If

With less than 24 hours left before another essay is due in, I have decided to post a poem that I wrote a couple of months ago. I wrote it the day before a big essay was due in. Luckily tomorrows essay is not as big and important, so I am not feeling quite as desperate......... (hopefully you know the original)

If
(with sincere apologies to Mr. Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all around you
Are papers, books and half-drunk cups of tea
If you can trust yourself when doubt enfolds you,
That your argument is contradictory.

If an “outing” is a visit to the kitchen
If a “treat”s a game of online solitaire.
If you fail to recognize you in the mirror
As your red and bleary eyes look back and stare.

If you can stay awake and not be tired,
Or, being tired, don't give in to sleep,
Or, being awake, don't give way to hating,
And yet withstand the temptation to weep;

If you can quote - and not make these your master;
If you can think - and make those thoughts your own;
If you can turn to friends when in disaster
And waste a half an hour on the phone;

If you can make one heap of all the theories
And throw in a few of them - just for show,
And grapple with “reductionist” and “localism”
And decide on whether or not to quote Foucault;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To keep your sanity when reality is gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can bear to read the words you've written
And check the spelling, et al’s and ibid
Put your student number on the top right corner
And remember – omit your name or God forbid!

If you can fill the last possible minute
With sixty seconds' more of your conclusion -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And you’ll have handed in your essay - my son/daughter! (gender emphasis added)

Sizwe Banzi is Dead

Last Tuesday night, some friends and I went to see ‘Sizwe Banzi is Dead’ at the National Theatre.

If you haven't heard of it, the play was first performed in 1972 in Cape Town, written by a white South African playwright, Athol Fugard and two black South African actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who played the two lead roles. They then took the play to London where it won the London Theatre Critics award for the best play of 1974 and has become one of South Africa's most important plays. The play explores the effects that controls such as the 'pass law' had on South Africans during apartheid.

The extraordinary thing about the production we saw was that it starred the original actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona playing their parts, 35 years after the first performance. They were phenomenal. I wonder how many times they have performed the play. They wrote it when they were affected by the oppressive laws that the play addresses. Writing the play was an act of defiance against the cruel apartheid regime and they have seen the play becoming an icon of the struggle. They have also seen South Africa become a democracy. Their performance was full of passion and you can tell that this play is part of them. I feel privileged to have seen them.

As I sat on the top deck of the bus going home after the play, I thought about some of the questions the play generates.

Questions of autonomy. How important is my name? How important is my identity? And for what would I give it up?

Also of freedom. I have had it all my life. I can go where I like. Do what I want. I have never had to question it. But this is not the case for many people all around the world. Oppressive regimes continue. And I shouldn’t take my freedom for granted.

I am going to take the easy option and end this post here. I don’t have any groundbreaking comments to say about this issue. All I can say is that I am thinking about it and where my role lies in the bigger picture. If nothing else, I at least aim to not be ignorant about what is going on and what has happened in recent times.

And if you haven’t seen or read the play, please do. It is brilliant.

You have entered wedding season

About three years ago it started. Wedding season. My friends began to get hitched. From thereon in, things would never be the same. And I don’t mean that my friends changed after getting married, I mean that I had to start planning my life months in advance around the various weddings to make sure I could attend. Now please understand, I am not complaining at all. Considering the last two weddings I went to were in Sri Lanka and Cape Town, it has been fantastic!

Now weddings are great places to observe fellow human beings and probably my favourite part is the dancing. The couple are married, the speeches are over, the guests have been fed, and everyone is finally relaxed and the real fun begins. There’s the shy, quiet guy from table 3 who turns out to be a demon on the dance floor, the old uncle who dances with every young girl in succession. And no matter what people’s music taste is outside of weddings – jazz, punk rock, classical – suddenly everyone’s favourite song is Bryan Adam’s “Summer of Sixty Nine” or any Abba track.

My first video on the blog is from a wedding I went to about a month ago and it is one of my favourite videos. The evening is coming to an end, there are probably only a dozen songs left to be played, everyone has had a few wines and is feeling quite happy with life and slightly tired after a long day. What I love about the video is how each person is in their own little world, doing their own little dance, happy to be in the circle (or not quite in the circle) but not taking any notice of anyone else and the song is an absolute wedding classic. I can watch this video over and over as it just makes me laugh each time. Unfortunately it’s come out a bit dark. Enjoy!!

P.S. When I posted this video on youTube, the site directed me to some other videos of dancing at weddings, and it led me to believe that perhaps the weddings I have been to have been quite tame. Below are my personal favourites. If any of you are at inclined towards wasting a bit of time on youTube, please have a look – you won’t be disappointed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYgTBRbhw0M&NR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPmYbP0F4Zw&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8BtiA13oPQ&NR

Notes from the field Part 1: They call it Facebook

(while studying my class, complete with lab coat and clip board)

I have come across an interesting phenonemon. It is widespread,but only among my younger classmates, and it is EVERYWHERE. Computer screens across the nation.

On the home screen it advertises itself as "Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you." After a tour given by a classmate (one of the younger ones..) I can tell you about it - you give yourself a profile: name, age, origin, sexual preference, education, history, favourite books, favourite food, favourite movies, favourite quotes. You can add friends and look at their profiles. You can look at who your friend's friends are, you can see which friends you have in common. You can post messages, form groups, arrange events, add photos. And there is news: this tells you what your friends are doing, where they've been, who've they've met, who just broke up with who..

I don't think I shall comment on this today.

The unbearable lightness of blogging

So,
I think I should expand on the theme of my blog….

Last Thursday was International Women’s Day and thanks to my friend Anna, I attended a panel discussion, entitled “Women’s Rights in the age of insecurity”. The panel included, amongst others, Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for International Development, and Noerine Kaleeba, co-founder of The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO) in Uganda, whose husband died of AIDS and who now lives in Malawi and is the director of the Funder’s Collaborative for Children, which helps children in Malawi grow up free from the burden of HIV and AIDS. Areas discussed included: the impact of neoliberalism on women’s rights, religious fundamentalism, stigma as a form of violence.

So what relevance is this to my blog?

Well, in September I started a Masters in Environment and Development, which, obviously, explores the issues of, yes, environment and development. And I am learning about how social issues such as politics and economics affect people’s lives, how the environment fits in to this all, globalisation, social networks, gender, community etc etc etc.

I am on a quest to become a social scientist. And with my background in science, I am finding the transition incredibly interesting. (I am also in the Geography department, which is wonderful - I've always loved maps and my dad loved geography).

Part of the masters involves research and to get us into the spirit of human observation, we had to perform a “participant observation exercise”, which involved sitting on the bus and recording what went on. (I was lucky enough to have an eventful journey as a woman fell down the stairs – oh dear, what have I become). In our methods class we are looking into such questions as what constitutes knowledge and reality, what is taken for the truth, how can research ever be objective when a human (the researcher) is involved? Epistemology, ontology etc.

So………. This blog is practice. Practice in observing MY world and recording it. Observing the actions of people around me (and my own actions) and MAYBE drawing some conclusions. And, as a lecturer of mine says “embracing the subjectivity”.

I should probably get back to that assignment that is due tomorrow, now that I have tried to justify my blog existence. Ask me in a couple of years what I am doing, I will probably be studying dentistry.

Panic on the streets of London.....

Panic on the streets of London
Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself
And I worry............
What future is there for a neoliberal world, a consumer society, where have our values gone, will there be enough ice for the polar bears, will the poorest continue to get poorer, does aid do more harm or good, will the fatcats ever cease their unfair agricultural subsidies, is our world turning into a desert, does fair trade work, should i buy coffee from starbucks...

But above all, I worry... about this blog... will it reflect who I am, will it properly reveal my IDENTITY, will I be judged, will big brother find out my secrets, will it be used against me when i am president, will my friends laugh at me...
And I wonder to myself
Could life ever be sane again?