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Cockie Lobin
This is a Zimbabwean rendition of the favorite children's poem
"Who Killed Cock-Robin?"
Zonke nyoni lapa moya ena kala ene kala,
Ene zwile ena file lo nyoni Cockie Lobin,
Ena zwili ena file ena zwili ena fili Cockie Lobin
Kubani ena blalile cocky lobin,
Mena kluma lo fly,
Na lo piccanini astromomical microscope,
Mena blalile cocky lobin.
Kubani ena blalile cocky lobin,
Mena klumu lo sparrow,
Na lo picannini intercontinental ballistic missile
Mena blalile cocky lobin.
Kubani ena digga lo grave,
Mena klumu lo owl,
Na lo earth moving equipment kamina,
Mena digga lo grave.
Kubani ena klumu lo prayers,
Mena klumu lo vulture,
Ndaba mena kona maningi culture,
Mena klumu lo prayers.
A Poem by John Gillespie Magee KIA WW2
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered
Wings. Sunward I’ve climbed and joined
The tumbling mirth of sun-split cloud – and
Done a hundred things you have not dreamed
Of – wheeled and soared and swung high in
The sunlit silence – hovering there. I’ve chased
The shouting wind along, and flung my eager
Craft through footless halls of air. Up, up, the
Long delirious burning blue I’ve topped the
Wind – swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark nor even eagle flew – And,
While with silent lifting wind I’ve trod the
High untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee
Killed in action – 11th December, 1941
Aged 19 years
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered
Wings. Sunward I’ve climbed and joined
The tumbling mirth of sun-split cloud – and
Done a hundred things you have not dreamed
Of – wheeled and soared and swung high in
The sunlit silence – hovering there. I’ve chased
The shouting wind along, and flung my eager
Craft through footless halls of air. Up, up, the
Long delirious burning blue I’ve topped the
Wind – swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark nor even eagle flew – And,
While with silent lifting wind I’ve trod the
High untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee
Killed in action – 11th December, 1941
Aged 19 years
George Carlin's Views on Aging
M
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.
"How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.
You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.
"How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . . . YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50
and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!
So yo! u BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.
You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!
You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I Was JUST 92."
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!" May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
HOW TO STAY YOUNG 1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay "them "
2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.
3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And th! e devil's name is Alzheimer's.
4. Enjoy the simple things.
5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.
6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person, who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.
7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets,keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.
8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable ,Improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
9 Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county; to a foreign country but NOT to where the guilt is.
10. ! Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.
"How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.
You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.
"How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . . . YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50
and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!
So yo! u BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.
You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!
You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I Was JUST 92."
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!" May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
HOW TO STAY YOUNG 1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay "them "
2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.
3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And th! e devil's name is Alzheimer's.
4. Enjoy the simple things.
5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.
6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person, who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.
7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets,keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.
8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable ,Improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
9 Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county; to a foreign country but NOT to where the guilt is.
10. ! Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Did we put a tyrant in power?
- Lord Carrington The Times April 5, 2008
The former Foreign Secretary remembers how Mugabe became president of Zimbabwe
Peter Carrington:
If you want to understand this week's events in Zimbabwe, a little history might be helpful. For it demonstrates how the responsibility for what has happened in that country over the past two decades lies firmly with Robert Mugabe and the decisions he has made.
The past terrible few years raise questions about how President Mugabe came to power.
Was the Lancaster House agreement - which brought an end to the civil war in Zimbabwe and allowed for the victory of Mugabe - a mistake?
I am convinced that it was not. When I became Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary in 1979 the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe problem was near the top of my in-tray. It had bedevilled successive governments ever since Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence in 1965 and set up a white-minority government. It had soured Commonwealth relations and damaged our relationship with some of our closest allies. The election of 1979, under a constitution that gave disproportionate power to the whites, which brought Bishop Abel Muzorewa to power was not recognised as legitimate by any other country, except South Africa, because Joshua Nkomo and Mugabe, the main rebel opposition leaders, were not allowed to take part. Towards the end of 1979, however, the situation had changed. Nkomo felt that time was not on his side. He wanted a settlement as soon as possible. The Muzorewa Government and the whites in Rhodesia were fighting a war against the rebels that was draining the economy and which could not be sustained for much longer. The South Africans, who were supporting the Muzorewa Government, were finding the burden too great.
The frontline states surrounding Zimbabwe all had reasons for wanting a solution; Zambia was the host to Nkomo's army, an imposition which they wished to end. However, there was one person who did not feel it necessary to press for a settlement - Robert Mugabe.
He felt that his Zanu guerrilla group was winning the war and that he would become Zimbabwe's leader. Despite this, it seemed that it was worthwhile to have at least one more try to settle the problems at a conference to be held in London. I did not think it likely at the time that the Lancaster House conference would succeed.
There were a number of difficulties to be solved.
There was the constitution, the elections and perhaps the most difficult of all, the land question. There was no way in which the whites in Zimbabwe would be prepared to accept the compulsory purchase of their farms. What was agreed to in the end by all parties was that willing sellers should be paid a fair price for their land and that the British and Americans would be prepared to finance this. As the conference was reaching its end, it became clear that, albeit reluctantly, Nkomo and the Muzorewa/Smith Government would be prepared to accept the agreement on the table.
Zanu, the Mugabe party, was not prepared to do so. He thought that, since they were bound to win power, election or no, success would be theirs without an agreement. Presidents Nyerere of Tanzania and Machel of Mozambique pressurised Mugabe to accept. Privately, President Nyerere made it plain to me that he would not accept the result of any post-settlement election unless Mugabe won it. In the event, as was wholly predictable, Mugabe won the 1980 election easily. The prospect of a Mugabe Government was worrying, since he was known to be a Marxist and had made incendiary remarks about what would happen if he gained power.
The quietly spoken Mugabe worried me: he was secretive, seemed not to need friends, mistrusted everyone. Devious and clever, he was an archetypal cold fish. Christopher Soames, a man of great good sense and the Governor of Southern Rhodesia, developed a close working relationship with Mugabe. A big and friendly man, Soames was able to persuade Mugabe that an orderly transfer of power and a tolerant attitude towards those who had been his enemies would be the right way forward. Mugabe's Government started tolerably well. Having seen food shortages while in exile in Tanzania and Mozambique, he knew it would be counterproductive to seize the well-managed farms of the whites. Nonetheless, we were never certain which way Mugabe would jump; I just had a dreadful feeling that he would leap in the wrong direction. In the end, Mugabe has proven to be a textbook example of Acton's dictum about how power corrupts. If there had been no agreement in 1979 the war would have continued, many more people would have been killed, and Mugabe would, in the end, have won both the war and the presidency. Economic devastation would have come much earlier. There can be no doubt that the election of Mugabe in 1980 reflected the majority opinion in Zimbabwe.
For all that has followed we did the right thing, the only thing that could be done back then. So much for history.
Now the future beckons.
It will take a long time to restore the prosperity which that beautiful country once enjoyed. Yet the people of Zimbabwe are resilient. It says a great deal for them that, despite threats and intimidation, the recent election seems to have overthrown the Zanu-PF majority in Parliament. Strictly speaking, this is now no longer our business, but a great many of us will feel that we still owe the people of Zimbabwe, who have been through such desperate times, all the help we can give them.
Although Mugabe tries to paint Britain as a colonial foe, we should feel no embarrassment for our role in Zimbabwe's recent past nor about doing all we can to assist its people today.
And those of us who remember the country as it once was can only condemn the selfishness and folly of the man who has brought this about.
Lord Carrington was Foreign Secretary, 1979-82,
and chaired the Lancaster House conference
Peter Godwin on Zimbabwe Elections
“The chances of a free election are minimal.”
One of the flood of Zimbabweans to have fled the chaos of his homeland, author Peter Godwin tries to find some hope in the wreckage. Original article here.
So, I’m on the train from Perth to Fremantle, trying to stay awake after a 30-hour flight from New York, where I now live, via Stockholm and Kuala Lumpur, when I hear the two young black guys in the seat behind me speaking in Shona, one of Zimbabwe’s home tongues. I greet them in my rusty Shona, and soon we are chatting about home and how bad things have become there. And then the train pulls in at a suburban station and a middle-aged black lady in a nurse’s uniform gets on and sits down next to me. As soon as she picks up that we are Zimbabweans, she joins in - she’s from Harare, it turns out.
“Did you know that Zimbabweans have the highest IQ in the world?” she says. Hmm, that seems a little over-patriotic. “Yes,” she continues, “I queue for sugar, I queue for salt, I queue for fuel, I queue for cooking oil.” And she bursts into peals of laughter at her joke.
A friend of hers, she continues, saw a queue and joined it, as one does in Zimbabwe, even without knowing what it’s for, as it’s bound to be for something in short supply. Usually queues are remarkably good-natured affairs, with people chatting and bonding in the shared absurdity of their misfortune, but this one seemed a little subdued. When he gets to the head of the line, he realises why. There on a table is a coffin with a corpse laid out in it. He had inadvertently been queuing for a body viewing, and these were mourners. She hoots again, and gets off at the next station.
Back in Perth, I am interviewed by the enormously capable artistic director of the Perth International Arts Festival, Shelagh Magadza, who is, you guessed it, yet another Zimbabwean.
Welcome to the Zimbabwean diaspora: energetic, educated, talented and absent.
This is what we’ve come to - a nation wandering the Earth, exchanging mordant jokes on Australian trains, ruing our fate at literary festivals. It’s estimated that nearly 75 per cent of Zimbabweans between the ages of 18 and 65 have now left the country. That’s getting up to Irish Potato Famine ratios. It’s a veritable exodus. Imagine any city - imagine Adelaide - suddenly losing that proportion of its population. That’s how bad things have become in my homeland.
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, my family memoir set in the collapsing Zimbabwe, ends in about 2004, when my father died. At the time, I remember thinking “the country couldn’t get much worse”.
Boy, was I wrong.
Then, inflation was a few thousand per cent, now it’s up to about 120,000 per cent - way higher than in the Weimar Republic, when Germans loaded up wheelbarrows with money to go grocery shopping. How can one even imagine what 120,000 per cent inflation means? Here’s one flippant example of the effect of the economic calumny that has beggared Africa’s most promising nation: Players teeing off at the Harare golf course usually order a round of drinks before the game so that the barman can line up their frosties on the counter as they come down the final fairway. Members used to pay after they’d finished their beers. Now they pay when they order them. Because, by the time they play a round of golf, the price of the beers has gone up.
There is a harvest of superlatives provided by Zimbabwe’s spin down the vortex of failed statehood. It is the world’s fastest shrinking (peacetime) economy, halving in size since 2000. It has one of the lowest life expectancies - about 35; more orphans per capita than anywhere on the planet; and half its population is malnourished.
Meanwhile, Robert Mugabe, who just celebrated his 84th birthday, recently moved into a $26 million palace, with 25 bedroom suites. And the question, “Why do Zimbabweans stand for it?” has already been answered: they don’t, they leave.
With snap elections due on March 29, there is a new flurry of hope that those who remain will eject him after 28 years in power. Mugabophobes now have two alternative presidential candidates, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and now the newly declared Simba Makoni, one-time finance minister and technocrat, recently expelled from the ruling ZANU PF party for daring to challenge the Sun King. He is supposed to have the backing of various other ZANU PF heavyweights (and the smaller of the two MDC factions).
But don’t get your hopes up. The chances of a free election are minimal. Quite apart from the fact that the last three have been blatantly rigged, and that the opposition finds it hard to campaign, gets little access to the state-controlled media, and has its canvassers harassed and arrested, the electoral commission that handles the nuts and bolts of the poll says it cannot possibly conduct elections so soon. They don’t have enough ballot boxes, election officers, transport, fuel, money, they say. The basic logistics are impossible.
“What should we do?” I hear you ask. The more we hector and berate Mugabe, the more it enables him to pose as an anti-colonial hero. South African president Thabo Mbeki hasn’t been much help. On the very day that the South African-brokered negotiations broke down, he declared them a success!
In so far as African politics, in particular, is about patronage, I think we need to dial reality past Mugabe, to signal that he is fast becoming an irrelevance, and that the world will turn and he will soon be gone, one way or another. (As someone said on hearing that Mugabe had been ill, “nothing minor I hope”.) The most effective way to do this, I think, would be to pull together a multi-lateral donor conference, in which not just countries, but institutions like the World Bank, IMF and major private philanthropists, pledge amounts that they will start spending, the day after democratic normalisation.
This is a way to unlock our imagination on how reconstruction could start. The amounts pledged would help harness greed to good effect, signalling to the local Zimbabwean elite (who are wondering when to dismount the current horse) how well everyone can do under a new dispensation.
Such a conference, with its resultant document, can also begin the debate on how to fund specific reconstruction areas: agriculture (and different models of resuscitating commercial agriculture), education, health, currency stabilisation, energy, infrastructure, and so on. It also gets us away from a hectoring, negative binary on Zimbabwe to one where we lay out upon a heaving table the glittering goodies that will be available as soon as the venal autocrat is gone.
I think that this would help establish a profound paradigm shift, and change our attitude from one that is purely reactive to Mugabe’s latest felonies, to one that sees beyond him, by writing the tyrant out of the script for Zimbabwe’s future.
Peter Godwin’s latest book is “When the Crocodile Meets the Sun” (Picador, $24.95).
Susan Cook-Jahme's Page
Profile Information
- Hometown:
- Cape Agulhas, South Africa
- About Me and My Book:
- Susan Cook-Jahme: is an illustrative artist, author, poet & photographer. Her writing subjects are often taken from her experiences of every day life in Africa and can either make the reader roar with laughter, or cry with compassion. She works out of her home-based studio in the beautiful Western Cape region of South Africa, using her journals and photographic material of Africa's people, beautiful animals, flora and fauna collected over many years in Africa's most wild and inaccessible areas as material for her painting and writing subjects. Susan's life has been spent in various African countries and the Indian Ocean Islands. She started writing at an early age and has had her illustrations, poetry, articles and short stories published in well known publications throughout the world.
Visit the storefront where she sells her books:
http://www.lulu.com/susancookjahme
Africa’s Amazing ABC (children’s)
http://www.lulu.com/content/973718
African Dust On the Soles Of my Feet (poetry)
http://www.lulu.com/content/973617
Susan's (Sukie) Photo Gallery where she sells her photographs
You can purchase Africa's Amazing ABC from my Lulu.com storefront
Susan Cook-Jahme's Photos
Susan Cook-Jahme's Blog
Lord Carrington on Robert Mugabe
Did we put a tyrant in power? - Lord Carrington The Times April 5, 2008
The former Foreign Secretary remembers how Mugabe became president of Zimbabwe
Peter Carrington:
If you want to understand this week's events in Zimbabwe, a little history might be helpful. For it demonst… Continue
Posted on April 5, 2008 at 11:54pm —
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Scribblers’ Retreat Writers’ Conference 2009
Literacy is our purpose.
Fulfilling dreams is our goal.
www.scribblersretreatwritersconference.com
@ Sea Palms Resort, St. Simons Island, Georgia
February 12-15, 2009 – Elizabeth Blahnik, Ernest Gilbert, Pam Mueller, Kathy Kerr, Maggie Toussaint, Dr. Jim Outlaw, Lee Carter, Millie Wilcox, Monica Simmons, Roger Pinckney
May 14-17, 2009 –Dickie Anderson (F), Ed Ginn, Ervin Williams, Holly McClure, Cappy Rearick, Harlan Hambright, Constance Daley, Bud Hearn, William Rawlings
August 13-16, 2009 – “SciFi, Fantasy, Mystery, Inspirational”
November 12-15, 2009 – “Novels, Short Stories, etc”
Scribblers’ Retreat is a non-profit organization established with the goal of reaching writers of all ages; to inspire and promote their hidden gifts and talents.
By involving the local community, authors, publishers, editors, journalists and all forms of the literary world, we are opening their minds and bringing hope where there was doubt.
Scribblers’ Retreat is not the typical classroom setting. It was designed to bring world-class authors, literature professors, editors, journalists, illustrators, photo journalists, proofreaders, publishers, publicists, screenplay writers, and website/graphic designers, etc. one-on-one with young and old alike. It is the opportunity of a lifetime for someone who has had a manuscript in a desk drawer for 40 years or who has an outstanding poem that simply must be read.
Scribblers’ Retreat Writers’ Conference
Where “can’t” is not in our vocabulary.
For more information:
Jeanie Pantelakis
Co-director
Scribblers' Retreat Writers' Conference
1-800-996-2904
912-230-2207
cpantelakis@gmail.com
http://www.stacy-deanne.net
http://www.stacy-deanne.net
Also, check out my latest cover for the JGDS (Junior Geography Detective Squad) children's mystery state book series:
Isn't my job cool?
Aidana WillowRaven
www.WillowRavenIllustration.com
IM: willowraven.illustration
Mary Ellen
http://writethroughme.blogspot.com/
One of my most favorite movies is Out Of Africa with Meryl Streep & Robert Redford. Your art work is awesome and so many books. Wow!
I am still coming up the ranks. But I have many readers! Here is where I reside on the web:
www.johnmarionfrancis.com - Personal website
http://www.authorsden.com/johnmarionfrancis - National
http://www.myspace.com/romanticwordartist - MySpace
Be forever creative!
~Jonathon!
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