I guess I have a slightly different perspective on South Africa because my parents emigrated from Italy to here in search of a better life for us.
In 1977 I was 8 years old. I knew nothing of Apartheid. All I knew was that Cape Town was beautiful, and we could afford a large house with a garden (as opposed to the tiny flat at the top of many, many stairs, where we’d come from).
We had a full-time nanny, one rand was worth as much as one U.S. dollar, and we lacked for nothing … except TV because back then the South African Broadcasting Television only broadcast for about 2 hours in English and 2 hours in Afrikaans every day. (Since I couldn’t understand either language at that stage, TV didn’t impact my life much!)
It’s hard for people to understand that South Africa is a very large country with 9 distinct provinces. Cape Town was spared most of the riots, police clashes and other human rights abuses which happened elsewhere in the country. We did not know what was happening at the time due to the total censorship of the media. Read more…
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I’m 42 yrs old, and the only New Year’s Resolution I have managed to keep is the one I made several years ago to stop making New Year Resolutions!
It took me that long to stop setting myself up for failure. You see, for as long as I can remember I’ve always felt that I just simply was “not good enough” so, every year, I’d promise myself that this year I’d finally be “good enough” if I lost 30 pounds, started exercising, became better at housekeeping and cooking healthy food, whilst at the same time started earning more money and volunteering at my kids’ school and donating more to charity and writing a novel and, and, and, and …. my list never ended!
Invariably, before the end of January, all my good intentions had been crushed by reality (“the road to hell is paved with good intentions”), and I would end up feeling even more useless than before!
So what changed? You know the saying that if you don’t respond to the “tap on the shoulder” the Universe will “drop a piano on your head”? Well, several years ago, I woke up in the worst pain I’d ever been in (except, maybe, for when I was in labour), and for several months we didn’t know what was causing it. Read more…
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I guess I have a slightly different perspective on South Africa because my parents emigrated from Italy to here in search of a better life for us.
