The volatile face of poverty

(Photo: Beeld)

Yesterday our team could not go on site to a client as members from their host community and retrenched workers had a violent protest in which they stopped the mine bus, rolled it over and set it on fire with nine people seated inside. Fortunately the commuters all escaped the fire, however, one of the men that has been working in a senior position at the mine for two years tried to calm the crowd down and got stoned to death as a result.

Our team was right there, on their way to the mine to have a meeting with the senior management on sustainable development principles. We had a recent audit on site in which we indicated to management that there were work to be done in respect of their approach to the host community. This incident however has highlighted to me the dire position communities are in and the need for transparent relationships between corporate, government and communities. We have a lot of work to do and I believe we have run out of time.

I never applied for this job

Don't get me wrong, i am very proud of what we have achieved in such a short period of time.......however, sometimes I cannot help but ask myself - what have you done?

One of our newest and arguably most professional team members referred to me as a hippie the other day. I could not argue with her at all. I am a bit of an idealist and tree hugger and sometimes all of these Corporate Governance issues just don't make any sense to me at all. I understand that a company like ours will go through growth phases and during those it is important to make sure that we get our house in order to balance between growth and stability. And that is a difficult balance to obtain and maintain continously.

So far we have done really well and I salute the team

Upholding the cross

Democracy in our country is still a fairly young experience and today, as I was standing in the line to cast my vote, I could not help but remember the first election I participated in. In 1994, when the lines snaked around the suburb I lived in. A party atmosphere in the air as all the citizens of this beautiful country waited together to choose a new future.

The line today was much shorter, more organised, people were more blase about the right to choose. Families making use of the public holiday to have another long weekend with trips planned across the country. My current suburb is mostly made up of more affluent families...mixing in line with their domestic workers, grooms and other support personel. A couple of people ahead of me a mature gentleman was standing, serenity edged on his face, dressed in his Sunday best. He was remembering the road we travelled to get here as a country, to arrive here at a space where we can share this priviledge to each mark their own choice, without coercion or fear.

We must, at all cost, protect this, as it was indeed, dearly won

Autumn is here

The season has changed and winter is on our doorstep. I feel it in my bum that just does not want to warm up at all - John is convinced that it is my cold feet that steals the heat from the derrier. I have to be honest, winter is not my strong season. All I want to do is cuddle up in bed and drink hot chocolate. Suppose the best thing about winter is the scarves and big jackets. I love dressing up in winter with bold scarves and funky jackets.

And this year - winter means soccer, and what a family of fierce players we are! In E's first soccer game the other day he got an injury (cut lip), scored a goal and got send of the field to cool down. I cannot tell a lie, my kid lives with a passion and determination that frequently lands him either in trouble or the hospital. Like last week, when he had five lacerations to the cornea and walk around for two days with an eye patch. Everyone at school is asking whether we have 'frequent user' cards at the local hospital. I am starting to think that it will be a very good idea.

And here we are

The dream of living on our little piece (peace??) of land eventually realised. From offer to purchase to registered owners took, almost to the day, a full year. But we somehow managed to convince the powers that be that two self employed entrepreneurs will be responsible land owners.

I could never have guessed that throwing two adults in the midst of a neglected property in the heart of mink and manure country could result in such a kaleidoscope of emotional experiences. It has opened rusted emotional doors, send us way back to childhood dreams and horrors, through psychedelic adult memories right back to the reality of flooded fences and washed away roads. We have learned about ourselves and each other through anger and tears but we have also studied our local African bullfrogs in wonder, delighted in the fascination of our children with the crabs down at the dam and stared in unbelieve as the waters from our local little stream rose to a power full river racing through the bottom of our property.

Despite the dream of becoming more sustainable and building a veggie patch and chicken coop to proof the commitment, we have not had much success in any of these endeavours. I am starting to dread full colour pictures of fat round organic veggies and promises of a greener future – my tomatoes started with enthusiasm and then turned white and rotted on the stem. The only joy I had from my beautiful pumpkin flowers was the flower dolmades that was lovingly made by Nana when she came to visit from Crete (a whole new story), then the leaves all turned brown and died. Okra has provided some confidence, we have had two good Cretan meals from that hardy little plant and the brinjals have also kept hunger from the door. Month-end the business will be moving from our little country flat to a very corporate office park and the two chickens that currently entertain us there will be relocated home – their little spot has been ready and waiting for about six weeks.

We have truly settled in here now, our candles are on standby to help us cope with all the electrical outages, we have come to enjoy the shocking experience accompanying the opening of taps when you are in the shower and the call of the peacocks don’t wake us at night anymore. John has turned into a DYI guru that can fix electrical fences, build outbuildings and even understand the mysteries of washing dishes.

We are slowly building a fun loving and emotionally safe future.

Racing Along

I cannot believe that we are in the middle of November, time has almost lost its meaning to me as we continue to speed along this highway of our life. The more I feel that I would like to slow down and enjoy the small things in life, the more it seems to me as if everything is just speeding up. Buying our home was such a long struggle and it seems as if every waking moment is either consumed by work or our property.


E is growing into a young man right in front of my eyes and I feel nostalgic about leaving his small childhood years behind. Next week it is his graduation from pre-school and the start of the long summer holidays. We are all graduating out of the informal schooling environment and impromptu trips and holidays to a far more structured educational environment next year. That together with the coming of age of two of my businesses will, I believe proof its own set of challenges.

I cannot tell a lie, 2010 was a very hard year, emotionally and financially but when I look back I can see how we have grown. Grown as a family and into a family; grown from a very small business to industry leaders in our field with a diverse set of clients across the mining sector and mature negotiations even outside of the mining sector. Building linkages and products in a niche market during an economic recession has taught me many valuable skills in business; the most important I believe is how crucial it is to have the ability to move with the market whilst you consolidate your base at the same time.

Us as a family, learning to live together in our home, oh dear, I do not even know where to start to try and capture the trials and tribulations of settling into our new home. But I think we are starting to jell as family and learning how to best love each other. Not to talk about our home starting to look slightly like a home and less like a family abiding in a neglected little house on an overgrown farm.

I am having so much fun choosing paint colours for the house at the moment and i cannot decide which room i should start first with as i would just love do everything at once and have it all ready in a flash. I do realise that it is not realistic though but I absolutely have to share that I feel so super spoiled as I splashed out on the most wonderfull 100% pure Egytian cotton linen for my bed. I have decided that my bedroom's theme with be chocolate and vanilla and the to go with that I will have deep Imbuya wood side tables, oyster coloured bed linen with dark chocolate brown pillows and trimmings and dark wood accessories in the room.  Baroque cream linen curtains set of with wooden railings and a sand coloured walls. A room of light.

The lounge we added to the house was a storeroom until a week ago, now it looks sligthly better and I went to select colour palets for that room yesterday. I am thinking dark skirtings, the stupid builder put really shitty wood skirtings on and I dont have money to replace it so I think I will just go ahead and paint it a very dark green/bluegreen type colour and then use the same colour palette but a much lighter colour to go for the walls. I think that will really set the tiles of nicely and bring the room out. Then some floating shelves in the same colour as the skirtings to accentuate the darker colours on the walls and break the monotony of that room. I still want to design a wall feature with photos and mirrors down the long side, I just need to understand the spacing of the floating shelves (as we need the packing space rather desperately) in relation to my mural. I should start taking before and after photos for my blog as the metamorphosis is rather exciting to follow.

Circles in the sand

My thoughts seem to turn me in circles all the time, as the company is consttantly growing and developing new products, associated brands and following the opportunities knocking on our door, I seem to be divided between growing the company into a corporate giant with all it's trappings or staying an anonymous persona in the background. I can see glimpses of the politising and maneuvering in our boardroom, things I so despise about human nature. And I have to ask myself whether I am just naive or need to grow up quickly to make the system work for me, or should I rather distance myself from all of it? The problem with distancing one selve from it is that your lack of action will invariably lead to your submission to the problem - this is one very hard lesson I learned in my marriage and I believe it is valuable for all relationships. And what is life if it is not a sequence of relationships with various spheres of people?

Let's party

It was my birthday recently.......and how do i know I am a year older? I tell you what, it happens when you plan an evening of raucous sex and good food and instead of fun, you fall asleep by 8:30, only to wake up in the middle of the night with your mind racing on all the business decisions that needs to be made.

What has happened to me?

Anyway the party we had over the weekend was a lot of fun, even it was a sweltering hot summers day! It was the first party that I have ever hosted for myself and it was at our own little home. I rented some tables, chairs, cutlery and crockery with caribbean umbrellas, all set up in the bottom of our garden/ read untended grassland. John organised greek lamb on the spit with roast potatoes, fresh greek salad and crispy bread rolls. For table decorations I combined greek imagery with fresh food colours and came up with my own eclectic creation. The day was lovely!

Caribbean colours in the highveld

My friends, some of whom I have known all my life

when I think Greek food, I think lemons and brinjals

Our Chef! Love you John, you are just the best

Phew

That was close - my hectic work life frizzled my brain.... resulting in complete password removal. Luckily after a couple of hair raising minutes, in which I realised my primary email address does not exist anymore, I did manage to figure out a way in which to reset my password. Let's hope that will be enough motivation to get back in here more regularly

I know it is late in the day

But life here has been in the supersonic lane for a while now and I just wanted to say

Watching the Soccer World Cup was exhausting work

Weekends are just the best

Because then we can get to do all the things we love, like

Sleeping on our couch

Or riding our beautiful baby horse
Visvinger (aka Fishfinger)

And paddling in our lovely dam

with Puppies joining in on all the fun in the sun escapades

And our little rescue horse watching everything from a safe distance

All in all, I would say....most agreeable! Yes, definately, most agreeable

Through the eyes of E

I am very camera shy and there are hardly any photos of me to be found. The night before the big move E took my camera and shot some fun pics of mom. These are his unedited work - heavens, I wish I had this kid's eye for a picture.

Chaos reigns and minds are lost

The more I think I hate routine and too much order, the more I learn that without it I am lost. The chaos of the move and renovations have gone to my head and I find myself at a loss for the most basic things. Like the keys, and does this house have keys......new ones, old ones, changed locks and not to forget about all the keypads and pin numbers. Good heavens, did you say you gave me a little booklet with the details on how to change the code?? are you insane? does this mean that I am responsible for finding it, oh yes, I do remember, I saw the electrical compliance certificate just the other day. It was lying here somewhere....what do you mean you cannot find the invoice for the transfer duties to be paid yesterday, it was right here, I think......aaahh there is that dentist's number I have been looking for, oh yes, you are waiting for the booklet on how to change the keypad numbers.......

Do you like how we have changed the single garage into a family room?

we broke that door out that you can see just right of the chair and made it into a big square opening through to the kitchen and the lounge area.

The dust left by grinding the bricks were unbelieveable

The best part was going with John to the tile place to select our tiles for this room. I know it was just a couple of tiles but just doing that together for our house made me feel incredibly happy and belonging to a family again. It truly is the little things in life that brings the most gratification and happiness.

Still a bit of work to be done to finish it all off but I do believe it will be a really nice room once it is all done and it has added a lot of living space to our home. The tiles we selected are called Provence Pewter - a mixture of pewter greys, greens and sandstone type colours.

I think we should paint that solid long wall a darkish pewter colour and then have a mosaic of interesting photos/frames in a diamond type shape in the centre. Just to break that wall up a bit.....

And in stead of the four car garage and third bedroom, we settled on carport next to lounge. No sense in adding a garage bigger than the cottage itself. More so since we are thinking about building a family home at a later stage

I am so glad this mess is nearly done so I can enjoy my little country mouse house

Head Space

Owning a little property like the one just bought has been a dream of mine for a very long time. But before that, it was a dream shared. Shared in a previous unity, a forgotten future. Now that I have infected John with my dream and we are on the cusp of changing lifestyles and building a future, I find myself sad and slightly forlorn.

I dont want the past back, no
I want the future as it is dreamt
I just feel
bereaved

About Fatherhood

 

So in the past, John and Nikyle’s relationship was a Sunday afternoon computer game and pizza. But as we all know, there is so much more to family and being a dad. After a bit of prompting, I have gotten John to ask Clarissa for the dates and venues of his soccer games. And that is were we have spend the last two early Sunday mornings. Next to the field, shouting for him and supporting his team.

Walking the land

So the big nasty conference was a roaring success.

The nails looked smashing..doll, the outfits were just devine, and we even managed to do a LOT of good business.

Or at least open those doors to the you know who in the mining industry. We do understand though that the hard work starts now, as we need to sign those deals and get the business into MTS to really make sure the conference worked for us as it was supposed to. We had our very first meeting this week past and hopefully we will be able to follow up on the rest early this coming week.

And then, believe it or not, but the property eventually came through. Yes, we have a move in date of this coming Saturday, the 5th of June. I hope, if we can get the fence repaired and the gate motor that got stolen re-installed so we can at least be safe in our new abode. I took myself and the doggies for a walk there today and this is what we saw

Our dam at the bottom of the property, where I saw some Egyptian Geese the other day

The Stables, OMG - did I mention that there were stables?

And yes, I know, but have some imagination - this is a menage!

The paddocks and lunge ring at the bottom of the property, with Nikita running across this vast expanse of land, her tongue dragging on the grass

My new kitchen and lounge.... I know, lots of work here

Family celebrations

My brother turned forty the other day and I deemed it a suitable occassion to traverse near to 500km for the day to go and wish him well. Especially since I have never gone to visit him at his new abode in the North West Province, where this combat trained ex special forces guy is searching for solitude and restitution of his soul between cattle and endless rolling grasslands.

It was a wonderful day and we were hardly there when he offered to go and show me his domain on horseback.
So I spend the next three hours riding a boerperd bareback in a slow canter. It was one of those experiences that are very hard to describe - the close contact of contracting muscles, the mesmerizing rhythm, the give and take of our bodies as we effortlessly consumed the miles.

 Back home the kids had lots of fun and Elrich could not wait to have a turn on the horse.

It was only ok to share the ride with mom for the first five seconds before he 'really needed to ride this horse by myself please mom!'

Ouma and Oupa could not believe that they could actually have all their children and grand children under one roof for a day. I must admit that even though me and my bro did not always sit around the same fire, the day was well worth it and it was wonderfull to share this special day together as a family.

The cousins could not agree more!

Pulling a loose thread

I often feel very disconnected from what I am doing, the people in my life and in actual fact – my very life itself. Like I am an outsider looking in – a very critical outsider, and when I am there in that space, I do not understand human relationships, or emotions, or the reasons for living at all. I question the very reality of my existence and the sanity of this planet – the wheel of life and death, our capitalist economy, the killing of animals to consume, the all consuming machine of consumerism and the madness of modern life. It becomes a dark vortex sucking me in and leaving me breathless at the end. I have no clue what it is related to and how to not go down it, but I do know that when I am there, the days flow into each other and I don’t seem to get anything accomplished.

On tenderness

Can I say that our holiday gave us a wonderful break from the reality of every day life? Spending time in this paradise can be nothing short of idilic, don't you think?

Our bathroom

and at candlelight

Where you can laze in the privacy of your own private patio, listening to birdsong and river sounds

And get so close to the wildlife that you can almost reach out and touch the animals.

We had to search long and hard to find this male lion as the reserve is 26,000 hectares in size and they are free to roam at will.

But after a six hour drive we arrived exhausted, irritable and sick (John) so after a rather unpleasant and emotional afternoon and early night, we returned home the next day. Fortunately for our relationship, we were stuck in the same car for the journey home. Forcing us to haltingly talk about the real issues at hand.

Like my seemingly lack of tenderness and extreme difficulty I have to feel and show love towards John. My immediate emotional withdrawal at the first sign of either conflict or emotional need. Two extreme emotions that are part of the same coin, I believe. John's passive aggressive response to me whenever I say or do something he does not like. The need we both have to be emotionally close to each other, but the difficulty we experience in maintaining that closeness in any stressfull situation.

But we want to be together....he is such an emotionally intuitive man that are prepared to talk about his emotions, comment on mine and put himself on the line for a future where our relationship needs are met. So we have decided to go for some councelling, together as a couple, but also as individuals.

Sigh

I sorted my desk today and my to do list is 3 A4 pages loooooong

and I am going on leave for three days next week, to this lovely place. John is taking us there for some much needed R&R'ing

but before then, it is a weekend of family obligations, directors meetings and a monster TO DO LIST!