#FeesMustFall

Dear Privileged

My laptop has had a virus for most of this year, but it has been able to function nonetheless. I have been able to surf the net with ease, watch movies and complete assignments on time. Until today.

Today I could no longer use my laptop comfortably, and everything I had to do on it became an annoying task. Because of this virus, certain software refused to install until I got rid of it. As a result- I am stuck with just my phone, without electronic books and unlimited series to watch. Without access to my school notes and music. I am extremely inconvenienced, but my laptop can no longer support me due to the condition it's in...

Which brings me to the past week's happenings. The education system has been a flawed one for a while, but we have somehow managed to get by. There has always been something not quite right, but we have been able to ignore it. Life continued to go on under the strain of the offish thing in the system, until last week.

Last week a virus was detected by students across South Africa. We can no longer operate within a system that excludes us. It is getting harder and harder to explain to our fathers that fees have gone up far higher than his salary increase ever has in YEARS. It is getting increasingly stressful to scrape together the coins for another semester at university. It is becoming more and more painful to watch capable and deserving people get left behind because they cannot afford school. Everything has a breaking point and it's been a long time coming. For both my laptop and the education system. 

The education system, (and my laptop) are in for repairs now - because that's what happens to BROKEN things. Everything must come to a standstill and it needs to be fixed before we can continue. We are not in the business of making sure that no one is inconvenienced because we have been inconvenienced for much longer than we can remember. We are in the business of addressing the injustices, of installing an anti virus, and ensuring that all programmes, or poor people, can operate and participate in this system.

So it must have been quite the week for you - with all these protests going on. However, we are in the business of no longer being left behind. We are in the business of being heard and addressed. We are in the business of getting what we deserve, even if it means your schedule might be a tad strange for a while.

We are not sorry for this inconvenience. It has been about you for too long.

It is now about us.

Thanks,

Unprivileged

Black label

So. Hashtag- RhodesHasfallen.  Cool. I guess. You know. *puts on the full armour of God*

Look, I haven’t been keeping up with the protests and round-the-table discussions, but it was a bit hard to miss that he has fallen, so my view is a raw one. Don’t get me wrong though, I am not apologizing for my opinion.

Rhodes has fallen, but nothing else really has.  I feel like there are such bigger concerns going on in this land that could really do with the same amount of passion and urgency that was associated with this statue.  I mean, it would be nice, as young people, to be as driven and united towards other things that could make a bigger difference in our well being.  If we were as angry towards all the other things that desperately beg for our attention, we would be in a much better state.  But that’s my 2 ZARS worth, AKA 0.17 US dollars.  Do you see where I'm going with this?

What I’m saying is, I don’t know if it matters that he has fallen when we still have 21 000 pregnant high school girls.  Give or take.  Probably give. When there are people going to bed unfed? Hey?  When there are people who think I should get up and go to school and then go to work and THEN walk to the taxi rank, and they get to take my cellphone. The one I bought after eight months of saving. Sorry?

When there are men who think they are allowed to say what they want to say to me because I was born with a big bum, but because I’m wearing leggings, I’m asking for the comments.  Or to be raped.  How?

When young girls know the lyrics to Partition, but can't recite their 9 times tables? When there are people who have so much to offer but don’t have the funds to go to school.  When there are kids being stolen on their way home, because someone thinks its okay to just quickly ruin parents’ lives.  When cellphone networks are charging so much for dat... Nevermind.

Perhaps my feelings towards apartheid are not as they need to be.  I know we were dealt an unfair deal, and that the effects of that deal are still very prevalent and obvious even today.  Look at me assuming I'm only talking to black people.  But anyway,  I feel those effects, and they reverberate in my life everyday, but shouldn't larger issues be addressed here?  Illegal abortions killing young girls? HIV perhaps.  Poverty, goodness, poverty.  Or education. In some cases, lack thereof.

Maybe I don’t quite get the real struggle, but the only power I believe a statue has is its compressive strength under loading and its material behaviour.  Ore maybe I'm not a revolutionary and I don’t see the bigger picture here?  The breakthrough? 

I don’t know.

I feel like it has fallen, but there is no refreshment nor reward at the end of the day. Personally.

Alright.  Give it to me.  Tell me how desensitized I am.  I've got my armour on.

Ntsa

Should I text him first?

By "I" I mean you, because I have life under control. *pops pill*   

Well.  It depends, really.  There is a wide range of psychoanalyses that you can undertake before deciding whether or not to text him, especially if it's to text him first. Because it does warrant a psychoanalysis in some instances.   The answer is very easily yes, and just as easily NO… depending on who you ask, what their take on life is and what they’ve had happen to them in the past six months. 

Should you text him (first)?  Doubt normally means don’t, so no, don’t text him.  Besides, he could be out having fun, and worst of all, with somebody else (a girl, I mean. Or a boy, just to throw a spanner in the works).  The reason you're afraid to text him first is because he probably isn’t your boyfriend.  I hope we aren’t afraid of texting our own boyfriends, please Jesus.  So no, don’t text him if you're afraid of not getting a response, because he really can do with your message whatever in the world he pleases.  He could roll his eyes at it, or wonder what it is you actually want from him, or delete it and return to his beer and FIFA.  He could take a screen shot and send it to the boys’ chat group, where a lengthy seminar will take place on how you just can't leave him alone (guh, I know you want thiii diii!), and how that, in some way I cannot quite understand, makes him the man.

Or you could honestly just text him, and be unapologetic about it.  You can allow yourself to be yourself and just get your life, boo-boo.  You can neglect all the unwritten rules and make up a list of your own.  You can text and not feel like you're going to ingest Jeyes fluid should you not get a response.  You can text because your life does not depend on a response, I promise.  Plus, your mind could do with the peace.  You can text him first because you know yourself, and your worth and all those other things we claim to know about ourselves yet we know very little.  You can text him first because you know in your heart that that doesn’t make you less of an anything, instead it almost makes you brave, relatively. 

You can text him first if you have something to say, in the exact same way you do when you text other people in your life.  And he will reply to your text in the same way he replies to the people in his life. Or not.  But how will you know if you don't?

Should you text him first?  Not if your esteem relies on it, please.  Not if a non-reply reply is going to send you on a binge tonight, and not if you're going to collect all your girls for a conference call on why he didn’t reply when they'd rather be watching Scandal (both the US and SA versions). There are many reasons, but you don’t have to get your panties in a knot about it.  He just didn’t reply and you will be fine.

But he could reply, and invite you over for some coffee, or whatever your equivalent is. 

Its really out of your control- what happens afterwards.  but that applies to many things in life- so that's hardly news.  I don’t really know if you should do it or not. 

Do whatever the hell you want- life is hard enough without us being hard on ourselves. 

I really, really need to dance.  

Listen to Banks- Brain.

Bye!

N

Winter in February

Today I feel so cold at work that I had to conduct the briefest of explorations on why black people are always the first to feel the drop in temperature. Or in anything really.  But in this case, in temperature. So I searched “Why Do White People Never Feel Cold". It feels like 16 degrees in here, yet there's someone who has complained at how hot it is.  He probably wants to tear his files asunder.  Dude, I bring a scarf to work.  How are these two things happening at the same time?

They aren't even wearing jerseys, I have NEVER not worn a jersey in this office. I bring some or other cardigan every single day AND I keep a scarf in my drawer or handbag just in case someone feels like turning it down a few notches I wish weren't available.

Its freezing. Seriously. No. seriously.

This temperature, or lack thereof, is also bad for my health because it increases my tea intake to levels some people don’t reach in a week.  I don’t have much time to make a thorough investigation. To do a thorough investigation… (I'm not sure which sounds better.  Ntsako 0 – 99 English).  What I did find, amidst all the other complicated reasons people tried to give was:

1.  White people generally have a higher percentage of body fat than, uhh, their counterparts, making it take a little longer to realise that hey, its Winter.  This is also why they are better swimmers, apparently.  This is explained by Physics and buoyancy and other things I will not get into right now.  

2.  White skin, or skin with little melanin (hallo yellowbone), I think it’s called, increases the creation of vitamin D in low levels of sunlight (or lack of heat). Think of it as built in generators in like, Stage 3 load shedding.  See Biology textbooks for more. And News24.

Other people in the forums chose not to answer the very simple question, but decided it would be more worthwhile to argue that we were all created the same and how we are all imagining things- but I'm not imagining that I'm the only person blowing into the palms of my hands, secretly wondering why nobody sells soup around here.

So there you have it, two reasons why white people don’t get cold. Okay that’s a bit strong- I'll rephrase, two reasons why white people don’t feel the cold on such high degrees as we do. There's a complicated play on words there if you give it a second.   

I should draw up a questionairre, or get some of my white friends to tell me how can?  I will have asked somebody before the end of the day to confirm this. It's not racist, is it?

Hope you all are having fun in the sun.  Apparently its unbearably hot out there. I'll only find out at 4pm.

I need tea. You know, again.

Ntsa

Vac work report

There will come a time when being a woman engineer isn't the big deal it is today.  It's not even that much of a thing anymore, but for as long as there are times when I find myself in a boardroom and I'm an outlier in all possible ways, I'll ride the wave and let myself be a big deal to those who think I am.

Varsity asks for a 6 week blow by blow analysis of the experience we gained during vacation, to assess whether we are being exposed to the industry in the way they see adequate.  Well...

I get a bus early in the morning before half the township is awake, to be shipped off to some or other suburb by bus, and report for duty.  On some days I am armed with a hard hat and dusty safety shoes peering out of my bag- causing it to weigh a fifth of my weight  - what with the pap and chicken I have for lunch. I sit on the bus and read (oh yes, another weight contributor), and notice the side-eyes I get from people as they wonder where in the world I could be going with these things... and because I look like I am fourteen, it doesn't help much.

I arrive at work when now a quarter of the township I left behind is awake. On a good day the sun isn't too harsh, and the rain has allowed me to settle at my desk before showering the land. I make some tea and sit down to do calculations for the following 8 hours.  How dedicated am I?  Sometimes the calculations are easy, and other times they have you taking coffee break after toilet break after kalahari.com break.  And everytime you return to the work you remember why you were on it in the first place.

Then maybe, there will be a site meeting. So I hop into some or other old white man's car for a lift- and we are off. We arrive and I make like a transformer and take my pumps off to replace with the boots and tuck my hair into a pony tail to accommodate the hat.

I get to be told I'm pretty by the construction workers on site.  Those are self-esteem booster days.  Good for the heart.

Apart from being the one who undoubtedly woke up the earliest (and will get home the latest tonight), I am the only one with cocoa-coloured skin and a bit of boobs on my chest, I have the highest year of birth on my ID and I am the only one here fighting something oestrogen has decided not to tolerate for the week. Some of the people sitting around the table think I'm there to take minutes, others ask-and the incredulity on their faces is worth Instagramming. Some already know why I'm there-and think I am taking chances trying to join them in this industry, and the rest welcome you and help you learn everything they know. God bless them. The whole lot.

A walk about the site will then take place, with our noses held high as we inspect the work that has been done, almost like a mother-in-law swiping her finger behind a cupboard to make sure her daughter-in-law is cleaning for her son. With the hard hat on my head and the boots weighing down on my tiny feet as we pace through the muddy site, my handbag holds a dead cellphone and some Vaseline. And my bus tag and skafthin.

Then I hop on the car that gave me a lift earlier, and ask all sorts of questions about what was being spoken about at the meeting- because I promise, University is sometimes just a Durability Test. To see if you can endure and persevere and die and rise again...and keep going.

Then I nod off in the car and wake up with a jolt and wonder how unprofessional it is to be falling asleep right now. On a scale of 1 to 10. Where 1 is 'Oh sleep, child' and 10 is 'You have some nerve'.

All in a days work.

Adequate?

Ntsako

Life hacks: Passion discovery

I've never really liked those-what are you passionate about/write a summary about yourself type of questions.

It may have taken almost a quarter century, but I think I may know where my passion lies. If you aren't sure what your passion is, just think of what upsets you most when it doesn't go the way you think it is supposed to go-in your eyes.

Think of what you feel like fixing, something you think everyone is doing wrong and how you think you are go-to guy for answers. What you can sit and read up on without being asked to, what you can research without feeling like you have been tasked...

What you could speak about and then feel like you're prattling on. Only to continue because you know you haven't expressed yourself enough, and you need people to understand.

What occupies your mind and requires a master plan prepared by you. What wrecks your brain because you cannot get results nearly fast enough... what has you begging people to pay attention because you are speaking.

I think that could very well be your passion.

Ntsa

Happy New Year

But honestly. That's all it is. A new year. 

*puts feet up and gets the last drops of bourbon out of glass*

I don't think I can just rule off and start a new page. My stuff wasn't complete. What I can, and maybe should do, is check the progress to date.  I don't like that I'm forced to measure my successes and failures and goals over a 365 day period. I suppose I was born into it and I must just go with the flow, but what if I started a new season smack bang in the middle of October and it'll only be completed anywhere between 2017 and death?

First January symbolizes a brand new start for a lot of people. It is a clean slate with all old baggage removed. New you. New diet. New dreams. New New New. New everything. I'm excited for you guys, it must be really nice. I could join in the fun and compile a young list... But I already feel a little annoyed because I'd have been bullied into it. Almost like Valentine's Day sagas. Goodness.

I don't want to use a new year as a line that marks a new start, when there was always a new day. A new week. A new moment, really. I don't have a 365 day period, but I guess it could be organised- just so that I'm not the only one who doesn't have a list of accomplishments come December.

I'm pretty much the same girl I was about a week ago. And the day before that. I still have the same goals I had in April, July and November. And those goals don't reach their sell by date at the end of the year. They also stress me out... make me feel like I should tone them down a little. I think I need to draw up a Gantt chart so I can organise my life in years.

Maybe that's the solution.

Oh my goodness. My dreams need to come true. It's driving me crazy.

Anyway it is a new year. It's a fact- if I don't get too particular and annoyingly pedantic by involving the Mayans and history.

I don't mean to be so incredibly somber, there's plenty to celebrate.  So. Compliments.

Have a great one... And work work work!

I know I will.

Xx

Ntsako