Lovedrops Jewellery - One of my Longstanding Passions 

As some of you may know, I have been making beaded jewellery since 2011. I was unemployed at the time and wanted to start my own business. I looked on the NYDA website for some ideas, and found jewellery making as something I would be interested in. 

I have been crafting jewellery ever since and enjoy it immensely, when I get to do it. I have taken breaks of months or years in between at a time due to lack of funds to buy beads. I currently have a whole lot of jewellery I'd like to let go of that I have made over the years. 

I'd like to ask my readers to consider supporting my jewellery hobby by purchasing one or two items, if not for yourself then as a gift for someone you love. In my new job I am not allowed to have side businesses, so I was thinking to rather donate a percentage of proceeds to people who need it. I was unable to make a success of my business due to lack of funds for marketing and not being able to afford an online store. The logistics of selling online full-time is also not feasible due to working full time in a demanding and tiring job. However, I'd like to make my current online jewellery store go live and then just have the jewellery posted once on a Saturday through a Postnet or by collection from my home in Kuils River. 

I'm just putting this out there for those who would like to help me help others in need through my hobby. So essentially the funds will go to people in need and to fund bead and supplies purchases. I would not get any of the profits, so it would run like an NGO, but won't be an NGO. Just being able to do my hobby will be rewarding enough for me. Please consider supporting this wonderful initiative, coming from a place of love and creativity. I will post the link to the online store once it is live, probably by next week. 

UPDATE: I AM ALLOWED TO SELL JEWELLERY IN MY NEW JOB. I have not made the online store live yet and might soon. 

Me and My Kinky Hair - a Journey through different times

I know some of you might think, is hair really such an important thing to talk or write about? For the intelligent maybe it is irrelevant, but generally in society people still get classed and judged according to the texture of their hair, particularly in racially segregated and in my opinion, generally racist city like Cape Town.

People wear many different types of hairstyles and it is acceptable generally in society to wear one's hair as one pleases. However, I find in the coloured communities and in general in Cape Town, hair is still a determinant on how you get treated in society and in the workplace and how successful one can become in one's career. It determines one's social affiliations. For example, on Instagram I noticed less likes on my posts with my natural hair than with straightened hair. It determines which men take an interest in you. Lighter complexioned and straight haired coloured men would rarely be seen with someone with African hair. I am glad and lucky to have found a decent and intelligent Rasta man who loves my natural African hair.

While wearing natural African textured hair is a noble and powerful thing, it can also increase discrimination and isolation, particularly among coloureds especially in the work environment where they would isolate, undermine and disrespect a coloured person with African textured hair in hopes of impressing and getting favour with their white superiors who still use divide and rule tactics (by approval of one 'type' of coloured versus oppression of another 'type' of coloured). Or one can be perceived as a trouble maker for coming across progressive and in being defiance of European beauty standards and thus be isolated and excluded. 

But let me talk about the pain and journey of healing of having my type of hair in a racist South Africa. When I was a toddler in the early 80's, all I saw on apartheid TV was white women with long blonde or black hair who were portrayed as the standard of beauty. We lived on the 'platteland' in Heidelberg at the time until I was about 11 years old. I then started wearing this fuschia headscarf belonging to my mother and pretended it was long hair. It upset my parents that I would do this but I felt a deep shame and inferiority about my short kinky hair and wanted to be like those women on TV. 

I had my first discussion about straighteners and relaxers when I was about 10 years old. I remember my mother and I having this conversation about using a straightener while sitting on our stoep looking out on our large garden in Heidelberg. My best friend from Heidelberg who had long wavy hair, told me about this miraculous hair product from Cape Town called a relaxer that her cousin was using, and that is how the conversation came up. My mother refused to straighten my hair with chemicals and just used rollers, a hair tong and a hair dryer on my hair. I had my first relaxer when I was about 15 or 16 years old. There were always girls who bragged about their long straight hair and were vain about it. There was also the narrative that girls who had textured hair were less beautiful and less attractive to the guys. However, growing up in a home where education, intelligence, good values and virtues were valued, I focussed instead on my school work and hobbies such as my art and poetry and playing with my Maltese poodle called Jessie instead of obsessing over hair. I based my self-esteem on my other qualities and also believed that I was beautiful in my own way. When I started relaxing my hair I developed a deeper sense of inferiority, as the straightened hair reinforced the idea that straightened hair was more beautiful.

After university, and after a couple of years of relaxing, I discovered the GHD ceramic hair plated straightener when it became all the rage around 2013. I also bought one and soon my hair was dry, brittle and damaged from using the GHD. I became tired of the chemicals and also had a boyfriend from Mitchells Plain who reinforced this practice of going to the hairdresser like the other girls to get my hair done. I started focussing too much on my appearance and this made me feel emotionally unhealthy and unbalanced. Then in 2016 after a few weeks in hospital for a serious condition, from which I fully recovered, I thankfully discovered the Natural Hair Movement. This was a breath of fresh air for me and a chance to rediscover my natural beauty. One one of my aunts commented before I went natural just how wonderful I would look with natural hair, but I think in her mind she was imagining curls that they advertise in ads with mixed race girls. Unfortunately, my natural hair was not like those bouncy curls, but tight kinky coils, strongly African textured hair like the Afro's once donned in the 1970's. I had to accept that my natural hair was not how I would have liked it but was strongly African and Khoisan. I then felt at peace once I went natural and accepted that 'this was me in my natural real state'. I no longer tried to achieve an image or strived for straight hair. It also reinforced the emotional connection I have with the Xhosa people, as I believe I have Xhosa lineage. I am proud today of my African Khoisan and possibly Xhosa heritage, even though this kind of ties is frowned upon by many Capetonians. But definitely from both my parents I have Khoi and San lineage. 

My hair reminds me that I am a child of the African soil, that this is my heritage and that I belong here. I still hold space for my European and Asian lineage, but I am proudly African and Indigenous. I may be talked about or frowned upon by certain other people who find hair like mine unacceptable and ugly, but my heart is clean from hatred and ignorance and I prefer to walk in the light of love and acceptance of blackness and humanness. I try my best not to be influenced by the ignorance, racism and xenophobia in society and try to embrace all people as equal, as we are. Black and Coloured people have been disadvantaged and we are not always as developed and educated as White people, but we are still human and deserving of dignity and respect. My thoughts go to the people of the Cape Flats as I write this. And the same goes with hair texture, whether your hair is bone straight, wavy, curly or kinky, all hair textures is beautiful and perfect as it is. I am also lucky that my features allow me to have different types of hair textures to suit my face. I have experimented with braids and that also looks good on me and I have made my hair into curls and that also suits me nicely. I am lucky to have this hair on which I can try diverse styles and each style suits my face. So in essence, for everyone, all types of hair is beautiful and should be accepted and embraced by all. 

My Medical Studies Once Upon a Time - Some Stories

 My Past Medical Studies

Something few people know about me is that I was a medical student at Stellenbosch University after high school. While I did not get to graduate, the journey is one I will never forget and which will always stay with me. 

At first I was accepted for and started a BSc Dietetics degree in the year 2000. I attended about a week or two of the dietetics classes, when I felt unsatisfied. I felt that I could have more potential. However, I might have over-estimated my abilities and asked the university to accept me into the MBChB degree for medicine, which they did on the 7- year extended program. I then had to attend academic support classes and do the first year over a period of two years. I was very happy about this and started with great eagerness and excitement. I was going to use my life to help others. 

Anyway, this did not work out, when I fell into a depression for various reasons including the isolation of being only a hand-full of students of colour on campus, and failed some subjects which I had to repeat. When I failed the 3rd year, I was unable to re-write any subjects and my studies then ended. However, I had the option of returning after completing a BSc in Medical Biosciences and then resuming from the first year or third year again. 

Unfortunately my parents did not have the finances to support my studies any further and I dropped out. This devastated me and I stayed at home for a year wallowing in depression. I eventually got out of it and became a bookkeeper, which I have done ever since these past 20 years. But if I had the opportunity today, I would return to medicine and be more mindful of my health. However, my interests are also in art, psychology and social work. I am very passionate about helping people and tend to understand people, however I am at a stage in my life where it is very difficult to change careers, let alone work and study part-time, which I know a lot of people do but due to being prone to stress and burnout, I don't know if I can do this. 

I have a few stories to tell of interesting things that happened during my medical studies, which is the point of my post. Firstly, in my third year during my obstetrics module, I delivered 7 babies at Karl Bremer hospital in my clinical rotations. This is one of my greatest achievements in life. During a gastro-intestinal operation I had to attend, I became nauseous from all blood and guts I was seeing and thus vomited in the scrubs area. Luckily a senior 6th year student who was mentoring me was there to support me. 

And one night I had a very creepy experience. During one night of rotations, when my shift was nearly over and the nurses gave me permission to go home, I did not have a lift home at 3am in the morning. I then walked down the eastern passage to the lecture halls of the university. The lights down the passage was dim and one had to pass a chapel in the passage. At the lecture hall there were small booths with couches, and I decided to take a nap on the couch. However, I started hearing creepy sounds. I heard the sounds of footsteps which came closer and closer and then eventually just disappeared. Besides the chapel there was no other room in the passage and the chapel was further towards the hospital. I still believe it must have been a ghost. I also heard the sound of what sounded like a cat maouwing or a baby's shrieks. I also believe that could have been ghostly sounds. After that night I promised myself never to walk alone late at night in the isolated passages of the hospital unless necessary. I was also very fit from all the walking I had to do in the hospital. I still remember my white coat and my lithman stethoscope I had to use. And my dissection set which I had to use for dissecting the cadavers. 

We also had to dissect the bodies of cadavers (human bodies which were preserved with formaldehyde) and that did something to one's psyche that stays with one for a long time. I dissected the heart, the brain and the penis amongst other organs. The smell on one's body after those classes were terrible, but it was part of the fun. We also had to take half a skeleton home, a skull and pelvis to learn the skeletal system. It was very interesting but also difficult to remember all those difficult medical names. I had my medical knowledge gained, with me for many years after I left and could help my family with some medical knowledge where I could give advice. 

I still feel like a professional today even though my role as a bookkeeper is a semi-professional or clerical like role. I feel out of place in my bookkeeping career and still have a strong desire to help people and change society. I hope my dreams of going back to helping people in humanities this time, one day soon. I stayed this long as a bookkeeper due to lack of funds to study something (part-time) I like and hope this change can come soon.