Friday, November 28, 2008

Racism is alive and well!

Ugh! I grew up in Cape Town, fairly liberal town where being gay, lesbian, black, coloured or Indian didn't mean much to white people, colour and sexual orientation was just another part of your life. Until the forced removals in the 60's, we all got along with everyone and life was great until the government stepped in. The day that Nelson Mandela was released I drove alone to Cape Town, drove through the masses of people waiting to see this great icon of the struggle against Apartheid. Of course I never got to see the man, there were just too many happy people. It was a great day for South Africa, and living in liberal Cape Town totally reinforced it for me.

That is, until we moved to Pretoria. I finally understood what it meant to be black in this country, how white people could be so filled with hatred towards a people whose only crime it is to have a black skin. Many white people here still carry within them that seed of blind hatred. It's scary. I worked with a woman who prays on her knees every night that none of her children will come home with a black friend, that none of her children will come home saying that they want to date a black person. She'd rather her children become gay and live with a white partner. She prays for this every night.

We live next door to one of the few black families in our community. The day we moved into our home, one of our neighbours came over to introduce herself and to inform us that we better lock our valuables up as we had black neighbours. Our black neighbours have been nothing but friendly, they've looked after our mail whenever we've been away, seen that nothing is out of place and informed our security service of anything strange in the area. I highly doubt our white neighbour has ever done the same.

I tell you all this because this morning, as I left the school grounds, I overheard two white women complaining about the inherent laziness of black people, how it must be because they are black that they have this dislike for hard work.

I sometimes wish that human beings had been created colour blind, where everyone looks the same.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Update on quad bike boy

Well it looks like the parents were very lucky this time around. The little boy is doing well, there are no apparent signs of brain damage and the little guy has been moved to the children's ward.

May this be a big lesson to his parents.

The Mamas

Towards the end of 1999 I joined an online community for the first time, Babycenter. It was a few months after we had lost our baby and I found solace in the loss boards there. After a few years, the administration of Babycenter split and I followed with the rebels to Pregnancy.org, a place that was supposed to be all about the mamas and their babies, free of the strangulation of rules and guidelines at Babycenter. Well, Pregnancy.org became that which it hated - a constrictive, power hungry, ban-happy place where your opinion on topics wasn't valued, where your very words were censored so that ass (denoting donkey) became ***, or mass would become m***, you get the picture.

Just over a month ago I left that site permanently, I can't even log onto the site anymore because my IP has been banned. My crime, posting a link to another, better, site. Oh I did it deliberately, I posted a link to The Mamas, started by a disgruntled member of Pregnancy.org and one that I hope will supass all our expectations. As of this morning, there are 1076 members, the majority came over from Pregnancy.org because they, too, could not accept the censorship and general feeling of being let down by a once great admin team.

Thanks Jen and Jamie for doing this, taking so much of your precious time and starting a site where women can be women (and some men too, we have a handful as well!). Where the word ass means your butt and isn't ******* out. Where we can be adults and hang out without worrying that big brother is watching us.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Choices parents make

Sometimes parents make bad parenting choices. This does not mean they are generally all bad. It just means that I would like to slap them upside the head and ask "WTF! Do you not think??"

There was an article last week in a local newspaper about a quad bike accident in which a four year old boy was severely injured. His parents, after much nagging from the injured little boy, bought him a 50cc quad bike. After much pleading and begging, the father agreed to let him ride his quad bike up the road to his aunt 5 houses away....without a helmet...they didn't think anything could possibly happen because it is only a 50cc engine, the child would ride slowly. Well, the little boy lost control of the quad bike and slammed into a brick wall breaking every bone in his face, including fracturing his skull. His father was walking alongside him and couldn't run fast enough to stop him crashing into the wall. In the article the mother asked that all the nasty comments from people stop, that it was an accident, that they didn't mean for their son to be so badly injured. Lady, WTF were you thinking in the first place??? A four year old shouldn't even be on a quad bike let alone without a helmet! And if your kid throws a tantrum because you won't let him ride it, so what? He's the child you're the adult. Act like one!

I feel sorry for the family though, don't get me wrong. But really, think next time before you give in to your child's demands.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Last night...

we attended the preschool concert. My daughter's graduating to grade 1 next year...my baby is growing up! The concert was in the primary school hall she will be attending next year.

Imagine a group of about 200 or so people, all squeezed like sardines into an area that should not be able to hold so many adults so close together...now imagine no aircon, only open windows high above with no chance of cool air coming down....and pigeons. Big fat feathery beasts flying above us all. It's a pity not one dropped a little something...:)

Like many parents, I wasn't interested in anyone else's little precious except mine. My daughter was all that mattered last night and she performed beautifully!

My baby really is growing up....

Blogging my life

Blogging has become the new place to be seen on the interwebz. If you don't have a blog, it's like you don't exist.

So begins my blogging journey...