Every single little girl grows up learning about the gracefulness being a ballerina.

Every single little girl, at some point in her life, yearns to dance.

Every single little girl wants to wear a tutu and a tiara and prance around on tippy toes and dance to her hearts content.

Every single little girl dreams of dancing to audiences on a stage and getting praise and applause for being beautiful and graceful and perfectly girly.

Dancing to me, is an essential part of growing up.

Dancing is an essential part of human culture.

I got the link to the Save the Cape Town City Ballet site yesterday, and I think it’s a crying shame that the company is not getting the funding that’s needed to develop and bolster all the little girls in Cape Town’s dreams of being a ballerina.

Basically the Ballet company will close down if it doesn’t receive urgent funding.  We cannot let that happen.

I don’t have a little girl, but I have a niece.  A little girly girl, who learnt to walk on her tippy toes, before she walked on flat feet.  She has just turned 3, and is forever twirling and dancing and prancing around.  The thought of her not being able to go to that prestigious company, if she ever gets that good, just because a few bureaucrats were shortsighted, makes my blood boil.

So, lets all pull together to do something about it.  Please tell your companies.  Please tell your colleagues.  Please tell your friends.

If you donate something, you also stand a chance to win one of the following:

• One of 5 sets of double tickets to the Poetry In Motion Gala Event, to be
  held at Artscape Opera House on Sunday, 9 May 2010 [ More info ... ]

• 24 Bottles of wine, kindly donated by Michael Oliver, along with 3 signed
  copies of his books.

• A magnificent poster-size photographic print from Cape Town City Ballet’s
  current photographer, Pat Bromilow-Downing.

Please use the reference JV1 for your donations:

Cheques should be made out to:
CAPE TOWN CITY BALLET and posted to
PO Box 94, RONDEBOSCH 7701

For direct internet transfers:
Bank: NEDBANK
Account name: CAPE TOWN CITY BALLET
Branch code: 123 209 (Please note: Some banks will require 2 extra 00′s at the end, eg. 123 209 00)
Account no: 123 200 8842
Reference: Name + Reference Number (JV1)

If you make a donation, please send an email to win@savecapetowncityballet.co.za and with details of  your name,
contact details and the amount donated. All emails received will be placed into a
random draw, to be held on Tuesday, 4 May 2010.

I’m a little late, but my freedom of expression was curbed at work today, because Websphere has decided that my blog is a games site… but anyhoo… I cannot be stopped

There was a call a few days ago for all SA bloggers to unite against the threat against freedom of expression in South Africa. Now I don’t normally get involved in political issues on my blog… but this time I feel strongly enough about it, so I’m joining in the fray.

Expression of my thoughts is why this blog has been going for so long. Yes, some thoughts have been tempered over time because there have been huge ramifications about what I’ve said in the past, but in essence, my blog has remained about my thoughts about what happens to me and affects me and my family and friends.

From my blogging, I know how difficult it is at times to stand by what you write… there are very often times that a lot of people disagree with me, but it’s important to get those thoughts out, I think. If I think about something in some way, guaranteed someone else will think the same thing but not be able to put it into words. And by getting those thoughts on my blog, I get to properly explore my feelings and get to rationalise them too (well hopefully anyway)

Anyway, this was a very long preamble, and hopefully you’re still awake but because of the reactions to some of things I’ve blogged about in the past, I take my hat off to investigative journalists. I really do! They play an extremely important role in our society and even though, I don’t necessarily agree with the tactics they might employ to get the story… get the story they must!

And so, that is why I join Chris Roper and other SA bloggers in this campaign, and post the message as written by Sipho Hlongwane

Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of the ANC YouthLeague spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the Secretary General of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money laundering practices of Dumisani Lubisi, a journalist at the City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations. We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on Constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa.
We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democratic safeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.
The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to
silence them in their legitimate work.
We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but a insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information
about the Youth League President.

We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other Constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.

See the blogroll here

Ooh and an update… the ANCYL has responded

If you follow me on Twitter and FB you would have noticed that I’ve changed my picture to this one with me and a Christmas hat… well… iMod is running a challenge at the moment and the first 500 people to change their photos to include a photo of themselves with a Christmas hat will get R2 donated on their behalf to Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and FeistyFemale (Beverley Merriman) will match the donation

http://imod.co.za/2009/12/01/twismas-time/

What are you waiting for?!!

Change your photo and add your name to his list, it’s for a great cause!

Do you remember the Childrens home that we threw a Christmas party for a few years ago?  The stories written at the time, about meeting the kids and the resulting party are here, here, here and here:

Here’s an update on the St Janes de Chantal Haven and how the kids are doing.

Remember Arthur?  He’s been adopted and is apparently very happy in his new home.

And Kia and her bad skin which we thought was excema?  It was actually shingles, and apparently eventually they couldn’t even put clothes on her little body because it got so sore.  She was 2 years old at the time this photo was taken.

Hannah has lost 5 of the children that were at the home 2 years ago.

At the moment, there are 25 children at the haven, and a few of them are in hospital receiving treatment.  Not all the children she gets have HIV, some of them come from abused homes, and most of them need medical treatment.  She’s still getting children from Child Welfare, but more and more of them are being dropped off at the gate to the home.

A month ago, 5 armed men climbed over the walls of the haven and held her and the children up, demanding money.  Apparently, she just told them that she didn’t have money, and they should all look very carefully at the children because one of them might in fact be one of their own!  She eventually had them changing nappies and feeding the babies J She’s one amazing woman!

She told the story of the one baby she’s got in her care at the moment, and this is heartbreaking…

She got the baby girl a few weeks ago when the baby was 2 weeks old.  The mother had left the baby on the floor of her shack while she went off drinking.  When she returned, or when someone came to answer the screams (no sure which one), a rat was eating the baby’s face.  By the time the baby got rescued, the nose had been chewed off as well as part of the cheek, and the baby is currently being prepared for her second round of plastic surgery.

I can’t actually get that out of my head… that poor poor baby my heart breaks for her.  Never mind the anger I feel towards any mother that can just leave their 2 week old on the floor to go drinking?!!

Leanne, who went to visit the home over the weekend, said that the kids are happy as usual and the carers only too grateful for an extra set of hands to help with bottle feeding and nappy changing and story reading.  And as you can imagine, they need a constant supply of nappies and formula for the babies and food, clothes, and school supplies for the older kids in her care.
I’m going to try and get there in the next few weeks, so if you have anything you want to donate, let me know.

… and it’s time to think about those less fortunate than yourselves

Laura is putting together a Christmas party for a children’s home and she’s looking for people to donate R100 per child for gifts.  Please help out if you can.  She’s still looking for 10 gifts for kids.  The details are HERE

If you want to get more involved, the party is now going to be on the 12th of December… and I’m doing the photography

It’s Election day today in South Africa, so yay we have a day off work.

It’s 9:30am, and I’m still in my jarmies and having coffee, and the weather is miserable today!  Twitter is currently going nuts with everyone posting photos of the queues all over the country, and their inked thumbs when they’re done… it’s so very cool to watch it via social media as it happens .  The guys are using the #VoteZA and #SAElections hashtags, if you want to search for the pics (go to http://search.twitter.com and type #saelections ).

We’re going to go this afternoon, I think.  Hopefully the queues would have died down by then.

I’m hoping that the ANC won’t make the 2/3rd majority they’re looking for, but I don’t have that much faith in my countrymen.  If they get that magic number, they’ll be able to change the constitution.  Or as the clown of our political system says… the ANC is not looking for a 2/3rd’s majority this time, they’re looking for a 3 3rds!!  He’s a madman, but that’s a topic for another post… and he scares me… he’s too dangerous… it reminds me of the fanatical following that Hitler had actually. Just read this post that appeared on MyNews24 last week.

Yesterday, the office and the shops were buzzing with election talk.  Some people not wanting to say who they’re voting for, and others shouting out that people must vote for the “winning party” or anything other than them.  From the reactions yesterday, and the way people were responding, I think that most black people will vote ANC again… just because they’re the winning party… there seems to be no substance behind their decision… and that’s very sad and worrying.

In fact, the M&G have had a poll prediction website up with a whole load of questions, and dependant on your answers the program would tell you who you should vote for.  Very clever, and it had the policies of the major political parties  built into the answers.  According to that, I should vote for the DA or the ID.  Everyone in the office was doing the poll  yesterday, and eventually one of the ladies piped up that she think it’s rigged because no-one’s outcomes said they should vote for the ANC.

It wasn’t rigged, because I’d seen twitterers results being posted and results on Babynet too, and there were a few people whose results said they should vote for ANC.  PMSL! What does that really tell you?

Anyway, I need to get today going… I’m going to try catch up with my blog reading later… and I’m taking photos for Earthmosaic too… hope you all are too!!

I spotted a newspaper headline on the side of the road today.  It read “Zuma: Tutu hates me”

My immediate reaction… Shame! Too bad!

My twitter stream has been going mad in the last 2 days with this Zuma news, and the best chirp by far, was tweeted by @woganmay this morning after the NPA announced that Zuma’s charges were dropped “My, what a sunny day it is in South Zimbabwe today…”

Last night Lance and I woke up to the sounds of gunshots.

Before all you non-SA people lift your eyebrows… it doesn’t happen often in my neighbourhood… which is why we woke up.

Last night, however, it sounded closer than I’ve ever heard them.  First we heard screaming.  Then we heard shots.  It was definitely from 2 different guns, they sounded very different.  And it must’ve been very close for us to have heard the screams.  And then the shots were on the move… the sounds came closer to our house… and then further away.

Lance and I were chatting about it this morning and we both feel that the strangest thing of all was that there were no police sirens AT ALL!  Weird.

They must’ve been called by people living closer to the noise.  But who knows if they ever arrived?!  I suppose I’ll have to wait for the next email from the neighbourhood watch people to see wha was going on.  If it had happened closer to us, we would have phoned the neighbourhood security and the police but we didn’t because we had no idea where the sound was coming from and we weren’t going to take a chance and go looking for it (but nothing and no-one came down our road).

My MIL phoned this afternoon though, to tell us that a friend of hers heard on the radio that there was a shootout last night in our area with AK47′s, but I can’t find any news on the net about it.

Very strange.  And so tonight, our garden alarm beams went on extra early and Lance says he’s not going to sleep well (I always sleep well ).

I read an article on IOL earlier today about the lights on Table Mountain being turned off for Earth Hour this year.

and the World Wide Fund for Nature is hoping that Table Mountain won’t be the only part of Cape Town which is plunged into darkness from 8.30pm to 9.30pm on March 28.

What a great initiative on the part of Cape Town!

I see that Johannesburg has also pledged support for this cause… I wonder what they’re going to turn off.  Is there something as symbolic as the Mountain that is lit up?  Unless they get business to turn off Sandton?  I mean really, if they turn off things like the Nelson Mandela bridge or something in Newtown… imagine how much crime will be in that hour.

It’s a noble cause though, and we should all try to make a plan this year.

So, follow this link to the Earth Hour site, and pledge your support.  Better yet… hold an Earth Watch party at 8:30PM on Saturday 28 March 2009.

Human rights groups, governments, and people in general go on and on about HIV education for the masses… and there’s a lot of that going around.  There does however seem to be a flaw in the education process… and it was highlighted to me today!

Who teaches the doctors… I’m talking about GP’s and their staff?  Does anyone actually insist that they get trained or does everyone assume, like I did, that they are trained or if not, will actually go and find information?

I had a very interesting conversation with a GP this morning.  One that is practising in Johannesburg.

According to this brilliant man, giving a few people injections with the same syringe but with clean needles is perfectly safe!  I’m sorry, but every article I’ve found on the web (from the CDC site to umpteen local health website) and every medical person I’ve spoken to today (from my SIL and brother who are trained paramedics to my own GP) agrees with me… it’s far from safe.   My SIL said that even her father (who was a Vet) didn’t share syringes on the animals he treated… it’s a matter of ethics.

I wonder how many people he’s put at risk. Think about it. It’s not only the people he’s injected using this draconian method, it’s also their families.  It makes me so so mad!