Nonqaba said ...

Pic: From personal archive. The tragedy of climate change is that natural resources are dug from the ground and trees massacred to make things, trinkets that will make things easier, convenient, faster and relaxing for us. It’s called lifestyle. Lifestyle has one definition: the individual. A lifestyle is bought with money, or with a promise to pay (credit cards). A lifestyle belongs to just one individual. A lifestyle provides the individual with company (his own), acceptance by his peers, laughter, warmth, food and love. Your basement and second hand stores have many items that were supposed to provide all this, but they ran out of time. So you bought a better television set, coffee maker, carving knife and a laptop instead of that elephant desk top computer. These items were produced in factories, smoke belching out of chimneys into the air. Air is very flexible, absorbs everything. We burn the food. No problem. We open the window and the air takes care of the stale burnt air. Air f

Pic: From personal archive. Bend is goba in Zulu. It is also a common surname. Go-ba . You say the first part like got and the second like baba. Tokyo Olympics in progress despite the pandemic. Track and field, 100 meters, runners bend on the start line, hands on the ground, then they burst out. Grandparents don’t walk straight. They bend a bit. Welders apply heat to bend steel. Beautiful landscapes are breath taking because of bends, twist and turns. Politicians bend their demands all the time, for the interest of the party or in return for favors, like being an ambassador in a country where the sun shines 24/7. ZULU ENGLISH Goba uma ungena iTipi. You bend when entering a tipi. Goba uma ungena indlu yesi-Zulu You bend when entering a Zulu hut. Goba uma ubingelela inkosi. Bend when you greet the kid. Ubaba ugoba insimbi ngomlilo. Father bends steel with fire. Lomuthi usemanzi uzogoba kalula. This branch is still wet. It will be easy to bend. Umuthi ugotshwa usemanzi. You teach a child

Japan PM Shinzo Abe took Pres. Barack Obama to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on 27 May, 2016, the first ever visit by a U.S. President. Enemies yesterday. Friends today. Today, Japan and America are thick as thieves through the G7 countries’ fraternity. China is the bad guy now, but Beijing and Washington were friends, mates, buddies, chums, BFF, or homeboys, in the 1930’s. Why was America and China chummy chummy during WW2? They both did not like Japan one bit. Japan, an island, occupied some parts of China with cruelty Chinese filmmakers mention in films like Red Sorghum, directed by Zhang Yimou. Japan occupied China In the 1930’s Japan joins Germany and Italy to fight against British allies. 24 September 1940 Japan attacks U.S. ships in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. 7 December 1941 America declares war on Japan. 8 December 1941 President Truman drops atom bomb on Hiroshima, in Japan. 6 August 1945 Fast forward to 2021. The fall-out between China and America is obvious, economic power. China

Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) helped during Covid-19 outbreak. Daddy, what do you do in the army? Veterans do not talk about what happened over there, in foreign countries and how they killed populations the government identified as the enemy. Nothing personal, just doing their patriotic duty. As a result, families and civilians in general do not understand how the army protects Canadian and American interests thousands of miles away, in other continents. The pandemic and floods give us a glimpse of the human side of the army, at home. In Canada, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) provided much needed help in Ontario and Quebec long term care homes, devastated by Covid-19 in 2020. The army is well-equipped for disaster management because it has special skills and resources designed for combat. These came in handy during peace time, when climate change resulted in July floods in Germany and China. Climate change cannot be reversed. It cannot be stopped either because we don’t want to change

Photo credit: online pic. YouTube and homework. Google and homework. Copying blogs and videos does not help students because it removes the ‘home’ from work. Teachers are looking for certain things in homework, especially written assignments. They might detect spelling or grammar gaps. They are also looking for home conditions. Where is the learner coming from? We grew up with two uncles and a grandfather. They read the paper voraciously and gave us sections to read aloud. But, the teacher’s choice is equally important. Write about MY PET assumes all learners have pets, forgetting that pets, especially dogs are common in wealthy homes, with huge grounds where dogs can romp.  Royalty for example. Poor parents in the east end of London U.K. and all big cities in Europe are unlikely to have dogs in their small flats. Some children were born above shops. Kate and Prince William’s kids however, will write interesting essays because they were born around dogs, the Queen’s dogs. MY SUMMER HOL

Divorce is hard, but money cushions the pain.  McKenzie Scott and her husband Jeff Bezos divorced.   Hard is lukhuni   in Zulu. Lu-khu-ni.  You say the  first part like look, the second like cook and the last like neat. In the olden days in a land called Kwa-Zulu, mothers, aunts, married sisters and grandmothers warned girls that: u-lu-khu-ni u-mendo  (marriage is hard). You think your marriage is hard because he did not say I love you when you parted at the train station? Women those days were marrying men who had 3 or four wives and the last wife, was not necessarily the last.   Climate change. It’s very hard to take, also very scary. Climate change is hard because we see nature’s anger after centuries of abuse: COVID-19, birds dying from oil spills, whales running away from home to die on the beach, the 2004 tsunami , floods, heatwave and fires bent on destroying whole states and provinces. Things are hard for clothing factories in U.S. England and France because fashion designers m

Online pic: Schuld, one of German towns affected by the July floods. Germany is a reminder that climate change is nature’s way of demanding passage, reclaiming its right of way. Piles of cars on top of each other in German floods, collapsed buildings and crushed steel structures is nature venting its anger for obstructing, its right of way. It’s a tragedy for us because of loss of lives, but it is pay back time for bleeding nature, we compromised for money. It has come to this because nature finds its back against the wall.   It cannot heal. The wind is blocked by demand for office space, the more floors the better. Buildings like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai are  a sign of money power.   We heal, but we do not afford nature the opportunity. I burned myself with a pot lid while cooking three weeks ago. There was a scar. It dried out, fell out on its own and has partially merged into the skin color. Money does not allow nature to heal because we need more cars, more cellphone chargers, mor

Online pic: Cents were paper, then coins, then garbage. What is money? What is its value? It depends on whether it is the British pound or pula , the Botswana currency. Botswana is the second biggest producer of diamonds after the Soviet Union, but the pula has a lower value. Money has no value. Interest does. The air we breathe and water had no ‘monetary’ value before the British invasion. Humans and animals shared these resources. From time to time, snakes bite us on the leg and run away, but there was peaceful coexistence between humans and animals, until pieces of silver. We pay with debit and credit cards now, but the origin of money is a piece of paper where A gave B something and B promised to pay. If B failed to pay, A grabbed his land, houses, plantations in the Caribbean or slaves. That promise to pay had a time factor. If B failed to pay, the promise increased in value. Time passed and the promise to pay became bank notes, pounds with the Queen’s head. Pennies were the bride

Annamie Paul. online pic. Like any new manager, Annamie Paul, leader of the Green Party of Canada faces entrenched traditions, allegiances and other currents that are not enshrined in any policy document. New managers have three choices. Do nothing, don’t rock the boat and enjoy the rewards of being a good sport. Second choice, re-arrange the furniture a bit and get half-applause because the furniture belongs to someone or a group. Third choice is throw out the cumbersome furniture and buy folding chairs and tables that can be used in many locations including the garden. The coffeemaker, which sits on a large table can also go because everybody buys brew from the coffee shop down the road. Very few new managers opt for the third choice because like new kids in a new school, they want to be liked. That’s why they opt for the second choice. We therefore assume Annamie Paul went for it, rearrange furniture a bit. We assume that she did not do this willy nilly, but consulted something tang

What is fiction? What is literature? Class. English Lit. started as books written by the king's men, women and horses.      Augustown : A Book Review Author : Kei Miller   “Is the teacher, Grandma. Is Mr. Saint-Josephs who cut off my dreadlocks.” Page 27. The little boy is Kaia. His grandmother is known as Ma Taffy in Augustown, a homestead in Jamaica. Most of the time, it is not steady because of police brutality and the school system bent on imposing a tea and cucumber sandwiches way of life. This novel Augustown is a work of fiction, but not to the reader because of hypnosis. It’s like gathering flowers, fruits, firewood and herbs in the forest. Dead leaves on their way back to the soil have a certain sound, so do twigs. The author alerts the reader to forest sounds. Some are audible, others are shy, like the sound of air. Ma Taffy knows the Augustown forest like the back of her hand. ‘Soft Paw’ the rude boy fighting the police thinks he does, typical youth arrogance, if you may

Kemba Walker Boston Celtics. Online pic. Dig is i-mba  in Zulu. You say the first part like email, the last like Kemba Walker, a Boston Celtics player. Ba-mba igolide.  They’re digging gold. Ba-mba amathuna.  They’re digging graves. Ba-mba amazambane.  They’re digging potatoes. Families have secrets. Are you comfortable with digging up family secrets in your memoir? Raging debate about that. Some marriages fall apart when a partner digs up the past. In one movie, a pastor insisted on marrying his childhood sweetheart who returned to Nigeria after working as a sex worker abroad. She said she and other girls were tricked into believing they would get jobs abroad. Mining is digging stones sold on the stock exchange. Miners get slave workers. Politicians say it’s good for the economy. Old mines are ugly scars on the land and mining companies are under no obligation to restore the land as it was. Even if they were, is restoration possible? This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka M

Photo credit: online pic. Off load is thulula in Zulu. You empty something from  one source to another one. For example, empty leftovers into containers you keep in the icebox (fridge). Thulula is also  big quantity, like tipping trucks to off-load sand. Garbage trucks also have a button they press to off-load the product at the dumpsite. Yes, garbage is a product. We produce it. Mama was a bulk buyer. She believed buying food like rice and cornmeal in bulk is cheaper. She would buy big bags, then empty them into smaller containers. Women fetch water from streams and empty it into big drums. Covid-19 vaccines are being off-loaded from planes to where they are needed. Thu-lu-la . You say the first part like took, the second like Lulu and the last like lull. ZULU ENGLISH Thulula ushukela wufake ethinini. Empty sugar into the tin. Thulula impuphu ifake ethinini. Empty cornmeal into the tin. Ba-thulula i gravel. They are off loading gravel. Ba-thulula izitini. They are off loading bricks.