Nonqaba said ...

Photo credit. Online pic. We don’t have to know everything about the sun and moon because it leads to the desire to change them, instead of concentrating on basic life. That is how we scarred the environment which resulted in climate change and kids wearing masks. We don’t have to know how two birds fall in love from two million of the same species. Falling in love is a Hollywood phrase that often results in women’s degradation and murder. I’m using it for lack of a better word.  I assume birds fall in love because they gather twigs and make a home, a nest. We don’t have to know how lions fall in love. It’s enough that we see a lion family, lounging on the grass, contemplating how to attack the ambitious photographer. There’s a she lion and he lion. How does the man know he’s the father? We don’t have to know.  We don’t have to know why a snake crawls because it will lead to the attempt to give it fake legs. We don’t have to know why a leopard has spots because a multinational company

Photo credit: online pic. The internet removed the crust from words such as boss, manager, accountant, professor, chief engineer, psychoanalyst, medical doctor, head chef, editor or producer, because knowledge that used to be exclusively theirs, is now in my phone and computer. The crust is gone. What is left is the food inside the bread: power. These titles are about power, power to nurture, hire or fire. Some NBA coaches who hate new talent at first sight have destroyed young lives. Deprive a player minutes or tell him not to score, then claim he cannot deliver. If you have been fired unjustly, you know how managers frustrate and fire workers who know the job better than them. In colleges and other educational institutions, power came from academic knowledge. The dissipation of hierarchy must be taking its toll on university professors because of shifting sand, from real world to the online world. Students are experts in the digital world. There’s no hierarchy anymore because the wor

It’s only fiction, but I’m currently touring a book about fake doctors in a sanitarium. The problem is: residents are not mad. Fake doctors with fake certificates on the wall are giving them drugs to make them mad. It’s only fiction, but does this happen? I suppose it does because people become garbage after a certain age. We don’t want them at work, and definitely not at home, so we throw them out to old age homes and sanitariums. Wait! It’s only families with money that can afford these old age or mental institutions. Mental institutions whose aim is to make a profit, easily get away with inhuman practices because families do not care. They don’t know medication given to residents to make them ‘calm.’ Families pay for room and board to hold old relatives that are past their due date, liabilities to the good life young families are striving for. They are an embarrassment when we have visitors. We condemn cruelty to senior citizens, but we forget that it was their choice. They lived al

Photo credit. Online pic. What do you do? “I’m into import and export.” Right. That is huge like the sun, seen by kids in Ouagadougou and kids in Ulaanbaatar at the same time. After that answer, there is reluctance to ask about goods he imports and exports. The silence is the fun part for the importer-exporter. He knew his answer will stop the inquisition. What he enjoys the most though, is guessing the questions snaking in the minds of his audience. He must be a drug dealer. He knows it is the number one unspoken conclusion. After all, drugs are grown, processed, packaged and shipped from somewhere. The product is received and sold somewhere else. That is import and export isn’t it? Humans? Is he exporting girls? The importer-exporter doesn’t like that guess work. He might not have a 9-5 job but he has a mother, sisters, aunts and cousins and he wouldn’t sell them for a billion dollars. Import and export? He must be selling outdated guns to ambitious thugs that want to be presidents o

Before the cellphone camera.  Video was in the court room before cellphones. Do courts still wheel in those video players in which prosecutors and defense lawyers used, to slide in VHS tapes with incriminating evidence? In the ideal world, we should be well-behaved, not committing any crime like shoplifting, assault or murder because we would remember that there’s a camera somewhere. Police won’t kill only black men regularly, because of police body-worn cameras. Unfortunately, the existence of video does not deter us from committing crime. We have a simplistic approach to our actions. Nobody saw me. I won’t get caught, forgetting that video is everywhere, in the woods, in toilet cubicles, even your gate. Technology is so advanced, someone can hide a camera on a shrub in your garden. But, some of that video might be inadmissible evidence, you argue. I’m not a lawyer. I only know that term from books and crime television. Whether it is admissible or not, the fact remains you were caught

There is no universal definition of family for obvious reasons. Religion for example. It is still a determining factor. That’s why most families prefer that boy should marry girl from the same religion. Culture and religion overlap, another reason why families prefer one culture one marriage. Men in Africa can marry as many wives as they like. Islam permits polygamy but the number is limited. Race is another factor, especially in the U.S. and South Africa, countries that had slavery and legalized racism called apartheid. The English aristocracy preferred marrying within the same accent. Blue blood used to marry blue blood. Is royal blood really blue? Never mind. It was unthinkable in 1937 that a British king in waiting would marry an American divorcee. Prince Edward V111 did just that, when he married Wallace Simpson. Today’s family includes boy marries boy and girl marries girl. It includes blended families: his kids from the first and second marriage, her adopted kids, her daughter s

Online pic . The Christmas tree. Cut or synthetic from the store? Either way, it is bad news for the environment. Christmas is good news for places that grow them. There are bank loans and workers to be paid.  This is not the only industry that invests year-round resources, for Christmas. We tend to concentrate on gifts and turkeys and forget about the whole sub-industry.   Good old Hollywood has always cashed in, by making films especially for Christmas. Studios also release what they think will be blockbusters at this time. Imagine the shock, when Black Panther, the Marvel film directed by Ryan Coogler became a blockbuster.  It was released in February 2018, because they didn’t think a black film was capable of such success. Whether it is a movie or home tree, growing trees only to cut them for one day, is bad for the environment because trees are the winter coat for the soil. After Christmas, they sit in garbage dumps with champagne and whisky bottles and old television sets, becaus

What's your PIN darling? One bank sent me another reminder that I should not share my PIN with anyone. I used to think that is common sense, until I overheard a conversation in a public washroom, of all places. The cleaning lady pushed her mop while telling her friend how her lover cleaned out her bank account. She gave him her card and PIN, then vanished. The friend was mad, but the cleaning lady said, he said he loved her. I wanted to say she deserved it but then thought about those 3 little Hollywood words:  ‘I love you. ’ They always win over common sense in a wrestling match. Those three little words contribute to love fraudsters. People meet online. They fall in love. Personal information is exchanged, which leads to banking information. Once an online stranger says I love you , he/she can make you sell your mother. The bank that sent me this reminder likened the PIN to the front door key. ‘You won’t give your key to somebody so they can get in and take what they want, right

Dr. Dre, rapper turned electronics millionaire and Nicole Young, divorced after 24 years. Law students used to study the basics: Criminal Law, Civil Law, Constitutional Law, Contract Law and Law of Torts (what’s that? Trust the British to call a spoon a spade). Not anymore. The world is highly developed now or highly destroyed, depending on who’s talking. That’s why they also study Environment Law, Entertainment Law or NBA Law, if there’s anything like that. Therefore, I assume that there’s social media law, and Instagram in particular, the ‘perfect life platform’ where the have’s like entertainers and billionaires display their assets for the have-nots. Divorce happens, which leads to toys like boats and Ferrari’s being orphans. Who owns the riverside resort in Belize or the six dogs that have been features in most celebrity dogs online pages? If there is a dispute about assets, can Lawyer A use Instagram posts to prove that the gift from a Swedish Prince was intended for his client,

They made a movie from the book. 12 Years A Slave  should be required reading for drug dealers, also known as street pharmacists. What drugs do to the mind is tantamount to slavery. Money occupies premium space in drug dealers’ minds and they are everywhere: on Wall Street, Bay Street, Hollywood, Milan, basketball courts, condos, castles, celebrity yachts, Lagos or Sandton. Drugs don’t  have a race or class. 12 Years a Slave must be required reading, particularly for drug dealers that work in the race. Slavery was about the destruction of a race. It involved lynching, rape, whips and chains. A drug dealer in 2021, is a slave master turning back the clock on the blood of departed slaves. 12 Years a Slave  is Solomon Northup’s story, a free man living with his family in Saratoga New York, of how slave traders duped him with a promise of work as a violinist. They kidnapped him and sold him to slavery in Louisiana where he was sold and re-sold, like real estate property. Drug dealers inves

Fabric comes from Germany, but original styles are Lesotho. In winter, when flu makes the rounds, we go through boxes of Kleenex, but they are not Kleenex. They are soft paper handkerchiefs we use to blow the nose, or wipe tears caused by a broken heart. But, Kleenex, the brand name has become the common name. Coke is a soft drink made by a company, but it is now a common name for a brown soft drink. Writers seldom say Pepsi in novels. I laughed when I got to England and saw Vaseline in a chemist. Mama used it on our legs, growing up in Africa. Mothers never say, go to the store and buy petroleum jelly. They say go and get me Vaseline. Countries can also be brand names. Most African women have never been to Germany but they wear ‘ isijalimane’ which means made in Germany. Germany’s textile industry makes a lot of money in Africa, because it incorporates symbols and fabric colors that depict Africa. Take Lesotho for example. German manufacturers incorporated the Basotho hat, into their

Canada, skating arena before Covid-19. There is an app for everything so you cannot claim that the brain is totally under-funded. True true. Many people continue to make money online because they oil their brain regularly. They identify problems and come up with apps to solve them. This puts Meta Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on an acquisition high, because he snaps them up for his stable. We might not be aware that we under-fund the brain, until we see a toddler crawling about, encounters an obstacle and comes up with a plan to work around it. It brings a smile to family members, but it also reminds us that we under-fund the brain. Trending. This is a good example of under-funding the brain. We rely on others to think for us, to determine what needs our attention now, now. It’s an emergency. Drop everything you’re doing. It’s convenient to blame the internet, but under-funding the brain is not new. In Victorian England society ladies all trooped to powder rooms after dinner to powder

Online pic: Destiny Etiko, Nigerian actress fluent in Igbo and English. The main reason why humanity goes to the gym is to appease the heart, which is extremely delicate. Another reason for looking good, is to appease humans that live with us or we hope, they’ll live with us. But the most satisfying reason is looking fabulous for you, which starts with dressing up. Shower done, now it’s time to put on clothes. The shirt slides in through arms with little ripples, nothing ostentatious like professional weightlifters’ rocks. Doing buttons is one two three. Remember the time when you had to hold your breath to button up shirts? Zipping up pants is a piece of cake because there are no road blocks. Zips do just that, zip up. Do you wear belts? Fastening them is no problem because there’s no hanging laundry around your waist. Women with no protruding waists look divine in dresses. Talking about the waistline. Working out regularly is good for your mental health because you don’t have to worr

Online image. Baby Alexandre with his father. Right, with his mum Nicole Coste from Togo. Princess Charlene, wife of Prince Albert of Monaco was born white in Rhodesia, which is now called Zimbabwe. When Africans reclaimed their land after Independence, her family went next door, to South Africa where being white was still a passport to privilege.  She grew up in South Africa and embraced her family's values of what black people are and how to treat them. She was into sports which led to world travel. She had a choice: shed her racist upbringing from Rhodesia and South Africa or cling to it. Two decisions she made as an adult demonstrate that she decided to cling to it.     1. Before her wedding to Prince Albert in 2011, she  moved Alexandre Grimaldi Coste, his son with Nicole Coste from Togo, from the main house to the employee wing. 2.  She came back from South Africa in November 2021 with a dog named Khan. Alexandre Grimaldi Coste Princess Charlene moved Alexandre from the main

How many colors do fall leaves have? Google landlord will Google it. Interest groups are always looking for more members. The first complimentary meeting is a sociologist’s dream. You see faces and personalities. Some smiles dance like the eyes of a well-fed and loved baby. Other smiles stretch once and close like an accordion.   But, you cannot miss the Google landlord. There she was in one bible study I attended, not to disappoint a friend who was trying to recruit me. I noticed that the Google landlord had the discussion in the palm of her hand literally, because when the group tried to remember a date or someone’s name, she Googled it. There was uncertainty about a song, she Googled it. What blew my mind was a scripture in the bible. The group was not sure about it. The Google landlord looked it up. That sealed it for me. I was not going to join the group. Anyway I accepted the invitation to appease a friend. I’m not a Jesus person. He came with European settlers to steal land that

Photo Credit: online pic of the Queen of England. He is quite cultured. He’s well educated. He can say such words without bruising his tongue. n  Gloucestershire n  Straffordshire n  Worcestershire n  Necessary n  Tchaikovsky In Africa, being well-educated meant you have erased all ‘primitive’ traces, embodied in your language and culture and embraced the ways of the Queen of England. I am fortunate because we grew up in Zulu, saw the world in Zulu, understood why the sky is called izulu and why we are called amaZulu. I function in an English world, most of the time. Most people in Quebec, function in French. However, my original language helps me understand languages of the rivers and eagles of this land Kanada, before the English and French invasion. There is some similarity between Zulu and let’s say Ojibwe. I pronounce  Ojibwe,  as I say it in Zulu. No problem. I say Anishinaabe as I say it in Zulu.   Nokomis  as in Zulu.  Miigwech as in Zulu. What would be interesting is hearing s

  Are books a dinosaur? Stop! Don’t write your first novel or memoir if you are not the following: # Angela Merkel, German Chancellor for 16 years # Hilary Clinton, who ran for U.S. President twice # Michelle Obama, former U.S. First Lady # Elliot Hamilton, British Formula One racing driver with 100 F1 wins Publishing is a business. It must make money. That’s why some publishers have probably asked Angela Merkel and Elliot Hamilton to write books. Clinton and Obama are already on the shelves. Publishers don’t know you so they won’t approach you with a book offer. That is why self-publishing is the only option for unknowns. Before you start on the pottery, molding characters, do some self auditing. 1.  Who will read your novel or memoir? Who are your block readers? Don’t count on family and friends. They’ll jump on board only when they see you on television. 2.  Do your block voters buy books? Remember visuals (YouTube, sports, video games, podcasts etc.) are your main competitor. 3.  H

Online pic: Some cities have Covid-19 white elephants. Covid-19 was not in the business plan. That’s why businesses that opened in March 2020 and beyond are hard hit by the pandemic. This is where soothsayers come in. Students in business schools globally are taught that every business plan must have a SWOT Analysis: S trengths W eaknesses O pportunities T hreats The pandemic threw that into the ocean because nobody anticipated Covid-19 as a threat. Nobody could. Climate change yes, because we’ve been ignoring warnings for years. Development yes, climate change? Not now. We’ll attend to it after healthy profit margins. Because business plans don’t have a soothsayer requirement, cities have white elephants that looked so good on paper, banks provided finance, cities pitched in, even provincial and federal governments. One white elephant comes to mind, a multi-use complex in the city I call home. Banks, an apartment building, office block, a grocery store, upstairs food court and a beer

2007 Movie poster. Some families have Christmas dinner in restaurants for various reasons. 1.  Women cooked over the years, but got less and less appreciation. 2.  Kids eat and run. Go back to their apartments the same day. 3.  Phones at the table. Family members eat and text. Older members especially women, feel left out. 4.  Movies have wonderful Christmas dinners but do not talk about the cost. Buying food and drinks might be an issue in some families. 5.  Family discord. Some people dread Christmas because they don’t see eye to eye with certain members. Others are tired of being asked why they are not married. 2021 Restaurant Dinner This is the second year of the pandemic, so Covid-19 restrictions such as social distancing are still on. Some restaurants took out some tables to accommodate that. Restaurants were hard hit last Christmas because Covid-19 was in full throttle. Business is coming back slowly but with certain conditions: show digital or plastic card before waiters escort