Purple Lipstick

Freed By Love

Every person has an innate desire to be loved. A tender touch, a warm smile and a loving look can do wonders to a broken heart. My world began falling apart before it even started. Losing my mother at the age of seven broke my heart to the core. It affected myself esteem and the way I viewed the world. For years I...

Thursday, October 20, 2016
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Rock Music in Zimbabwe in the 70s???

music

To be truly honest I wouldn't ever classify myself as a "fan" of rock music. In fact when I was in college my brother and I walked into the student hangout center at our school one night looking for food, and almost fainted when we found ourselves surrounded by people screaming and shaking their heads. I'm not even going to lie, I forgot...

Monday, October 03, 2016
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First Week of University as an International Student

college 101

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Everyone knows that saying. But very few people really understand what it means. My first week in this foreign place I had my mother and her sisters to settle me in. I was basically being spoiled so I did not miss anything. I had a part of home with me (my mother). The day...

Thursday, September 29, 2016
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Women Are Leading Africa

Inspiration

Our hearts flutter whenever we see women leading. I think Africa often gets a bit of a bad rap when it comes to the way women are treated (there are definitely things we need to work on.) However, today our team decided to put together a short list celebrating some of the great ways Women are leading in Africa! We hope that by...

Tuesday, September 27, 2016
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"Boys Will Be Boys"

alberts thoughts

When I was younger we used to have chickens in our yard (like most Zimbabweans at one point in their lives). They weren’t the pretty white expensive Broilers that would make the yard look organized and economical. Oh no, they were those kumusha type, few feathers missing, road runner chickens; and they were as anxious as they were unattractive. They were constantly on edge and would be scared of almost anything. They would run at the sight of even the slightest disturbance and blurt out loud clucks as they did. For their security we would place them in one room at night. But that was no comfort to them. The slightest sound, even the sound of a branch landing on the roof would send them into a panic and like an orchestra the entire flock would erupt into exclamations of desperate pleas for help.
What was worse was we had dogs, and for a few days we had to drill it into them that the chickens were not food. The chickens could not have cared less about our scolding and instructions. They were horrified every time Rex and Tiger ran about.

When they would make their noise from whatever trivial thing would frighten them, my mother would ask me to go check on them and see what was going on. As you can imagine this quickly became unpleasant and frustrating and after many nights of waking up and finding nothing there I eventually confronted my mother with this question
“why are they so scared all the time!?”
My mother, who is always kind and thoughtful with her answers to my questions, smiled at me and said,
“That’s what chickens do. Chickens will be chickens””

Flash forward a few months, and the chickens have become part of our regular scene at home. My siblings and I (as children tend to do) began to find ourselves attached to these chickens and ended up giving each one a name, petting them, and treating them as if they were babies. We’d rush home from school and scramble to grab some mealie meal and feed our little squad of pets. We’d add grass to their nests, chase the dogs away if they got too close, and save the chicks from whatever mess they would find themselves tangled in.
It was while we were doing all of this that I noticed something strange. The chickens began to act very differently. They would still panic here and there but they were far less noisy at night, far less cowardly at the sight of danger or disturbances. In fact they started to become brave! Chasing little children that came too close to their nests, sitting right in my lap as I ate my lunch, and walking on top of the napping dogs as they roamed their yard. The chickens became unreasonably brave, chasing maids and gardeners who entered their territory, climbing roofs, and eating food that was not for them.
This may have been funny and often times scary to observe, but when it came time for the chickens to be slaughtered (much to the children’s dismay) , the chickens were too confident to realize the man with a knife was here to kill them, and they would only run last minute. Baffled and annoyed at their failure to flee, I approached my gardener and asked him,
“why do these chickens not run!?”
He laughed and pointed at some roosters fighting and said back to me,
“that’s what chickens do. Chickens will be chickens”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Chickens are both symbols of cowardice and fearless pride. What determines which characteristic we see, tends to depend on what the chicken’s environment promotes.

I wonder what it means when we think of boys being boys as an inescapable truth that only applies to their weakness.

I wonder if like the chickens we assume their behavior is justified and permanent.
I wonder where the line is drawn as absurd or nature. Like the chickens and the dogs versus the chickens and the branch on the roof; a cat-call versus writing an inappropriate comment on their photos or posts.

Boys will be… what we allow them to be.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016
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Overcoming Depression

guest blogger

My Message To You, The Youth When I started to feel depressed, I didn’t even realize it. The feeling crept up on me very subtly. It started around November of last year and slowly worked itself into the New Year. Sometimes it hid itself. I would have days when I felt very low, tired and moody, and then I would have days when...

Thursday, August 25, 2016
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Getting Over My Insecurities

power

Its been a while since I've written on here ( i'm sorry, the team and I have been prepping for some exciting changes that you'll get to know about soon!) I honestly can't believe the year is almost over :'( I saw an advert for a musical about the Grinch on T.V. the other day and nearly fell out of my chair! Prompted...

Monday, August 22, 2016
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Purple Lipstick

Freed By Love

Rock Music in Zimbabwe in the 70s???

First Week of University as an International Student

Women Are Leading Africa

"Boys Will Be Boys"

Overcoming Depression

Getting Over My Insecurities

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