rondebosch houses are ostentatious

i run by them 3 times a week

and then 

back to my rental

in rondebosch.

perhaps i am ostentatious too? 

Stockholm Old Town at night - as seen by Tyra

is it possible to have city ache for somewhere you've never lived before? lately i've been missing Stockholm, even though i've never lived there. i've visited a couple of times before and love it so much but really i've no 'real life living' experience of the place. 

so i have slight city ache for Stockholm at the moment - which is weird. i told my friend Tyra about my city ache and asked her to send some photos. Lovely Tyra was one her way to meet her friend Magnus for a coffee and sent me photos of the walk. [side note: how much do we love the name Magnus!]  

i wish i could have joined her and Magnus for a coffee - would have been nice. don't get me wrong, i'm not unhappy where i am, i'm really enjoying being where i am now (in the fullest sense of the expression). i just for some reason miss Stockholm - a city i've never lived in. strange! 

(the flag says 'from Stockholm with love'. Tyra says every time she walks by it she thinks of me.) 

 

i'm reading a book on how narrative can be used in entrepreneurship studies (my thesis is focused on ICT entrepreneurs in Kenya), and in an autobiographical narration, a Norwegian woman who is a cultural theatre entrepreneur in the most northern part of rural Norway (Finnmark) accounts for what she calls 'city ache'. This is when small town life gets TOO much and "when you get city ache you simply have to go to a city".

for her, and perhaps me too i suppose, "the definition of a city is a street that never ends, or a place where you can drink a cappuccino, or be where nobody knows you". 

(Source: Foss, L. 2004. 'Going against the grain...' Construction of entrepreneurial identity through narratives, in Hjorth, D. & Steyaert, C. (eds.) Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepreneurship, 80 - 104, Cheltenham : Edward Elgar)

Midnight ceylon whilst
Lionel and others from past decades pour themselves out over the national broadcaster whilst i tune my eyes to another page of theory to turn in my mind.

look at the funny fish.

 

get excited when little hanna comes to visit. 

 

talk honestly about your life with a friend & some good tea.

embrace barbie when you're babysitting a three year old.

 

tell the three year old that she is infinitely more beautiful than barbie will ever be. 

And now for the rest of the season i'll be working at home in these.

 (the 'cross chart' - taken from The Gospel-centered life: a nine lesson study, by Bob Thune & Will Walker, 2009, World Harvest Mission, but introduced to me in a seminar at Student 20s camp by Kyle)  

basically this image illustrates the process of justification and sanctification. as i grow more and more in love with Jesus, i also realise just how sinful my own heart is. often this happens even out of the context of actively sinning - for example, just thinking of the goodness of God you realise, YIKES how awesome is God to still love me even though what's inside of me is pretty vile.

vile because i realise how some parts of my life worship the created and not the creator.

this chart is a picture of grace (God's unconditional love) to me, because it reminds me how much God will continue to love me into the future. unconditionally so - even though i might 'progress' in my own self-righteous heart and mind in terms of spiritual growth, and drawing closer to Jesus. this chart shows me that any 'progress' is further revelation (i like that word, it suggests to me that i can also revel in what i discover) of God's goodness - NOT mine.

i love Jesus for that, the closer i get to him, the more he shows me how it's still not at all about me. i love learning that lesson over and over again. even if sometimes it's awkward and painful. like how it is now.  

after hot cross buns, milky tea and dvds we went down the coast for just a bit to drop off a dear friend at her house which happens to be very different from the home we just came from.

from townhouse to township we drove on good friday evening. 

three girls, 1 baby girl. THEN! three men, who tried to open up our car and get inside and steal it from us and maybe harm us.

but you were there God. protecting. as you always do. we were safe.

i need to believe you more. i need to believe you in the face of crime statistics.

we left. we were fine. baby was fine. but those three men were not.

more than anything, i wonder what chain of events brings you to the point where at one particular space/time coordinate on a friday night you think it would be ok to try and steal someone's car.

i'm not angry at the men. i've long forgiven them.

i'm a little angry at our society. i'm a little angry a well to-do middle class people like myself.

that anger must be purposed.

i must work so that at one particular random friday night in a township somewhere in cape town, the option to steal someone's car becomes a less and less appealing a life choice.

God you can make good out of every bad.

make good out of this.

 

April is for fools
April is for Easters
April is for us.

I fell in love with Nairobi because of how alive it is. Then I fell out of love with it because it is loud, dusty and broken. Then the city charmed me back again with it's cheap public transport, friendly city-zens, and diversity.  

I went for a brief trip related to my Mphil thesis. I hope to be back soon again to do data collection for a longer period. 

Here are some pictures, here are some words I wrote about it.  

city view. Kenya has great coffee, but most people I met in Nairobi prefer tea. Kenya also has great tea so that could be why.

 A building in Parklands.  Public transport bonanza.

Wangari Maathai's legacy in Uhuru Park.

catching up with a friend over peppermint tea.

 

Nairobi is nothing like i've experienced before.

It's dirt poor and euro-expensive in the same streets.

It's cabs and matatus, malls and markets and dust and shoe shiners. 

It's go-getter in a land of foreign NGO expat hand-outs. 

It's mukimo and tangerine juice and delicious chapatis. 

It's peaceful friendly people and Al-shabaab bomb blasts down town on 

a saturday night when you're about to go outside to party. 

 Nairobi is African. Makes me think about my African part of the world.

Makes me wonder why I've never seen a black airplane pilot before boarding the plane to 

Nairobi. 

 

 "Nairobi is sexy grunge" my friend said on my last night in her city. it made sense to me after my brief 10 day visit.