Tribute to my mother

**           When I was a toddler you picked me up and wiped my tears.

**           When I started school you taught me to share my sandwiches with those who did not have.

**           When you caught me smoking with my friends at age eleven you told me that smoking was for rough girls and you encouraged me to stop.

**           When I sent away my first story to a radio station at twelve you told me not to be afraid to reach far and encouraged me to write.

**           When I said to you at sixteen that I would like to be an actress, you said, my girl, I would not like you to do that; your job will depend on your looks and I would not like you to be in show business.

**           When I left the country at age 21 with just my sister, younger than me, you told me not to be afraid and that you would see me soon. You gave us enough money to take care of ourselves.

**           When we were young girls, before leaving for Canada, you encouraged us to bring our boyfriends to the house so you could know who they were. You served them coffee and cake and always were nice to them.

**           When I got married to a foreigner you left your work in South Africa to help me with the baby and spend some time with us. You were kind to my husband and he was kind to you.

**           When I got divorced you cried because you knew the damage done to children who grow up without a father. You cried because you remembered your own experiences and did not want us girls to go through what you had.

**           When I got published you were my number one fan. You sat in a wheelchair at my first launch. Georgina and I pushed you up the hill to the acupuncturist in the rain. You believed that the Chinese man’s needles would fix you. We had a few good years together and then your number came up and there was nothing anyone could do. Even then, with your last breath, you would not leave until I told you not to struggle anymore to live, that you had been a good mother who always loved and put her kids first.  You gave a last sigh and slipped away. If I have done an ounce of good in my life, I owe it all to you, Mom; thank you.

http://expertscolumn.com/users/rayda-jacobs

http://www.raydajacobs.blogspot.com

http://redgage.com/account#rf:/account:innercontainer:dashboard.user

Wedding day anxiety

Imagine this scenario: it is a day before the wedding. The band has been booked, the bridesmaids’ outfits are ready, the catering is paid for, you are having drinks with the girls when suddenly you have anxiety and say that you can’t go through with it. Family members ask you what is wrong; you say you don’t know. You have mere hours before you become a wife. The groom-to-be is shocked and does not understand what is happening. The transition is so bizarre that one moment you are laughing with the girls and the next moment you are crying over the drink in your hand. What do you do? 

Handling wedding day anxiety

**           You do nothing for the moment except be with her. Don’t try to explain things; it will go in one ear and out the other. Calm her down by telling her that you understand how hard it is to leave home. 

**           Don’t blame yourself. It has nothing to do with you. Be rational. Hold her and say that it is all right to cry on the night before you get married. After all, it is a huge thing to leave your parents’ home and change guard. 

**           Put a temporary hold on the catering until you know whether the event is on or off. Remember caterers start planning weeks ahead of time and they don’t do anything without a fat deposit; don’t do it too late.

**           If hours later you are still fearful and don’t know the cause of it, put the wedding on hold. It is easier to lose some of your deposits than undo or annul a marriage. It may even be that once you have cancelled everything that the fear dissipates and you find yourself with just two witnesses at the Justice of the Peace. It may be the fear of change rather than finding fault with your partner which one is sometimes apt to do. If on the morning of the wedding your partner laughs off her anxiety from the previous day and seems fine, you know you have crossed that bridge and are set for the marriage to take place. The fear and confusion is akin to a new mother who does not know what to expect and wants the baby but does not want to give birth.

http://expertscolumn.com/users/rayda-jacobs

http://www.raydajacobs.blogspot.com

http://redgage.com/account#rf:/account:innercontainer:dashboard.user

South Africa's forgotten people

 

A few hundred miles north of Cape Town in the dry and rugged Richtersveld mountains lie four communities along the Orange River whose people are known by several names; the Nama, San, Khoisan, the ‘people of the Richtersveld’, and derogatorily also known as the Bushmen. With a slim frame, a biscuit or apricot-colored complexion, wrinkly features, wiry hair, they are the remnants of the indigenous people who once were hunter gatherers and beachcombers in the early Cape.

They had lived for centuries in the mountains, fished in the waters and looked for food along the shore. They have good eyesight and make excellent trackers and have the ability to study a pile of manure or animal dung and tell you which animal had made the deposit, the age of the animal, and the direction in which it had gone. They left behind a trail of rock paintings along the coast and had a wonderful sense of poetry, music and art. Some of these paintings can be seen at a resort in the Cedarberg where San children and adults are on display in their original skins and habitat.

Living conditions

It is shocking that once the land which had been freely used by all were taken away and some of them migrated towards the Cape, some wandering in the streets, some finding jobs, others living out their lives as alcoholics. In the past part of the white man’s form of payment was a ‘dop’, alcohol, which kept them in a perpetual state of slavery. Filmmakers saw a chance to join in and a film by Jamie Uys, The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a Coke bottle falls from the sky and causes a tribe member to start walking to the end of the earth to return it to the gods, was born. The San were romanticized and the act of trying to give back a Coke bottle to the gods attests to their delightful nature. They speak both Khoisan and Afrikaans which has a click to it when they talk. Hunted by the early settlers in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, they fled north and disappeared.

The Nama

Another group of indigenous people are the Nama, similar in colour and stature to the San, who also had Mongolian features, and lived around the Orange River in the mid nineteenth century. These indigenous people were called Hottentots. Today, about 60,000 Nama live in Namibia and in the Richtersveld which are made up of Eksteenfontein, Kubus, Sanddrift and Port Nolloth.They have been granted houses along sandy streets and there is the normal church and school and a piano which provide entertainment. The Nama Dance which has them dancing around a fire in a trance is a particular favorite. 

Culture in the Richtersveld

They are also known for their natural remedies and their rooster brood, flat bread baked on a stone oven. Problems in the community are teenage pregnancy and alcoholism; their biggest concern is that their culture and language is dying out. Elders are worried and say that the children are uninterested in learning the language of their elders and many of them now speak only Afrikaans and a few words of English. Their second claim to fame is that when Queen Elizabeth was in South Africa the last time she met with the leader of the four communities, Oom Po’, and shook his hand. A large framed photograph of the Queen is on the wall in the living room where everyone can see it. Of all the communities in the Cape these indigenous people have fared the worst.

http://www.raydajacobs.blogspot.com

http://expertscolumn.com"