A friend of mine asked about my hectic day yesterday, and it was my pleasure to confirm to him that I did have a hectic day indeed! However, it was my pleasure to have the hectic day.
You see, that one wife that I have, thanks to God's grace, spent the weekend with us, together with my 10-month old son. We therefore squeezed quite a bit of family time and fun into the weekend as we could. We even went so far as to accompany my wife and son to her temporary abode in Port Edward. That was my two daughters, Cwebile and Nomsa, my sister-in-law, Asive, my wife and the little chap. We had such a grand time in Port Edward that Nomsa didn't want to return; she felt like staying over in Port Edward. The only cost to that fun trip was my sleep. Asive hadn't completed her homework (Physical Science, of all the subjects!). I ended up sleeping WAY past midnight, and had to be up before 7:00 AM to make sure that Cwebile was ready for school. Well, Asive also slept late, but while I slept, she had to be up to prepare to go to school herself. I owe her that round, I guess, but I could argue that the assistance with her homework makes up for that inconvenience, aye?
Of course, that would have some serious logistical nightmares as Nomsa is only five, stays home with me when Cwebile is in school, and my wife has her sister-in-law helping her mind our son at her place of work. To add Nomsa to that fray would be too much.
I must confess this myself: I didn't WANT to leave either...
Well, today, it turned out that there were some critical items that my wife forgot to pack into her pilgrim belongings in Port Edward. We liaised by phone and agreed that I would trek back to Port Edward to deliver this. We all trekked there, in fact, but, fortunately for us, as I type this, Asive's homework is done; she has gone off to sleep, and it is only just past 10PM as I draft this entry.
Again, I didn't want to return from Port Edward today. Each time I look at my wife, now that she stays away from here, she is sexier than ever, and that little chap seems to sense that life just isn't all right unless we are all together, and he has the grandest of times when his sisters are around. I really miss them, but I miss my wife the more, I must confess.
I was telling her that we need to relocate the house from Port Shepstone to Port Edward, somehow. I've never been sure which one of the two maxims particularly applies to our relationship: "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "familiarity breeds contempt." I've had episodes where I was certain that I am experiencing the one OR the other. In fact, this momentary separation is taking place at a time when there was more turmoil associated with our living together in Port Shepstone than it was by enjoying the experience of living in each others' company. Well, that company is now limited to weekends only, and I am NOT liking the separation at all.
My ideal situation?
I wished I could relocate this house from Port Shepstone to Port Edward, just so that my wife has someone to come to while this phase of our lives lasts. However, if this separation is necessary to foster a spirit of rekindled joy and family links, then I welcome this stressor, for it comes for a reason. I hope to outlast its hefty weight on my spirit so that I can appreciate the lessons and grooming that it has to bring to my life.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Where it all began
I've been on the face of this planet for a little over 30 years now. Born and bred on a Christian mission station in the southern part of Zimbabwe, I especially appreciate the background that I have and the place that I could call home on that mission field now that I have left. Thanks to the political exploits of Robert Mugabe, I find no pleasure in watching the world around me wither in another man's hands.
My earliest memories of my life are from as far back as the years when I was two, turning three, and I was conscious of the fact that I had a family, two brothers and a sister. I particularly remember this one memory that I will detail here.
My father is a pastor who later trained to be a high school teacher. His area of expertise was Zulu and History. From my earliest memories, he has spoken English in an accent that I can't quite place, but you would have to look twice to confirm that, indeed, this is an African man speaking in English! Despite that high polish in his English, he is as Zulu as they come. He is now retired from active duty. In his early years as a full-time pastor, he was once stationed in Fort Victoria (now called Masvingo, in Zimbabwe). I have a faint, but lingering memory, of playing with one Tobaiwa Masarira. From my mother's recollections of those times, I used to have a fondness for this chap that I can hardly remember because I was SO young!
If I try to get any more specific than that, I am likely to get a concentration headache, so I will leave that aspect of my telling to a time yet future when something might just prod my memory to remember in more detail.
After Masvingo, my father was stationed in Plumtree, and that is where my younger (of the two brothers that I have) was born.
I will take the story up from there tomorrow.
My earliest memories of my life are from as far back as the years when I was two, turning three, and I was conscious of the fact that I had a family, two brothers and a sister. I particularly remember this one memory that I will detail here.
My father is a pastor who later trained to be a high school teacher. His area of expertise was Zulu and History. From my earliest memories, he has spoken English in an accent that I can't quite place, but you would have to look twice to confirm that, indeed, this is an African man speaking in English! Despite that high polish in his English, he is as Zulu as they come. He is now retired from active duty. In his early years as a full-time pastor, he was once stationed in Fort Victoria (now called Masvingo, in Zimbabwe). I have a faint, but lingering memory, of playing with one Tobaiwa Masarira. From my mother's recollections of those times, I used to have a fondness for this chap that I can hardly remember because I was SO young!
If I try to get any more specific than that, I am likely to get a concentration headache, so I will leave that aspect of my telling to a time yet future when something might just prod my memory to remember in more detail.
After Masvingo, my father was stationed in Plumtree, and that is where my younger (of the two brothers that I have) was born.
I will take the story up from there tomorrow.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Drained...
As for today's events, this idealist is TIRED--dog tired.
When my wife and I decided on opening up that health shop, we had the idea of relocating to a place that we thought was ideal: Port Shepstone. I have already expressed my sentiments about the "ideal" place that Port Shepstone is, so I will make do with what I have. If anything, let the place serve to be a stepping stone to actual ideals.
When we acted on the idea, we separated for some months by a distance of over 450 kilometres. Neither one of us liked that separation, but we deemed it temporary and necessary. In the meantime, my wife prepared to relocate HER business interests to where I was so that we could be together.
Today marks the close of that chapter of togetherness. In a bid to contain the economic losses sustained in last year's foiled attempt to launch the health shop successfully in Port Shepstone, my wife will begin cooping up in a little cottage midway between where we stay and her place of work. The stretch is some odd 110 kilometres. My wife has been driving this stretch every weekday and some Sundays from August 2008 to date. From the halfway point about which I speak, the road is crosses a provincial boundary. From a fairly well-maintained road, it narrows down considerably in width, winds through the most hazardous and haranguing of landscapes, meandering through hilly, forbidding terrain, with many a pothole plus lots of cattle and other domestic animals on the public thoroughfare. Some of the cattle appear to be two-legged as they walk right along the pathway created for vehicles, and walk in such a fashion as to seem oblivious to the vehicles that whizz by, unmindful of the highly likely possibility of being hit by one.
Cattle on the road! That's another story (if not several) for another day.
Suffice it to say that we have come full circle. We will be living separately AGAIN, indefinitely, until my less-than-ideal situation as the husband and father in this house is sorted out along economic lines. I would LOVE to contribute meaningfully to the family budget, and that is just not happening in these circumstances. Lord in heaven, hear our plea!
It could be the very thought of this impending separation, or it could be other factors, or a combination of all of these, but I am just drained. Even as I type this, I am overdue to be in bed, and here I go: off to bed.
One day, I should be able to sleep at 9:00 PM, consistently. In my ideal world.... In my ideal world.
O, well!
When my wife and I decided on opening up that health shop, we had the idea of relocating to a place that we thought was ideal: Port Shepstone. I have already expressed my sentiments about the "ideal" place that Port Shepstone is, so I will make do with what I have. If anything, let the place serve to be a stepping stone to actual ideals.
When we acted on the idea, we separated for some months by a distance of over 450 kilometres. Neither one of us liked that separation, but we deemed it temporary and necessary. In the meantime, my wife prepared to relocate HER business interests to where I was so that we could be together.
Today marks the close of that chapter of togetherness. In a bid to contain the economic losses sustained in last year's foiled attempt to launch the health shop successfully in Port Shepstone, my wife will begin cooping up in a little cottage midway between where we stay and her place of work. The stretch is some odd 110 kilometres. My wife has been driving this stretch every weekday and some Sundays from August 2008 to date. From the halfway point about which I speak, the road is crosses a provincial boundary. From a fairly well-maintained road, it narrows down considerably in width, winds through the most hazardous and haranguing of landscapes, meandering through hilly, forbidding terrain, with many a pothole plus lots of cattle and other domestic animals on the public thoroughfare. Some of the cattle appear to be two-legged as they walk right along the pathway created for vehicles, and walk in such a fashion as to seem oblivious to the vehicles that whizz by, unmindful of the highly likely possibility of being hit by one.
Cattle on the road! That's another story (if not several) for another day.
Suffice it to say that we have come full circle. We will be living separately AGAIN, indefinitely, until my less-than-ideal situation as the husband and father in this house is sorted out along economic lines. I would LOVE to contribute meaningfully to the family budget, and that is just not happening in these circumstances. Lord in heaven, hear our plea!
It could be the very thought of this impending separation, or it could be other factors, or a combination of all of these, but I am just drained. Even as I type this, I am overdue to be in bed, and here I go: off to bed.
One day, I should be able to sleep at 9:00 PM, consistently. In my ideal world.... In my ideal world.
O, well!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Full Earth Cycle Round the Sun... (excerpt from my Facebook Notes)
I shared the following note with my Facebook friends, and it is pertinent that I share it here as well. Here goes:
===============================================
It was my birthday yesterday, declared a holiday by a quasi-Briton who shares the same birthday (not date: day!). Today, another three people that I know also had their birthdays.
The other day, I tried to picture God in the heavens, looking down at us earthlings, throwing parties and sending messages of goodwill whenever one of us completes a full earth cycle around the sun. For some reason, I couldn't picture Him finding reason to have a party. After all, He is the One who set time rolling. Before time began, He is. I find that AWESOME, don't you?
It is a similar kind of awe that I feel when I meet someone who has lived long enough to call my dad "son." Now, THAT is seniority, and my dad is not young, by any means.
Back to that image of God looking down on us, celebrating the fact that we have lived long enough to see the beginning of yet another cycle around the sun. Every day on this planet is someone's birthday somewhere, and, boy, do humans party! Any excuse to indulge the appetite, and I will call for a party.
On the FIRST day of the week, the day popularly known as Sunday (we will not be fooled by the quasi-calendars that mark the day popularly known as Monday as the first day of the week), God, after setting time in motion on this planet, said there should be light. There WAS light.
Now, to appreciate the significance of that FIRST creative act on this planet, I know, for a fact, that, for light to exist, there ought to be a source. In this account, light existed with no named source for the light.
AWESOME! :-O
As I type this, the sun has slipped over the African horizon, ushering in a night of rest for me and my spiritual friends who share the same ideal that I will describe just now. In the night, darkness (the ABSENCE--NOT the inverse, but the ABSENCE--of light) reigns. In my world, therefore, I associate light with it's source: the sun, the same golden, gleaming orb that peeps over the eastern horizon, hours before the telltale signs of a brightening day have marked its imminent appearance.
However, and I am deliberately stressing this point, the very FIRST Sunday on this planet was marked by the presence of light WITHOUT THE SUN!
AWESOME!! :-O
Two, three, and four days later, only then did God speak the sun, and other celestial bodies (I wouldn't know if these were the ones that are observable by the naked human eye only, or the ones in the solar system only, or the whole lot in the whole universe) into existence.
I therefore put it to you, as you read this short excerpt, that light, the progression of night and day, existed for a FULL three days before the sun EVER existed. On that note, whatever the age of the earth is, we must add three days to it, for we count years by the number of full cycles that this earth makes around the sun, and the sun, in the beginning, wasn't there for a full three days of this planet's existence as we know it before the sun came into being. Three days out of seven, counted by 24-hour cycles that were NOT regulated by the earth's orbit around the sun.
OUCH!
Here's the point: for the Roman pagans who contrived the idea that the golden blob in the sky, the same one that reliably rises every morning to herald the start of a new day, is some god, and then named the FIRST day of the week after this god, isn't it ironic that this sun god NEVER existed on the very FIRST Sunday on earth?
As I type this, the Sabbath has begun in my area. I am at rest (halellujah!). Some other people will be marching off to "rest" in obedience to the edict of his papal supremacy 24-hours late, on the venerable day of the sun.
I'm suddenly reminded of the account of Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). When you go off to worship the sun god on Sunday, lo and behold, God has NOT created him yet! You may scream and kick, cut yourself and yell yourself hoarse, but the only God who answers by fire said to rest on the LAST day of the week, and that day is NOW.
I rest my case (no pun intended). :-)
===============================================
My ideal world would involve this WHOLE planet coming to a halt, literally, every seventh-day of the week, to commemorate a full cycle around the Son. The record of Scripture according to the Gospel of John, the first chapter, reveals that the Divine Being who brought this planet into existence, plus these paltry creatures called man, is none other than God, the Son.
===============================================
It was my birthday yesterday, declared a holiday by a quasi-Briton who shares the same birthday (not date: day!). Today, another three people that I know also had their birthdays.
The other day, I tried to picture God in the heavens, looking down at us earthlings, throwing parties and sending messages of goodwill whenever one of us completes a full earth cycle around the sun. For some reason, I couldn't picture Him finding reason to have a party. After all, He is the One who set time rolling. Before time began, He is. I find that AWESOME, don't you?
It is a similar kind of awe that I feel when I meet someone who has lived long enough to call my dad "son." Now, THAT is seniority, and my dad is not young, by any means.
Back to that image of God looking down on us, celebrating the fact that we have lived long enough to see the beginning of yet another cycle around the sun. Every day on this planet is someone's birthday somewhere, and, boy, do humans party! Any excuse to indulge the appetite, and I will call for a party.
On the FIRST day of the week, the day popularly known as Sunday (we will not be fooled by the quasi-calendars that mark the day popularly known as Monday as the first day of the week), God, after setting time in motion on this planet, said there should be light. There WAS light.
Now, to appreciate the significance of that FIRST creative act on this planet, I know, for a fact, that, for light to exist, there ought to be a source. In this account, light existed with no named source for the light.
AWESOME! :-O
As I type this, the sun has slipped over the African horizon, ushering in a night of rest for me and my spiritual friends who share the same ideal that I will describe just now. In the night, darkness (the ABSENCE--NOT the inverse, but the ABSENCE--of light) reigns. In my world, therefore, I associate light with it's source: the sun, the same golden, gleaming orb that peeps over the eastern horizon, hours before the telltale signs of a brightening day have marked its imminent appearance.
However, and I am deliberately stressing this point, the very FIRST Sunday on this planet was marked by the presence of light WITHOUT THE SUN!
AWESOME!! :-O
Two, three, and four days later, only then did God speak the sun, and other celestial bodies (I wouldn't know if these were the ones that are observable by the naked human eye only, or the ones in the solar system only, or the whole lot in the whole universe) into existence.
I therefore put it to you, as you read this short excerpt, that light, the progression of night and day, existed for a FULL three days before the sun EVER existed. On that note, whatever the age of the earth is, we must add three days to it, for we count years by the number of full cycles that this earth makes around the sun, and the sun, in the beginning, wasn't there for a full three days of this planet's existence as we know it before the sun came into being. Three days out of seven, counted by 24-hour cycles that were NOT regulated by the earth's orbit around the sun.
OUCH!
Here's the point: for the Roman pagans who contrived the idea that the golden blob in the sky, the same one that reliably rises every morning to herald the start of a new day, is some god, and then named the FIRST day of the week after this god, isn't it ironic that this sun god NEVER existed on the very FIRST Sunday on earth?
As I type this, the Sabbath has begun in my area. I am at rest (halellujah!). Some other people will be marching off to "rest" in obedience to the edict of his papal supremacy 24-hours late, on the venerable day of the sun.
I'm suddenly reminded of the account of Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). When you go off to worship the sun god on Sunday, lo and behold, God has NOT created him yet! You may scream and kick, cut yourself and yell yourself hoarse, but the only God who answers by fire said to rest on the LAST day of the week, and that day is NOW.
I rest my case (no pun intended). :-)
===============================================
My ideal world would involve this WHOLE planet coming to a halt, literally, every seventh-day of the week, to commemorate a full cycle around the Son. The record of Scripture according to the Gospel of John, the first chapter, reveals that the Divine Being who brought this planet into existence, plus these paltry creatures called man, is none other than God, the Son.
My Birthday
Of all the days to start a regular post of my memoirs online, it had to be on my birthday. " Hip! Hip! Hooray!!"
As a believer in the Almighty God, I am blessed to have lived to see the completion of yet another earth-cycle around the sun.
To those who do not believe in God, think about your lack of belief in this way: IF God exists, you will have something to lose when He decides that He is calling a stop to all the New World Order nonsense that we see going on in this world. IF He doesn't exist, you will have had NOTHING to lose by believing that He does. The statistical odds that He exists against the odds that He doesn't are 50:50. Those odds are too great to stake on the equal chance that He doesn't exist.
Fortunately, God HAS left more than enough footprints in the sands of time for humanity to establish, by faith, that He does exist. Whenever I see a shadow on the ground as I approach a corner, cast by some object around the corner, beyond the reach of my eyesight, I cannot prove through sight that the object around the corner DOES exist, but I can extrapolate, from the existence of its shadow, the one fact that, for certain, the object that cast the shadow exists. The presence of a shadow presupposes the object that casts the shadow.
As I look back at the full extent of my years of existence, I can say, now that the answer to the question on God is firmly established beyond dispute, that I owe it all to Him, to God.
I sit at home today, with my younger daughter watching a National Geographic nature special on the story of a young, male leopard named Chilolo, I could be anywhere but here. I could be a piece of humanity reduced to living my life off the streets, or in a mental asylum, save for the grace of God. As my story unfolds, the reason for my saying so will become apparent. Even then, I dare not minimise the experiences of those who have seen worse by pitting mine against theirs. However, this is just my story and not theirs. Therefore, I look at my life purely in its own context.
My older daughter is off to school already (she is in Grade 5 and has brains that would rival most politicians that I know). My only begotten son went off to work with his mom. I have a wife who makes my world go round. However, she is so bashful when I say things like that, so be kind and not tell her I said these things about her online..., but then I can't help it, so there!
Didn't something sound odd in what I just said? Maybe not, depending on one's personal views, but I feel odd. Here's why.
My wife and I opened a health shop a while ago. I'm a health nut, you see. However, I'm only nutty in the most reasonable of ways (smile). For one thing, I believe that being healthy doesn't mean eating insipid food. If that is what it meant, judging from some of the health food products that I've come across on this planet, then could these health freaks who make such deplorable products explain to me why the Lord of Heaven endowed us with sensitive taste buds, only to deny them their full taste sensations for so-called health reasons? I literally get red under my collar when some people misrepresent health interests in annoying and insulting ways like that.
By no means do I want to convey the image that I am above reproach. However, there is a fine line between promoting a rarely appreciated stance like healthful living and totally losing it, and going all cuckoo in the process. I am, by no means, cuckoo. For the same reason that God gave people taste buds for their full use, so also did He give them fine brains for their use too. I choose to use my brain, thank you.
Back to the health shop story, I ran the health shop, for my wife has her own business interests. I opened shop in November 2007, in a small south coastal town called Port Shepstone in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. For one thing, I failed to factor into the business plan the interesting socio-economic setup in Port Shepstone.
Being close to Durban (Durban is a mere hour's drive from Port Shepstone), there is a large Muslim Indian population in Port Shepstone. Most of the businesses and buildings in the central business district are run and/or owned by our Indian Muslim business brothers. In my short existence, I have never seen a need (if we can call it that) to exact so much money for the use of one's services. For a shop space of close to 100 square metres, I was paying close to R13,000.00 per month, from the word "go."
One could argue that I had a choice to seek rental services elsewhere.
Hmm. I had been looking for shop space to rent for almost a year before I settled on the shop space in question. Not only was it strategically placed next to a major road, facing the road, it was also placed next to a pizzeria, a video shop, and a major bank around the corner. Did I mention that it was also positioned on the upper part of a mini-mall, with a Super Spar Hypermarket on the lower floor?
When I initially approached the estate agent for its availability, when the shop was still under construction, he told me that the landlord actually wanted R20,000.00 per month in rent! Now, before I make this landlord sound outrageously exploitative, another landlord who owns a shopping complex next to the one that I eventually rented also rents out shops of similar, or slightly smaller, size for R20,000.00 per month or more. O, yes, he is Muslim too, so I have concluded that it must be an Islamic arrangement between these Port Shepstone businessmen. Yet another Muslim businessman was renting shop space slightly bigger than the one that I rented for about R26,000.oo per month.
Why do I mention all this? Just to highlight a simple fact: between January and March of the following year (2008), South Africa had a series of electrical power blackouts called loadshedding. For the rough winter that the country had had in 2007, and most people relying heavily on electricity to keep warm, there was not a shred of load shedding for the WHOLE winter. Come the HEIGHT of summer, and all of a sudden, South Africa had insufficient electrical power to dispense to the whole country when the needs for electrical energy were most minimal. That, plus a dire budget speech made by the Minister of Finance in March of 2008, brought many a business to its knees.
My knees buckled in July 2008 after my sales figures literally plummeted from March until I closed shop. Before then, I had had a steady, upward climb in sales, peaking in February. I moved our shop equipment and stock to our garage, and have been trying to peddle some of the stock from there. It has been most difficult without the natural advantage of shop space in the public thoroughfares in Port Shepstone.
So, I sit here at home, sorely wishing I had a means of reversing this story that I have just told, and rebounding from the financial hiccups that this venture into the unknown has caused. Until I redefine what I do, or find something else to do, I am a happy but rather unsatisfied house-husband. If there is a housewife, then I am her counterpart.
While it is fortunate for our family that my wife can still work, I would rather that she was the one who was at home, taking care of our 10-month old son at home, rather than fending for him at work. The last time I checked my mammary glands, they were totally dysfunctional when it came to feeding an infant, so I do not blame my wife for going off to work with the son; no, I don't. Her mammary glands DO work, and, yes, I checked! They work. However, I cannot stop wishing for the IDEAL: I wish I were the one working and my wife taking a more than deserved maternity break.
Is that too ideal a wish?
As I close off this birthday blog, I have tabled this issue with God in prayer. In His wisdom, He will attend to my needs and those of my family, as He sees best, in His time. It is ONLY in that light that I can truly say: I am happy though there is a vacuum of purpose in my desire to be employed in a project that can generate income for my family.
This is the Idealist, signing off... ;-)
As a believer in the Almighty God, I am blessed to have lived to see the completion of yet another earth-cycle around the sun.
To those who do not believe in God, think about your lack of belief in this way: IF God exists, you will have something to lose when He decides that He is calling a stop to all the New World Order nonsense that we see going on in this world. IF He doesn't exist, you will have had NOTHING to lose by believing that He does. The statistical odds that He exists against the odds that He doesn't are 50:50. Those odds are too great to stake on the equal chance that He doesn't exist.
Fortunately, God HAS left more than enough footprints in the sands of time for humanity to establish, by faith, that He does exist. Whenever I see a shadow on the ground as I approach a corner, cast by some object around the corner, beyond the reach of my eyesight, I cannot prove through sight that the object around the corner DOES exist, but I can extrapolate, from the existence of its shadow, the one fact that, for certain, the object that cast the shadow exists. The presence of a shadow presupposes the object that casts the shadow.
As I look back at the full extent of my years of existence, I can say, now that the answer to the question on God is firmly established beyond dispute, that I owe it all to Him, to God.
I sit at home today, with my younger daughter watching a National Geographic nature special on the story of a young, male leopard named Chilolo, I could be anywhere but here. I could be a piece of humanity reduced to living my life off the streets, or in a mental asylum, save for the grace of God. As my story unfolds, the reason for my saying so will become apparent. Even then, I dare not minimise the experiences of those who have seen worse by pitting mine against theirs. However, this is just my story and not theirs. Therefore, I look at my life purely in its own context.
My older daughter is off to school already (she is in Grade 5 and has brains that would rival most politicians that I know). My only begotten son went off to work with his mom. I have a wife who makes my world go round. However, she is so bashful when I say things like that, so be kind and not tell her I said these things about her online..., but then I can't help it, so there!
Didn't something sound odd in what I just said? Maybe not, depending on one's personal views, but I feel odd. Here's why.
My wife and I opened a health shop a while ago. I'm a health nut, you see. However, I'm only nutty in the most reasonable of ways (smile). For one thing, I believe that being healthy doesn't mean eating insipid food. If that is what it meant, judging from some of the health food products that I've come across on this planet, then could these health freaks who make such deplorable products explain to me why the Lord of Heaven endowed us with sensitive taste buds, only to deny them their full taste sensations for so-called health reasons? I literally get red under my collar when some people misrepresent health interests in annoying and insulting ways like that.
By no means do I want to convey the image that I am above reproach. However, there is a fine line between promoting a rarely appreciated stance like healthful living and totally losing it, and going all cuckoo in the process. I am, by no means, cuckoo. For the same reason that God gave people taste buds for their full use, so also did He give them fine brains for their use too. I choose to use my brain, thank you.
Back to the health shop story, I ran the health shop, for my wife has her own business interests. I opened shop in November 2007, in a small south coastal town called Port Shepstone in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. For one thing, I failed to factor into the business plan the interesting socio-economic setup in Port Shepstone.
Being close to Durban (Durban is a mere hour's drive from Port Shepstone), there is a large Muslim Indian population in Port Shepstone. Most of the businesses and buildings in the central business district are run and/or owned by our Indian Muslim business brothers. In my short existence, I have never seen a need (if we can call it that) to exact so much money for the use of one's services. For a shop space of close to 100 square metres, I was paying close to R13,000.00 per month, from the word "go."
One could argue that I had a choice to seek rental services elsewhere.
Hmm. I had been looking for shop space to rent for almost a year before I settled on the shop space in question. Not only was it strategically placed next to a major road, facing the road, it was also placed next to a pizzeria, a video shop, and a major bank around the corner. Did I mention that it was also positioned on the upper part of a mini-mall, with a Super Spar Hypermarket on the lower floor?
When I initially approached the estate agent for its availability, when the shop was still under construction, he told me that the landlord actually wanted R20,000.00 per month in rent! Now, before I make this landlord sound outrageously exploitative, another landlord who owns a shopping complex next to the one that I eventually rented also rents out shops of similar, or slightly smaller, size for R20,000.00 per month or more. O, yes, he is Muslim too, so I have concluded that it must be an Islamic arrangement between these Port Shepstone businessmen. Yet another Muslim businessman was renting shop space slightly bigger than the one that I rented for about R26,000.oo per month.
Why do I mention all this? Just to highlight a simple fact: between January and March of the following year (2008), South Africa had a series of electrical power blackouts called loadshedding. For the rough winter that the country had had in 2007, and most people relying heavily on electricity to keep warm, there was not a shred of load shedding for the WHOLE winter. Come the HEIGHT of summer, and all of a sudden, South Africa had insufficient electrical power to dispense to the whole country when the needs for electrical energy were most minimal. That, plus a dire budget speech made by the Minister of Finance in March of 2008, brought many a business to its knees.
My knees buckled in July 2008 after my sales figures literally plummeted from March until I closed shop. Before then, I had had a steady, upward climb in sales, peaking in February. I moved our shop equipment and stock to our garage, and have been trying to peddle some of the stock from there. It has been most difficult without the natural advantage of shop space in the public thoroughfares in Port Shepstone.
So, I sit here at home, sorely wishing I had a means of reversing this story that I have just told, and rebounding from the financial hiccups that this venture into the unknown has caused. Until I redefine what I do, or find something else to do, I am a happy but rather unsatisfied house-husband. If there is a housewife, then I am her counterpart.
While it is fortunate for our family that my wife can still work, I would rather that she was the one who was at home, taking care of our 10-month old son at home, rather than fending for him at work. The last time I checked my mammary glands, they were totally dysfunctional when it came to feeding an infant, so I do not blame my wife for going off to work with the son; no, I don't. Her mammary glands DO work, and, yes, I checked! They work. However, I cannot stop wishing for the IDEAL: I wish I were the one working and my wife taking a more than deserved maternity break.
Is that too ideal a wish?
As I close off this birthday blog, I have tabled this issue with God in prayer. In His wisdom, He will attend to my needs and those of my family, as He sees best, in His time. It is ONLY in that light that I can truly say: I am happy though there is a vacuum of purpose in my desire to be employed in a project that can generate income for my family.
This is the Idealist, signing off... ;-)
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