Last Sunday I bought a new pair of shoes from Aerosoles at DSW where I work. I’d been eyeing them all summer long and they had finally gone on the discount/clearance rack. To my disappointment, there were none in my size – 9 ½, but they were SO cute that I begrudgingly took them in a 10.
“I’ll just have to flop around in them,” I thought.
To my surprise, the 10s fit…perfectly. It suddenly dawned on me: I’m NOT a 9 ½ anymore! I’m a 10. Ugh! Since I’ve had kids, my feet have gone from a 9, to a 9 Wide, to a 9 ½ and ultimately to a whopping 10. Good thing Liya is my last baby, or else you could track me through the forest with my Sasquatch sized soles.
Marshall likes to joke (or at least I think he’s joking) that I ‘collect’ shoes. I do NOT collect shoes. I have an appreciation for them as art and I do my best to give them a good home in my closet. Many of them have never been worn or had the tags taken off. That’s adoption, not collection.
Seeing that the 9s, 9 Wides and NOW 9.5s no longer fit my feet and need to give way to their larger counterparts, I am faced with a dilemma. What do I do with my babies?? A conversation on Facebook provided the answer. Good old Facebook – solving the world’s problems one post at a time.
I’m going to have a “I got pregnant and now my feet have gone from a size 9 – 10 and can’t fit these shoes anymore so come and buy these shoes at a steeeep discount” sale. The proceeds will go towards funding our move to South Africa. I think I will throw in a couple of the bags and clutches I’ve adopted over the years. I have good friends. They will find good homes, I’m sure. J
But hey! If you’ve ever been preggers: Do your feet shrink back…or am I destined to wear the same sized shoe as Clint Eastwood forever? Tell me there’s hope…!
A dear friend wrote this note to me via Facebook about African political history and I though it was worth sharing. It was in response to this video I posted earlier this week.
Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana, West Africa
Don't believe all you see on the telly, or in the newspapers. That man's message is too glib. He is only interested in selling his book, so spouting off the usual platitudes. There are two sides to any story, in Africa there are several!
Kwame Nkrumah inspired other leaders to break the yoke of colonialism. He had a vision of Africa linked by road, bridges, rail and air transport, just like in America. He started a transcontinental high way from Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana and stopped after he was kicked out of office, in La Cote d'Ivoire. He funded a feasibility study that showed that the Congo river alone could supply all the continent's electricity! (That is why he sent a Ghanaian Army Force to keep the peace after the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba was asassinated by the Belgians).
The former colonial masters were concerned about the loss of ready markets for their goods, as these countries were now trading with Russia, China and the eastern European countries. America was interested in Africa for extension of its ideologies, markets and position as the only super power. Every African leader toppled after independence has CIA prints all over them! The Judas in the case of Nkrumah, was an African American named Brown who was his mate at Lincoln. Brown was made US Ambassador to Ghana, and he fed info back to the CIA who paid the Army officers who made the coup about $3m! (the 30 shekels was affected by inflation!:))You can check archival material that has been released 30 years after the 1966 coup in Ghana.
Colonialism was not interested in developing Africa's infrastructure. The railways in Ghana, Guinea, Mali, the two Congos were built to carry commodities to the ports, and sell manufactured goods back in the colonies.
Nkrumah and others embarked on infrastructure programmes, which were halted when they were toppled. The economies of the new 'independent' countries were then designed from the 'mother' countries!
Exactly what Nkrumah had feared would happen! He called it neo-colonialism. For example, the French had the policy of assimilation and brainwashed some Africans in their former colonies that they were 'French' skin colour notwithstanding! Therefore Houphouet Boigny, first President of La Cote d'Ivoire, also had a seat in the French Senate and represented a region in France! All that country's gold, cocoa, etc were sent to France, who then sold them on the international markets, kept what ever they liked and sent what they thought was necessary for development in La Cote d'Ivoire. After he died, his successor (Caretaker President) Laurent Gbagbo told the French this arrangement has to be renegotiated, because the population had grown, and he proposed a 60/40 ratio, with the lower percentage going to France. The only sources of income for France are tourism, cheese and wine and possibly any taxes paid by their Haute Couture companies. Unlike the UK and Belgium, who had lucrative sources of raw materials from their former colonies, France had only La Cote d'Ivoire. (Guinea which is far more endowed than La Cote d'Ivoire was closed to them by the late President Sekou Toure, and Senegal only produces peanuts!). Therefore, the majority of France's income was from Ivorian produce! So to preserve their interests, they decided to mess things up! They know the Africans' mentality very well. Alasanne Ouattara was put forward by the French to contest the position of President against Gbagbo who was also running for the office of President.
The constitution clearly states that only native born Ivorians can stand for President. Ouattara was brought to that country by his parents from Burkina Faso, aged three! He did well at school and in the civil service and was even appointed Prime Minister under the late President Boigny. However, this was a nominated position, not by election. He did not qualify to stand for election as President. The French decided to make mischief with this. Ouattara's ethnic group spills over from Burkina Faso to the north of La Cote d'Ivoire. The latter part of that country has little or no infrastructure unlike the fertile and rich south where most of the wealth that was exported comes from. With the help of the French, Ouattara's propaganda machine recruited the northerners to protest that their candidate from their ethnic group was being discriminated against. They felt denying their kinsman the opportunity of running for President put paid any hopes of their area getting developed!
That is the root cause of the bitter six year war in that country. Whilst the war was going on, the French ransacked the country's mines, farms etc, using their superior technology. Landing strips appeared in jungles to cart cocoa, gold etc off, even in the middle of war zones!
Africa's biggest tragedy is that we do not have visionary leaders. The current crop of leaders are all propped up by politicians in the 'mother countries.' Their economies are planned by the IMF/World Bank. With life so hard, why would the electorate be interested in politics? The people in Guinea did so recently, and 30 people lost their lives! With the possible exception of Ghana, most citizens in African countries are not interested in western democracy to meet their needs.
Mugabe gets a lot of bad press (and I don't like what he has done to his own people), but no one talks about Britain reneging on the Lancaster House Agreement, where Britain agreed to pay all the white farmers off to relinquish their land and return it all to the Zimbabwe government and people (their version of a mule and 40 acres after emancipation in the US). What he should have done, immediately after independence in 1980 was to train his people to take over the farms. He did nothing, and then lost patience with Britain after 30 years! He confiscated farms and gave them to people who had no clue how to run them.
Lack of infrastructure also means no sharing of intelligence among Africans. This glaringly obvious in how Mugabe and all the other 'late entrants' into independence committed identical mistakes, that they could have learned from Ghana and others.
The French have not finished their divide and rule tactics in Africa. Their current interference in Guinea is a very interesting one that you should follow. Two men contested for the Presidential elections a few weeks ago. One of them is backed by the current President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, the other by the Minister Foreign Affairs, Bernard Kouchner. Kouchner's choice Alhaji Cellou Dallein won, apparently by a slim margin. Although it was discovered that the Electoral Commission's CEO and staff were involved in fraud (they've been dismissed) and a run-off election is due to be held, but no date has been given yet.
Kouchner will be contesting the Presidency at the next elections in France. The President of France whoever he may be is interested in diversifying their source of income from La Cote d'Ivoire to resource-rich Guinea. So, whoever wins the election in Guinea, it is France's gain.
We need visionary leaders who can thumb their noses at the west, and who are committed to using whatever wealth our countries are allowed to retain to invest in education, health, infrastructure. The 'mad dog' of Libya, has used his country's oil as a powerful and useful weapon. France and Italy rely on him for their cheap oil, so they are very careful not to upset him. He says 'jump', and they ask 'how high?' Nigeria could have done the same, but there were too many thieves in positions of power.
Without an educated and trained work force, without infrastructure how can African countries open up to tourism? The thieving and foreign meddling too has to stop.
Yes, racial tension is still high in South Africa. And like we talked about this yesterday, S. African youth have no clue as to who are the Apartheid era heros. Does the future of S. Africa really know where its is going?
They know Brittney Spears, they know Tiger Woods, but they don't know their Apartheid Heros. I think the most shocking thing about this is that it's just been 16 years since the end of Apartheid.
Yeah, Apartheid just ended in 1994. I was a Sophomore in High School so, not it wasn't that long ago. You may be asking the question, "Why in the world do you care dude? You're a black american and you should at least know your own history. Why worry if SA kids care about theirs?"
In the words of old African-American saying, which has relevance for everyone, "you can't know where you're going, if you don't know where you've been."
Its amazing how far just a small gift, a small sacrifice can go. I was watching this Documentary on Hulu today and about one persons journey to Africa and what impact one person can do if they only sacrifice what you have for the life of another.
Ahhh….the internet. The information super highway where data is transferred and received within a blink of an eye – if you have high speed anyway.
This week, I tried my hand at Twitter. I confess, I’m not very good at tweeting, but following Marshall’s lead I went ahead and did my part to campaign for 34 Degrees South. The objects of my tweets? Gail King and John Legend.
As I said before, it would pain me to ask Oprah for a single thing. This is solely based on principle. Her best friend, on the other hand, is fair game. My first obstacle was condensing what I wanted to say to Gail King to 140 characters or less. Merely asking for direction on how to go about fundraising to move to South Africa and work in a township, I waited for a response. These celebrity types don’t actually tweet themselves, do they? So why wasn’t her assistant tweeting me back? That’s how tweeting works, isn’t it? I felt like such a Luddite.
Next I tweeted John Legend. He and Marshall went to elementary school together, and he just won a humanitarian award for his work in South Africa as well. Those degrees of separation made me confident that he would tweet me right back. We were practically family after all! After inviting him to visit our site (and eventually US in South Africa), I waited for a reply…and got none.
I didn’t know how to feel about that. Actually, yes I did. I felt stalker-ish, and didn’t like it. With that, I decided to leave the tweeting up to Marshall and pursue other more direct forms of human contact, like panhandling. He’s far better at it than I am anyway.
Perhaps the hardest part about moving anywhere, whether it’s to a new state or a new country, is getting your children accustomed to the idea that they will be moving away from all that they’re accustomed to. Everyone keeps telling us it’s easier to move children when they’re small, rather than in their tween-teen years, but I’m not so sure that’s the case.
We have four kids, the eldest of whom will be six this December and the youngest will be six months old then (Liya is not pictured). I’m pretty confident that moving a kindergartner who has been socialized by iCarly and Sponge Bob (something I’m by no means proud of) to Africa where there is no Chuck E Cheese – or even its equivalent – will have some level of pain and difficulty for her. The question is: Can we push through the pain?
I’m confident that Marshall can. He’s the type of parent who can administer ladlefuls of cod liver oil to small children without a twinge of sympathy if needed. Oddly, he’s naturally adept at making them feel really good about taking down a spoon full of medicine without the sugar. And that’s exactly why I’m leaving the task of telling the kids up to the man of the house while I nod encouragingly as he delivers the news.
I have faith that they’ll be really excited about the move. I mean, if a trip to Wal-Mart is cause for glee, how much more a 20 hour plane ride half way across the world?
I’m going to have a “I got pregnant and now my feet have gone from a size 9 – 10 and can’t fit these shoes anymore so come and buy these shoes at a steeeep discount” sale. The proceeds will go towards funding our move to South Africa.
A dear friend wrote this note to me via Facebook about African political history and I though it was worth sharing. It was in response to this video I posted earlier this week
