freshly sharpened pencils...

I remember my first years of high school being made to cram and recite poems and ideals which were supposed to later shape the man I was to become. We blinded complied and wondered what all the fuss was all about. Well today, one of those poems came back to haunt me. In the midst of all the chaos and mayhem that surrounds, I found myself starting to recite, “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run…”Precious lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem If.

As I press on with the new career - online media - who would have guessed a mathematician would end up dabbling with the wonderment of the internet? General student-skintness is slowly waning but I think I may be going through some quarter-life crisis: wondering what the hell the rest of my life will be. It’s a period of plenty If’s and each one is extremely open-ended. If this is it then… If this career takes off then… If it ends up Graduate School then… If it’s back to Africa then…Kipling’s poem pretty much brings to life the journey that I have to take here onwards. It’s very prophetic in its statements and yet so candid in its expressions. I could be at my lowest ebb or highest peak and it would still make sense. Those aren't merely just words in four verses. Those are tools, pitch forks and spades, to equip, mould and build every man, woman and child. For your own sake read it:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

And so we have a new mayor, Boris. I woke up yesterday readying myself for the first day of this four day week expecting the Central Line not to be working – and then blame it on the new mayor. Pity, that didn’t happened and I got out at the other end to a sunny and fresh London. No doomsday here but I shall remain morbidly fatalist. Will the buses stop running? Will the tube strike go ahead? Will congestion return to London? Will the Olympics be a fiasco? Will I lose my sense of being a Londoner?

We shall miss Ken and his antics. Out-spoken, almost unapologetic and quite frankly rude. Weirdly enough I loathe Boris for exactly the same reasons. However, I am open to his idea of winning me over and gaining my trust as he wishes. I shall press on but a slender part of me wishes him a measure of good fortune in his role. We are watching, closely!

I may have grown up in the same Matabeleland province as parents, but my upbringing was a reflection of what they never had, or possibly would be been the stuff their childhood dreams were made of. They didn’t go to a pre-school that gave elocution lessons, or had the chance enrol in one of the country’s finest schools steeped in a culture of all round excellence. While my father in his youth may have had to bring the cattle home after school in rural Kezi, I had cricket and tennis in the afternoons and while my mother’s packed lunch may have been sweet potato in her rural Insiza setting, I found the cold meats and salad lunch unpalatable.

Inasmuch as I may believe to be a product of a modern democratic and yet decaying Zimbabwe ruled by the black majority, I remain a minority. Few have been so fortunate to have a privileged upbringing in a country where poverty and social injustice is the norm. Having studied abroad, suddenly I am aware that I can hardly spell in SiNdebele or complete a sentence without borrowing a word from English. I daren't try read. I may have a Nguni name with such gracious meaning but then again I have to second guess what my first language is. I sometimes ask myself what language I actually think in.So who am I? I am a product of those pedigree dreams which our African parents had for us - to be all they could never be. But it has turned us into mongrels, hybrids who can command an intellectual debate on western philosophy but shy away issues concerning the continent at present: AIDS, malaria, poverty, conflict and democracy.

I must admit that I am an outsider to South Africa but I can’t help being enamoured by its politics. Quick frankly the politics in my country is pretty much screwed and so I may as well borrow some sugar from the neighbour. I’ve just read with some glee that the ANC is jazzing up Jacob Zuma and pimping him up for the world. A year ago I had my reservations and thought, darn it, SA will move swiftly down Zim’s route when JZ takes the mantle. However, I have since warmed up to the guy and I guess the pimp who’s doing the pimping must be praised for changing the opinionated arrogant mind.

Unlike Bob (that aging dictator in that ailing country) or Thabo (the intellectual who has started to bore us stiff!) JZ presents himself as an ordinary man, far from the aloofness which still resonates in African politics. I’ve always have had this idea since my life that politicians are special beings, almost god-like, who are on a different but yet higher level than the you-and-me on Main Street. JZ is the guy who you would probably bump into in a crowded bar and go on to offer him a pint. He’s the sort of chap who isn’t shy of admitting to his mistakes and who says a potential president can’t have a looming trial? He almost strikes me as my current mayor Ken Livingstone. He’s the ordinary Londoner who just happens to run London. Maybe South Africa could benefit from the ordinary South African, who just happens to run the country. But will JZ's shady past cloud the dreams and aspirations of a young country?

Interesting things can happen during a typical morning commute. For the past two working days I have been one of the two thousand people sitting, mostly standing in a crowded tube train somewhere under London. Signal failure was one excuse and the one this morning was that somebody triggered the alarm of the train behind us by mistake! This obviously in normal in a city of seven million odd souls but it brings out certain social characteristics I don't find during a seamless commute.

I find London and its inhabitants a bit too stuffy on the tube. At least on the bus, one sometimes hears the annoying start of a conversation with the bleating of "I'm on the No. 73!" into a mobile phone. Love it or not it breaks the monotony of the glum faces and uncool silence - and you get to enter the world of another Londoner and try piece together a that person's world from the conversation they are having. On the tube one is confronted by a haughty atmosphere so steely and lifeless I sometimes wonder if I really am in the most vibrant city in the world. It's all about the shuffling of a free paper, the thump-thump from some over zealous MP3 player and the riders staring into nothingness, trying to avoid the little eye contact they can afford.

Throw a spanner on the rails, stop a train, do something and life emerges. Firstly with the inaudible grunts of displeasure, followed by loose small talk, then witty giggles finally leading to full on conversations and random bouts of laughter. Is it because we suddenly realise just how fragile we are and escape that fragility by talking to a complete stranger? If only these poor people could take a leaf from the commuters I used to know in Souther Africa. Life doesn't suddenly start in these awkward moments but it exists, rain, shine or a president who clings on the power after being rejected by his people.

It's just gone 17.07 this Tuesday afternoon and it's that time of the day when one simply is a zone they'd rather not be. Caught up in a constant work flow, lost in the stark oblivion and wondering just how one got caught up in the this whole process of feeding another human being's pockets so well. I don't think I'll ever understand capitalism and the whole notion of being competitive. We labour perennially to keep the cogs in action, the wheel of life moving lest we miss the gravy train.

Well lately I do think I've been lost in this worrisome underworld. I wonder if moving to the big bad city has hardened my senses and made me less a human being and more an animal. Treating life as though it's a competitive sport: the race for the morning shower before the room mates fet hold of the water; the brisk walk to the tube station out pacing the suit playing with his Blackberry; the shove into the crowded train (sorry old lady!); the dash for the office dodging the militant cyclists and irritating black cabs. All this to spend the ten hours plotting and planning on ways to beat the competition that lies hiding somewhere in cyberspace.

Sad, really sad! The monster has consumed me and like Jonah, I must to find my way out.

Right, it's been over a year - damn 18 months but who doesn't believe in being raised from the dead?

I seriously have almost forgetten what blogging is all about bu tI shall soon find myself in that "zone" of blabbering on about the nothing-ness that surronds us and the trivialities of life in this good for nothing planet. In case you were wondering, I now earn a dishonest living in the big bad city, feeding the bowels of globalisation and capitalism. My days are spent convincing unsuspecting louts on the internet to perform random sessions of point-and-click and milk their plastic money to the hilt. Dare I say, I love it. Academia has taken a back seat, sorry!!! But no regrets.

I've been reading through past entries in this blog - you should too - and I found them interesting, entertaining, charming, funny but sometime out right desperate for attention. I find it a bit scary that I have grown in the past 18 months but I will continue to share my witty infantile drivel.

My pencils have been sharpened and so here goes nothing!

well, that's what i haven't been doing over the last month. well i lie. my girlfriend and i went to her sister's boyfriend's sister's birthday party a couple of weeks ago and it was smashing. the video evidence which was disected on the sunday morning had plenty to show - and plenty laughs too. ndindindi full-time... and we can handle it.

next week is her sister's party up in the midlands. it's a surprise which we all hope she hasn't caught wind of and it's pretty much going to be a who's who of who's who. i more i get to know B, the more i realise that her people know my people and my people know her people. and so at this party at the month end, i shall be pleasantly surprising people. i'm already preparing to answer the question, "so how did you guys hook up?"

i wish i could tell you the long story short but hey these things happen when you least expect them.

besides the amaFaro in our lives, we still do normal people things: you know eat, sleep, catch buses, go to work, go to school, etc. only difference is that certain factors have changed and those changes have been welcome! it's so good to be here and alive.