Knysna

While we had a storm here, a storm which was not nearly as bad as we had been led to expect, Knysna was burning. It is one of the worst tragedies I have ever known. Twenty years or so ago I used to know Knysna well. We would visit often. We had many friends there. We would take the train and spend an hour or so. there whenever we had visitors. We would go there for squash matches or meetings of one sort or another, or just for an outing. I did a lot of work in the surrounding forests when I was employed at Saasveld. Forestry Research station.  This was a beautiful little town. now it seems to have been quite destroyed. Hundreds of houses burnt, hectares of forest and plantation gone for ever.
 Of course, the drought and the windstorms were very largely to blame for the excessive destruction, but if the Forestry Department had functioned as it did when I worked there, I am sure the fires could have been contained before they did so much damage. In those days, there were towers in strategic positions which were manned day and night and fires could be quickly spotted. Then there were many more permanently-employed forestry workers. Most of these were trained in fire-fighting, so there was a large pool of  fire-fighters to be called on when needed. Now most of the plantations are privately owned and the owners find it more cost-effective to out-source labour and employ temporary workers, and this has increased the risk of destructive fires.

I remember Willem, the forestry worker who had been seconded to the lSaasveld laboratory when I was in charge of it. He was such nice happy soul and such a  good reliable guy. He was known for being the first to volunteer when there was a call for help in putting out a fire. "Always the first to jump on the lorry," the foreman told me. I thought of him when I read of the 67 year-old fire-fighter who died of burns and smoke inhalation. That old man must have been somebody like Willem. I wrote this for him.

FIRE -FIGHTER

“You again!” they said.

“Always the first to jump on the lorry.”

“Why don’t you give it a break? they said

“Why don’t you leave it to the younger guys?”

“Stay home this time,” they said.

“Don’t you remember the heat and the dirt?

Ash, soot and sweat on your hands and your face

the smell of charred hair and blistering skin,

and the small, burnt animals on the forest floor.

It’s a nasty job,” they said

“Don’t you remember how a blaze from the ground

can flicker up tree-trunks  and fly to the sky?

Don’t you remember how sparks shower down,

and how smoke sears your eyes and grabs at your breath.

“Aren’t you afraid?” they said

“But they need me there,” he said

"Tales for Real Girls"

I have just  been reading on Facebook, a promotion for a book about women who have excelled in various fields. The purpose of this book (written by feminist women) is to be an alternative to stories like Cinderella where a girl is helped by a fairy to marry a prince. It is intended to give girls confidence.and make them feel that they are just a worthy and  competent as boys.T his seems a laudable aim, but one thing worried me.:the statement that girls should be encouraged to believe that they could be anything they wanted to be. Now this is such a blatant lie.! There is nothing wrong in encouraging children to aim high, but to tell them that they con succeed at anything they want to is just to set them up for disappointment. All children should be helped to develop  their special talents, but to encourage them to believe that they have abilities that they lack or to allow them to be blind to their limitations is just to be cruel and make them feel dreadfully guilty when they fail. It is bad enough that boys are pushed to dominate and excel at all costs, why put these pressures on girls too?

I am glad to have been born a girl and to have been born in the middle years of the last century. when girls were taught cooking and sewing and were expected to become  wives and mothers rather than astronauts or physicists. I had a mother and aunts who had shone academically and had done well in their respective careers, but I was not put under the sort of pressure to excel that the boys I knew experienced. I was allowed to be myself, I was allowed to be ordinary. I am sure a lot of girls feel this way. Of course we should be grateful for the stalwart women who have opened greater possibilities for us,enormously increasing our choices of career, but how nice to be able to believe that we don't  have to work long boring hours or battle our way up  corporate ladders the way men have to do to be accepted.

Tour to Prince Albert and Eight Bells

I have just come back from a delightful tour for Seniors run by Tours-4-Us.  We were told that the average age of the bus-load of old people was 75, but as one of the passengers was only in her fifties, most of the others must have been over 80. They were, however, a very spry lot and also sweet and friendly..  It was nice being able to go with my friend, Cynthia. Apart from having to help her out of a bath on one occasion, her company was not demanding and we had fun together. The accommodation was good, unpretentious but comfortable and the food was good - too good. I ate far too much. We traveled through some spectacular scenery. Here are some photos.

 Du Toit's Kloof

 Matjesfontein

 Prince Albert Main Road

Ancient Tricycle

 Meiring's Poort

Hartenbos Train

Eight Bells

Education by Face Book

Just when I had decided that I should not waste my time with the daily reading Facebook, I start getting really interesting posts. Whether friends send them to me or whether it is the newspapers that are targeting me I don't know, but I have been receiving the most interesting articles. No only have I been able to keep up to date with what Zuma has been up to, but I have been exposed to some lovely poetry that I would not have otherwise been aware of and I have also learnt about new research findings in Biology and Neuroscience.
Today I came across an article published by the New Yorker about Schizophrenia( written by Siddhartha Mukerjee)  Genetic research has thrown new light on this disease and found a connection between immune response and Schizophrenia. A pair of genes (B2 and B4, I think they are called) are responsible for the production of proteins that destroy foreign matter, harmful compounds and junk of various kinds in the body. These proteins travel about scouring our organs including the brain and twine themselves around bits they want to destroy. They also twine them selves around some synapses. Apparently during early development, even before birth, our nerve cells are making more and more connections , but when we reach maturity many of these connections are destroyed by the aforementioned proteins, presumably because otherwise we would have far more than we need.  A variant of B4 causes too much synapse-destroying protein to be produced and synapses that are actually needed are destroyed. Somehow this gives rise to the symptoms of Schizophrenia. (and also bipolar conditions). Scientists think this is why the onset of psychotic episodes occurs typically in late adolescence or early adulthood when these proteins are active.

The brain is a very strange organ, more wonderful than we could ever imagine. It would be great if knowing more about the causes of mental illness could mean that a cure is in sight for this horrible illness, but I am afraid this is wishful thinking.

The decay of the ANC

So our infamous president is not going anywhere.  I am not surprised. Those who are greedy and unscrupulous can usually get what they want.The Guptas and their patron/puppet,Zuma have won. We shall have to get used to living under their evil and corrupt regime. Living under a bad government  is something we had to learn to do in the past. We can learn to do it again. We must get ready to face more poverty, more unemployment, higher prices, more government inefficiency. When I supported the struggle against the Apartheid government, I knew that this could happen. But at that time to join the forces opposed to the Nationalist Government was the right thing to do. It is no consolation to me to know that I foresaw the future so accurately.

This is a sad day for South Africa.

Atheists on Facebook

Some of my best friends are ... Isn't that what we say when we are about to be critical of some group or other. We throw a hypocritical sop to those who would say that we are too unkind or too picky or something of that sort. But thinking about it, it is actually true, that some of my best friends are atheists. This is hardly surprising as atheism is very trendy these days, especially among those who consider themselves intellectuals. The famous biologist and atheist, Richard Dawkins, is one of the most influential writers today. Perhaps not quite as popular as he was a few years ago, but still a best-selling writer. Whether it is his influence or not, proselytizing  atheists are popping up everywhere. It is  reading another Atheist rant on Facebook that has given rise to to what I am writing now.  What I would like to say to those who post such things on social media is this. "So you are an atheist. You don't believe in God. You are very pleased to have discarded all those restricting superstitions. Fine! I'm happy for you. But you don't have to dis the Faith of other people."

This is what I have against some Atheists: They are so radical in their attitude to religion.  Richard Dawkins in particular, is rabid in his opposition to all religion, but especially Islam. Any right-minded person must deplore the excesses of Islamic extremists, but the overwhelming majority of Moslems are not like that. Those I know personally are good decent people, dedicated to clean living and good works, which leads me to believe that Islam is actually a force for good in the world, although I do not subscribe to its tenets. But the Crusaders have nothing on Dawkins when it comes to hating those who believe differently.

Just a note on the above: The well-worn assertion that Religion has caused all the wars of the past      ( and the present too probably) is countered in  Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood . She maintains that wars are all fought over land and that it is not religion but agriculture that is to blame. Personally I wonder whether most conflicts are not all about resources and that leaders of governments just cynically use religion to justify the bloodshed. The crusades were probably really about the Spice Trade and the modern ones are mostly about oil.

Colonials and Colonists

A new buzzword--  Decolonisation.  Actually this word is not at all new to me, It was very popular in Zambia in the sixties and seventies. It is always evoked when people want to change names of public buildings and streets. I approve of it in this context. We don't want to be reminded by signposts and maps of many of the rather awful people who have given their names to avenues and airports. Decolonising school and University curricula is also  justified. There is probably too much emphasis on European literature and African History should be taught far more from an African point of view than it is at present. But nowadays  colonist  colonialist   colonisation. have become dirty words. A lot of bad things have been perpetrated by colonists in the past, of course, but I am afraid very often anti-colonial is used to mean  not against being taken over and exploited by foreigners, but actually simply anti-white.

I have recently read the opinion that it is important to define what a colonist is. My dictionary simply defines a colonist as somebody living in a colony, which in turn is defined as a settlement abroad controlled by the founding country.How does a colony come to be and how does somebody become a colonist. A group of people might be sent out (as some of ancestors were sent to the island of St Helena) to establish a settlement which would be a colony of their mother country. The land might be uninhabited like St Helena was, or there might have been other people already living there, but it would be land that had not previously belonged to those who were colonising it. So you might define a colonist as someone who settles on land that did not previously belong to him. An appropriator of
land.in other words.

White settlers  in many cases, simply moved onto land in various parts of Africa, built houses and farmed land.. These certainly fulfill that  definition. There are also those who have acquired land through conquest. British people have been very successful in doing this. One can  also say that white people from the Western Cape colonised most of Transkei and the Eastern  Cape. I believe that  people who are now using the term, think of a colonist as a white person who has settled on land that did not belong to him(but probably to an innocent black person) However the definition above can also apply to Zulus who in the past acquired land through conquest, and what about the numbers of  people from the Eastern Cape who have settled on land in the Western parts of this country that never belonged to them. So if you are deriding colonists and colonisation (and in fact there is good reason for deploring the exploitation that has accompanied colonisation) you ought to refine the definition and say exactly which colonists you are talking about.