Sipho Vilakazi (Interview for the History of Goju Ryu in South Africa)

Sipho Vilakazi’s body has a latent energy about it. He sits stern and cross-armed across from us, but five minutes later, while recounting his memories of his karate training, his gestures are expansive and his face is animated. He started his Goju Ryu training in 1972 at the age of 12 in a community hall in Dobsonville in the township of Soweto. He recalls sharing a portion of the hall with weightlifters and boxers, one of them being the future South African Flyweight Boxing Champion, Terror Mathebula. And, he remembers having to skip training on a Friday because that is when the drum majorettes used the space.

His sensei, Stats Mgomezulu, having migrated from Judo, to training Goju with James Rousseau, had started the dojo at the hall. As he travelled for work, he taught them intermittently, and it says a lot about the dedication of those youngsters, who continued their training in his absence. And, in 1975 when Cecil Mokoena took over their training, he was impressed enough with their level of expertise that he graded them up a belt. Cecil Mokoena had already been training with James Rousseau for quite a while and had been trying to establish a dojo at the Orlando High School, when one of the karateka approached him and asked him to meet with the twenty or so Dobsonville students. Sipho remembers, “When he came there he found us training, we were white belts. The highest grade at the time was an orange belt, but we trained and trained. Then he [Cecil] said, Okay, I’ll take you guys for two weeks, and you will choose if I’m the right guy to train you, and I will choose whether I’ll continue with you or not. That was the agreement.” Two weeks later Cecil was satisfied that he had students who were willing to accept him as their new sensei. After receiving Stats blessing, Cecil offered to connect them with his Sensei, James Rousseau, at the Fox Street Dojo in Johannesburg.

There was very little integration between the races during the apartheid era. When asked whether black and white students were allowed to train together, Sipho shook his head and said, “But with Sensei James and Sensei Arnold it was different. Sensei James trained Cecil alone, and he was a black guy. And, at that time, they [the police], could go and check whether he was training a black guy. I think Sensei James took a decision to say, no one is going to tell me what to do. He trained Cecil alone, and it was not allowed. But as black people we had hindrances as to who you could train with, especially when it comes to people of a different colour.” Sensei James held mini gashukus exclusively for the black karateka, and graded them at the Fox Street dojo. Although he did go to the Dobsonville dojo, he felt it was important that they needed to know their Hombu. Several Senseis like; Arnold de Beer, Johan Roodts, Roger Mahon, Pikkus Windell, and others, trained Sipho there too.

The Apartheid ‘Pass laws’ also hindered his training, as his freedom of movement was limited. “There was this stability unit which was moving around. Those are the men who were arresting people. But, I think that somewhere along the way they got tired, because we would always go and come back. They would see that this is the bunch of people with bags and gi’s, because we would show them. [They would ask] ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Town.’ ‘Who are you training with?’ ‘So and so.’ ‘Is he allowed to train you?’ ‘Yes.’ And that was the end of it. People had to make that decision, if I am arrested, it is fine, but I am going to train. I was one of them.” He remembers early morning bag searches when he was catching the train to Johannesburg for the 6 am training sessions; and then again on his return. “So we had these random problems, but after a while I was no longer worried. If they came, here’s the bag, search. I knew they won’t find anything. They were just frustrating themselves. We then found [out that] some of the police guys were doing JKA. Maybe that helped as well, so that they started to know some of us, because then some of them started to ask, ‘Who are you training with?’ ‘Oh, ok.’ Then it was fine, you know. This guy is going to training, so it also established relations in terms of us moving freely.”

When “the splits” happened, it became a lot more difficult for the black students to train, as they were allocated regions and Senseis. “The barrier was that we couldn’t train wherever we wanted to because this thing of the West, South, East, it was a problem. If you stayed in Dobsonville, and they saw you coming from the other side, they (the police) would ask, ‘Why do you go and train there, because in terms of the boundaries you are supposed to go to the West.’” Sipho struggled to travel to Sensei Johan Roodts in Krugersdorp; he remembers walking long distances as the only transport available at the time was the train. And in 1979, he found that training with Sensei Roodts was no longer practical. He started looking for a more convenient dojo, and decided to train with Sensei Arnold de Beer instead. This decision was not one he made lightly, as it came with a certain amount of risk. “To be quite honest, when Sensei James left things fell apart. That’s where we had the problems, because now we had this demarcation type of thing, where you belong to the West, you belong… then Cecil left, but we remained. I said, ‘No man, if they arrest me, let it be.” It was the right choice, as under Sensei Arnold’s mentorship Sipho travelled to Okinawa, and was the first African black male to be taught by Ko Uehara at his dojo. He also opened a successful dojo in Soweto in the eighties, and he still assists at Sensei Arnold’s dojo today. He is the only remaining karateka from the original 1970’s Dobsonville group.

 

 

Maverick

“I had an old boyfriend who said it was always better to buy books by the bakkie load.”, she said as we walk through the retirement village library, and talk while we look for the new titles that Penny has added to the shelves. “He used to go to auctions and buy these ‘lots’ of books and other bits and pieces, enough to fill the back of his bakkie. Then he’d go home, sort through them and put the books he didn’t want outside on the pavement.” She sees the incredulous look I give her and quickly adds, “They were gone the next day. Theo said that the Bergies who stayed on the mountain were the most literate homeless people in the world. They were ex doctors, lawyers; professional people who went nuts and couldn’t live in the real world anymore.”

 

We walk up the stairs; I take my time with each step and make sure that she does not need to rush to keep up. “Theo loved to collect stuff. His house was full, and there were books everywhere. They were in piles on the floor, in the kitchen, in the bathroom; everywhere. He once found this old couch at the side of the road. He loaded it onto his bakkie and he brought it home. It was in terrible condition, the fabric was torn and the springs stuck out; but he just chucked a throw over it and used it. He was very good with his hands. He loved to fix things. I gave him half a propeller that my ex left behind. He sanded it down, polished it and hung it on the wall. It looked beautiful. He always found value in everything. In one of the auction lots he found a series of pressed dried flowers that a woman had collected and framed. He said that she had taken the time to create that, and now someone was just throwing it away. It made him angry that people could be so dismissive of other’s feelings and achievements. He said it was precious, so he hung it up, and of course it fit right in with all the other things he had in the house.”

 

I check the notice board inside the entrance of the village clubhouse, my advert is still tacked under the portion labelled ‘Social’. We walk down the stairs onto the road that leads to my car. “My daughter loved Theo, she called him Maverick, because he was unorthodox. She said that he was her favourite boyfriend of mine. She would spend hours at his house, snuggled in a chair reading, or just chatting to him. She said the house reflected his personality, that it was full of character. She loved how it was full of things; not in a hoarder kind of way, or old person knick knackie; just comforting, like a good book. She felt comfortable amongst his clutter. I had another boyfriend whom she hated. He was a minimalist and everything in his house was stark, white and bare. She said that it was the same as his personality, that he did not have one, and the house was a true reflection of his character. He only spent some of the year here, and he had another house overseas. He told me that when his wife died he got rid of most of her things, oh, he kept some photographs and paintings, but most of the other things went. He made it minimalist too. My daughter said that it was like he was wiping her out of his life so that he could move on, I thought she was too harsh. She really hated him – but she loved Maverick." 

We take our time walking to my car. She picks at a plant here and there, pinches off a leaf, and removes an old flower. “We got together after his third wife. He had an affair while we were together. She was an art professor at the university. He broke it off with her when I found out; he said he wanted to try to make it work between the two of us. Then one day soon after the breakup she arrived at his house, caused such a scene, screaming, throwing things, and when Theo wouldn’t humour her she stormed out in a rage. Later that night he got a phone call from her, she was in hospital. She said that she had caught the train home, had been attacked, and been raped. He rushed out to be with her. He supported her in her recovery for a long time after that. We didn’t last much longer after that. Something never felt right about what happened. Many years later, when I spoke about it to his son, he said that he thought that it had all been a figment of her imagination. He said he never really believed her story, and that he thought she was psychotic. She never really seemed normal to me, she didn’t live in the real world, and I did not understand how she managed to teach at a university. But, it is funny how academia seems to draw the strangest people.” 

I unlock my car with the remote and put my bag in the boot. She carries on walking down the path that leads to her cottage. I open the windows in my car to let the stifling air out and lean against the passenger side door. She rests her arms on the balustrade that lines the path and waits for me to finish. The sun is hot on my face and arms. She stands in the shade. “He always said I was the only normal one he ever dated. He said that he loved women, he didn’t care what they looked like. He could manage long-term relationships He was married three times, but he also had many affairs. He was attracted to psychologists, and you know what they say about why psychologists choose to go into that profession; it is to fix themselves. It never worked out with any of them. He said they were all nuts. I told Theo he projected his issues onto them, that it wasn’t them that had the problems, that the issues were all his, and that he was looking to them for solutions. I often told him that he should see someone to help him work through things, but he refused. Years later, he phoned me and said that he had finally gone to see someone. He said that he walked into her office, they looked had at each other and she said ‘I don’t think this is going to work out, I think we should have an affair.’ And, they did. I couldn’t say that I was surprised, that kind of thing happened to him a lot.”  

“Was he that attractive?” I ask. My arms are tingling from the sun; I slide my arms behind me and lean on my hands. “Well, he had the most beautiful green eyes, with long dark lashes. He had curly dark hair and a small beard. He was a climber and so he was broad shouldered, and had a lean body and legs. He was reverse rich. He came from a very wealthy family, but he hated them, so he went out of his way to look as scruffy as possible. He wore button down shirts, but they always had stains on them, with cut off jean shorts, and slops. Those slops you get at the Zimbabwean markets, the ones made out of tyres. And, he never wore underwear. He is a wildlife conservationist. He once went into the bush to track some animals in the wild; he spent those two weeks naked. That was the type of guy he was.”

 

“Mentally he wasn’t right though. I know he said that he loved women, but I thought he actually hated them. He hated his mother. He said ‘What kind of mother abandons her son, how could she send a six year old to boarding school?’ She sent him to Bishop’s, it was a very expensive Catholic boys’ boarding school. Well, it was what the rich did in the fifties. He hated it there. There were rumours about molestation and abuse that floated around about the school, but I never really believed them. Then one night I went to a party at a friend’s house, he had gone to Bishop’s. I asked him about the rumours; he gave me this funny look, and said that whatever I had heard was true, and worse than I had heard. Then he turned his back on me, and walked away. I didn’t know what I had done wrong. Later that evening his wife, a psychologist, spoke to me about it. She said that I had upset him, that he was still traumatised by his time there, and that 60 percent of her patients came from Bishop’s. I never questioned Theo’s stories about Bishop’s again.” 

 

She straightens up and takes a step down the path. I start to walk back to the driver’s side of the car. “Even though we broke up after the art professor, we still stayed in touch. Every few months I used to get a call to see how I was doing and to catch up. He’d ask me to marry him and I’d laugh and say no. A few years back he bought a piece of land in the Cape. It had a small house on it, and he converted everything so that he could go ‘off grid’. He asked me if I would like to come for a visit. I said no because I didn’t want to drive on my own to the middle of nowhere. So he offered to come and pick me up when he had to come to town to do a collection from the university. And he would drop me off a week later. I agreed, and I went. It was ok for the first few hours, but by the end of the first day I couldn’t take him anymore. It was terrible. I wanted to leave and I was trapped there. He was okay in small doses, for a few hours even, but not for a whole week. He was too intense, his moods fluctuated, and I couldn’t take it. It was a horrible experience. I don’t know how I lasted the whole week. I remember taking a lot of long walks. He still phones me and asks me if I want to come and visit. It is easier to say no now that I am in Joburg. My daughter still loves him.”

 

She smooths her hair back, and takes a step away from me. “He is semi-retired now. He works about three hours a week at the university, consulting and handling the overseas students. He is in his sixties, and the twenty-year old girls still throw themselves at him. He is that type of man, he is attracted to women, and women are attracted to him. You should meet him some time.” “I don’t think so,” I say, as I climb into my car and close the door, “He sounds dangerous.” She laughs, turns away, and waves without looking back.

 

Author’s note: The basis for this story was a conversation I had with an elderly student. I have adhered mostly to her portrayal of the facts as she experienced them.

Sources regarding abuse at Bishops Diocesan College, Cape Town:

News24 – Police investigate sex claims at Bishops. 2014/08/03. http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Police-investigate-sex-claims-at-Bishops-20140803

Accessed 2017/05/07

 

IOL News – Boys expelled from Bishops for bullying. Williams, M. 24 March, 2000.

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/boys-expelled-from-bishops-for-bullying-32643

Accessed 2017/05/07

 

 

Joan's story

It’s funny how the universe sends us people that can either enrich or destroy our lives, the premise being that we can learn from both types of people. Joan and Clyde are a couple that I’m sure are going to teach me a lot. They are both in their sixties but they live young, grabbing life by the luridly patterned Hawaiian shirt collar and enjoying it to its unpredictable and wild limits.

The three of us were having breakfast at Siemens and the conversation swivelled from vegetarianism (Clyde had recently been converted by a You Tube clip about how we treat our about-to-be slaughtered animals) and exposing children to the idea of butchering animals, to the experiences that life had sent our way. Clyde mentioned that Joan had led a fascinating life and that she should write a memoir. Joan being shy and humble commented that her life was both too complicated, and she was too private to lay her life out like that for everyone to view. Maybe, she pondered, she would do it if she could write under a pseudonym. Clyde prompted her a little and she relented, sipping her tea she recounted an experience she had had in her youth.

“A long time ago I used to counsel prisoners on death row. In those days they were doing several executions a week, it was a mess. Some of them were really bad men, in for the worst crimes, and others shouldn’t have been there.” She was visiting a prisoner whom she was counselling that was on death row, when he asked if he could ask her a question. He said that when a prisoner was removed to the nearby hanging chamber for execution, the guards would fetch the prisoner and then slam the door to the cell shut as they left. The prisoner would stand in the double volume communal space that was separated by wire mesh from the cells inhabited by other prisoners and call out, “I’m going now”.

Normally the cells were noisy, but when the door slammed and the prisoner spoke, a quiet would fill the void and no one spoke. He felt that at that moment someone should say something, acknowledge him in some way. It felt wrong not to say something.

“What”, he wanted to know, “should they reply to this man going to his death?” Joan paused. Captivated I asked, “What did you say?” “I told him to say, we will remember you.” I must have looked confused because she elaborated. In the black African cultures, a person lives on as long as someone remembers them. Knowing that the prisoner is going to his death and hearing what may be some of his last words is memorable. It sticks in the mind of his fellow inmates. He is heard and remembered, continuing to live long after he takes his last breath.

I find this belief comforting. My Grandfather lives in my memory, and through my stories of him to my children he will continue to exist.

Turning Forty.

Misery loves company, and as most of you know, I am feeling very miserable to be turning forty next week. So my inner journalist went into collection mode and I started interviewing everyone I met regarding their thoughts on ‘passing over’ into the big Four Oh.

Mario, the kids Karate Sensei, turns forty next year and he’s already in the early stages of mourning the demise of his thirties. According to him as soon as he’s forty he will be too old to act childish. In his thirties he could act juvenile, but as soon as he’s in his forties he won’t be able to get away with that sort of behaviour. When the clock strikes midnight, his forties begin, a giant cosmic switch flicks, and responsible behaviour and maturity commence. This from the man who pretends to throw children out of the first floor window on their birthdays… maturity, I think not.

A mom I chatted to at a recent birthday party told me she felt fantastic. She said she was more decisive, self-aware, and knew what she wanted from her life now that she was forty-six. She’d had her children and was now pursuing her career with the confidence that she could control every situation. It helped that she looked fantastic and had that ageless skin and radiance that only an African skin can produce. I looked carefully and she didn’t even have wrinkles around her eyes! In my next life, I want to be black! Another mom decided that she wanted to learn to play the cello and started taking lessons. They both seemed to feel that turning forty was not the end of an era but the beginning of one, a time in their lives when they knew what they wanted and had the drive and will power to get it.

I need only look at my Mom and Dad to know that ambition and vitality has no age restriction. My Mom will be exhibiting her sculptures in both Germany and Portugal this year. She only started to sculpt in her late thirties. Dad will be driving people to do better and more dynamic things at companies where he owns shares. They taught me that age was just a number and that you were as old you felt, or to paraphrase Dad; “You are as old as the woman you are feeling”… har de har har!

Unusually, my father-in-law made the most impact. He said, “Just wait till you get to sixty-five!” I caught a hint of regret in his tone. Here was a man I consider very active, he hikes, has recently remarried, to a woman ten years his junior, and is always travelling somewhere. Yet he’s anxious about turning sixty-five. I mulled that over and realised that he was right; each cycle has it’s scary ages. The decade birthdays seem to be pivotal. They make us reflect and take account of where we are, and hasten change to otherwise stagnating lives.

Maybe this is what a midlife crisis feels like, it’s the fear of the unknown, of knowing that life has given you another forty years that you have to fill; and still enjoy. That fear could explain why men buy flashy cars and try to recapture their youth, the times they felt the most vigorous. While women veer towards intellectual endeavours; like the cello; or a degree they may never be able to use. The hormones that were pushing us to create life finally quieting a little so that we could hear what we really wanted to do. I’m lucky to have goals, a supportive family, a husband who loves me, children who adore me, a brain that’s hungry for knowledge and plenty of time to enjoy it all. Bring on the forties, I’m ready for you!

2010 Holidays.

The Christmas holidays are over, and once again, I’m ambivalent about this. On the one hand I really enjoy having Hubby and the kids around, sleeping late and not having to cram all the extra murals into a limited amount of time. On the other I want to have my personal space back, being able to drop off the kids at school, go to Tai Chi classes and do all the running around that a stay-at-home mom does, without having to worry that the everyone is fed and watered, and kept entertained.

You would think that the children would be the most demanding, wanting to be taken to the movies, or schlepped to friends for play dates, but no, that award goes to Hubby. Every year-end his condition gets aggravated. You see he has this chronic case of the ‘Can-you’s’ that flares up during this time. I don’t think he can control it, he just blurts out, “Can you please do this? or Can you please fetch that?” in a very nice reasonable tone, that of course you can’t say no to, especially because he’s doing stuff that will end up making your life easier in the end. The problem is that his disorder only acts up when I’m in the middle of something myself, for example washing dishes that I’ve let pile up and now are so irritating that I have to do them now or ditto for laundry. Stuff I don’t really want to do but have finally plucked up the courage and willpower to do, stuff that needs momentum to finish successfully… then along come the ‘Can-you’s’. I guess it could be worse, he could have a case of the ‘Get-me’s’ as in ‘Get me a cup coffee or get me lunch’. That condition I know there is no cure for; my Dads had it for as long as I can remember.

Everybody is back into their routine now. Hubby is back at work. Josh has started ‘big school’, entering Grade one bespectacled and sombre with the immensity of it all. Jamie filled with excitement at seeing his friends, has planned visits at their houses without even asking my permission, and already set high academic goals for the year ahead. Life’s back to normal for me too, an ever growing list of stuff to do, a dreaded upcoming fortieth birthday and lots of studying and writing.

2011 stands before us full of promise and adventure, let’s grip it by the ears and give it a good shake, if we are lucky, it won’t bite us or punch us in the nose.

Planes, trains, automobiles & witches

Big plane, shuttle, little plane, bus, train, car! The kids and I sat on the train to my parent’s house in São Teotonio listing the different forms of transport we would have to use to get to our destination. After being awake for almost 20 hours and extremely sleep deprived, I’m actually surprised I was still capable of coherent thought.

The beauty about being near the end of a voyage is that you get to appreciate the personalities that entered into it to make it unique. For example, the Spanish male air host who berated an older man who wasn’t stowing his carry-on luggage quickly enough, blocking the aisle. OK that in itself may not be interesting, but he did it in Spanish, and I understood what he said, that gave me a little thrill. Add Spanish to my linguistic repertoire.

Hubby will never let me forget that I, in my single-minded ideal to get us to my parents home, almost left him with all the bags, no money, without a passport and of course not able to speak Portuguese at the Entre-Campos Train Station in Lisbon. When the train arrived it went past us stopping about 100 metres away from where were waiting, I grabbed a child in each hand and ran for it. I’m sure that at some point during my sprint I did turn back and check that he was following, dragging three bags with him, I love my husband after all. OK, so maybe I only checked once I had already boarded, sometimes I have serious tunnel vision. We all got on safely and found our allotted seats without much difficulty, except for some fellow passengers who had luggage battered knees or elbows (in a country of short men he looked like a behemoth. One day I overheard a little girl point out to her mom how big his legs were). I was teased for the next two hours on the train, then ratted out to my Dad for being a negligent wife.

When we are children we have certain characters that appear in our lives that scare the hell out of us till we become teenagers and hopefully outgrow them. Thanks go to the unremembered adult who took me and my siblings to see a drive-in movie called ‘Scanners’ where the baddy makes peoples heads explode, very intelligent, not! I saw it on E-TV recently, very, very cheesy in a late 70’s kind of way but I digress.

While being teased by hubby, who should board the train but a witch! When I was little my mom would buy me books of fairy tales, I don’t know where she got them but they all had that lurid brightness that we now associate with the 1980’s. The illustrations were harsh and didn’t hold back, when the wolfs stomach got cut open for Granny to come out in Little Red Riding Hood, blood and guts were everywhere. The witch that Hansel pushed into the oven was covered in warts, had those crooked arthritic fingers that tested poor cage-bound Gretel for weight gain and was clad from Kappie covered head to toe in black. Still gives me the shivers. Well that’s who got on the train, you can ask Hubby I almost had a coughing fit trying to point her out to him. She dragged two engorged black bin bags along with her, probably filled with dismembered Gretel look-alikes! When she couldn’t find space in the tiny bag storage section she harassed the teenagers nearest the door for being so insensitive and using it all. Then she dragged her bags down the aisle and sat in the seat behind me. I felt those beady malevolent eyes on my back till I disembarked. Maybe she was just someone’s Gran who’d had a bad day but I prefer to remember it my way, as the witch who got on the train to Funcheira, my childhood fears revisited.

Overall, it was a wonderful start to our trip and only the beginning of our Portuguese adventure.

Things I love about Gauteng, South Africa.

A trip overseas a couple of years ago made me realise all the things that I loved about South Africa. I’ve kept my list simple but if you are a cynic like hubby you’ll be saying, “Yes, but…” I went through it with him and he shot down every one. The point is, it’s the little things that make the biggest difference between them and us.

 People here have easy smiles, I can be thinking about something funny the kids did, have a smile on my face, look up and the person I’m looking at will smile too.

 I dread going to any government department, the only bright spark in the otherwise harrowing ordeal is that I know that while I am standing in the queue I will start a conversation with someone and at the end, I’ll know all about their lives, I’ll know about their children, husbands and maybe even their hopes and dreams. It’s a veritable smorgasbord for a writer because they are someone I wouldn’t ordinarily have a conversation with.

Once when I was renewing my license a jolly black man wandered up and down the line chatting with all and sundry, he teased the white people for how much we spent on food. According to him, he only needed meat, vegetables and pap to feed his huge family. He just couldn’t understand why we spent so much on cheese. We were kept entertained for three hours with his humorous indignation and jokes.

 If we see people acting strange or doing something wrong, like a taxi going over a painted island to get to the front of the traffic, it doesn’t matter what colour we are we will do a little shake of the head or a roll of the eyes, we are bound in solidarity against injustice. If someone’s dress sticks out of a car door or a door is slightly ajar you can be sure that by the end of your journey another driver has pointed, gestured, and waved in your direction to tell you about it.

 We are a very touchy feely country, we aren’t afraid to stroke the faces of other peoples children, pat their heads or take their hands if they are crying or in distress. Outside my sons school a woman who was obviously a maid stopped me and asked for help. Her employer had moved, it was her first day at the new house and she was dreadfully lost and in a panic. I calmed her down, drove her to the nearest garage, phoned her employer and gave her directions to the maids location. I was swallowed in a hug that engulfed me totally, it felt wonderful, familiar, and genuine.

 While I was overseas I had to go a government department, there I noticed a few massive differences. They didn’t speak to one another, where we are verbose and loud, they were sullen. No matter where one goes government departments are always the same. The queues are long and people are there because they have to be not because they want to be. How one treats your fellow man while in that situation to me shows how you feel about others at your basic instinct levels. In S.A. it is normal to ask those in front and behind of you to hold your place if nature calls or if you want to ask an official if you are in the correct line. When you come back, even if you were away ten minutes your spot will still be there.

Overseas I sat next to a woman who was obviously in some discomfort; I said I would hold her seat while she went to the toilet, saying that a woman who was standing nearby could sit down in the meantime just to get off her feet. The woman I had offered the chair too growled at me saying that they didn’t do that there. I shrugged and kept my mouth shut for the rest of my incarceration. In time, the woman had to leave and she lost her seat. No courtesy and we’re the third world country!

 Lastly, I love that when I go shopping someone will be singing to himself or herself in the aisle. Sometimes they just hum a tune or whistle to themselves. Other times they’ll have a strong beautiful voice, singing a gospel song, sharing the joy that they feel while singing it. I’ve caught myself humming along to an oldie at the Pick & Pay, there’s no embarrassment when someone hears me, they know I’m content and they’re OK with it, besides they probably do it themselves every so often.

This list is just the beginning, as soon as I’ve posted it I’m sure that I’ll think of ten more things I appreciate about living here. We humans look for the positive in all situations. Hubby would say “We are just frogs in a pot, and the waters getting hotter” I’m much more positive, I love that we are diverse and yet still have so much in common. Let’s hope that others feel like I do.