The season of giving.

hello readers,
Firstly i'd like to apologise for the lack of posts or updates , i just finished exams and I've been recovering, however this is the end of such behavior and i have interesting content coming up in the foreseeable future.
The season of giving is upon us  and honestly i feel overwhelmed. Firstly Christmas is a reminder that my high school career is coming to an end and also it has recently, in the last few years, lost alot of the magic it once held for me.
Instead of moping around however i'm trying to reform my thoughts about Christmas by changing what i do.
In actuality i am a great consumerist but for the season of giving i would really like to tone that down. So over the next week i will be sharing charities i support with you these charities really mean alot  to me so please donate or volunteer, if you can, any little bit counts and that basically it for today.

Child Soliders:
This cause really means alot to me i read Ishmeal Beah's along way gone when i was about 13 and i remember thinking that  it was really horrific that these children my age and younger were being made to kill people like that. I also remember eventually making a movie about it for history class and  finding out that girls were also affected by this and very frequently were also the victims of sexual abuse, i think war is not a situation that anyone should be put in especially not children.
 click here for a UNICEF fact sheet that basically  in broader detail what i said above.

WAR CHILD is the first charity i would like to bring attention to. you can donate anywhere from three pounds to three million pounds and they have opportunities for  you to volunteer your time. they have really cool projects and even though i really doubt that my audience would be first in line to buy Dolly Parton cd's, you could possible sky dive for them? hay living life on the edge is always fun right?
CHILD SOLDIERS INTERNATIONAL  is another great charity the do work in countries like Myanmar, which has been in the news recently, Thailand, Chad and India.click on the name to see more about them. The also do research on the psychological effects of war on children. You can donate here .

If you read this and donated thank you.
Please share and forward this article to raise awareness because this issue isn't really talked about alot and it should be.  This festive season season many children will not look under their tree and find presents they will just be faced with the traumatic reality of going into the world and having to kill people. Help end this.

Fat Shaming

This post could go alot of ways,

firstly i could write a long post about how being beautiful and fat don't have to be mutually exclusive, 

OR i could write about how body size is not at all a factor of beauty and the overused " its not about whats outside its about whats inside" would be the star of this post.

That's not my place, i am neither fat nor am i skinny. so to pass any judgement on fat people would be wrong. 

Lets start by what inspired this post: i was casually scrolling through my instagram and i saw a lovely picture: the comment being "i am not fat i have fat, having fat doesn't define me" as powerful as that was, it was overshadowed by the next post which was a picture of a fat lady with tights clothes on with a comment that read something like; "this is not thick this is fat ew, sorry if i sound rude" now i found it very ironic that this lady was fat and did not merely have fat. 

Body shaming is an exercise we all partake in, well that is a gross generilisation, many of us partake in. Studies done by myself in my mind indicate that we body shame for two reasons

1. We have a weird feeling of superiority because our bodies are more socially desirable 

2. We feel bad about our bodies and feel the need  to exercise this self consciously and demean peoples whose bodies are less socially acceptable.

Do you see the problem with body shaming now?
We don't live in a Utopian society but if we did everybody would wear what they wanted and not be judged for merely wanting to be happy.

In this life i have decided that the Keke Palmer body doesn't happen to everyone and if i dont wear what i want waiting for it to happen to be i'm doing to be 60 wearing bum shorts.

LET PEOPLE LIVE.

Its ok to express your personality by wearing what ever makes you happy, its not ok to judge people for the decisions they make regarding their bodies. 

Freedom park

Just a few shots of the exhibits at my new favorite heritage site in South Africa for HERITAGE day.

Freedom park should be added to bucket lists all over the world because it tells a holistic history of  Africa which is very cool so go.if i had to rate it, probably like a 4.5/5 

the website with directions and stuff: http://www.freedompark.co.za/

Humanity

i find it rather upsetting how little people want to know, not know but want to know. i remember grade 9 history i did a project on holocaust denialism and i still to today find it very upsetting on how that is seen as PREPOSTEROUS however denying the African genocide is not.
Rewind to two days ago when  i looked this women in the eye while she told me that " apartheid was everyone's fault even the blacks, it was a large mis-communication and they stole cattle from the dutch who had already been oppressed by the British"my first thought was please bring the proof of the cattle they brought from the Nederlands here first but on reflection i found this so upsetting ( and yes my continous use of that word is deliberate) that i went to the bathroom and shed tears. How melodramatic of me. 10 minutes later this same woman continued on about how someone people in her family died in Auschwitz and she wasn't too found of German people. PREPOSTEROUS. how could you look me in the eyes and tell me that my great great grandma being brought as a slave from  malaysia was her fault but i however must reconcile and turn around and admit to not having done the same. Bigotry at it finest,
When writing about race and racism i always try to be neutral not offensive i try not to be an angry black woman. But never in my life have i been so insulted. this obviously senile woman reprimanded me after i gave her my ; you're speaking kak face. its just sick that this person completely dismisses everyones humanity but her own.
one day when i tell my children about this i will be sure to instill that in them, many people have suffered and you must respect that suffering learn from it and about it and try your absolute hardest not to become a patronizing twat.

In memory of Stanza

My mom had this friend in university called stanza bopape he was an active part of the struggle.
She tells me the national party government cut him and two and threw him down a well and I tear up.
It's not the first time she tells me this story. Every time I tear up. Sometimes on the way to school I drive past a street named after him and I start to think... What if he was still alive? What would he have named his children? Would I even know his children?
To put this in context I don't know him. I have never met him. All I know is stanza bopape street and my mothers stories. But somehow I feel robbed... If he was still alive I could have listened to his stories. Stories I'd like to hear. About how they burned the banned books in fear that the impimpi's would report them. I just really don't know why his lack of existence in current times bothers me so much but it does. Every single time my mother refers to him I tear up and it's she doesn't even say it in an affectionate way but I cry. Stanza died for me to be free and I don't even know what free means... It constantly haunts me! This feeling of you're not doing enough to thank him. I don't know why I tear up at the mention of his name but it gets me so sad... Is this what he had in mind in detention? Me going to a school with white people who constantly deny their privilege? I wish he could tell me... But they cut him in half and threw him down a well.

Lupita Nyong'o

They are not many times where I cry because of things like speeches or interviews but lupita speech at the essence black woman show really brought me to tears because I myself have been one of those skin lightening cream almost users well let's just say that when I was about 11 I religiously googled which ones was best to use to get that Beyoncé skin that is why that speech was important to me. Firstly she highlighted the importance of representation of dark skinned ladies in the media. Then went on to talk about how she had grown up being continuously bullied and ridiculed for her skin tone, Alek wek was her example of somebody who made her feel beautiful. Personally I think she talked about a very important issue that the black community and black women have to deal with the constant need to be whiter to be lighter to have straighter hair and it is very important that people like lupita come out in the open and talk about these issues. I watched that speech and I had tears in my eyes because of what you was saying was so true yet so beautiful in terms of how she found exceptance. And it's a long way to go because I still go on Twitter and see teenage boys talking about how they want light skin girls or how being darkskin makes you savage but speeches like lupita's give me hope that we are working towards fixing colorism and self-hatred in our communities so I commend Iupita for going out there and speaking about something that is so close the hearts of so many black woman.
Link to speech: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPCkfARH2eE

Response to pharrells "new black"

So if you haven't heard about this by now see the link: http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2014/04/pharrell-seemingly-forgets-racism-still-exists-hes-new-black/
Ok so in Essence according to pharrell if we deny our systematic oppression and differentiate ourselves from old black people by all all changing our mentality to that of a house slave, all traces of racism will be erased from the world and we will become "new black" cause old black just isn't good enough anymore. Old black is our skin colour and we've evolved from that. So basically all my black readers, change your mentally to "new black" to erase all race problems you'll ever have the inconvenience of dealing with in 3 2 1.

Traveling while black

So I know this blog post has probably been done before but I thought instead of elaborating on it how about I share a few of my experience's and encourage you to do the same, vent maybe?
Ok so I was about 10 traveling through the Netherlands to get to England my mother and I were the only 2 black people in the plane and we stopped for a layover in the Netherlands  we were stopped and made to wait till the next flight a similar thing happened in Dubai when I was 7. Its easy to say it wasn't cause we're black but really? In the end we had all the correct things to continue our endeavor, but the inconvenience was the problem. Share your stories beneath.

A few tips when talking colonization with white people

this weekend I was at camp in magaliesburg to work on leadership skills with a very diverse group of my peers and while we were ab sailing a few white people overheard my conversation with my Nigerian friend. We were discussing how we aren't planning on giving our children English names or allowing them to speak more than one European language in fear that their minds might be colonized, now although this conversation may not have been targeted at them a few of my melanin deficient peers were quick to respond telling us that that was "stupid" now being the tenacious young woman  that I am I quickly fueled a conversation on how colonization has ruined the African continent, now I'll let you make your own conclusions on whether my outrage at the responses given to me in this conversation was valid
Firstly when I responded to the haenous claim that Africa was less technologically advanced than Europe by pointing out that African kingdoms such as ancient Nubia, Egypt, Mali and Benin all thrived in pre colonial Africa the response of the obviously historically clueless one was "well, my dad told me that there were no double story houses in Africa before colonization"
And when I said that different black kingdoms in the world had advanced for centuries without oppressing anyone the other said "but it's human nature" after this I said but they raped, murdered and stole from my people "human nature" was the response. then I made the mistake of saying that it is more fair for their type of folk to suffer  for the genocide of my ancestors than to prosper from the wrong doings of theirs the response from this same person was "what you do today will determine your tomorrow that's why it's fair that we prosper!" Then I said if that's true your people have a lot of crap coming their way now they were laughing at me. When I said that colonisation was just an all round bad thing they said "Nicky, you know all these websites you love today are due to that be glad I mean South Africa was colonized for the longest and now we have nuclear power"
So here are the tips earlier promised
1. Don't , you cannot discuss matters that are really important to you with people who won't even listen to your opinion because you are inferior
2.don't be angry, black people aren't allowed to be mad at these things they should be accepted with grace and forgiven otherwise you get no sympathy.
3. Don't talk about how Africa today is still being enslaved cause in their minds they've given the land back to the natives and cannot be faulted for the state of it, they think it's better now that it was before, I mean who cares that it's the largest recorded genocide that's effects are still haunting Africa today? I mean we now have double story houses and nuclear power!
4. Lastly, don't expect them to understand, they will never. Beliefs will always be stronger than education! So no matter what has been taught to them about why the black man is in the state he is in today most of them will always believe that they helped our backwards race reach it's potential

blog?

so after a conversation with a friend and the realisation that tumblr was unable to satisfy my blogging needs i decided to start a new blog which is less cluttered see old blog at http://fr33domkids.tumblr.com/ . however this blog is going to be different its going to be about the people i meet and the conversations we have. their stupidity or genius and how it is relevant to the world around us. and yes race is going to be a big topic issue as i will discuss the metaphysical dilemma of being black and african. Yep, so basically welcome to my blog.