Africa: The Sangoma

Africa. Wow. It was absolutely amazing. One of the highlights was attending a healing ceremony, run by a Sangoma or healing lady, in Zululand. The Zulus worship their ancestors and when things aren’t going so well, they consult the Sangoma who chats to said ancestors and tells you what to do to make them happy and then your troubles will resolve.

It’s raining. In fact, it been raining for a couple of days as we pick our way through the tiny village of curious children, goats, slush, chickens, animal poo and round mud huts to the larger one where the ceremony will take place. There are just us and the locals and everyone needs to remove their soggy shoes before entering. The drumming starts, there’s lots of singing – and the occasional ‘Jesus’ slips into the lyrics which is a tad odd, but otherwise all as you’d imagine. And boy, can these people dance and sing! Even the 18 month old toddler has rhythm.

There are offerings to the Sangoma and her apprentices when they arrive – fruit, money, sweets and alcohol. She passes around a bottle of brandy – to us first – and we take a swig. This is rapidly followed by beer, then a bottle of 'Brutal Fruit' – which I guess is some kind of vodka cruiser? - and drink some regardless.

MWW having a slug of the..?

Part of the ceremony involves the apprentices washing everyone’s feet in a plastic tub. We’re invited first and balance precariously as each foot is thoroughly washed in the basin of cold water. Once the feet of all 50 or so people there are washed, the water, which is looking a bit murky by now, is then collected into empty plastic soft drink bottles for the purpose of – and I swear I am not making this up – giving to sick people to drink!!! Because if you weren’t really sick before, by god after a few slugs of that foot water, you sure will be!

Perhaps don’t try this at home.

Mother Who Works: Happy birthday Jazzy-angel

Mother Who Works: Happy birthday Jazzy-angel: "Sixteen years ago today, our gorgeous girl Jasmine was born. And almost 2 years ago she died.If she'd lived forever, we couldn't have loved ..."

Happy birthday Jazzy-angel

Sixteen years ago today, our gorgeous girl Jasmine was born. And almost 2 years ago she died.

If she'd lived forever, we couldn't have loved her more.

We sent up a lantern this morning to wish her a happy birthday.

Still miss her every day.

Love you Jazzy, xxxx

Africa - here we come!

We’re off to Africa on Friday – the day school winds up for the term and as usual, we’ve cut it extremely close. I do like to maximise the time we get when we go away. The kids finish at 2.30 and we’re on a 11.50pm flight. It should be fun. We’re going with some friends and their two boys, so we’ll have 5 kids with end-of-term exhaustion and a flight that goes via Perth to Johannesburg and then straight on to Manzini in Zululand. It seemed like such a good idea to “just get there!”  when we were booking.

As a consequence, it’s been a very busy week. We’ve been to the doctors for immunisations, I’ve been to a workshop on school-leavers, a dinner out with clients, I’m on Cub duty again tomorrow so have shopped, cut, glued, knotted and set up the hall in preparation for that, I’ve had a PSG (Parent Support Group) meeting for my son and I did PMP (I don’t even know what that stands for… Physical Movement Program??) for the youngest (I only injured one kid!), I had a waxing appointment, booked the car into the airport car-parking and managed to get the invitations designed, printed and posted for the pending 18^th birthday party. And, lord forbid, I’ve even squeezed some work in!! (My work mate Mandy does on occasion accuse me of being Mother Who’s Supposed To Be Working….)

Amongst it all, I even managed to look at a map, so I have some vague idea of where we’re headed, despite having had the comprehensive itinerary for some weeks. I walked with a friend last night who asked many embarrassing questions, like how long’s the flight, what game parks are we going to and what’s the accommodation is like –to which I answered “I don’t know”, “I can’t remember” and “I have no idea”. So, business as usual for our style of travel – a surprise when we get there!

But, what I did manage to do at work this week was catch up with the Digital Guru as some people have said they’re having trouble commenting. (I hope that is the case, as I get precious few…) Anyway, the easiest thing is to start with your selection from the 'Select a profile' drop down box of “Comment as”; Anonymous is fine and add your name to the comment if you want to – or not! There is one of those crazy words you have to copy like 'Zolic' to avoid spam, but please persist!!!

Hopefully I’ll manage to get a quick post in before we head off…. MWWxx

Fund Raiser

I blogged a while ago about the fund-raiser late last year when my friend Pen and I bought lunch with 10 Firemen.

Last Saturday, I found myself at a much more intimate fundraising event and still managed to get myself into trouble. It was for a friend's daughter’s humanitarian trip to Borneo and, aside from that, a bloody good party with a heap of people I really like. So as I wondered around the dining room table of silent auction items, it was good to see everyone offering their support – except for the Botox.

That’s right – 28 units of Botox valued at over $400 and not one bid! Clearly far too embarrassing for the ladies at this party. But too tempting for MWW and I whacked down $50. An old (as in ‘known for a long time’, not ‘ancient’!!) friend upped the bid to $100 as we sipped lovely French champagne. Now it was competitive as well. I couldn’t resist. I upped my bid to $110 and vaguely threatened him not to outbid me again.

It was announced from the top of the stairs that I was the lucky winner. Luckily I really didn’t care – perhaps it was all the exceptionally lovely champagne. A doctor friend suggested perhaps 280 units might be a more reasonable amount required for me. On repeating this to another doctor friend (there is a point to theses ‘doctors’, stay with me people…) he suggested Doctor One had obviously seen a lot more of me that he has.

“He hasn’t. But I doubt Botox could replace these,” I said, snapping my Bridget-Jones undies (that were just about at my neckline) so loudly he was forced to ask ‘Did that hurt?”

“Nup’, I answered truthfully. I think there’s so much padding there it’s all well protected.

So I’m then introduced to the donor of the treatment and am somewhat alarmed to discover he’s NOT a doctor. Hmmmm.

 ‘Just ring the girls at the clinic and they’ll look after you’, says the entrepreneurial investor. Girls? Are they doctors?  No. I thought this kinda thing required qualified medical people? No, apparently not. Confidence quickly waning despite the Dutch courage of exquisite bubbles….

So what do you think? Consider the $110 a charitable donation and forget it or risk looking extremely surprised for three months??

Fun Run

Can someone, anyone, explain to me why those two words appear together with such monotonous regularity when we all know it’s an oxymoron, a contradiction, or as we in the land of advertising like to say, a ‘tension’. Running is not fun. And I know. I run. Well, when I say run, sometimes it could be described as a shuffle, but regardless, it is NOT fun.

Last year was a PB on the Fun Run front. It started with Run For The Kids, one I’ve done for a few years now as it supports the Royal Children’s Hospital, which I’ve unfortunately had far to much to do with, and is quite an amazing course, through the Burnley Tunnel and over the Bolte Bridge for those of you who know Melbourne. It’s roughly 14.7kms with a lot of up-hills, so my sister-in-law and I always arrange a family pub lunch after with lots of sparkling wine just to ensure we make up for any good we might have done!

Last year, I was literally just out of the shower when my friend Pen, who’d also done the run, text me to suggest we sign up for Race Buffing Billy, a steam train that winds its way up to the top of Mt Dandenong. For fucks sake! My calves were still screaming from the morning run, but as it was a mere 13km, I said yes.

Before we started, we ran into some friends, one of who is a fitness guru. She looked surprised to see me (a re-occurring theme when it comes to running and me, for some reason....)

‘Have you trained?’ she asked looking deeply enquiringly. No, I thought, I just woke up this morning and thought heck, I think I’ll go race that train!

‘Not really,’ I answered truthfully, ‘but I do run regularly, so I should be fine. I’m not expecting to beat the train or anything.’

‘Oh everyone beats the train,’ she said as a matter of fact. I think I was smug when proved her wrong?!

Then my client was a sponsor of the Mother’s Day Classic and invited us to participate. Couldn’t say no to that either, so on Mother’s Day when most mums are having a lie-in a getting breakfast in bed, my dorta and I were up at 6am in the cold dark to go and run – go figure...

And finally, while I was in Sydney on a girls’ weekend, my partner was out with friends here and they all decided we needed to do the City To Surf – in Sydney. With over 80,000 runners, it really was unlike any run I’d done before. But I’m still not sure I’d describe it as ‘fun’. Dinner at the extremely lovely Ice Breakers in Bondi on the Friday night – now that was fun!!!

So, Run For The Kids is nearly here again, but we’re off to Africa for the school hols, which I’m quite sure will be the real fun. In my book, the only fun part of running is when you get to stop.

I take my gaff, and raise it.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a shocking gaff, My First Board Meeting, but was reminded by another MWW that in fact I have, made a far worse one (thanks BM!)

Sitting at a client’s boardroom table, I looked across to see someone I’ve known for ages, but don’t see often. She works with the client. Let’s call her ‘Nicky’. She sitting next to another client who is heavily pregnant and I notice that Nicky is also clearly quite pregnant, (you can see where this is going already can’t you – but wait, there is a twist!)

On my way out, and thankfully not in front of the 15 or so in the meeting, I say ‘Hey Nicky! I didn’t know you were having a baby!’ The rising puce creeping up her neck  and spreading over face said it all.

‘I’m not pregnant,’ she shamefully muttered. “I shouldn’t wear such tight clothes,’ she said, awkwardly pulling at her top like a 5 year old in trouble. I felt sooooo bad.

‘Oh it’s not your tummy,’ I improvised, ‘I just don’t remember your boobs being so...impressive.’  She graciously smiled, we parted and both felt the excruciating pain of humiliation and embarrassment.

I heard later she went home and cried. I also felt like crying.

So I was surprised to get a phone message from Nicky a couple of weeks later. “Hi MWW, I know you felt really bad about that comment the other day, so I thought I should ring and let you know I’ve just found out I’m 18 weeks pregnant!”