Reflections

I have just spent  three weeks in my homeland, Zimbabwe, and tonight is my last night. The weather has been  brilliant  despite the temperatures  being very high. I have managed  to store enough vitamin D to take me through  the last days of the British winter.

As I reflect on the experience of my stay, this blog post  will focus on three aspects that are close to my heart, which are governance, politics, and standard of life.

Governance: the state of the nation says a lot about the style of governance. Independence was about self governance, which is about tge native Zimbabweans  taking leadership  positions  and developing  the country.

I stand to be corrected  after 40+ years. All that I have seen  is deterioration  of what was a very promising  country. Those who have taken leadership position seem to relish the fact that they  are in those powerful  positions(at least in government), yet there is nothing to show of that powerful.

You only want to look at the state of offices to see the chaos that seems to be the pattern  right across the government  sector. I am just talking about what confronts  you every time  you want services to be provided.

Politics: It seems to me that the ruling zanu-pf has a sense of entitlement  as a result of having waged the liberation war, which brought about independence. Be  that as it may, I wish the ruling party put effort in making sure the standard of life for ordinary Zimbabweans  is lifted. If anything, the standard of life for ordinary people is worse  than it was during Ian  Smith’s  era.

The nation needs a different political party to govern  perhaps development that may bring about the change that is needed.

Bloganuary: Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved.

Love in a big family can not be felt, especially if it is a one parent family. Not because one parent does not love their children but because that one parent is the breadwinner, the nurturer they will be doing their best to provide for the family.

I was brought up in one such family, we were six children and mother dingle handely brought us up. She worked 24/7, leaving home at the crack of dawn and coming back at 8:00 pm exhausted. The only time my mother could have quality time was when we played the board game ‘ snakes & ladders’ she would make sure we gathered together on the floor to have fun together.

The time when I felt loved (not that I was not lived at my mothers, the love was shared among the six of us) was when I went to live with my maternal grandmother. There I was the only one, I had grandma to myself.

I was fussed over. Everything that grandma did was all centred on me. She literally brought me up to be the person I have become. In Grandma, I experienced what love was about she loved me unconditionally she punished me for things I did wrong, and even the punishment reflected her love for me.

The best thing about my grandma was helping me deepen my faith to be the God-fearing person I became it is through grandma’s love for me.

Bloganuary: Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

When I saw the prompt earlier in the challenge, I decided I was not going to write. Today, however, just going through the prompts, I decided to write two weeks after the prompt was posted.

I do spend more time thinking about the future because things are very uncertain. I think of where I want to retire to, how will I manage to look after myself and who would be there for me when I am no longer able to look after myself.

Everyday savings are being eroded with inflation, meaning what you may have thought would be enough is no longer enough as the value of money decreases. Having always lived in rented accommodation so the question is, will I even afford to rent? These and many other questions are what causes me to spend time thinking about the future.

I want to believe everyone is bound to think about the future it would not be normal if you stopped thinking about the future. I guess if I understand this prompt, it is not being obsessed about the future to a point where you can not enjoy the present.

It has just occurred to me that perhaps there is a difference between ‘thinking’ and ‘worrying’. There is no problem with thinking about the future. However, there is a problem with worrying. I am sure I am not the only one who tends to confuse the two.

Thinking about the future will make you aware of what you need, perhaps you, my find, yourself changing lifestyle and live simply so that the money you have may stretch a little bit.

The challenge I have is stopping to worry and take one day at a time, being alert to what is happening to the world economy and being open to other possibilities.

Bloganuary 11 : Come up with a crazy idea

I must admit this prompt made me chuckle when I laid my eyes on it. It was challenging to come up with one. I am glad I managed to have one

My crazy business idea is of a ‘Chicken Rental’ it is crazy in that the whole idea of rental is about renting something you want to use for a specific time that owning it is not necessary.

Who in their right mind would want to rent chickens? What specific reason would anyone have to do that? Hire chickens to just admire, and for how long? The whole idea is crazy unless the person has some crazy condition that gets a kick from having chickens for a specific time as one would with other things people hire.

Bloganuary: 9 What is your mission

It is when you are confronted with a question like this that you reflect back to see if at all you had a mission. The word itself means: ‘a task or duty assigned or alloted or self imposed’ from the day one is born their task that are assigned to you

As a girl growing up in my culture, the first mission was to become someone’s wife. I am glad that things have changed since. That is what was alloted to me by virtue of being a woman.

The prompt talks about what I imposed on myself, My mission first and foremost is to love God and serve him and love other people. That is what I imposed on myself. The question is how have I fulfilled it.

The way I have served God is accepting working in the church, which can be problematic because there is a pay cheque at the end of the month. I view any job, whether in church or the secular world. It is serving God as you serve God’s people, those with faith, and those with none.

Then comes the aspect of loving people, I know I can mot say confidently. I love people. The word I would use is ‘like’ people as it offers an opportunity of ‘disliking’, which is strange really when you come to think about it.

People’s actions determine whether you will like them or not. The word also give you an opportunity to change how you feel about them if they change their behaviour. I guess I like the flexibility the word is like. The more I think about this, the more I realise my mission has been complicated. I am a very politically minded person, and it is my own native country’s and the world’s politics that make me dislike certain individuals.

If my mission is to love God and other people, I am certainly not succeeding, I do not have problems loving God, I have conditions when it comes to other people. That is why I prefer liking people it makes life easy, and I can have conditions. However, that is not how Christian faith works, so I may need to rethink my mission considering all possibilities life throws at me.

Bloganuary: What colleges have you attended.

I find this prompt as confusing as the one on playing. I had to ask myself where my starting point was . Do I start counting from when I finished my secondary education, which makes sense since it is where you begin developing a career that colleges are about.

The problem with the prompt is not to know what is expected. Do I just name the colleges, or do I say something about each of them. If the latter is what I am supposed to do, then it makes sense as I will have much to write.

I have only attended two colleges since completing my secondary education. First, I attended the school of social work where I studied a diploma in youth work. What I studied at this college was introduction to psychology and sociology. I needed to study the psychology of adolescents if I was going to be working with young people and sociology, which about how societies function as societies form and shape young people’s lives.

Having worked as a youth worker for 29 years, I felt the need to reinvent myself. That is when I attended the second college, which I studied theology the idea was tobreinvent myself. I had always worked in the church, so I felt drawn to theology. What I liked was the degree I chose to pursue was Contextual Theology, which I found to be very fascinating

I completed my BA (HONS) in Contextual Theology and decided to do a Masters degree because I had enjoyed doing the first degree. It was interesting to study theology with no intention of being ordained as a clergy person.

Bloganuary: What does play mean to me.

I must admit the prompt for the second day left me puzzled. The prompt was in a question form:’ Do you play in your daily life? What says play time to you?

To me, play time means doing something that helps me relax from my daily routine. Put differently play time is doing something for fun. Recently, play time has meant playing word games on my mobile, which I found to be a lot of fun. What is more fun is being able to play with people from all over the world.

While it is fun to play these word games, I am discovering a lot of new words that have never been part of my daily vocabulary since English is my second language. My play time is proving to be a mental stimulation, which I am loving doing.

To me, play time is necessary for not taking myself seriously for a while and finding myself again. Working demands that you give your all to what you are employed to do, and at times, it means serious thinking and serious decision-making, which one has to do day in and day out. So play time means I can be myself without the oessurr of proving myself.

What makes me nostalgic

This may sound  strange considering the age I am now, I wish I could go  back to being a teenager  again. Why? Back then, I did not know what I know now. It felt like exploring  what life was was very exciting.

I lived with my mum, who made sure we were provided for so I did have to worry about anything except my education and spending time with myvftiends as all teenagers do.

I obviously dreamt about what it would be like when I am an adult working and having my own place. It is nice sometimes to live in fantasy as everything looks exciting.

I did become an adult and worked, had a place of my own, got married, and discovered that every stage in life comes with a lot of changes. Being an adult also comes with a lot of responsibilities, which can be challenging.

Why I’m nostalgic about my teen years is how carefree life was, then. I am not suggesting that having responsibilities is bad but does cause you to make serious decisions about all aspects of life. Whereas when I was young, decisions were made for me.

CHALLENGES

Challenges may propel you to try things that may be outside your comfort zone. Challenged may result in you not being able to function. The death of my sister has left me lost, not able to function.

There is the saying, “You never know what you had until you have lost it.” It was only after my sister died that I realised what I had, which I no longer had. I took having her for granted she was there whenever I needed her.

She was my going to person when things were hard. She always wanted the best for me. Every time we fell out with each other, she was the first yo ant to put things right.

She always put the needs of others first before her own, encouraging and supportive. There is now a void that she left, which I will mot be able to fill as I realise now she was the only one who was able to do what she did.

It is now two months since her death that I am finding life a challenge, I so much want to call and talk to her, and then I realise I can not, then I am lost. I miss her so much that I wish I could reverse what happened.

All I can do is accept that she is no longer there, which is very hard for me at the moment. I feel very much on my own. I guess that is what grieving is about my word it is painful. This is a challenge I am living with at the moment.

Every life has value

The recent events of Israel and Hamas have got me asking questions like, “Who determines whose life is valuable and whose life is not valuable.

What has really got me even if I can never understand the issue between Israel and Palestine is how most of the world is quick to justify Israel’s actions towards Palestinians.

Palestinian lives are lost every day and never make it to the headlines of most newspapers, yet when Israel life or lives are lost, the world seems to wake up. Are we meant to believe that Palestinian lives do not matter?

The little I know is that this conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on since 1947/8 when, as far as records are concerned, Israel occupied Palestinian land and forced Palestinians to leave.

No one condones 700 lives being taken for no special reason, nor does any one justifies the bombardment of Gaza as a way of payback. Two wrongs can never make a right. The West appears to be on the side of Israel for reasons they alone know.

My argument is why is it every time Palestinian lives are lost, it is not talked about, but every time Israel lives are lost suddenly all headlines of the world’s newspapers are about how terrible that is. Yes, it is terrible when innocent lives of bith Palestinians and Israelis are lost.

However, it is clear that the so-called developed developed nations send a message that Israel can not do wrong. What is so frustrating is that even the ‘United Nations’ does not seem to call out on Israel’s aggression towards the Palestinians. It feels like Palestinians are now understood to be Hamas.

Is it fair to show clearly that Israel lives more valuable than Palestinian lives? That is how it looks at the moment. Most leaders of the Western nations have come out in support of Israel and nit seem to care about Palestinians. The only voices have come from Africa and Ireland in support of the Palestinians. Something is not right. The same governments condemned Russia of its aggression towards Ukraine, yet it seems okay for Israel to be aggressive towards Palestine.

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