My BoPo Journey

I'm a member of the body positivity movement, albeit the slowest progressing one. Basically I am number 1 from the back. I love myself and I do all I can to be good to myself.
After years of learned self-loathing I can safely say that I am no longer on the hatred side of the spectrum. You see, when all you hear from your family, school teachers, school mates and random strangers is negative talk about your body, it's difficult to go against it.
I remember dreaming about cutting off my inner thighs when I was younger because, not only was the chafing bad and painful but I had to walk in such a way that I minimize friction, i.e. Take very small steps. Little did I know that I had become the standard/unit measure for how far apart kids should plant beans. They were very observant, I'll give them that.
A lot of people wish to have a thigh gap, so they could look nice in swimwear, my dream was to have a normal person's stride.
Coming back to my point : I might never reach a point where I am taking photos (nevermind posting them) of myself in underwear, fatkinis or even exercise gear but in the ways that are within reach I show myself love and compassion.

At my previous job, I got accused a lot of loving myself too much. The irony is that I feel like I don't love myself enough.
Mine is a journey in all fronts. Holistically. Body, mind, spirit... I am not so narcissistic and shallow to constantly obsess about my looks but hey that's where I am at with it.

#bopo #bodypositive #plussize #fat #growing #learning #healing #healthy #loving

Never let how far you have to go bring you down, look at how far you've come

Reading this quote from Jay Shetty brought back a memory. When my sister @ka_tiyoni had just moved back to KZN from East London, I hosted her for a couple of weeks while she was looking for a place to stay in Durban. She used to drive a gold Megan shake it!
She used to attend morning mass at the Emmanuel Cathedral in Durban every weekday, without fail. We tried attending Sunday Mass at St Joseph's Cathedral once but it was just too chaotic. You see, my dad always used to say that God will not be found in chaos and noise but in quietness and stillness. True or not, that's how we were raised.

So, we would go to church at Emmanuel Cathedral (I was working in Mariannhill at the time and  staying at the St Francis College staff cottages behind St Joseph's Cathedral at the time), we enjoyed the English Mass - no unnecessary noise from school bells or spanners🤦
So, one time driving back from church, we were reminiscing about how tough it was being unemployed graduates, at home with our BSc. degrees, harvesting beans... And we were so grateful that we were at a different place in our lives.
Right this minute, I am thankful that I am no longer at the very stressful and down-right-evil workplace that I had chosen to hang on to for longer than I should have. #grateful

 This here is my beautiful and stubborn sister Jules @Ka_Tiyoni. Tanaka's mamkhulu. My parents' first born child. Big sis! 

What's in a bug - the case of a praying mantis

Let me introduce myself : I am the 3rd daughter of Gatigati u4000 kaMlunjwa kaMbidlane kaMgwabashe, indlalifa nenkosana kaMdambiso.
I hail from the south coast of KZN, eMandleni Tribal Authority is where the white man decided we should be led because Mdambiso, the leader of the clan wouldn't fratenize with ondlebe zikhanyilanga, so he lost his chieftancy to Duma, his travel companion and friend.
Where I am from, a praying mantis is highly regarded as a symbol of the presence of the ancestors, specifically ugogo (grandmother).
I must admit that I am still a novice in this ancestral stuff.
Growing up, I was told many times to respect this insect and not kill it, but guess what, I always squashed it.
In 2017, I happened to see one on my kitchen window in Pretoria Central. I was staying on the 3rd floor of a rather upscale flat, which was vacuumed every day and had window washers ever so often, so I wondered how exactly the green bug had gotten to my window.
Because I had started the journey of embracing my roots and ancestors, I relished the visit. I was hard broken to find it dead by the sink a few days after.
When I was going through the trials and tribulations of 2018, I was desperate to find a praying mantis anywhere in the huge, beautiful and picturesque flat that was proving to be a money pit. None came. Not to say that my ancestors had deserted me but it sure felt like it.
So when I made umqombothi recently and bragged about it to my family on our many whatsapp groups, my sister Jules laughed at me saying "you made umqombothi but ugogo visited us instead", this accompanied by a snap of the green bug. Just as I was about to start whining about this blatant favoritism, I spotted one in my mother's kitchen. Never in my life have I ever been so happy to see an insect.
After losing my dad, I had a new found respect for the after life, the ancestral world. I miss my daddy and other departed family members so much and desperately want to believe that they are with me always.
We need to treasure our elders whilst we still have them around and keep their memories alive when they have been called to the after life.

Making umqombothi (Zulu traditional sorghum beer)

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, South Africa is on lockdown and alcohol sale and public consumption is strictly prohibited. So as a law abiding citizen I decided to make umqombothi. I posted the step by step-by-step instructions and process on Instagram @MeuJwara and on my facebook page as well. There are a few people who are not on social networks who have asked me for the recipe, so here it is.

Ingredients:
3x 500g Sorghum Malt
500g mealie meal
5L water

There's a series of steps that my mom taught me:
Making umqombothi Step 1:
Mix equal amounts of malted sorghum, 500g in my case and 500g mealie meal. Add cold water and work it into a paste consistency.
Add twice as much hot or boiling water to the paste by volume and stir for 2 minutes. Close the container tightly and store in a warm place overnight.

Step 2:
The next day, you will see that the mixture has separated into two, with a sour watery layer on top and the rest of the mixture at the bottom. when you open the lid of your container, the mixture will be slightly foamy.

Pour the watery top layer into a large sauce pan, and bring it to boil. Add the rest of the mixture and stir continuously until it start to boil. Reduce heat and let it simmer in a covered saucepan until it is thick and creamy(about an hour or two depending on the size of your mixture). Take off the heat and leave it to cool overnight.
{At this point, you could eat the cooked mixture as a delicious sour porridge. I add a pinch of salt and honey to make it extra yummy 😋

This is my favorite step for obvious reasons.}

Step 3:
Now that the cooked mixture has cooled overnight, you add twice the amount of malted sorghum (2x500g in my case) into the mixture and mix thoroughly.
Leave the mixture to ferment in a closed container. The lid mustn't be tight, we don't want an explosion!

Step 4:
I am not a fan of this step.

After a day or two (depending on how warm it is), when you open the lid a boozy smell will fill the space and your beer will be looking bubbly and when those bubbles pop they'll be sounding like cold drink in a glass.

Straining/filtering it is the final step.
Enjoy!

Mpumalanga, my happy place!

When all this is over, we shall travel again. In fact we will be making up for the lockdown. I foresee plenty of #shotlefts in the post corona pandemic era.

While we are keeping our social distance and enjoying time with our families and loved ones, let's rejoice in our travel memories. I am trying to not overshare but trim my clips to show a little bit of what I love so much about Mpumalanga.

I remember travelling with Kabelo and Mnakile, listening to the radio and discussing other things as we were staedily moving towards Hazyview, using the Kiepersol route. The car stopped suddenly and a frustrated Kabelo was confused. Putting his hands in the air as if to say "Hi taku hini?" he shouted "Wait wait wait", shushing us. "How can you chat and listen to the radio at the same time?" inquiring, clearly disturbed and baffled by our multitasking abilities.

I ain't no Robert Frost or Maya Angelou but I try

Without warning I changed. I can still be sweet but BS I do not take. I can still laugh and joke around, but step on my toes not. I no longer allow people to disseminate lies and skewed half truths about me, you will not get likes and laughs at my expense. Oh no you don't!

What hasn't changed is my hatred for belittling and disrespect. Don't you dare yell at me!
I transformed without warning. Toughened by life's smackdowns and fueled by childhood memories of a time when I couldn't stand up for myself, I changed without warning.
An eye for an eye is what you'll get. When you go low, I shall go lower.
#Catchmeoutside #Howaboutthat
#ghettopoetry
#afterschoolisafterschool
#iwritewhatilike

Excorcizing demons of the past

This is a photo of me in heart failure, before diagnosis. Face all swollen and puffy. 

The other day I was chatting with my cousin (well, his mom and my dad are double cousins, they share both sets of grandparents) about how I got to my current state of mind and the current state of affairs.
He didn't believe that a job could cause someone so much distress and plainly said 'gazlam, if you were utterly heartbroken by a man, you know you can tell me right'.
I don't know what infuriated me more, the fact that he doesn't believe the hell I went through (along with some of my colleagues and friends: Tinyiko, Mnakza, Kabelo, @sibomkhize and @molotoz) or the misogynistic assumption and conclusion that I suffered heart failure because of heartbreak.
I could not be mad at him, who in the world makes his/her job their entire life. I used to think about work every waking moment and if I wasn't devising a new project, I would be thinking of ways to improve existing ones. Always tweaking things and getting resistance for it.
When I think back to the days that led to my hospitalization, there's a lot of red flags that I could pin point. My typical reaction when attacked was to fight back but when my former director accused me of racism, I just couldn't deal. It shouldn't have but it broke me down.
I remember poor @mnakilezwanedlamini trying to get me to calm down.
Some people can come for you and attack you from all angles, just for their own amusement. It's in their nature to toy with people's lives.
These are the flashbacks that threw me off when I went for a job interview on ash Wednesday. I am certain that I heard God tell me 'I don't want this for you'.
It totally threw me off and I am glad.
My mom's always said that she felt some type of way about nuns after attending boarding school, nursing training and working with them for many decades at a Catholic Hospital. One time she asked me if I wanted to become a nun and the sigh of relief and joy on her face when I said 'NO, HELL NO!'
I digress. It's not just nuns. Hell, not all nuns are evil and cruel. I have nun friends who are exceptions to the norm. Shout out to Sr V and Sr P.
I stand here a changed person because of the experiences of the past 13 years & the biggest lesson for me is that I come 1st.