Hi name is Enchante, I am mum to a Cbeebaholic

A friend of mine recently asked why I never blog about my baby, and my response was that this blog is really about me and mostly me, so I never get the others roped in. but today I just had to write a post about this incredible, three and a half year old, 95cm tall living organism crammed full of energy who I happened to carry in my womb for all of 38 weeks, amazing. I always marvel at how God chose me to assist Him in bringing forth this amazing little creature. Anyway one of its characteristics is that, at 630 am, before I am even fully awake, it is at my door asking for “something”. Now this is not some code from the planet that they must come from, it is simply a way of telling me that wake up and give me some candy. Now before y’all go off at me about bad parenting, I do not actually give out any candy (most days) but this was just to demonstrate that when you are all waking up busy thinking about your day ahead, my little man just has one thing on his mind, candy.

Now the most interesting characteristic of the marvelous specie is that, at 7pm when you are anxious to watch Prime time News, he has the remote firmly clutched in his hand and declaring that we are all going to watch cartoons. Now if we are all to be honest, there is a little child inside of every one of us which never grew up and secretly enjoys watching Scooby Doo, Looney Toons etc (for old times sake we say), so naturally cartoons at 7pm would not be a catastrophe (most days). In fact I am quite a big fan of Disney Channel and I am not ashamed to say it. However, the challenge we are faced with is my little warrior is particular about the choice of cartoon channel, it has to be the British Children’s channel Cbeebees. Now anyone who has a child, or niece/nephew, cousin or friend’s child, who has had the unfortunate chance to sit through a programme on Cbeebees will know that it is SPECIFICALLY designed for ages 10 and under. In fact it should come with a strong restrictive warning about the age limit. So the little man loves it, singing along to the tunes, jumping up and down and imitating whatever they will be doing. I have to give it some credit though, it has vastly improved his language skills, and its like a revision class for his numbers, shapes, colors etc when he comes from school. However it is absolute torture for any parent to sit through it. so because of all the trauma that parents out there must be going through, I think its only proper that we form a support group and help each other through the worst years.

Hi I am Enchante, I am mum to a Cbeebaholic…….

somebody is in trouble

Somebody is in trouble

thoughts wander and the heart races.
Excitement, giggles like a 14 year old
Its madness, sheer utter madness.
I wake up excited and look forward to the day starting.
I smile to myself as I count the minutes til I can get to that magical place.
A place where just for that moment I can forget who it is I am,
I can forget what it is I have to account for
I can just be…exist…live…float.
I laugh. I smile; I even get some thrilling shivers once in a while.
Its exciting, exhilarating, rejuvenating.

I speak, I tell, I verbalize, I express.
I hear, I listen, I comprehend and sometimes miscomprehend
its part of the charm, the magic, the enchantment.
Its novel, its new, and it shall soon pass I am sure of it.
Once the euphoria is over what will remain is solid, grounded, meaningful.
But while its here I shall enjoy the foolishness of it.

No I am not newly in love, far from it.
I fell in love a while back and I am still very much in love.
I have just been made to feel 16 again,
when crushes I had but dropped them just as fast.

©Enchante

Random musings

Its been gnawing in my head all day today, incessantly as if taunting me. Until I just had to give in, weak I know but believe me I tried to resist. So I gave in and dug deep into the buried recesses of junk and found it. it was almost like I was possessed because once I made the decision to look for it I got some superhuman strength to lift things and excavate it. I say excavate because I had indeed buried it, away from prying eyes and inquisitive hands. Then there it was… I cannot begin to explain the surge my heart did when I felt its cold cover against my hands. With hands trembling with excitement I opened the yellowed pages and breathed in deeply the musty smell of old pages and ink long dried. For a moment I was transfixed, taken back to a time when I was young and carefree. I sat down and started reading, then I couldn’t stop. I read about the feelings that I had 7 or more years ago. It felt foreign at first as if I was reading about someone else, but the more I read the more the memories came flooding back. And I was there back in the moment and I knew exactly what had been happened. For a moment I felt a stab of guilt at reliving old feelings, as if I am betraying my current trusts. But there has to be a reason why I have held on to an old scrapbook/diary for the last eleven years, when I feel like I am no longer sure of the direction that I am navigating this ship of my life, I always refer back to it for a campus. It helps me keep grounded. It reminds me of whom I set out to be, a fact which sometimes the cares of this world make me forget. Maybe I am just trying to hold on to my past, refusing to grow up. But there are time when what we think is being grown up is actually losing sight of who we are in the first place. So I read and read and I recognized familiar emotions. I got in touch with that girl that I was. In fact it’s the best thing that I have done all weekend, and I am grateful that I have my yellowed, dusty book to take me down memory lane, to things that my natural memory has left fade in the background. I realized, I started blogging long before I knew how to use the internet!

betrayal

My heart pounds, like the rhythmic sound of the pestle as it hits the mortar
Blood rushes through my ears, like a burst sewer pipe in the streets of Harare
I lose my balance a bit, my equilibrium is definitely not what is should be
I wait for the anger to kick in, nothing
I wait for the tears to start stinging at my eyelids, nothing
My tear ducts appear to have gone on hiatus on me
All I feel is the dry, numbing, excruciating pain…
I imagine looking into my chest and seeing my heart shatter…
The fragments noiselessly falling to collect at the bottom of my stomach
I need to go; I need to get out,
Out of this body and away from the piercing pain that threatens to suffocate me.
I have to remember how to breathe; 30 seconds have gone past without a grain of air being expelled from my lungs
I need to run, to shake it off.
But my eyes go blank, darkness engulfs me
No I do not swoon, but the eye of my mind shuts down on it own volition
The agony is too much for it to continue watching
I feel my legs giving way, and I stumble to find a place to sit
I have tasted betrayal’s vile, foul-smelling palate in my mouth,
Wake me up when it’s over.

HIFA

This past week has been nothing short of exciting. I always get really excited when one of the biggest shows (at least in my book) comes to town and that is the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA). I was just telling some people the other day that sometimes I think I am more excited about the euphoria, the adrenaline that surrounds this show. But the performances are exhilarating all the same. And this year I have managed to watch more than any other year due to the fact that I was still on that month long leave, what perfect timing.

One of my favourite performances this year, (well so far coz as I write I am yet to watch all the shows that I have earmarked) is an all woman cast performance by some of the finest divas around. It had the soul and grace of a woman. It was a celebration of the essence of a woman, the African woman and as I sat there I couldn’t help but be reminded again of how much I am proud to be an African woman. As I listened to the magical voices of Prudence Katomeni, Dudu Manhenga, Hope Masike, Ruth Mbangwa and the rest, I got transported to a beautiful place. I got to step out of my body and look at myself afresh. I saw the strength, the resilience, the power that lies in me. I saw the love of a mother, the selfish strength of a lover and I saw how all the burdens that a woman carries are balanced because we were built for the rough terrain. I saw the softness and kindness only a woman can possess, and I saw the grace and charm inherent in our DNA. But you see it is not actually me I was looking at, it was the woman I want to be, the woman I always strive to be. I always remind myself that I have to always strive at being a Proverbs 31 woman, and it fills me with ultimate delight when I realize that, all the things described in that beloved scripture, are the perfect description of an African woman, who holds the world in the palm of her hand. Did I tell you how proud I am to be an African woman?

HIFA always rekindles my love for theatre and every time I sit there enthralled by a performance I always get stirrings to find my way back to the stage. You see I used to love theatre, I used to love the stage, the emotions you evoke when you stop being yourself for a moment and become someone else, the warmth the beams set off when the spotlight is on you, and of course the pleasurable thundering beat of your heart when the audience breaks into a loud applause. I always wonder how I lost the passion, or rather how I left it drift to the recesses of my mind and heart such that I only get the stirring only once in a while. But you know what they say, its never too late to follow that dream. But I don’t know, life does have a way of sucking out of you passion for anything that is not directly linked to your livelihood, and it has a way of fooling you to prioritize things in an order you are not entirely happy with all in the name of doing the sensible thing.


P/s well of course I proceeded to finish HIFA before I posted what is above so I might as well make it into one LONG post. The rest of the shows were electric to say the least but I am more interested in what I observed during the festival. This might spark some controversy but I couldn’t help noticing the number of mixed race couples at this event. White woman + black husband or vice versa. And what tickles me is almost always, the black component is spotting dreadlocks. Is this perhaps an expression of their “Africanness” which in turns adds to their appeal in the eyes of the Caucasian partner? Don’t get me wrong I love locks, hell I even have them myself and I absolutely love them. And in a way yes they do make me feel more of an African child than my former straightened hair. However I still don’t get how dreadlocks become the ticket to bag yourself a Vanilla spouse. Yes I said it, shoot me.

And now in other not so exciting news, my month long leave has finally come to an end. People ask me what I did with it, obviously meaning what meaningful thing I did. I never know what that questions requires of me, but what I know is , I rested a lot (read slept), I spent time with my parents, and I discovered that there is hardly a sentence that my three year old son cannot construct by now. I read a lot too, and I watched a fair amount of television, I learnt new recipes and I strengthened a bond with my cousin by spending time with her. In fact I achieved quite a lot in this one month and I am not sure how I feel about going back to work yet but I have feeling I will do a much better job at it than I was doing a few months back. Even though of course the urge to look for another job is definitely still there, but that’s a post for another day!

Ola!

So I am back, after my sojourn. Let me see if I can remember the highlights of my trip. Oh first of all of course, I have always heard people go on and on about how women are absolutely crazy about men in uniform. And I always used to scrunch my eyebrows at that because honestly speaking, those specimens are lacking in my home country. There is just nothing appealing about the police officers, army officers or whatever officers I have seen here. Until I set foot in Spain ((((whistle)))). I was attending a rather high profile meeting so it meant that we had police escort everywhere we went and oh my goodness, I have never seen so much eye-candy! I mean we all agree that Spanish men are quite a dish with their dark hair and gorgeous accent, just wait till you see how they carry their uniform! Its sad that for security reasons they declined to have a photo taken but I can most assuredly tell you that this was high-ranking amongst my highlights of Spain.

Onto other Spanish related stories, I had quite a bit of a drama when I realized two hours before my flight that I was at the wrong airport altogether and the one I wanted was 70km away! Now I shall forever be grateful for efficient first world public transport, because had I been in sweet mother country I would have kissed my flight goodbye. So anyway in between, very little (read none) Spanish with bus drivers and taxi drivers I managed to get onto that plane even if I was the last person to check in!


By the way, the Canary Islands are absolutely beautiful, save some few quid and head down there because it is absolutely amazing, and the climate is warm too.And for all the ladies who are shoe-and-bag crazy as i am, you definitely need to get your booty over to Tenerife, you will shop your heart out at amazing bargain prices. and i have to say this, Spanish people are quite warm, whether it was because i was in a tourist area and all they saw was ching ching $$$ as they looked at me, i will never know. but all i can say is, the drivers are very courteous to pedestrians ( something refreshing when you come fom Zim), everyone else pretty much greets you with a smile. but then again, as i said before they might have just been smiling at my wallet instead.

Jetsetting

so today i am off to Europe, the weather better be kind to me i am not looking forward to having my nether bits frozen. i am African i dont do snow! he he i want to believe that where i am going the sun will be shining (humming) anyway i hope i will find lots of interesting stories to blog about when i come back, i will try and visit blogville in the two weeks i will be away maybe post too if i am lucky!