Suisse

You know how cliché is ‘the world is your play-ground’, well I guess those clichés sometimes do come back to our lives and make impact as they were initially intended.

I’m off again to Switzerland for a 7 month internship with the United Nations food and population agency in Geneva (wasn’t sure on how my Mother was going to react since I was stuck in Egypt not so long ago and had to ask her to bring me home). For some reason I was excited that I made it out of the 7 candidates I was competing with from Nigeria, Canada, Cameroon and Mexico but then the financial aspect of my trip brought me back to mother earth, but I’m happy anyway that I’m returning back to the neutral country.

I will be living in Bern, the capital city, taking a train for about an hour every day to work in Geneva, so I’ll have a bit of 2 cultures i.e. living in the swiss-german part and working in the swiss-french part.

To all my friends, readers of my blog, acquaintances and colleagues thanks for the support given – especially those that came through for me and my team during AfroxLDS’07 (If you’re an aiesecer you’ll know what that means), to my colleagues for my cushioned entrance at PWC due to their friendliness.

Well keep on reading this blog as it will get more interesting as I update you about my day-to-day life with the Swiss.

As we say in Sesotho (for those of you I’m temporarily leaving behind):

Khotso, Pula, Nala – Peace, Rain and Prosperity.

Ps: Yes I will have a Swiss bank account, so if you want to put your money in it – I’ll be more than happy to hold it for you with only the following 3 conditions:

· Should be more than a million $ (not Zimbabwean dollars…okay!)
· Leave it in my bank account for atleast 6 months (so that I can earn interest on it)
· Should have been legally obtained (pick-pocketing is illegal)

If you don’t fall in this category it means you’re broke like myself and I therefore don’t see any business sense, just joking – I have my price and willing to negotiate.

In conclusion, I do charge a commission – I am in the capital of capitalism after-all :)

‘I am because we are, since we are, therefore I am’ – John Mbiti

I’m reading the book ‘country of my skull’ by Antjie Krog (been looking for the book since 2004 and finally have my hands on it). A great book – has won many wards nationally and internationally.

…Came across very sensitive, insightful and informative issues, the book is about our South Africa history – Apartheid, how the core of South Africa’s being, race (black and white), was what provoked actions in the past, has formed our present identity and has shaped our perspective of the future.

Two prominent figures in the country, Thabo Mbeki (current President of the country) and Bishop Desmond Tutu (noble prize winner) dissect the words reconciliation and forgiveness. Tutu says ‘reconciliation is the beggining of a transformative process (one must be able to transcend one’s selfish inclinations before one can transform oneself and one’ society) for Mbeki it is a step that can follow only after total transformation has taken place’.

South Africans have a notion that we live in/ are building a rainbow nation, and I battle with that as we still don’t understand each other. Things still look the same for me, everything is still divided by race, from the food we eat, neighbourhood we live in, shops we do our grocery in and cars we drive, there is still a huge gap that can only be bridged by cultural understanding. It seems we tolerate each other because we need to coexist for our survival and that’s it! Weather this coexistence is reconciled and transformed still remains a debate.
A black friend of mine said that white people will never understand nor appreciate how black people bend their backs to accommodate them till and how they (whites) cannot do the same – this reminds me of Nozipho January-Bardill’s statement when she said ‘reconciliation will only take place the day whites also feel offended by racism, instead of feeling sorry for blacks’.

In a sense I understand her comment but do we need to go that route so to make a point or make another person realize where you are in terms of thought? I didn’t realize the complexity of the words truth, reconciliation, and transformation especially in the South African context until I read this book.

I’m due to represent the country yet again abroad, but for a longer period of time – this time, I wonder though how I am supposed to represent the country and my culture. There is no harmony between the individual and the community, I cannot be as we are not, and since we are not, therefore I am not.

…what is this rainbow nation we are talking about and trying to build, has it begun, has it worked, will it work and how do I represent my country’s identity?

Anybody out there….