Hyperventilating and paralyzed

My room (metaphor for my life?) has been an unmitigated mess for the past 6 months, ostensibly because I was finishing ‘next week’ and would then pack all my stuff and get ready to move on to see what else life has in store for me.

‘Next week’ is here and I cannot find the strength to tape together the first box and to catalogue the books I put into it. Cannot muster the psyche to go through clothes and general stuff to determine what to give away and what I want to lug back home. I guess I still need time to look back at the closing door (as I wade in stuff I don’t really need). Though if I were honest I’d confess that it’s just the inertia of rest (total laziness) that’s got me in its clutches… and that I want to savor it (as the mess piles higher and higher... but really, what's a couple more days after 6 months) just a little while longer.

The efficient, kick-ass, no-nonsense, take no prisoners part of me will be summoned in due course… Am actually taking next week off to put the bum to sleep and (re)awaken ms. active. Trying to decide whether ms. active should come back to this mess or whether, as her parting gesture, ms. bum should at least sort some stuff out. Aye, to be or not to be…

UNLEASHING THE WATCHDOG

copied from http://hermes.wits.ac.za/wcs/display_article.asp?id=571

Kenyan whistle-blower and former anti corruption chief, John Githongo will be coming to South Africa to launch the 2006 Power Reporting Workshop hosted by the Investigative Journalism Workshop (IJW) at Wits University.

Githongo, left his post as Permanent Secretary for Ethics and Governance in the Office of the President in early 2005 and sought refuge in the UK after having uncovered corrupt dealings worth millions of dollars under the new regime of Mwai Kibaki. Githongo will deliver a keynote speech on whistle-blowing and witch hunts. He, together with another fearless journalist in exile Geoffrey Nyarota, Zimbabwean Daily News founder, will conduct a workshop on 'Holding Governments to Account'.

The three day Power Reporting Workshop is the second international conference for investigative reporters hosted by the IJW in two consecutive years. It is organised in collaboration with the London Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) and the Johannesburg Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ) and will take place from August 28-30 in Johannesburg.

Acclaimed national and international investigative journalists have confirmed their participation and will be teaching a host of tools and techniques which add value to any story in the newsroom. The topics to be covered reach from covert and non-covert reporting to investigating business and resource exploitation, sources and spin-doctors, forensic interviewing techniques and computer assisted reporting (CAR). The Workshop’s objective is to encourage a media culture that looks behind the façade.

“Unleashing the watchdog in our local and regional media is one of our prime goals at the Investigative Journalism Workshop,” says Birgit Schwarz, IJW Director.

“We have a fine and rich tradition of investigative journalism in this country.” says Anton Harber, Caxton Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Wits University. “But we need to rekindle the watchdog culture we once had”, adds Schwarz, “and remind ourselves that to be the voice of the voiceless is no less important in a democracy than it is in a country with an oppressive regime.”

To dig deeper on a daily basis is especially important in a young democracy, says Schwarz. By providing practical workshop sessions and networking opportunities with top investigative reporters from abroad and the region, the IJW, which is a USAID funded project, hopes to empower local journalists with the tools that will help them improve their investigative reporting skills. “We want to unleash the urge to probe and to provide the tools to do so effectively”, says Schwarz.

One who will provide the latest tools available to reporters is Tommy Kaas. Kaas is editor at the Danish International Centre for Analytical Reporting (DICAR) and has trained reporters all over the world in subjects like advanced internet research, spreadsheets, database managers and social networks analysis. Kaas will conduct a whole series of computer assisted research (CAR) workshops for different levels of experience.

Others such as British journalist Michael Gillard, who has written extensively on financial and organised crime as well as corruption, or Gavin MacFadyen, Director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London, will conduct workshops on more traditional tools of forensic reporting such as ‘Reading Company Accounts’ and ‘Covert Reporting’.

From the region, award winning Kenyan journalist Joyce Mulama will conduct a workshop on social investigations; senior Tanzanian investigative reporter Benjamin Thompson will together with Global Witness researcher and Namibian reporter John Grobler explore issues of resource exploitation, while leading South African investigative reporters such as Sam Sole, Wisani waka Ngobeni, Martin Welz, Deon Basson and Ruda Landman will share experiences, case studies and tools of their trade with delegates.

An exhibition of Great South African Investigations will be launched at the 2006 Power Reporting Workshop to demonstrate that investigative journalism has a proud and established history in South Africa and to encourage young up and coming journalists to follow in the footsteps of those who braved the authorities in the hope and ambition to fight injustice and the abuse of power in the name of their readers.

The workshop programme and speakers’ biographies can be found at www.journalism.co.za.

Beautiful Collabos

(Pha)Relly is beyond puurty... he's beautiful (check out that facial bone structure)!



Love collabos btwn talented folk from la belle Paris :-)



There goes my grey matter as it prepares for the final quarter of 2006.

The 'Magic Eye' of HIV prevention; Smart Schools

Am currently gathering HIV awareness/prevention material so I can prepare a presentation to deliver to a group of teenagers in 3 months' time. Not sure how well it (the presentation) will serve them, ‘cause even with everything I know about HIV and AIDS I still can’t claim to be 100% safe (i.e. I do very well at abstinence, and then one day, when the hormones, the stars and the wind are aligned just right… all my efforts go out the window, I’m shot off the pedestal back into the primordial slime… may tell the story of that struggle some day soon).

But back to information gathering…

First stop today was lovelife South Africa where I got high-res versions of the TV PSAs. They’re mandated to spread the HIV-prevention gospel to South Africa's youth, so they use some pretty hip billboards and PSAs… the sort that some of us “non-youth” wouldn’t get right away… or ever! As a result, they are constantly under fire from parents, churches, community groups, etc. who feel good money is being wasted on adverts on billboards and primetime PSAs, and teaching teens promiscuity (safer sex methods) when they could be … I don’t know… putting it into the community somehow. Lovelife is truly where the rubber meets the road in the condomize vs. abstain debate (pun intended).

They do the most interesting and abstract billboards, kinda like those Magic Eye pictures… you have to see it a few times, stare at it from just the right angle, and then one day (if you have the kind of mind that “sees” 3D… mine has never figured those pics out), while you’re rescuing yet another meal from burning to a crisp, or placidly ironing your laundry, the light bulb will go off. And you’ll think, “that’s what that means!” This happened to me a few years ago… when they had the ‘his&hers’ billboard campaign (sure you’ll probably figure it out in a minute… hmm… let me know if you do, ok?).

Lovelife’s advertising campaign is so good, you can do research on it, as seen in this appropriately titled document, The struggle for meaning: a semiotic analysis of interpretations of the lovelife his&hers billboard campaign.
They came under fire early this year because of a billboard that said "HIV loves pelegi go supa bosadi [HIV loves the notion that child-bearing proves womanhood]".

Enough people caused enough of a stink to force them to take the billboards down. The message referred to a practice around here where young girls feel they have to prove their womanhood by giving birth to a child(ren) (and yes, I’ve always wanted to write “a children”). The billboards came down ostensibly because they were stigmatizing pregnancy. [I heard somewhere that it was an 'unofficial' policy back in the days of the struggle to make sure any girl above 16 had a child or children. Of course, like the slogan “freedom today, degrees tomorrow”, no one admits to its existence and though official evidence of it has been washed away by the demands of a civilized democracy and the most liberal constitution in the world, the unofficial evidence remains].

Starting early this year they launched a pretty hard-hitting TV PSA campaign with the tagline “HIV, Face It”. The first one I watched not only caused the rise of goosebumps of fear all over my body, but also scattered in the four winds, any lust that may have been lurking in the shadows of my mind, body or soul ... putting me right back on that pedestal (to await, again, that proper alignment…). Take a look at it... what scares me is the part where the voice over guy says "HIV Wants You!" which is where I picture an uncle sam (or uncle hiv in this case) pointing and looking directly at me, and I can't look away because I am guilty of something.
The ones that followed have been as hard-hitting… and progressively sadder because they show you the cycle and what happens after you give in to your all-too-human desires. This is even tougher to watch because everyday on this continent there are hundreds (from all walks of life) having to “Face It”. And even more of us who are steeling ourselves with profuse prayer and supplication to the gods, the ancestors, and fate, as we prepare to go in for that test.
One last thought on things magical, check out the unharnessed power of school uniforms in this article.

Second stop was the office of a colleague who teaches in high school, and he has adapted this (Rice, G.H. (1995). AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa: A diffusion model. Journal of Geography, 1 (94), 317-322 Rice, G. H. (1994). The global AIDS pandemic: A diffusion simulation. Teaching Geography , 3 (19), 124-126) really neat illustration of how HIV spreads, to the South African context. He teaches IT among other subjects and had a copy of the activity in the computer room. As he opened the door, he read the sign posted on the door and rolled his eyes. He had put up a notice that said “Unfortunately the internet is down until further notice. Sorry guys.” And some clever kid had turned the ‘u’ in guys into an ‘a’ (which he is)… kids… never miss an opportunity to be smart alecs.

But let me start at the beginning: I drive up to the boom gates infront of the school (located in leafy suburbia) and tell the guards manning the booms that I’m here to see so-and-so. They ask: "is he at the school or at the market?" And I’m thinking: “market???” I drive into the school compound and sure enough there’s a flea-market looking place complete with stalls and people packing up their wares, mostly food wares. I walk around the stalls, totally jazzed that a market and a school can coexist in the same compound. When I asked my colleague he said it’s the organic market, open every week day, serves Jobergers who are obsessed with interested in things organic, and that it never interferes with classes ‘cause the kids are pretty disciplined (plus quite a number of their parents have stalls there).

I found the whole concept, a school that knows how to make money off renting bits of its property, intriguing so I pressed him for more details about the school:

It goes from kindergarten (or crèche/grade nought) to high school - grade 10, the kids don’t wear uniform; they have to play at least one musical instrument. Class size is a maximum of 30 students, and they go from class one to grade 10 as the original group of 30. They have one main teacher who looks after them from class one to class seven, and are then handed over to another teacher who sees them through to grade 10. The first teacher will also keep an eye on them and continue to be part of their lives until they leave the school. Of course life happens along the way, but these are the guiding principles. High school kids pay the low low 'special only' rate of R40,000 a year (lower grades pay less), and the kids go on to university and to a diverse range of careers.

It’s the Waldorf approach to learning and no, you dare not breathe a word about the competition, Montessori, around there. I think both are really good learning methods, though I'm more familiar with the Montessori approach 'cause all the amazing puzzle-whiz kids I've met come from Montessori schools... maybe I can get something to try on the know-it-all teens from here ...

CRASH, changes, what’s the road to heaven paved with?

Just watched CRASH… great movie, glad that this was recognized and it won an Oscar. We know we live in a cruel and unequal world, but I suppose in order to survive we push those thoughts aside and focus on the task at hand… figuring that it won’t do to “think too much”. This movie shows the anatomy of karma: how our unconscious actions (‘cause we’re too busy focusing on our own stuff, or trying to prove some petty point) will spawn other actions that will eventually come back to you. Shows the depths of human cruelty and the heights of human goodness… I’d like to know why God made us with these highs and lows… why not just make us all-pious or all-wretched? Why these two extremes residing in the same mind and body? (and please don’t say “imagine how boring it would be if we were all the same”)... suppose she knows best and may or may not reveal her point someday.

Helped a friend and her family move from an apartment into their first home this weekend, prompting all sorts of nostalgia. We made really great memories in that apartment… it was my first home in Joberg, it became a ‘squatter camp’ at some point, with 7 of us in a 2 bedroom apartment… We were 3 women, 2 of them control freaks, and me only allowing my control issues to show when I’d grown out of the ‘visitor’ phase… Discovered that it is true: women’s periods do ‘sync up’ when they live together… forget whose pheromones were the dominant ones. Went through my generous and consumate chef stage there, where I’d make elaborate meals for all 7 of us daily. Learnt a great deal about team work and genuine friendship, and about my own depths and heights. Time has flown ‘cause in the ensuing years, the original couple got married, bought the apartment, had a daughter, got good jobs, and bought their first house. All this has made me pause and cast a quick eye over my life's milestones. According to me, myself and I, we’re doing pretty well… according to ‘society’ I am performing very poorly. Human beings being social animals and all, and with the individual being driven to ‘fit in’, I suppose I should get started on the road to social acceptability round about now.

Speaking of being socially acceptable, I’ve been collecting different views of what it takes to make a successful relationship. Some folk I’ve spoken to have been categorical in their view that “you never end up with the one you want” and “it’s better for him/her to love you more than you love him/her”. When I first heard that, I looked at the people telling me this and thought “and you are really quite serious about this?”… Well, the more I heard it, the more I started to get convinced that I had clearly read one too many romance novels and would do well to get my feet onto the ground pronto… “just be stoic, and suck it up with a man who is not-the-one-you-want”.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a very healthy respect for arranged marriages - at least the ones I know of - and totally believe in the whole ‘learning to love’ as a feasible option to ‘love from the start’… a good number of my Indian friends bear testimony to the workability of this approach where cooler, more experienced heads (professional matchmakers) find you about 5 different options, you get to pick one from the 5, and you both give it the old college try. I just have a problem with mismatched affections, and think that all those selling that ‘you can make someone love you’ crock should be shot. Why? Because there are folk who buy it and then decide to darken the doorways of those who don’t buy it… an unhappy experience for all involved, and a reminder that the road to hell is paved with good intentions…. So what paves the road to heaven?

Biodiversity 101

Having once been a card carrying environmentalist and conservationist, I broke rank with that fraternity when I came to understand that as things stand now, the best thing communities can do for themselves is to have a great big barbecue, feast on all the wild animals in their backyards, and on a full stomach, plan their way forward. Why I came to that conclusion is a story to be told on another day.

I did, however, get foaming-at-the-mouth upset when I read about the 228 leopard tortoises intercepted at JKIA enroute to Thailand (that country that seems to want to turn itself into east Africa by acquiring our fauna) from Uganda. But wait! Why get mad at the Thais who were importing “shells”? Rather get mad at ourselves for being clueless enough to sell our heritage for a pittance… because there is no price high enough to compensate the environment or posterity for the loss of biodiversity. Yes it is poverty that drives us to these acts. Not just the poverty directing you to say ‘I need to eat today’, but also a poverty of knowledge, of a connection to nature which would allow you to understand that by selling this today, you have actually impoverished your tomorrow... but then again, why worry about that when it was already impoverished?

In both the villages I consider myself from, young unemployed men insist that God put them there, at the foot of a forest, and at the edge of an ocean, so they could exploit those natural resources. Back when I was a bleeding-heart liberal and tree-hugger I remember my father stopping to buy charcoal on the roadside somewhere between ukambani and taita. Very few trees in sight, and yet there were several bags of charcoal lined up along the roadside. I asked one of the (shirtless) young men selling them, as a bleeding-heart liberal is wont to do, whether he was planting any trees to replace the ones he was consuming, and what he would do when he finished all the trees suitable for charcoal making. He laughed and answered simply, “we’ll just move on to another place.” Of course I am not blameless because I went on to eat many a meal cooked using those dead trees.

I once met a man who was paying boys in the village to collect chameleons … he had found an overseas buyer for them and was exporting as many as he could get his hands on… never wonder again why you don’t see as many chameleons as you used to back in the day… butterflies suffered the same fate… so did sea cucumbers... and so did the animals that were sold to Thailand last year (anyone have updates on the current situation there?). God only knows what else is ‘hot’ on the market right now… other than leopard tortoises.

What are you thinking when you ship 250 live tortoises (and I don't care how rapidly the reproduce!)? Obviously not about the biodiversity you just cost your country. Just because Geochelone pardalis are not yet on the CITES endangered species list is not an excuse to export this large a number. Besides, how do you think other animals got on the darned list in the first place?

Other countries that killed off their biodiversity have something concrete to show for it… booming economies, tarred roads, rural electrification. To the Ugandans (and Kenyans) responsible for our diminishing stocks of flora and fauna: It is just plain irresponsible to kill off your biodiversity and have no benefits accruing to the community at large!

uThabo

Thabo Mbeki possesses such knee-melting intellect that there are days I wish we could give him one term as President of Kenya (though he may yet rule us as the President of Africa). Yes he has his faults: alleged paranoia, alleged Napoleonic complex, ‘too’ intellectual... too much of an ideas man, always traveling around the world instead of addressing the needs of his country, too aloof and not a man of the people, doesn’t recognize that HIV causes AIDS…

Despite these allegations, I think he is one of the most attractive African presidents (the lure of silvering temples and an honest-to-goodness thinking brain beneath them) and quite Clinton-esque (the positive and negative attributes). He knows how to put together a good team to look after his country’s economy, and is masterful in his use of the race card (as a stiletto, club, sword of Damocles…), and in the use of his office through his weekly “letters from the president”, and through his speeches to address and upstage critics. You can count on him to constantly remind the oppressors that they denied him and others like him the chance at a normal life, denied him his son and other children that might have been, and forced him to give his life to the struggle for liberation (even as his party embraces and absorbs the ‘former’ oppressors).

My favorite of his speeches remains the one he gave 10 years ago at the adoption of the new South African constitution. Every time I read that speech, ‘I am an African,’ I am overcome by an indomitable hope for this continent... "However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!" He recently gave the 4^th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture at Wits University on July 29^th and I was fortunate enough to watch it on television and to download the text here because the newspaper reports (as usual) did not do it justice. I enjoyed the delicious irony of the content and spirit of his speech delivered against a backdrop of (a) an audience that had blinged all the way to the lecture theatre, (b) the way in which “the ordinary people” (campus community) were kept away (with physical barriers) from “the big people”, and (c) the transformation of the area outside the lecture theatre … best described as “pimp my piazza”.

He addressed the need for this country to repair its soul, and for the "haves" to care about the "have nots". Clearly a controversial call because we who are in the grip of capitalism (a system whose time has passed, but which continues to hold on with its last fingernails...) want to know why our "hard-won" wealth should be shared with those who snoozed and lost, while we schmoozed and won.

He addressed the issue of morality spot on when he said: "To argue, in the manner of Machiavelli, that there is one rule for business and another for private life, is to open the door to an orgy of unscrupulousness before which the mind recoils. Yet granted that I should love my neighbour as myself the questions which under modern conditions of large-scale economic organisation, remain for solutions like who precisely is my neighbour? And how exactly am I to make my love for him effective in practice?"

And he may as well have been speaking of Kenya, or any other African country when he remarked: "In these circumstances personal wealth and the public communication of the message that we are people of wealth, becomes at the same time the means by which we communicate the message that we are worthy citizens of our community...

the meaning of freedom has come to be defined not by the seemingly ethereal and therefore intangible gift of liberty, but by the designer labels on the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the spaciousness of our houses and our yards, their geographic location, the company we keep and what we do as part of that company...

It is perfectly obvious that many in our society, having absorbed the value system of the capitalist market, have come to the conclusion that, for them personal success and fulfilment means personal enrichment at all costs and the most theatrical and striking public display of that wealth...

What this means is that many in our society have come to accept that what is socially correct is not the proverbial expression - "manners maketh the man" but the notion that each one of us is as excellent a human being as our demonstrated wealth suggests!"

I for one will be sorry when he steps down as President in 2009.

National Women's Day - August 9

Attended a public conversation with Dr. Phyllis Ntantala this evening. What drew me to this particular lecture was (nope not the usual endeavor to put off doing what I have to do until the last possible minute) the way in which it was advertised, using a paragraph from her autobiography:

“It was one evening at the Lincoln Center in New York. Pavarotti’s voice filled the auditorium with ‘Mama’, one of those arias he sings so well, and the audience, in appreciation, gave him a thunderous ovation. As he came back for yet another bow, my mind suddenly flashed back, and that other world to which I once belonged came into sharp focus – the bends of the Nqabarha River, the meadows, the animals, the simple country folk, the school kids pouring out of the school-gate at the end of the day. I saw them all, as I had seen them so many times in that far off time and place. I sat down, cupped my head in my hands and bowed my head, softly saying to myself: ‘How strange! Little do all these people know that while I am part of them at this particular moment, I am part of another world of which they know so little. I come from Gqubeni along the bends of the Nqabarha River. That’s where my roots are. That’s me!”
- Phyllis Ntantala, A Life’s Mosaic.

I figured that she must have something of value to say if she could shuttle between these two (and possibly more) worlds and retain a measure of sanity and perspective. That she is mother of the current Minister of Arts and Culture merely served to heighten my interest.

August 9 is my favorite public holiday, one of the entries under the “things I absolutely love about South Africa” column: Women’s day. For the past 4 women’s days I’ve celebrated in this country, I’ve generally received (from myself and from others) flowers, dinners, spa appointments… all because I happen to be female… so I’ve come to regard it as a day when men go out of their way to be gentle, and to wish every woman they encounter a ‘happy women’s day’. I had not, sadly, investigated the origins of this day, figuring that it was simply part of the SADC endeavor to have 30% female participation in parliament by 2005... especially 'cause I know Mozambique’s Women’s Day is 7th April, and Angola celebrates International Women’s Day (March 8) as a bonafide public holiday (while everyone else simply commemorates it).

August 9, 2006 will mark 50 years since the historic march of 20,000 women, on Pretoria to oppose the application of pass laws to women. The talk content should be posted here shortly. Dr. Ntantala gave the historic context background of the struggle, highlighting the earlier attempts to introduce passes for women which had been successfully thwarted. The 1956 protest was a symbolic win, with the pass laws implemented through bureaucracy and neatly in place by 1961. When they were repealed in 1987, it was a purely academic exercise because women had long left the homelands and moved in with their men/husbands in the single sex hostels of Soweto and other migrant communities, and in the family houses that had sprung up to satisfy demand. Take home message: Women were instrumental in the achievement of democracy, but still remain undervalued despite guarantees in the constitution.

What I took from this talk:

I met a woman I last saw in 1993, a year before she voted in Colombus, Ohio in her country’s first democratic elections.

It was awesome to watch a mother give a talk, and have her son (Minister Pallo Jordan) attend, and listen to her indirect and subtle criticism of the government he serves…

The talk ignited debate about public space and intellectual women, with someone asking why more women weren’t present in the public space (defined in this instance as TV, newspaper columns/commentaries, and radio)… inviting the rebuttal that a large number of female intellectuals in South Africa teach thousands of students a year… doesn’t that count as public space?

An audience member indicated she was “deeply disturbed” by the casual tossing about of the word “intellectual” without its meaning being clarified, and she was also uncomfortable with the dichotomization of ‘rural women’ and ‘intellectual women’… with someone else saying that the women’s agenda had been hijacked by the middle class agenda…

It was also good to note that Dr. Ntantala, unlike many ‘intellectuals’, was not shy in her praise for a woman I bow before, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as a “brilliant woman with a keen mind, sharp tongue… and astute analysis of South Africa”. She also praised the independence of two other women, Epainette Mbeki and Ellen Kuzwayo who joined political parties in their own right, and not because they were following boyfriends/husbands.

It was interesting to hear the perspective of one who has been present every step of the way in the creation of today’s South Africa. I wonder what she and Ma’Mbeki think of their sons... These women are immersed in community projects… their sons are running the government that makes these community projects necessary… what kind of conversations do they have with the sons? What is their honest personal opinion of government and the way it’s run? And when they’re talking amongst themselves, do they mention “Thabo/Pallo was always a little bit …. and you can see evidence of this in his recent stand regarding …?”

muscle.

Toned, sculpted, firm, definitely steroid-free, all the better if it’s all naturally (vs. gym) developed… I love muscle.
Appreciate female muscle too, on Lourdes Mutola, Serena, Venus, and on me too (when I’m not being untrue to myself). But it’s the male muscle that melts me. From the beautiful calves of Michael Chan to the sunkist flesh of the frat boy/landscape architect (for those who’ve seen ‘something new’), though it’s most disarming when dipped in dark chocolate: Walala hoi with their beautiful, all natural muscle. Whenever at coast or Dar, I stare out the mathree/daladala window at that working, sweat-slicked muscle.

Remember the scene in Boomerang when they’re trying to determine whether or not the nipple’s showing in the ad and the guy says it’s definitely showing ‘cause he’s drooling? Well, that’s me and toned muscle. I could be minding my own business, thinking about saving the world (more on this later) and I’ll find myself taking a second look at a guy who’s just passed me, only to realize that he’s displaying (even in most innocent way possible) toned muscle. This… ehm… this tendency once impacted my work. A colleague and I were administering a survey and entered this guy’s office... My mouth fell open as soon as I saw him (sunkist, short sleeves, very nicely fitting trousers…), I remember my lips flapping but having no idea what I was saying… Hurray for team work! ‘cause my colleague came through and rescued my mute/confused self, and got what we’d gone for (and more).

I’ve been told girls can volunteer to slick oil onto body builders right before they go on stage, but I’ve steered clear of getting details. Why? I don’t think I’d hang on to the reins of control if I mistakenly put myself in the way of such temptation, though in my bolder days I actually went up to guys and asked if I could run my fingers along their muscles! Many kindly indulged me.

Having once been in a business where the statement “you look different with clothes on” was common, I fully appreciate the difference clothes make and remember being pretty unimpressed with some folk upon first meeting them, and that changing when they took the clothes off. It also took me a moment to recognize the ones I was used to seeing undressed… [swimming! The business was swimming!]

Usually it’s athletes who have muscle to die for, and I’ve narrowed it down to my favorite muscle sports: soccer features at #1 ‘cause of the legs, and sometimes the abs. That is just pure working out (and youth) that gets those legs to where they are. Favorite soccer team of all time? Mali during the Africa Cup of Nations 2002… can’t wait for 2008 and 2010. (rugby players are just a tad too beefy).

# 2 sport is swimming: Having always been fascinated by the physiological differences between males and females, I find swimming is the ultimate frontier where the fundamental differences are evident. For female swimmers, the subcutaneous fat shows big time, indicating that indeed, feminine fat persists even when you swim twice a day, six days a week… and it covers up the muscle tone you know has to be under there somewhere. Male swimmers, however, are a whole other story. Their muscle tone is evident… drool-inducingly, waxed/shaved-ly so. My favorites at the moment: Roland Schoeman, African Swimmer of 2005, and Ryk Neethling. We saw a lot of Roland on TV in 2004/5 when he was doing the talk show circuit and obligingly taking his shirt off for female fans waiting to swoon at the sight of his sculpted 6pak. Ryk I’ve seen live at the Ellis Park swimming complex... happened to be there while he was shooting some ad, and remember saying to a lady there (his publicist?) that “I’d love to have that body” (meaning I wish I had the discipline to swim long and hard enough to get that buffed). She gave a delighted laugh and said “many people want to have that body”. There was also this picture of him on a billboard in Pretoria for the longest time, just to test the multitasking skills of women when faced with body beauty.

#3 is road biking or spinning in the gym studio. It is a devout desire of mine to coax my leg muscle into the tone and form of those stunning spinning instructors next year… It is just poetry in motion to see that muscle play covered by that smooth hairless skin... how I got sucked into spinning...

But do let’s move on to more chocolate-dipped muscle: Two women I will go to my grave envying are Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith… first got to learn of them from the coffee table book ‘Africa Adorned’. Having traveled the length of this continent, if there are women who have seen African male muscle in all its glory, it’s these two. Thank heaven for photographs that allow us share in this beauty. When I’m finally able to travel Africa the way I’d like, I seriously think I’ll melt into a puddle before the journey’s over… not sure if it’ll be in southern Sudan, Angola, or DRC…