hair. That’s why publicists give politicians bullet points, or ‘sound bites’ as they call them. In other words, viewers are too busy looking at the face to soak in important information, such as the extension of COVID-19 money for workers and businesses. How old is the Prime Minister? Perhaps he also wonders. Is that why he grew a beard? Granted, Trudeau spotted some beards before the pandemic, but he wore a beard consistently in

COVID-19 and this Christmas. The virus kills. Others survive. Government and health experts caution, trim down year-end gatherings to reduce funerals and cremations. People with common sense understand that, but the practical side is bound to dent family relationships. Christmas dinner for example. It was bigger last year, has always been bigger. Who do we exclude from the dinner table this year? I’m using this meal because I’m writing from a North American perspective. People celebrate Christmas differently all over the world. Millions are not even Christians. They regard the holiday as a venue for a pause, a pause from work and hustling in general. Grandmothers and grandfathers will be excluded for obvious reasons. They are perceived as high risk carriers because their bodies are fatigued, from other ailments. Excluding them is a painful decision for most families. The pain is acute because of the Thanksgiving experience. They did not fetch old people from care homes. Who else will b

Winnipeg, Canada Day celebration, B4 Covid-19. What would you like for Christmas? I prefer ‘ like ’ to ‘ want ’ because we cannot always get what we want. Farmers want rain, but nature has its own agenda, which might be drought. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. No! I don’t agree with the song. I’m dreaming of a recycling Christmas where I’m one or two years old again. It will remove cobwebs from my brain. There’s a problem. I’ll try and solve it this way. Kids that age do it all the time. One woman tried to get her one-year old of the breast to no avail. She resorted to applying something on them. The son went to the mother and helped himself. He tasted something bitter. He went to the bathroom, rolled out some tissue, came back, wiped them and ate happily ever after. The women in the room looked at each other with shock, then delayed laughter. If I hadn’t been one of them, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would like to be recycled to a toddler for Christmas so that I can be sharp like

We’re mad at the pandemic, not because we cannot go to work, run our small businesses, catch a movie, go to the gym, dinner, pub, church, outdoor concerts and NBA games. We’re mad because lockdown forces us to admit the possibility of driving to pawnshops. We hope it won’t come to that. We hope we won’t be forced to sell the house and downgrade to an apartment, which means selling bulky sofas in exchange for bean bags. We hope we won’t have to take lawnmowers, BBQ stands, chest of drawers, humidifiers, waffle-makers, fur coats and costume jewelery to the pawnshop.   If we do, we can get them back after three months. I didn’t know. Movies gave me the impression that when your life falls apart, you take your precious things to pawnshops, never to be seen again. Two novels, Soon After  and Wanna Get To Know Ya  gave me a fresh insight about pawnshops.  Soon after  has a pastor that owns a pawnshop. Wanna  has a character that keeps items well beyond the time regulated by law. Forget what

Book Title : Soon After Author : Sherryle Kiser Jackson But why did aunt Elaine burn down the church? That is the burning question. My mind should not be on this book. I reached THE END, so I must move on to other books, I didn’t finish months back. I have quite a few. I stop reading when I come across yet another New York Times best seller  which ‘reads’ like a Hollywood movie: a reporter, crime committed, wrong suspect, detectives. God! Detectives! Why must most books have detectives? What’s the point of buying books when you know what will happen? Slow down, take a deep breath. I will. Soon After  has all of the above except detectives. It has a fire chief  instead. The title could easily be soon after the fire, because someone  burnt down the Harvest Baptist church. Soon After  works though, short and sweet, and there’s fire on the cover. COVID-19 lockdown is forcing me to attend all unfinished business, including books. Aunt Elaine is an enigma because she doesn’t feature that muc

"Mama I’m hungry.” “Is the kitchen closed?” “Please mama. My stomach is hurting.” “Honey, you should say, mama there are no eggs.” “I can’t cook. I’m too little.’ “Learn how to cook honey. Mama won’t always be here.” “Mama don’t play. You’ll always be here.” “Go brush your teeth, I’m coming.”   Once upon a time, people died of old age. Then we became sophisticated, tried to ‘improve’ nature with things and how our bodies work, ate new food and new people. We ended up with new diseases that love young people. That’s why kids should learn to cook, as soon as possible because mama won’t be there all the time. When though? Difficult question, because of age. Come to think of it, kids learn unconsciously just by being around adults. We even complain that they are getting under our feet. They hang around because they love us, they mimic what we do. They are rookies in this world. They want to know how things work. “ Mama, I’m hungry. ” The right thing to say is: ‘ Mama there are no eggs

Photo Credit: online pic   COVID-19 and school, virtual school. Virtual classroom, college, tuition, online learning or whatever you call it, needs a computer. What happens to parents that cannot afford it because they don’t have silver, gold, platinum, black, blue, orange or red credit cards? This post was prompted by laptop sales, the cheapest being R800 for top of the range machines. Refurbished ones cost less but few people want yesterday’s problems, today. Christmas is scaled down this year because one parent or both aren’t working, or are working reduced hours. Reasonable kids (depending on  age) understand that 2020 is a no-gift Christmas. A computer however, is the ideal gift because it will be used 24/7 and for a good purpose: online classes. The problem however, is ownership, making the family understand that the only laptop in the house should be shared like the kitchen table and the bathroom. Kids already have their own phones they do not share with brothers and sisters, le

Literature students that copy book reviews from the internet short change themselves because professors are aware of it. How? They see the same book review injected with Botox here and there, from 20 other assignments. College teaching staff, who silently admit that the internet diminished their value long before COVID-19, turn a blind eye and grade copied book reviews with tepid marks, 50-53%. Life is too short to try and fight the tiger: the internet. However, they reward literature students that read books and write their own analysis handsomely. Professors enjoy reading original student assignments because no two students are the same, even twins, the wonder of nature. Students that make time to read the book come up with original answers to who, what, why, when and where. They are not yes men and yes women. The author is not available to explain why the woman in the story has a whole walk-in closet full of white clothes. Students from India might bring a unique insight to the anal

New York State Governor A. Cuomo On 25 November, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an opinion that pitted government attempts at containing COVID-19 against the First Amendment. The court said, among other things: “ …….while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edits   that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques .” WHO l  Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York l  Agudath Israel of America These two religious organizations are the applicants. They went to the Court to seek temporary relief from Governor Cuomo’s ‘color-coded’  classification of the city, that would limit the number of people in churches and synagogues. Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, Agudath Israel of America,  died from COVID-19. In order to contain the pandemic, most cities are divided into red, orange and yellow zones. The applicants maintained that the following classifications were discriminatory an

We don’t need most of the things we will buy on Black Friday. They are just extras, but the environment doesn’t have extras. That’s why we wear face masks. We polluted the air through our ‘economic development.’ Translate that into producing extra jeans and tops, extra cosmetics, kitchen appliances, plastic cards in our wallets, pumps for every product in our bathrooms and kitchens, drinking straws, soda cans, cellphones, computers, cars, sneakers, music speakers etc. Black Friday extras were made in a factory somewhere and factories have waste just like us, in that can under the sink. Factories dispose of industrial garbage in rivers and the air, when they burn it. Climate change is a boring subject. It is political. You shy away from talking about it for fear of being labeled socialist or leftist. There’s only one label trending now, SCARED. COVID-19 is in your face, in the form of a mask. Scientists are working on vaccines around the clock, but will they find a cure for a water COVI

Donald Trump will be a problem for the media after Biden’s inauguration because he is not Rihanna. He won’t take a bow like her song, work on his memoirs, golf to his heart’s content and live quietly like all former presidents. His modus operandi  will be to destabilize the new administration, through Twitter and other digital platforms. Yes he can. The current strategy to nullify voters’ wishes that led to Biden’s victory, is just a test drive. The destabilization drone will be in full throttle in 2021. Nothing can be done about his Twitter soapbox. Anybody can have a  account. What about American-based electronic media: CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox etc.? How will they handle him, because his tweets are bound to multiply, when he is without a formal job? The first item on the agenda for news directors is classification. Will they classify Trump’s tweets as news, in the traditional sense of the word? If they do, they’ll rehash them, which is a countless exercise, because  haters and adoring fans

Bahamas education. Online pic. Canada, U.S. and Europe think they have the best educational system in the world. They don’t, because of the volcanic crack. What crack? In rural Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South America, there’s no missing link or a gaping hole between the classroom and home because kids know, that teachers hang out with parents. They go to the same church, mosque, temple, building society, market, financial co-op, choir practice, harvest or festival committee. Teachers drop by the house at any given time. ‘Thami, is your mother home?’ ‘Mama, Miss Deavoir is here to see you.’ Therefore, parents and teachers are one step ahead of kids. Kids know that they cannot punk the teacher because mama will know about it. And, what’s your point? The point is: because of iPad education, kids do not fear the link between school and home. Therefore, they can do whatever they like without the possibility of teachers walking through the door to see Mama. Kids are therefore

  COVID-19 is a wake-up call about knowledge and what we perceive as knowledge. For example, the bank wants a business plan that will demonstrate that your plan to dry pork bellies and use them as pizza toppings, will be a stock market home run. COVID-19 has made cities ghost towns, which were planned based on what governments and business know about human traffic in search of food, sports, services and fun. Town planning is joined at the hip with business. Towns need to grow, otherwise they become ghost towns. So, cities create basketball, baseball and football clubs, man them with American players on mega salaries, thus generating wealth for businesses within the perimeter. Families drive down from suburbs on game night, park the car, catch dinner, do some shopping and drive back to rural tranquility.   Town planning. Big question? Should it follow how a child is born and grows or how trees do their thing? The first example is the origin. Trees and other plants have their beginnings

Stacey Abrams. They say democracy is for the people by the people. That is why it baffled me when opponents mocked Barack Obama when he ran for president, dismissing him as nothing but a community organizer. Americans voted for the Democratic Party and Obama became the 44 th  U.S. President in 2008.   I don’t know how you describe community, but for me, it is a collection of human beings in a place somewhere, trying to come up with ideas of solving their problems here and now. Before the White House, Obama won the Illinois Senate seat from 1997-2004, based on community organizing, driving around the state, talking to people. Opponents ridiculed him because he immersed himself in various communities, some of them totally against each other politically. His opponents were on higher ground, they were campaigning. What is the difference? Community. His opponents ‘campaigned’ while having a pint in restricted men’s clubs, playing golf, sailing, relaxing in Martha’s Vineyard, skiing in Switz

Teachers not only teach, but they prepare students for exams, as well. It’s one and the same thing, isn’t it? Not necessarily. Understanding or comprehension is the goal, when teachers stand in front of the class. We’re using understanding or comprehension deliberately. They mean one and the same thing. Students might be comfortable with the term understanding, because teachers use it all the time. It becomes a problem when exam questions use comprehension. Exams are the highest level of testing. Teachers test all the time. There are in-class tests, homework, assignments, all kinds of testing. Students may be used to ‘understanding’ not ‘comprehension.’ We are not talking about language as in English language exams. We are talking about a chain of learning, where exam questions should be an extension of what teachers delivered in class. Exams should not be teachers’ enemy, springing on students new methods of asking questions. When I still had the brain to learn, I never discussed exam