What Is Love?

NO!  This is NOT yet another soppy, "chick" orientated blog, whingeing, whining, nagging or complaining about the male species, so DON'T shut of your technological device just yet, read on...it'll be worth it. 

There seems to be an epidemic affecting us 80's babies, it seems over the past couple of years damn near all of us simultaneously got bitten by the marriage and baby bug.  I have to really wrack my brain to think of a friend or family member within that age group, both male and female who isn't either engaged, married, an expectant and/or existing parent.  Even then amongst the few I can think of at least half are considering proposing and/or settling down and starting a family.  

I have to admit, the idea of being in a mutually committed relationship, with one person who you can absolutely trust to keep you safe from sexually transmitted diseases by NOT cheating and furthermore to keep you safe from unnecessary heartbreak by constantly considering the consequences of their actions, sounds like bliss.  However, even as simplified as I've stated it, that bliss seems unattainable.  Which brings us back to our peers afflicted by this marriage/baby epidemic, how many of them are happily married?  How many of them are raising children they conceived as a couple, happily together under the same roof as a family unit?  I have no doubt that some do fall into those categories, but not nearly enough.

We've all seen significant others out there, with others who are definitely not significant.  In Zimbabwe cheating is so common that a term, used so widely even children know it has been created to define a mistress, "smallhouse".  And then there are the terms, "baby mama" and "baby daddy".  What happened to make it desirable to be the side dish to the entree or to scatter one's sperm in multiple vaginas without consideration that one's seed or in most cases seeds will grow up in yet another broken home with more step mothers and step fathers and more step siblings and half siblings to even confuse a genius.

Are we sure that we are really ready for the marriage/baby epidemic or do we need to reevaluate the situation.  

What Is Love?

Noone is perfect!  But, we need to take personal responsibility for our actions.  A child is a gift and we cannot continue to procreate so carelessly.  The reality is relationships require work!   You wouldn't apply for a fulltime job unless you were absolutely sure you were able to meet the requirements and if you accepted the job, you would have to work hard inorder to not only retain your position, but to excel.  So why commit yourself to a marriage if you aren't willing to put in the work necessary to make it work?

Too many of us believe that if we date multiple partners eventually we will find the perfect one.  LESSONS LEARNED.  There IS NO PERFECT ONE!  Each individual comes with their pros and cons, the trick is either to be single and have relations with various people, mutually commitment free or to mutually commit to a relationship and work at it and through it together.

Most of us wouldn't just get up one day and quit a job we had held for an extended period of time, albeit it's ups and downs (with in reason).  If not a job, why quit on the person you love?

Thanks for stopping by,

AfricasHeiress.

Coming to America.

Remember back in Africa, I'll be specific and say, Zimbabwe..but I'm fairly certain that you can *insert your native country here* when as a teen you would watch music videos off DSTV or other satellite television, all of them American, ranging from Craig Mac to Mariah Carey and fantasize about your journey to "the land of the free"???  Taking that fantasy to as close to a reality as you could by not only memorizing the exact words, verbatim and choreography so that your African ass might as well BE  the artist you were imitating, but by integrating the accent, walk, talk and attire, remember Karl Kani???...into your lifestyle.  Maaaan!!!  How, oh how we wanted to be in America.


Ok, years later - post teens, MANY of us are here in America, myself included and have been for year, after year, after loooooooong year.  Question: "Was it worth it?"


Depending on our individual circumstances, we ended up in America for various, unique reasons.  Hardly any of them even remotely related to those teenage dreams we linked to the music videos we used to watch.  If anything, having arrived here, and felt the hostility America can have towards immigrants many off us may wish we had never even watched those music videos way back when and stuck to our local television, boring as it may have been.  LESSONS LEARNED....*sigh*.  It is an awful thing to feel as if you have to beg for the basics you would otherwise have the privilege to select from, at your leisure in your country of origin.


When did one's birth place begin to have such a HUGE impact on one's life?  You may think I am insane to type that, but ask yourself...how much of a difference it would have made in YOUR life if you were, I'll use myself here now...American born versus Zimbabwean born???  Food for thought!  Blue passport versus Green one...a WORLD of difference!


Please, don't get me wrong.  Until the day I breathe my very last breath, I will be PROUD to be AFRICAN, SOUTHERN AFRICAN, ZIMBABWEAN!  But I have experienced first hand the consequences my nationality has had on my ability to excel in America.  That dreaded "paperwork" restricts access to damn near EVERYTHING!  Education, employment, health care, purchases, rental, travel...and on and on.  As Africans we are patient, resilient people, so we find our ways around it...BUT...is it really worth what we endure, even in the midst of that patience and resilience???


I have a Bachelor of Social Science degree in Labour, Organisational Psychology and Human Resource Management.  A TRIPLE major, completed in only THREE years.  If I was American, I'd be a genius, but I am African, in limbo here, so with that degree, I have had to babysit.  ME, private school educated, wiping a shitty baby's ass, not my own baby, a job my uneducated maid in Zimbabwe would have done.  So many others, driven to desperation, much more highly educated than I have had to do the same and worse.


Dedan Kimathi said, "It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees".


Coming to America.


Should we all just go home?


Thank you for stopping by,






AfricaHeiress.

Growing Pains.

My friend's father passed away yesterday and it got me thinking about how as we get older we are affected so much more, both in frequency and emotional intensity by death.  Not just in the actual dying or "passing away" to put it more sensitively of those known to us, but also in the looming possibility of their demise, in the event that it is not sudden, but long and drawn out, associated with, for example...a terminal disease...HIV/AIDS is one that has affected most, if not all Africans and then of course, there is Cancer which seems to be as rampant as the common cold in recent years, amongst many others.


As young adults, we have ALL lost someone by now.  Some of us having lost both parents before our thirtieth birthdays, some earlier, some our own children, siblings, extended family and friends.  In March 2008 I lost my father and my mother was diagnosed with Stage IV Colon and Carcinoid Cancer, so death and I have dueled, once He won and now I constantly feel his threatening presence hovering over my Queen, my mother.  It's HARD!  The combination of  emotions that we are now aware of or able to feel so deeply as "grown ups", sadness, pain, fear, anger, frustration, guilt, hopelessness, helplessness and more..."insert yours here" can be crippling.


We are here now, LESSONS LEARNED and having come this far, most of us would probably not want to go back in time and start all over again, but do you remember how differently death affected you when  you were younger?  Close your eyes and remember as vividly as you can your earliest experience with death...how differently the child's mind perceives it, assuming off course that you were a child, life is different for us all.  I was about 9 years old when my favorite uncle died, suddenly in a car accident.  I remember running around with the other kids at his funeral, laughing, happy even, I don't think I quite understood at that point that he was NEVER coming back.  Fast forward to the present, decades later and I tremble at the mere thought of losing a loved one, I have woken up in the wee hours of the morning, sweating, my heart racing and scrambled to call my brother in a different country because of a DREAM, a DREAM in which he died.  What more if it were a reality?


GROWING PAINS.


I dedicate this blog to all of you whose loved ones are terminally ill, have lost loved ones and who will lose loved ones and to the loved ones who leave us behind, let our love for each other be eternal, surpassing space and time.


Thank you for stopping by,


AfricasHeiress.