Chutzpah/balls/voema/gusto?

With the English summer definitively here, along with its wasps and brommers, my homesickness has ebbed slightly - but this could also be the ever-present sense of excitement knowing our arrival in Cape Town is now only 6 weeks away! (Craig has whisked Layla off with him to the butcher in Kettering which sells the most fabulous boerewors: we've run out of meat having braaied three nights in a row now! But at least with my little Layla out of earshot, I can focus on some VERY important tasks that simply can't get done while I am wearing my Mommy hat. Shame, she has had the most exhausting week with her teething keeping her awake and in tears, her head perpetually damp and hot from fever... Two molars and two eye-teeth are to blame.)

Soundtrack? Miles Davis. "Summertime".
Beverage? Need to make a cuppa, but if I had a choice, it would be a 'Cafe Romano Corretto' - a shot of earthy, rich espresso married with a shot of grappa. Ah! If only! *wink*
Goal? To write a little story for my weekly iMod slot, and to follow up on some of the newspapers and journalists who've featured my 'Malema, A Love Letter' project in their articles. (After my Radio 2000 interview on Monday morning, I couldn't help myself Googling 'Malema, A Love Letter' to see where and how it was being featured 'out there'! The response has been 95% positive - with only one myopic poephol referring to the idea negatively: but you could sommer see he hadn't actually read my original story about it: he was 'picking up stompies'! The song playing now? Miles Davis's 'Weirdo'. How apt!)

The young ANC rep I met (and tried to interview, but he was more concerned about the wandering camera crew discovering him!) in London at an expo a few months ago chickened out of giving me Julius Malema's number. And perhaps, rightly so - but we need more people with chutzpah/balls/voema/gusto if South Africa is going to stop stewing in its historical juices! Anyway, someone else has stepped forward with JM's actual cellphone number (!!!) so check back here to see how my chat with Julius went! Bizarrely, I have complete and utter peace about speaking to him. Why would I be nervous or afraid, as so many have suggested? Again, I am blaming the media for pulling the wool over the eyes of the habitually passive, unthinking South African. NEWSFLASH: The news is not the gospel truth! The juicier, the bloodier the story, the more newspapers will sell, the more advertising, blah blah blah. After 'Tea with Julius' in December, I will be taking on the country's editors in a news revolution! Just watch me! (*wink*) (--- lots of winking happening today! Must be the intoxicating combination of Miles Davis and this sweet, sweet solitude!)

Staying in touch...

After a week of the most unseasonal but GLORIOUSLY warm sunshine, the grey skies are back to haunt us with rain, rain and more rain. At 14C it's not as bitterly cold as that icy snap that made me so miserable I had to turn the central heating on!
My friend, Ang, gave me a lekker warm coat (I was REALLY that miserable it must've shown on my face) but it won't fit over this ever-expanding belly for much longer. In fact, a quick shop-around on the weekend didn't render many coats that are in the 'tent' shape I was so hoping to find... The only ones available to me now are the maternity ones. The maternity wear shops all think us pregnant females must be desperate and/ stupid! WHO, in their right, pregnant or non-pregnant mind would pay the prices they're asking?? But hell - maybe I will end up succumbing to their arm-twisting extortion because I NEED TO BE WARM!!! Even if it means paying 100 squidoodles for a massive black tent that makes me look like I'm hiding an entire Tesco grocery shop inside it?! (Work has been very, very slow in the offering: one day of work in almost two months... But now that I've signed up with another agency, I should be able to afford The Tent after a few weeks.)

Craig's daily reading of the P.E Herald newspaper (he can't actually go to sleep at night if he hasn't read it) has prompted me to begin the same habit in the frantic hope it'll help curb this snowballing homesickness. Yesterday was my first day. This is what I discovered: my second-cousin, Luke Watson, called Afrikaners 'Dutchmen' and is now suffering the cold shoulders of all the Boks. Admittedly I do feel a little defensive on his part for two reasons. One, he is my second-cousin (though I only remember playing with him as a tiny tot at Storms River more than 20 years ago) and two, haven't so many of us said the same thing?! OK, yes, yes... he was a bit of a poephol for doing it so publicly...

The other thing I discovered was so ugly and gruesome that it stayed with me all the day long, like a seething, pounding pain in the back of my head. Four little Xhosa boys were conned into helping a stranger catch a stray fox - but then raped them and made three of them watch while he butchered the one little boy... removing eyes, intestines, a part of his tiny little pinkie finger...
If only I could set up a filter on the news sites. If only. One of my reasons for reading the news is that I can feel more connected to my country - and also to acquaint myself with the true 'climates' of the country: political, social, economic. And I suppose that means keeping an open mind and taking it ALL in. Oh, but then I think of those four little boys and I just don't know.

PS. Just as frightening, revolting things happen here in England (everywhere, in fact). Some people use these kinds of stories as a numbing technique to not miss their homeland - but realistically, I can't do that to South Africa. In the news here, I've seen stories of a young British woman in Brazil butchered to pieces by her Brazilian boyfriend, then collected in a suitcase and abandoned under a bridge next to a river; or the pretty young special-needs teacher whose best friend's boyfriend murdered her and kept her body in a self-storage freezer, fetching her body whenever he felt like it, for necrophilic sex until her body decomposed from exposure to too much warmth - then he burnt her body in a field.

Nowhere is civilised.