I smile in amusement as I write this little post. If not that Easter eggs are popping up every where, my thought would have been that Linda has bionic powers to see into my kitchen.
I just finished breakfast of partially burnt scrambled eggs offered by my daughter. We are learning to cook and I guess burning is part of the practice 🙂
I humbly ate the eggs with a thankful heart. Soon enough she will get the hang of it with practice.
I think fleetingly back to my growing up years and learning how to cook in my mother’s kitchen. Only God knows how many burnt pots of rice, yam, beans, soup, I had to go through before getting into it.
Eggs were treats back then, eaten mostly on Saturday and Sundays because we had to wait for our local, home bred chickens to lay enough of them and on some days during the week, they were stingy or lazy with the laying of the eggs.
It’s not like now, where trays and trays of different types of eggs are on display for customers to choose as many crates as they wish.
Back then, it used to be a delight to go to the chicken coop at the back and find a warm, just laid egg.
Occasionally we were blessed with seeing a little chick hatch from eggs that my grandma set aside.
How she knew the ones that would hatch is something that I never understood.
Linda mentions ‘ball’ as today’s prompt and I think of the different balls that I am playing with right now.
The fleeting thought of my young sons ball comes to my mind and I pray his fever will break so that he can play happily.
It’s my birthday tomorrow and I should be preparing to have a ball, but I am just not feeling it.
A few days ago, I was excited and gearing for an awesome day and I still hope to, but when you have a child a little bit down, the last thing on your mind is a ball.
However the big ball that forms in my stomach makes me feel so sad and almost reluctant to talk about it.
As much as I can, I avoid race talks because it only stirs up strong emotions.
Last night a friend sent a video of a black girl being pushed around and insulted and insulted by some guy’s – white.
I wanted to stop watching it, but I continued. By the end of that short video, I had tears in my eyes and just felt so heavy.
I can’t even begin to articulate all the thoughts that went through my head.
My question has always been, are we not all human? Why are some people like this? What’s the benefit of such ugliness and discrimination?
We claim to be different, to be enlightened, we claim not being racists, yet at every turn it stares us in the face.
These boys who pushed a young girl about and called her ugly names, learnt it from somewhere and most likely their homes.
Racism is learnt ‘cos no child is born that way.
I have no answers just a ball of sadness that sits in me and I obviously went to bed with that thought and it’s been more so on my mind after watching the fiasco of American campaign trails in Chicago.
I strive to teach my children to work hard and rise up and above expectations.
I try to teach them that before God all men are equal.
I try to teach them to embrace life with an open mind, but sometimes society makes playing this ball so hard.
On Thursday’s, I share pictures about ‘Echos of my Neighbourhood.
I would like to invite you to participate. The challenge is quite simple.
Every Thursday, share a photo of bits and pieces of wherever you are at any point in time. It could be houses, backgrounds of your neighbourhood, activities and so forth and you can tag it Echos of my Neighbourhood, add my link to your post so that I will get the ping from your post.
Every other Thursday, I will publish a post with the links of all those who participated the previous week.
This is just a fun way of getting to see more of the World around us through your eyes, since we cannot all be at those places, we can at least see them through you.
In the air-conditioned bus stop shelter
Rushing to the train
Watching feet on train
Buying men stuff for dear Himself. He’s not fond of shopping.
Statue of ancient astrologers
A lounging Goddess
Depiction of ancient Egyptian art at Wafi
Inside Oud Metha
A lazy evening of eating Shawarma. No kitchen duty tonight 🙂
The gleam of the glinting Lamborghini had me looking for my glasses.
Artifact store
Nosing about in an artifact shop.
Sorting out my phone at Du
Some part of Bur
The pictures above are taken from here and there. During the course of a week, I take pictures as I go along sorting each day’s issues.
When I am going out by myself, I prefer to leave the ease of driving myself and opt to take a train, bus or taxi depending on. The first two are my first options.
In a good number of areas, the bus stops have a pair of shelter, one for women and children and a separate one for menfolk. Due to the heat which can be unbelievable at times, they are air-conditioned and well maintained.
If you want to get to know a city, to meander free and get to know it’s people, get a map and use public transport.
It free’s your eyes to stare, snap and interact.
When I drive, half of the time, my eyes are glued to the GPS screen trying not to miss a vital turn.
Today’s theme for Photo 101 is bliss. Well, it falls in rather nicely today. Yesterday it rained ceaselessly that the school sent a mail of no school today, so yours truly started having bliss from last night at the thought that I don’t have to jump up at 4:30 in the morning. Yours truly lounged in bed. Now that is bliss 🙂
My source of bliss are derived from the simple satisfaction that I can find in the daily life around me.
I make a conscious effort to cultivate a heightened sense of contentment and each source depends totally on my frame of mind.
Something as little as seeing a happy dog, gives me a sense of joy.
Below are some things that signify bliss for me.
Putting up my feet on a lazy weekend and indulging in a good read with some nibbles.
Listening to my music and stealing in some wiggles.
A lazy day at the beach.
Eating out with my lovelies. We get to spend time chit-chatting and I get an off day from the kitchen.
Walk in nature and emptying my thoughts. Sometimes, I use that time to pray as well.
Just sitting and watch children play freely gives me joy.
Getting a pedicure with foot massage. Ah!
The sauna helps to work out the kinks in those bunched muscles. Toss in a good professional massage and I am in happy land 🙂
In my days spent on Earth, my journey through life has taken me many times in so many directions, away from the shores of bricks and mortar that we called home.
From the Eastern part of my country in my childhood days, to the Western part as a young adult, I set up home in many places, but my heart lay in my parents abode.
That was the way it was until I got married and my heart expanded to accommodate some more.
In my years of matrimony, we have perambulated quite a bit. We have moved across countries and continents; from Africa to North America to Middle East and who knows where next.
In these years, I have consistently learnt to shed myself of material knick-knacks that may not make the cut during any move.
I appreciate creature comforts like other human, my cosy bed, the living room, kitchen and dining, but over these years of sojourning, I have learnt in truth, that bricks and mortar may make a house, but home are those who lie in it.
I chuckle as I write this. I can’t think of anything else when the word screen shows up as today’s prompt.
Why would the word screen rouse a chuckle out of me?
Well it reminded me of my short, sizzling courtship with my husband nearly sixteen years ago and when we first met.
I remember the first thought that I had when I looked at his glasses.
They were as big as a Boeing 727 jet with wide screen and behind the wide screen were very beautiful eyes.
I wondered why he was wearing contact lens and wearing such big screen in the name of glasses at the same time.
It turned out that they are not contact, but my husband has hazel eyes.
For a fully black man, that is not common. It was mostly albinos that I knew that had light eyes in Africa, but as time went on, I got to learn of Africans with blue eyes.
I think it was those lovely hazel eyes of his that got me and yes, for the love of me, he got rid of the Boeing 727 and we settled for a lovely pair of Tom Ford frames.
This is what it is and I have come to accept that. When I was younger, it was a bit difficult to really describe who I was or am and what I am all about.
I can get quite wrapped up in my books and in make-believe Worlds that open up for me in the pages and I find beautiful contentment from that.
Being around lots of people gives me pleasure and I would be the life of the party. Mingling, laughing, dancing and all the merry-making, yet in the background of all this, is some still brook that runs deep inside me. A reserved person looking from the outside.
This different personalities that inhabited one soul, confused me a bit in the younger years of still trying to find myself. I thought that I had to fit into a mold.
That I had to be x or y, black or white, this or that. That I had to be either an extrovert or introvert and every other label that people put out there to pen everyone else.
My mother would say that I was the most quiet child she has when we were growing up, with an acute sense of responsibility, yet at the same time, she would equally say that I am one person that would arrive and would be welcomed as many. ‘When she comes in, we say you people are welcome.’ A one woman riot squad.
In the early days, I never quite understood these things and struggled to fit into one caption or the other.
Now, I am older and wiser, I embrace the me who is a bundle of eclectic this and that and I have ceased with the defining.
I accept and love the me who rages like a wild-fire yet burns in peaceful flames.
The cool sophisticated lady with the blend of a gypsy, wild child.
I admire the me who loves colours in splashes of vivid brightness and the calmness of cool pastels. Who has a myriad taste, yet particular. A me who reads like an open book, yet with curling smokes of mystery.
This is me who loves noise and quiet, who embraces life with zest and calmness. A bundle of contradicting this and that.
Today’sSOC’s prompt asking us to write about this and that had me looking around for a few minutes then I realized that I am an epitome of lots of this and that.
My new skipping rope. The previous one was a killer rope in it’s past life.
So here I am seated in-between Sugoi and Umami, two Far East Urban Cuisine/Japanese and trying to decide what to eat as well as checking my mails when I see Colette’s challenge sent to me to leap and the Daily post prompt to leap as well, so I will kill two birds with one stone.
Don’t think that I am a food addict. A girl has to eat to keep the brain cells functional and aside from a bowl of porridge and currants this morning, this is a late lunch of my decision, veggie rice and teriyaki prawns.
I enjoy the drone of voices. It’s amazing when you keep silent and just listen to the cacophonous buzz around you. My thoughts takes me back to the beginning of the year and how far I am leaping along.
Thinking about leaping made start looking at people’s feet as they passed by, for silly reasons. No one was leaping out-rightly, just a scurry, a flinch, a waddle and a slow trot.
Where have I leaped to between Jan and now?
I tried to leap high, but feared that I would break a precious bone, so I just hopped along.
I just bought a new skipping rope, a few minutes ago. Very apt for leaping out of a month. I will obviously leap a lot in March.
The last one I had was used for drilling young recruits in its past life. It kept flogging the back of my legs *no jokes* when I didn’t skip high enough, that I had to ask myself if the punishment was worth the result?
So, I finally finished collating my poetry book and hopefully, by next week, I will seek professional assistance with editing and book cover. The plan is to have it out between March and April, so it’s right on track and I can tick the box for hopping along with my set target to have four of my published works out this year.
Yes, I know its a tall challenge, but I believe in setting a high bar for myself so that even if I fail to meet all, I fail forward by achieving a good percentage.
I hopped to a writer’s critic group and asides from parting with too many dirhams buying coffee and sandwich, watching people feel snazzy and writer-like with the interesting hair-dos and streaks of colours, and a huge dragon tattoo running from one shoulder into her bosom *I didn’t get to see the bosom* but the dragon did, and a lot of Shisha smoking all around, I really didn’t get much out of the experience, so I am quite doubtful that I will repeat the experience.
I dared to submit one of my stories for a competition. The results don’t come out till March, though in all honesty, I am not expecting anything, since the whole World, their wives, pet garter snakes, dogs and cats made an appearance. A cool cat is most likely going to win the prize. I did it to push myself out of my comfort zone and get over the jitters.
The weight hasn’t shifted downwards, but it hasn’t gone up thankfully.
Blogging is coming along nicely 🙂
I am ruminating over my personal goals for March, so let me trundle along and get cracking.
So, who would like to leap off the board with me? A short note will do just fine
Colette, thank you for making me look and appreciate my steps.
offered by my daughter. We are learning to cook and I guess burning is part of the practice 🙂
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