Tag: South Africa

Rheumy Tomorrow. Museum the Other Day

Grace by any other name1 Comment

Telling her I’m giving up. Or rather, I have no more hope left in me. I’m sucking up all the pain tablets I can but getting not enough relief to even feel any relief.

Is there nothing more we can do for pain? Should I see a pain specialist? What can they do? Maybe I should! See, I knew this blogging thing was good for me! I hadn’t thought of going to a pain specialist. Rheumatologists seem to focus on the disease and not the pain caused by the disease. Surely there must be more. I’ll ask her what she thinks.

I did my second Cosentyx injection this Monday and bled for the first time ever. It wasn’t bad. Just weird. Unusual. I’m going to only do my thighs seeing as it’s once every 28 days anyway. I don’t think there’s any risk of the area becoming thick and hardened like with weekly injections. I don’t know if

Life continues as normal. One child pulling my hair and pushing me harder. Some days she’s so happy. Her twin is still into Pharaoh. And school is still hard on me. I’ve failed to find schools that don’t have a uniform, are affordable, and in a safe area.

But the good news is that my teens are definitely- unless they fail their final exams – going to the University of Pretoria next year. I’m so happy for them! I last reported that my son got accepted for both his choices and that my girl got her second choice. Last week she got an email stating she’d been accepted into the The Faculty of Health Sciences!! She will do her beloved Nursing!! Woohoo!

I’m so happy they are going to live their own lives. As I state in a video I posted last week, my mother stopped me from both my first and second choices (I wanted to be midwife or am social worker) because she said they weren’t high class enough. By having freedom to choose, they are living my dream, and it doesn’t hurt that one dream is nursing!🥹☺️ If she changes her mind, I won’t care. I told her dad that they might find they are actually more drawn to something else so to give them some leeway. Advocate Mommy!

We went to the SA national history museum this past weekend. As expected, our Reo motored through and out as soon as possible. I wish she could tell us what she feels. Too much space? Doesn’t like the aircon? Too dark? Too many weird people? She didn’t even glance at any of the exhibits whereas her twin was talking nineteen to the dozen!

You can find the video I posted with more (poor quality photos) HERE.

Edit: I’m not going crazy or overblowing things! Well, I knew I wasn’t anyway! I saw my blood test results after typing all the above. My inflammatory markers have never been this high. Not each time we’ve tested for them, at least. They’ve even gone down a normal 2.4 when I was on Enbrel – for a short time. Otherwise other times it was 6, 5.5… This time it’s 14.4 and our standards say anything above 5 is “High.”

This will really help with my case! I’m truly suffering and need more help than I’m getting. Clearly the anti inflammatory tablets aren’t helping and the Cosentyx hasn’t started (yet.) My liver is also starting to complain. Thankfully it’s not too bad at all. Just gone higher than the norm. My AST and ALT are usually around 7, 18 or 10, 18. This time they were 22, 24. I’m not worried YET because the highest normal is 36. And, my kidneys have stayed stable. It could be worse! But that is not much comfort given how terrible I feel day and night.

Something surely has to be changed, right? Or we really will do nothing until two months’ time when we re-test? How ‘dead’ will I be by then?

It’s Just Hair!

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No, it’s not.

Look how neat and cute this girl’s pony puffs are!

I loved my hair. I held nothing against it except for when we washed it in the bath tub and the water would cascade over my face and into my nose and ears. But other than that, we had a good relationship. Sometimes, a young family friend would come and plait it on Sundays and I was convinced that plaiting it made it grow.

I also liked my hair because it was different. In those days, in the Black schools, even little girls had bald heads. But I didn’t! I felt I looked like a girl whereas sometimes I couldn’t tell from behind if I was looking at a girl or a boy. I just felt so sorry for them. No fun experimenting with different styles Sometimes some would have sores on their scalps…

I liked my hair until the day the Muslim girl asked our White teacher why I never won her “Neatest Hair” competition and the answer was, “Because her hair isn’t like ours. It’s different.”

Different meant bad.

Different meant it never looked neat.

Different meant less than.

I had known she looked down on me. I didn’t realise she thought my hair itself wasn’t good enough. I knew my cornrows were very neat. I knew my hair was nice, the other girls said so! Even asking how I got it into my small curls. (My Afro hair- with its natural kinky curls.)

But nope. She hated me. And she hated my hair. It wasn’t good enough. Never would be.

And so, I started burning it (and my poor scalp) into submission. First with perms (I think Americans call it Jheri curl?) and then with relaxers. I tore my hair out my scalp with braid extensions and yearned for long, fly away hair.

My hair was an extension of me. Black. Less than. Not like them. Different. Never good enough.

But today, I marvel at the beauty of our hair in its natural form.

I marvel at its elasticity as I start a new set of microlocks on my teen daughter’s hair.

I marvel at our different curl patterns and its versatility.

Showing off my grey❤️

It’s not just hair. OTHERS have made it an extension of their idea of the value we hold, our worth.

Well, it is not just different. It’s different and wonderfully made. It can win any competition it wants to enter because it’s not less than. Who needs to burn their hair into submission, raising their chances of ovarian cancer in the process, when their hair is beautiful with the texture it was made in?

God made no mistake when He created me to have pony puffs and cornrows. His creation was good enough.

I AM Apartheid

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As in, each time it’s mentioned, it’s not a story to me, it’s reality. From the leafy suburbs where I went to my White school, to the townships guarded by police officers on huge tanks as you ‘enter.’

I tried to join some neighbourhood WhatsApp groups where I live. It’s a previously White suburb. I left. They hanker after the good old days and for me, there is no such thing. They get angry about things that only Black people do. Like, selling vegetables on the pavement without a license. We don’t have that concept! We just have “trying to provide for my family” traditions. They get angry that the people didn’t apply for this and that compliance certificate..They get disgusted because one guy who was selling was picking his nose.🤣🤣They have time for loads of petty complaints. But all I see is, “Those Black peoples who don’t have the capital to buy or resent stores are an eyesore on our pavements.” (Sidewalks)

And there’s actually order. They group themselves in specific areas. It’s like an unplanned marketplace. And no, when I drive past I never feel like “they’re a danger.”🙄

So, that will be the background or context to this rant that I put up on my other social media place. First, I’ll post photos of Gugulethu. That’s the township I grew up in. Home size, home type, and area not of our choosing. Forced there by the apartheid government. Then below the rant, I’ll put photos of the homes in Simon’s Town. I’m sure you’ll understand the heartache and sadness of my childhood experiences.

I’m leaving the descriptions in the adverts on purpose. The difference between Gugulethu and there, is stark and sad.

My goodness!

I am angry and heartbroken in equal measure!

Periodically, we see updates on our Black and Coloured people getting keys or money for land in areas they were forcibly removed from.

This hits hard. Those triggers that the woke talk about?

Takes me back to junior school when I moved from Mickelfield Girls (Independent school. Rebel that took this Black girl when other private schools kept to the law) to Rustenburg Girls (ex-government school), where I felt the difference.

No, the WHITE GIRLS IN MY CLASS MADE ME FEEL THE DIFFERENCE.

During history, “Do you know Zooloo?” (Lessons on king Shaka)

“Do you live in a hut?”

And randomly, they’d ask, “Do you have a house? Do you live a shack? Is it stinky?”

One girl said that her father said “Gugulethu is an eyesore.”

This morning’s news about the Gugulethu people receiving keys after being moved from Simon’s Town hit hard. I had no idea Black people used to live there. It’s such a “White” area!

They took us from beauty and dumped us in squalor.

They took us from the coast, from the mountainside and shoved us where there was nothing to see, none of God’s beauty.

Then the racists have the audacity to long for “the good old days” in the white neighborhoods of theirs!?

Which good old days?

The ones BEFORE they invaded our land, took us from our property and colonized OUR neighbourhoods while forcing us to live where they then mocked us for living??

Or the more recent ‘good old days’ when they smugly lived on stolen land and only saw us when they needed our broken bodies to wash their stolen toilets and weed the grass that was ours?

I’ve never rejoined any neighbourhood WhatsApp group. People don’t think before they type. And my own life is painful enough without reading their dark thoughts.