What the Super14 final 2010 meant for me...and my country

“How much?” I asked, pointing at the plastic blue horns. I wanted a pair to show my support of the Super14 Rugby team, the Blue Bulls. On the walk up to Orlando Stadium, the street is riddled with informal vendors selling supporter’s paraphernalia for both teams. They spread their goods on the ground, open one or two samples and call out loudly to anyone walking past that isn’t already sporting a flag, hat, shirt, face paint or the traditional horns of the Blue Bulls team. I’m not a Blue Bulls supporter under normal circumstances, so I was ill-prepared for the game.

“R30, mamma,” came the answer. Using the salutation “mamma” is a sign of respect in African culture, the vendor I was dealing with was acknowledging that I was not young, yet not old enough to be a grandmother. The closest English equivalent would be “ma’am”, yet even that doesn’t quite carry the same meaning.

“If I take 3?” As with most informal vendors, the world over, you need to bargain for the best price.

“For you, mamma, I’ll give them to you for R25 each. R75 total.”

“Make it R70 for me.”

“Oh mamma! You’re tough! Ok, R70”, he bent down to pick up my purchase, when a strong gust of wind grabbed his stick-on tattoos and blew them into the field behind him. “Ow!” he cried, torn between chasing his merchandise and staying to protect what was left. I bent down and put my hand on the remaining merchandise to stop them from blowing. “Oh, thank you mamma!” He ran into the field to chase his lost product, and came back after a minute or two, breathless but victorious. I waited while he placed a stone on the recovered merchandise, thanking me profusely all the time. It struck me just how profound this moment was – it didn’t occur to him that I might steal his product, and it didn’t occur to me to leave him to find a solution to his problem alone. The interaction that took place was just natural.

Here I was, in the heart of Soweto, a white woman accompanied only by my 70 year-old mother – I was in the proverbial lion’s den, the largest black settlement in the country, and I felt welcome. All around me are rugby supporters, largely white and Afrikaans, mingling with the local black residents with no sign of trouble whatsoever.

This is a big moment in our history, second only to the unity we all felt at winning the 1995 rugby World Cup. Rugby has historically been a white sport, and it’s been a slow transformation to become a multi-cultural sport. By circumstances and a twist of fate, the Blue Bulls were forced to host both the semi-final, and final Super14 matches at the Orlando stadium in Soweto. This is history in the making, and I was there to witness it.

Across the field, which is crammed with supporters with portable braais (barbeques), I can see the local shebeens (informal pubs), which are bursting at the seams with white supporters – some of these business owners have probably never had a white person in their establishment, and here they are in their thousands, sitting alongside the locals and eating traditional fare. The shebeen owners have painted their walls blue, and have hung up supporters paraphernalia – I daresay it’s the first time they’ve had cause to do this, but I sense that it won’t be coming down as soon as we leave either.

Beer is flowing freely, the smell of cooking meat hangs in the air, behind me is the blaring sounds of traditional Afrikaans music interspersed with the noise of vuvuzelas (a traditional African noisemaker used typically at soccer matches). This is the best example we can give the world of how we live in unity and how accommodating we are of each other.

For the locals that aren’t attending the game, I can see them walking the streets in large numbers, some of them have brought their own braais onto the street and are cooking while chatting to the passing supporters. Some of the supporters have had to walk a fair distance because of the heavy traffic, and all are arriving safely and in high spirits. Out here on the streets, the informal vendors are also selling beer, food, and anything else you could possibly want – no opportunity to make money has been overlooked.

At this moment, on the eve of the FIFA World Cup, with the world’s eye on us - I’m proud to be South African, proud that I choose to live here, proud that my fellow countrymen are also displaying the best attitude possible to carry my country into a positive future. I'm proud to be a part of such a defining moment in the country that I love.

by Carol Willis.

Carol I am proud to have been able to publish such a beautiful story of community spirit and pride. 

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My friend in the mountain wilderness, to the north west of this quiet fishing spot, Flying fish Point, where I have been exercising in the pool every day, left a status update this morning that said. :-

“Having a wonderful day, weeding the old clucker tucka bed...new Arrowroot bed and building a compost pile during my weeding, also collecting old chook poop from the old chook farm next door.Gunna have a rip snorta of a compost in a few weeks. ALSO Serving customers off the road with my pumpkin, eggs and broms....wonderful day :)”

Now that sound like the sort of Lipofuze, lose 7 lb fast, sort of action I would love.  LOL, let me out of this clean swimming pool and into some good tropical dirt and even chook poop, compost bin and I will be as happy as a pig in lol J.
I am a gardener at heart and no amount of downsizing and coastal holiday making, will take away my love of the land, hard work doing things I love and the dream of self-sufficiency.

 

The Turning Point, the Year I Turned 13.

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down - Mary Pickford

 

Camp fire yarns, was created for me to tell stories I have heard through my life.  I will gradually compile them here.  This is a glimpse into my own story.  Not one of my happiest years, nor the worst, but this was the year of my first great turning point of positive change, in my life.

I don’t regret any part of my ‘different’ from the average life. Each thing that happened to me was a stepping stone I built on. Each event made me a little stronger and gave me a lot of understanding. of people with problems, I can relate to, because ‘there but for the grace of God,( or someone being there with their hand outstretched  for me to grab and haul myself up), go I'.

I remember my teens, my first teen year at home when I was 13 years old was the usual familiar for many, head on clash with my mum, only exaggerated due to our hostilities beginning when I was 4 years old and growing up in a family who longed for love but mostly hated each other.  Yes that does happen. 'It's a long complex, story, maybe the subject for a novel, not for today's waffle'.


 I left home before I turned 14, made some good choices for my life, early on and never looked back from there. That was the start of a much happier life for me than my childhood had been.  In some ways, I could say I only experienced being a teenager, the year I turned 13.

I certainly was not your average teenager, worried about my weight and looking for diet pills that work.  I actually was suffering from severe malnutrition, I had been since I was age 4 when it was diagnosed by the school doctor and the government,  school health program, 'chose me', as one of the 32 most neglected, children in the state of Victoria and put me on a free food program,  providing me my school lunch, and morning and afternoon tea, for the year that I turned seven.  I remember being so proud that I was 'chosen' and 'special' and I won the award for the child who grew the most in one year.  The program only lasted for one year, because I left school to go to work at age eight.


At age thirteen I was still as I had been since four, skin and bone, rib cage sticking out and 'escaping' into tree tops or my world of art to find beauty as reality was a nightmare. I was 'learning to be an artist and create my own beautiful world.’



At age thirteen, after leaving the job my mother found me, (a machinist in a facory), I found myself my ideal job, training to be a veterinary nurse and from that job I got a live in job working with animals, doing things I loved and felt I was good at, veterinary nursing, dog training and breeding and canine portraiture plus journalism for a dog club magazine.

During my teen years I was able to study art, obtain my leaving certificate by correspondence, study health sciences while I worked, living in with a caring family for the first time in my life.  It was in this happy environment, when I was only 14 that I met my husband Reg. 

Fourteen was the start of the happy life of my future. In many ways, (aside from that year I turned, thirteen), I skipped my teenage years and jumped straight into adulthood,  at least in a behavioural sense.

I can remember what a traumatised person I was at age 13. Desperately unhappy, afraid, knowing even then, that the only way to protect my sanity was to break from the only security I knew, that of an unhappy home, life.

I did not know if there was anything better ‘out there’, (there was), but as I was beginning to entertain thoughts of suicide, as a means to escape the awfulness of my existence, I knew I had to try to find a better solution than that and I obviously did J

One day, after a family member had attempted to kill me and I had fought them of till we separated, equally wounded, I sat on the front porch, sobbing until my mother came home.  When she arrived, I informed her, that I ‘would never set foot in that house again’.  I did not. I had only waited there long enough to sob my heartbroken goodbye to my mother.  I broke her heart too, (if there was anything left to break,) by telling her 'I was desperately homesick.

Homesick for the home I had never known.' 

There are many organizations set up to help counsel teenagers who are considering suicide. Yellow Ribbon  is one of them. Every individual has the potential to save a life, save another’s sanity, if they are willing to reach out and offer a hand to be grasped and an opportunity to allow another to better themselves, a world where they can feel good about themselves and their accomplishments and most of all a life free from abuse.

The Turning Point, the Year I turned 13, I made the leap, from Survivor, to Successful, Achiever. 

Don’t leave it to organizations to help. It is one on one individual acts that make the difference.

Every time you reach out your hand to another, IT COUNTS. Just because some will not grasp the outstretched hand, please do not ever stop reaching out. You could be saving a life with your kindness. Each opportunity to advance that you give to a young adult, has a positive snowballing effect that builds in momentum with other acts of kindness and offers of a ladders to climb, transform and enhance lives in ways you might not be aware at the time.