People who inspire: Michael Beckett

I was asked to do a short video interview about volunteerism and why it is important.  While prepping, I considered all the reasons why people don’t volunteer.  Typically it is because they don’t know where and how to get involved or they believe that they do not have the financial or other resources to volunteer.  And then Michael came to mind.  We met here on WP.  You can read more about the enormous challenge he undertook to raise a teenage boy virtually at Long-Distance Dad.  By virtually I mean from a different continent.   What impressed me most about this story is that Michael didn’t take the easy way out and just send money over to South Africa, he poured his heart and soul into this commitment that he had made to mentor Mtuseni from a teenager into a young man that any parent would be proud of. Michael has been more engaged in Mtuseni’s life than many fathers I know, who live here in South Africa. With their kids.  In the same house! He navigated our system from Boston, going as far as checking Maps to find dentists that Mtuseni would be able to reach by public transport.  He kept in touch with the Principle of the college Mtuseni attended, tracking his progress and guiding him through a very confusing and challenging time for any young person. Mtuseni is all grown up now and still needs his ‘dad’ to guide him and pick him up when he’s down and Michael is now involved in mentoring Mtuseni’s siblings.

He’s never said this to me but I think Michael must have been terrified some days.  He was dealing with a system totally unfamiliar to him, one that is not very user friendly. Just dealing with the emotional issues of raising a teenage boy would have made me run a mile.  10,000 miles. He could have pulled out any time but he has hung in there for the whole journey and his endurance and love are inspirational.

Many people say “I’m just one person, I can’t solve the world’s problems”.  Well, you don’t have to.  Michael Beckett didn’t set out to solve the world’s problems.  He set out to make a difference to one young man’s life and he did just that.

 

 

People who inspire: Women taking charge

Getting up on a Saturday morning and getting to a class may not be a big deal for some people.  For many, it involves a lot of sacrifices.  Finding that extra transport money to make, what is often, a very long trip to Sandton, may mean having to give up something.  And after a week of very long, hard working days, nothing would be nicer than to be able to lie in just a bit later before having to take on household chores and care for their families.  These are some of the women who, despite their personal challenges, have embraced the opportunity to become computer literate and take charge of their place in this new, rather daunting, digital age.

 

A Dollhouse full of memories

I moved to South Africa in 1986 to live with my dad.  Initially it was obvious that this traditional man’s man and ex-soldier was at a loss as to how to take care of a teenage girl.   He fumbled his way around the dual mom-dad role and I fumbled around being an awkward teenage girl in a place where I knew no-one else.  Eventually we found a comfortable place in each other’s presence, not demanding too much from one another and discovering just how much alike we were.

My dad did the cooking, which he was very good at, always consulting his hand written recipe book and making notes of what we needed to get from the Pick n Pay for his next dish.  I did try once to cook for us – it was slap* chips but I nearly burnt the place down when the oil caught fire.  My dad thought it was very funny and never let me near the stove again.

On Thursday evenings we would go off to Norwood Pick n Pay for late night shopping and dinner in the little restaurant at the back of the store.  That was when staying open until 8pm every day was not the norm.  It was a big deal for us … it was our ‘thing’.  We’d jump in the car when he got off work and head off down Louis Botha Avenue towards Norwood.  As we passed all the landmarks, my dad would point them out to me … every single time we went and every time felt like the first time he was telling me their stories every time was just as fascinating and exciting as the week before.

One of those places was the Dollhouse Roadhouse.  It was a favourite of my dad’s but he never took me there and I never asked why.  Whenever he gave people directions to this place or that, he would always say ‘just look out for the Dollhouse…’.  A bit like we do with McDonald’s today.

I drove along Louis Botha Avenue this past weekend.  It brought back all those happy memories of my beloved dad.  I took a photo of what remains of the Dollhouse.  I had heard it was being demolished but it is still standing, like a ageing monument to time and joy and life.

*South Africanism for hot fried chips that are usually thick and soggy and best had with salt and vinegar

The Dollhouse Roadhouse – April 2018

While Louis Botha Avenue is a very different place today it is still very much the same in that it is colourful, vibrant and diverse, full of foreigners creating their own opportunities and making a life for themselves

A vendor on Louis Botha Avenue, Orange Grove

An Avenue in Norwood which runs from Louis Botha to the Pick n Pay Hypermarket

People who inspire: Peter Mathebula

This is my colleague, Peter Mathebula.  He’s one of the techie guys who makes your techie woes disappear.  It’s a gift he has.  The other gift he has is the way he interacts and teaches learners at our pc training programme.

For the past five years, Peter has been giving up his time on Saturdays to empower people from disadvantaged communities with important PC skills.  He has a very special way with the kiddies that come to our programme, the majority of whom come from abusive homes and are now in places of safety.  These vulnerable children are absolutely crazy about this guy and follow him around all over.  He is also very popular with the adult learners who get great results in his classes. Needless to say, Peter provides very valuable technical support for the programme.

His personal journey to where is today is a moving and inspirational one and I hope that he will share it one day with all of you.

Peter teaching a kiddies class in 2014.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People who inspire: Happiness Ndlovu

Her mother couldn’t have given her a better name. Despite the hardships and heartache she has endured, Happiness is always smiling and her enthusiasm for life bubbles over when she talks excitedly and hands out hugs to everyone she knows. When we met Happiness, she was a waitress at a small coffee shop, supporting herself and her teenage son on nothing but her tips. She was 35 at the time and when she heard about our community project she immediately signed up for the free computer courses which she passed with flying colours. Having proved to herself that she is capable of so much more, she embarked on putting herself through night school to get her matric certicate. Shortly after matriculating , Happiness was offered a position as an administrator at a large Sandton corporate where she is going from strength to strength. Her next goal is to do a business degree. Happiness’ message to other 30something single moms is that it is never too late to change your life through recognising opportunities and working hard.

Weekly photo challenge: Face

This is Dora.  She is a domestic worker and has worked for me for over ten years.  A mother and grandmother, she works very hard to support a large number of her family who live in KwaZulu Natal.  Dora always has a smile on her face and funny stories to tell. I absolutely love the days that she comes in and ‘magically’ makes everything clean and pretty.  This post is in honour of the millions of women in this country that are working to support extended families and put grandchildren through school and university in the hope of giving them a better life.

Ones to Watch: 3 companies attacking familiar problems in new ways

Ones to Watch: 3 companies attacking familiar problems in new ways.

Weekly photo challenge: Treasure

I am not particularly attached to material possessions and there is nothing I own that I could honestly say I treasure, except perhaps books.

I do, however, treasure family, friendship, love and laughter.

I treasure intelligent conversation, playful banter, learning and teaching.

I treasure joyful memories.

I treasure old letters and cards, especially those from my late dad.

I treasure solitude.

I treasure my relationship with GOD.

New Year’s Eve dinner. 31.12.13

Memories. Quiet time.

Letter from my father. 12.06.85

Treasures. Love, happiness, friends, laughter

Treasured books.

Hashtagging happiness

So there I was, bouncing around like a buoy, gasping and spluttering, my backside finding every sharp edge of the jagged rocks as the ferocious undercurrent threw me around and all I could think was that this could really ruin my great run of #100happydays

In case you don’t know, 100happydays is a 100 day challenge to look for something in each day that makes you happy, take a photo of it and post it on Twitter (my personal choice), Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr or even here on your blog. Check it out here and give it a try.  Remember to include #100happydays in each post.

Anyway, back to my story … as I inhaled another litre of salty sea water through my nostrils, wondering if there was anything left of the bottom of my swimsuit that was being fiercely grazed on the rocks, a giant of a man yanked me up by my arm, pinching that soft skin on the underneath and muttered “Hey wena …”and some other stuff I didn’t understand  and probably wouldn’t want to either, and then he was gone.

I wish I’d got his picture for a happydays post, before he disappeared, for if not for him, I’d be around 86 short.

Here are a few of my first 14 days of hashtagging happiness.

Visiting the butterfly farm at MacBanana

Holidays in KZN mean I get to spend time with cousins, aunties and uncles. A lot of visiting, eating, drinking and being merry.

Fun time at Ushaka with great friends.

Leaving work for the last time for two weeks – vacation time!

Beating Joburg traffic blues with the Gautrain

A early but slow start to Sunday 12 January, watching BBC Click in my pyjamas while drinking coffee

Zoo Lake on Saturday morning

On 10 January, the first of my 100 days of happiness, the moon was high in the sky over the city on a still, warm, summer night.

Recommended for You – A True Story

A few weeks ago I tweeted, with great indignation, about Play Store’s list of recommended books for me. Yes dear friends,  I am still harping on about this and I feel the need to explain myself in more than 140 characters.

Kindle (and even good old fashioned paper) works very well for me, so I was quite indifferent when I saw that Play Store was now selling books.  By the way, for  iOS and Windows users, Play Store is not what you’re thinking – it is the app world for Android users.

So anyway, one evening I decided to browse through Play Store,  added a few books to my wishlist, which included authors such as Brent Weeks, Orhan Pamuk, TanTwan Eng and Khaled Hosseini and then, since it is usually quite helpful on other sites, I thought I’d take a look at what Google Play Store would recommend I read … and there it was … in all its gushy glory … the trashy romance novel! And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, there was 101 Best Jokes! as well as – dare I say it – (cover your innocent eyes if you under 18) – 50 Sex Tips for Him and Her.

Those dirty rotten scoundrels!

Since it is the  Google Play store, one would assume that they would link one’s Google searches to what they recommend one reads. Right? So, one would assume I typed into the search bar ‘I am 16 years old, mindless, loveless and hopelessly naive’, so they recommended the romance novels.

Another thought is that I might have Googled  ‘how to impress a date’, so they threw into the mix the 101 jokes and sex tips books.

Needless to say, I never did those Google searches. Ever.

Ok, so I may have once (or twice) asked Google to pleeeeeeeeeeeeease find me a picture of (a shirtless) Daryl Dixon and that’s why they gave me The Walking Dead.  No, not really  – well, yes I did really Google (a shirtless) Daryl Dixon – but I am a true TWD fan, so there they did good.

Well,  that shocking experience got me updating my Goodreads profile, Amazon and Audible wishlists – no more slacking there – and clearing my cookies (Daryl Dixon search be gone) and, since I ordered a Mark Lawrence book from Play Store, I see  that, while the list of recommendations still includes far too many love and lust reads, they are now only visible from line 5 together with Baby Food Made Easy (I know! I’m as speechless as you are), A Tale about Tails and The Tiny Fork Diet (LMAO!).

On a serious note, Google Play Store is great and just because I choose not to read romance novels doesn’t really mean I think that there is anything wrong with them and I mean no disrespect to anyone who reads the odd Mills & Boon every now and then.  I think that as long as people are reading something – anything – that’s great – then at least there’s less time for them to watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo!

Yes, I did put the little block over the word Sex on this image – don’t ask me why – I just did.