Hi school...


Never could get my head around that one!

What's in a name? 2

Thanks to a Canadian friend for this story. She has lived the last 15 or so years here in Africa but, wanting to return to North America, she is applying for jobs. How, she asks, should she answer the question "are you a member of a visible minority?" The application form is certain there are only two options: yes or no ... the form also asks her to confirm that the information she has given is true to the best of her knowledge.

What's in a name?

Or, perhaps, when is a name a dangerous label? Quote of this week on matters of identity must go to Dr Peter Kraska or Eastern Kentucky University, commenting on the death of (yet another) ordinary citizen at the hands of an over zealous military style SWAT team:

"The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy."

The full story from the BBC is here.

Given what we know about self-fulfilling prophecies in educational and other contexts, that a child labelled by teachers or class mates as "dumb" (or whatever local term we like to use) , is most likely to become a low achiever, isn't it time to stop worrying and start making some changes???

global village mutterings

bluefluff reminds us of the census of the global village just as I am watching SABC news and learning that from around 8 million five years ago the number of cell (mobile) phone users on this continent has increased to 100 million and uptake shows no sign of slowing in the near future. Forget about wind-up laptops, it's a version of the mobile phone that will bridge the digital divide on this continent with wireless connectivity to the net from local government provided relay stations based in schools, colleges, community centres and hospitals. The big secret which the mainstream phone companies don't want us to know is that there is no need to wait until they put in landlines -it's actually perfectly OK to skip a technology generation and move right ahead NOW! In fact many have worked it out for themselves and there are women making a living sitting on stools by the roadside, or in the market or the shopping malls, armed with a cellphone and a car battery providing mobile support services already. If you don't have electricity at home, no worries, these women will charge your phone while you wait or, if you have a job then you charge it there. You don't actually call on your phone either, most of the transmission activity on this continent is by SMS.

The new northern suburbs seem to go on and on forever, this one is a good 45mins drive from 'town' at the best of times - much longer at rush hour - and is by no means the furthest. Like many the area is walled with a fortress (or theme park) like entrance.

More rainbow thoughts

There is just so much to see and reflect on here. Superficially there is not so much to say except that this city has grown and grown – in all sorts of ways, and now looks more than ever like a big city one might find anywhere. There are good and bad areas, fast cars, fast food and fast bucks coming and going. But, there are more subtle changes too, that reflect the politics of recent years. Whilst many whites who could in 1994, were planning on leaving, others were planning on a closer move – to the northern suburbs of the city where self-contained and self-declared as 'secure', clusters of houses were springing like mushrooms all over the hills that form the greater mass of the outer reaches of the city. The idea was to escape the violence and insecurity which, consensus had it, was about to spread from downtown to the closer-to-centre white suburbs (including the one I am now peacefully residing in). 12 years on many, both white and black, have moved out to the clusters on the hills – creating new ghettos where those without cars are imprisoned in isolation and those with cars are destined to spend up to 4 hours a day commuting. The leafy inner suburbs they have left are quiet except for the rumbling of all those cars commuting through them to get to downtown… And, most interestingly, the security company vehicles which used to promise 'armed response' and would be stationed at intervals along the wide kerbs of the leafy inner suburbs have gone north too. They have been superseded, if not exactly replaced, by the pickups converted to tow trucks deployed by the growing number of salvage companies who monitor busy cross city intersections for the results of commuter road rage…

Rainbow reflections - and a little bit of history

More than 10 years on and I am back living (temporarily) in the "rainbow nation", in fact, in Melville, Johannesburg - barely half a mile away from the street we lived on when we first arrived in southern africa in 1994. We were the rainbow family looking for hope and a home in the "new" free South Africa. For now, however, my mind is on a young woman who travelled here on the same plane as I did the other day. 21 years old now she is returning to the country she was born in but which she left, aged nine, in the company of her anxious parents. She is looking for answers, about what this land is, who she is and where she really belongs. Her questions remind me of the circles within in circles of identity in this part of the world.

Back in 1994 this city was smaller, there were fewer distractions and for many the highlight of a Sunday morning was a trip to Rosebank Rooftop Market. A curious event, this market was located on the top of a multi-storey car park in one of the smartest areas of town. Even more curious than the location was the side event that took place on the neighbouring ground floor parking lot. Here ordinary white families of mainly European origin would come and sell their worldly goods in a desperate bid to raise enough cash to leave to return to Europe or beyond – anywhere that wasn't here, in fact. Often the parents had come to South Africa as children themselves. Sons and daughters of poor families they had left the UK and other parts of Europe in the 1950s and 60s in search of opportunity and an escape from a class system that offered them little to look forward to. My own brother's best friend had left that way leaving us in charge of his budgie! Now, in 1994, with a recently majority-elected government they were fearful of reprisals and rejection as black rule became a reality. The treasured personal possessions with which they had first arrived in South Africa were now their only assets in a bid to return whence they had come. I remember marvelling at the goods on display -preserved in time crockery, toys and trinkets that were so familiar from my English childhood -disturbed at how readily these people would sell their heritage in a desperate bid to reverse time and escape what I saw as a bright future.

Returning to my travelling companion, just 12 years on in 2006, I am wondering how many more circles there are to come, when and where will they all end?

Wherever I am

Circumstances have virtualised my entire working identity these last few weeks. My physical absence does not seem, however, to have been noticed by any but those with whom I normally share a bricks and mortar work space. It certainly hasn't changed the type or amount of work I have done or the people I have met, talked and collaborated with. What it has done is confirm my belief that working strictly 9-5 does not necessarily guarentee a good home-work life balance.

A BBCOnline news article takes my thoughts further as it ponders a future where we will wirelessly be virtual full time, not because we will be tied to PCs which will contain our lives but because our lives will be online all the time, hosted by other people through web-based programmes containing all that is important to us. We may be physically wherever we will (choose to) be and from wherever that is we will be wirelessly able to access whatever bit of us we want just then (in fact, just as we can do already with del.icio.us). Which leads me to wonder whether if I leave enough of me in different applications accessible online I might actually be able to fully automate the working part of me, make my physical me professionally redundent. I might then gain physical autonomy without losing the material advantages of paid employment...

hmmm! 

Last word on the topic!

Really - this has got to stop. This is not supposed to be a blog about (in)conveniences. Things are getting out of hand.

I was grateful to Nog for introducing me to a site counter that worked and happily installed it. Worked a dream and I waited patiently for the next day to see what results it produced. Opening up the detailed record I was horrified to find that the advertising on the site is VERY focused - on whatever you have most recently blogged about. Horrors! My page is covered with adverts associated with toilets!! Need a composting toilet? There's a company on my counter results page! Need toilet partitioning (whatever that might be - sounds anatomically challenging)? Try my blog counter for more details!

And, of course, no doubt this post will just make matters worse... gotta go and have a think about what I might choose for my next post, hmm, this could take a while! Feel free to help me decide...