Ma Wa Gray

Because I’m quite bossy I dictated my requirements for the celebration of our tenth wedding anniversary. Stephen duly complied.  I wanted to go and explore my (unacknowledged and barely documented) family history at Rorke’s Drift, dip into some Isandlwana lore and then bask in luxury at a private game lodge for two days.  This was a fact finding mission, one where I felt I was single handedly correcting history because it was only in Ian Knight’s 2010 book ‘Zulu Rising’ that the Stockil family get acknowledged as the missing link between the original owner of the farm, Jim Rorke and the Swedish missionary, Otto De Witte who owned Rorkes Drift at the time of the battle. We lived there for some three years before we could smell what the rock was cooking and got the hell out of dodge. We left a few months before the battle to settle in Winterton where we have been ever since. My family traded with King Cetshwayo and he in fact gave us our clan name - uMjangwan which means ‘young ...

  This afternoon I shouted so loudly and aggressively at my warring children that I literally thought I was having a heart attack. The build up to the explosion reads like a normal day in the life of a full time working mother who is trying to get a million things done in her holidays because she doesn’t have any time to do them when she’s working.  The highlights package includes a night of bed swapping for the entire family. A lengthy shopping trip with both children. The excursion’s aim was to buy everything we need for our upcoming camping holiday. And yes, I ended up buying a Hotwheels car and over priced kiwis. I made lunch, which Eva refused. I gave her yoghurt which she spilled all over herself. We had several bouts of hysteria based on puzzles, car tracks, dummy usage and cracker bread. I then tried to rest and Eva knocked on my door on five separate occasions. They then went outside to the trampoline directly outside my bedroom and despite a severe warning continued ...

 We spent the past weekend at one of our favourite places - Umzumbe beach. I write about it quite a lot. My mom grew up on this beach and we have spent many a holiday on its familiar beaches. The weekend was a bit weird though. There was a cyclone warning and so the beach was closed on Saturday. The shark nets had been pulled up and there were squalls of intermittent rain throughout Saturday. Friday and Saturday nights were also unsettling. During the night various rituals took place on the beach. There was drumming and singing and whistle blowing and those taking part in the rituals would wind their way down the path to the beach. The path happens to be right next to our beach cottage.  Between the expectations of tsunamis, shark attacks and haunted sleep disturbed by alarming cries by Sunday I was feeling ill at ease.  Sunday dawned overcast but still. The beach was perfect and silent and my parents were able to take the grandchildren down to the tidal pool to give thei...

  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...