Ma Wa Gray

  There is a moment in November every year when my diary gives up the ghost. I then have to gently coax it to the completion of the December examination marking session and then the poor exhausted thing bleeds ink rivers into my handbag, drowning in old lists and rehearsal schedules. It almost bursts with the realisation that another year has passed and it's spine barely held it together. Right now I am that diary. This year I have the overwhelming sense that I’m not the only one who would choose a broken, exhausted diary as a metaphor for their lives. If some people were to look at the dates that made up the past year in their diaries the list of unspeakable trauma and loss would just be too much for the pages to hold. In fact almost everyone I know has at least one new date in their diaries that speaks of the day when their lives changed profoundly. It is a day whose anniversary they will dread for the rest of their lives. I also know that many of the people I love are just very ...

  My late grandmother’s father was Irish. And to be honest I definitely have a touch of the blarney - whatever that means. In my mind I think it means I’m fiery, stubborn, creative and perhaps prone to over-exaggerating. It also means, as Athol Fugard says fairly frequently of his own Irish father, that I love to spin a yarn.  As a child I could tell the most terrifying ghost stories - ask Edu Boettiger. They were properly bad. Because I had made them up they didn’t really affect me but the rest of the populace of children in Winterton born between the years of 1983 and 1990 may beg to differ. I also thought I was bringing magic into my baby sister’s world by telling her intricate stories about how her Barbies came to life every night. The details were a little bit too real for her and ended in some terrible nightmares for her. Basically I did Elf On The Shelf thirty years ago and the results weren’t great. In my time I’ve got people to believe in fairies and Hogwarts, The Eas...

  ' The elephant herd is led by the oldest and largest female cow known as the matriarch.  The herd gravitate naturally around the matriarch, making her quite simple to identify. She influences the herd more than any other group or individual. In a crisis, the herd will rely on her to make the major decisions as to their course of action. Like humans, some elephants are born to be leaders.  Successful leaders earn respect through their wisdom, confidence and connections with other elephants. They need to care for the needs of their herd, and be compassionate to their own herd as well as the members of other herds.' Venkat Kumar Yesterday a great matriarch fell. If I were an elephant I would be with her herd, surrounding them, gently paying homage to her physical being with my trunk. I would sniff the veld, I would hear the croak of the frogs and I would be present with the herd who is left behind.  Instead I sit and weep through swollen eyes at my computer, desperate...

A Man of Magnitude One of the plays I study with my Grade 10 Drama boys is ' Master Harold'...and the boys.  There is a scene in the play where Hally, a young school boy, has a debate with his middle aged servant, Sam, about who they would consider a 'man of magnitude' to be. Various suggestions are made by both characters - Socrates, Karl Marx, Freud, Abraham Lincoln, Sir Alexander Flemming - and studying this particular scene in the play makes for both an interesting history lesson and a philosophical one too. Last night, out of the blue, I was reminded of this scene while I was praying as I considered who I would award a man of magnitude prize to. I would first need to design a profile of the qualities I think are most important in a man (and I will be the first to admit that they are different to the ones I would have for a woman). For me a man of magnitude is first and foremost a family man. A man who is devoted to his wife and children. Too much tragedy stems from...

 No Forest, it’s not like a box of chocolates - unless  they’re the new Quality Streets which have left the soul of South Africa very perplexed at Christmas time. Remixing packaging and leaving the fruitier flavours out has left many guessing as to what they’re gonna get…but no, life is like a game reserve.  I wouldn’t say I’m a game reserve fundi. I don’t go all ‘when Harry met Sally eating a sandwich incident’ when I smell the unique aroma of thatch and bedspreads that haven’t been updated since the 80s and immediately fall into a reverie imagining lamb chops on the braai at Satara.  I also don’t need to stop my vehicle for every brown bird that comes along. Give me the big show birds like a secretary bird or a kingfisher or anything with flashy colours and I’ll say, ‘That’s naas.’ And move on with my life. I have, however, had the uniquely South African experience of growing up in a country littered with game reserves. Travel a few hours in any direction and you’l...

  I had a delightfully funny digs mate who used to tell me a delightfully funny anecdote about how she used to spy on her baby brother after he had been disciplined. She says her beautiful, curly haired brother would sit cross legged and weep in front of a mirror, stroking his reflection saying, ‘Sorry Lawrence, poor Lawrence.’ It was the perfect pity party. I am actually envious of his balls to the wall sympathy for himself. If we ever found ourselves feeling a little sorry for ourselves she and I would stand in front of our bathroom mirror in our little digs pretending to wail, stroking our reflections saying, ‘Sorry Lawrence, poor Lawrence.’ I think it’s important that children learn to self regulate and deal with rejection or disappointment or making mistakes in a way that helps them to recover and move on. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional pity party, there is, however, something wrong if at some point you don’t pull yourself towards yourself and walk away from the mir...

 This weekend we have escaped to my in-law’s beach cottage at Bazley. It’s the kind of beach cottage that makes no sense. Rooms lead onto rooms and the toilet has the best view of the beach. It is old and has no tv. The frangipani flowers annually block up the gutters and most of the furniture would probably earn a fortune on Antiques Roadshow. The path down to the beach crosses the ubiquitous railway line and has a smell I will never be able to describe other than the fact that it is one of nostalgia. I love this place.  We have been joined by my cousin and his family. Their daughters are my goddaughters and could very easily pass as children of my own. Their eyes are framed with meters of black eye lashes and their hair curls in the sea air. Flesh and blood, mine.  Yesterday we ambled onto the beach at twilight. One must always amble onto the beach at twilight after a cup of tea. The children must all wet their clothes despite being told not to and, if you’re a Stockil,...

 Some fourteen years ago we lost almost our entire farm in a runaway fire that I can only describe as demonic. It was a truly horrific day.  On that day a baby burnt to death on her mothers back and the young mother was left with scarring over her entire body after months of skin grafts and agony.  Entire farms - buildings, livestock, pets, equipment, homes all disappeared in minutes. Houses with thatch roofs did not stand a chance and were obliterated into nothing.  Winterton was declared a disaster area and rightfully so. It was shambolic. The day started with two runaway fires - one on the other side of Winterton and one three farms away from us. The wind was incredible. I have never known wind like that. It was the kind of wind one could lean into. And I distinctly remember a moment in the chaos when I found my ancient grandfather discarding his walking stick as he stumbled out of his home to survey the chaos. The wind held him up. By midday the farm was empty. O...

  This afternoon I found myself in a coffee shop summoning up the courage to have my second Pfizer jab. You may well know that I am all for vaccinations but I got covid the day after my first jab and haven’t exactly bounced back yet. I’m not sick but a lingering fatigue and chest pain has remained. It has left me wondering about timelines for the second jab despite my consulting several reliable sources. Anyway, so while I was girding my loins in the coffee shop I became enraptured by a conversation taking place at a table nearby.  A beautiful woman was having a full on conversation with someone via her laptop. But the whole thing was happening in sign language. I could have watched her all day. As a Drama person I can honestly say that few people in this world nail facial expressions like those who speak in sign language. At one point the woman was telling her friend about breastfeeding and a crying baby and what looked to me like the biggest letdown of breast milk in the his...

 Yesterday Gray and I had some time to kill at Gray’s previous preprimary school while we waited for Eva to finish school (as it is her current school). Gray started at the school when he was one and a half and left last year at the ripe and mature age of five.  He took me onto the field that adjoins the little school where he and his two best friends spent many an hour doing whatever it is that little boys do. He ran off to a far side of the field to a random little tree and then came running back.  ‘Mom I went to check and there is a place for you to sit, it’s a bit spikey. Will you come and see where me and David and Matt used to play?’ - David and Matt have also graduated from preprimary school and all three boys are at different schools now.  I oblige and arrive at a fairly average little tree with an even more average, definitely spikey, tree stump next to it - I perch on the stump and engage my core for the first time in six months. Gray then shows me a pock m...

 As we all emerge from the perimeters of our gardens, a little shell shocked and promising that the next time we are caught in a riot we will not be caught with one litre of long life milk, icing sugar and a frozen loaf of bread bought in 1997, there is a very silent conversation going on. A conversation that I can guarantee 90% of us would never have thought we would have to have. A conversation we are all too scared to start, one I would imagine that is akin to admitting to erectile dysfunction or saying that your wife’s food is indeed better than your mothers. It’s the conversation that starts with admitting that maybe we need to consider other future options outside of South Africa, if not for us then for our children. The emigration conversation.  And do you know what? I’m going to pop that festering boil right now. We need to have this conversation and we need to not be ashamed by it because, like I said in a previous blog, there is a very clear line between being resili...

 This morning I read a political research note written by JP Landman titled ‘The Centre Is Holding’. It was a brief, insightful overview of where South Africa currently stands as a democracy. The document was littered with intertextual reference to Dickens, Yeats’s gyres (which I mentioned not long ago in my own blog) and various other (colonial) examples of when South Africa was on the brink but came back.  After reading it I wondered how many average South Africans would have had to Google ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ or in-fact the genocide of the Khoi and the San to be able to fully understand the article. As a relatively well-educated person I understood probably 80% of the references that he was making to moments in history and literature and for the rest I relied on my common sense to work it out. When I say relatively well-educated I mean to say that I hold a Masters Degree in Applied Theatre and Dramatic Studies which I completed at the University of Massachusetts and I am ...

  Most high schools have a prize for the student who never gave up. The kid who overcame unbelievable obstacles to make it to matric and, what is more, make it to matric leaving a legacy and example for the kids who are to follow after them. A few years ago a boy at my school won this award after surviving a savage hyena attack. He was camping in a game reserve and woke up to a hyena mauling his face. His early teen years were punctuated with several reconstructive surgeries to his face. In a time when acne should have been the main focus of every teen’s existence this little guy was saying to his mates - ‘hold my beer.’ I’ll never forget his final matric art exhibition which included the installation of a tent and some of the most moving art I have ever seen. It was remarkable. He is remarkable.  Yesterday I read an article by one of my favourite journalists, Rebecca Davis who happened to tutor me in Journ1 at Rhodes (for the one year where I reckoned I had the stomach to han...

  I don’t think many of us would have foreseen, a week ago, the sudden need to potty train our two year olds because we may run out of nappies. Or that lunch time would become a very real battle ground where if your kids don’t eat their lunch that’s it, no special top ups. Or that the litres of milk our children seem to mainline throughout the day would suddenly run dry.  This week we’ve had to climb into the skin of many South Africans.  I’ve never gone to sleep to the sound of gunshots and the smell of burning rubber.  Not only have I climbed into my bed, I’ve climbed into the skin.  There have been very few times when I’ve really had to ponder the future of my children in this country. Their prospects - both emotionally and financially.  I’ve climbed into the skin of the insomniacs who have to accept whatever education is offered to their children. When people queue in their vehicles for countless hours to get their share of fuel - climb into the skin of...

  I have purposely not posted the entire picture. Most of us are familiar with it - it’s a little toddler in mid flight after being thrown from a burning Durban building by their mother. The first time I saw it I wanted to be sick.  Today I want us to look at the rainbow of hands about to catch the child. Strangers standing as the soft landing. Strangers filling the gap between life and death. But they’re not strangers really, they’re South Africans.  I don’t have the energy to go into the complexity of what it means to be South African. It is as mysterious and diverse as the eleven official languages and multitudes of cultures that make up the rainbow. There has also been a lot of discourse - both good and bad - about who we are as people when little bits of hell open up as they have done this week. And I think we can agree that for the majority of South Africans trying to survive their lives is a daily hell - it’s not just a once off crisis. It is their reality. Quite a...