VIRGO - my birthday month

Virgo - The Virgin
August 23 – September 22
Virgo's have keen minds, and are delightful to talk with, often convincing others of outlandish tales with ease and charm. Virgo's are inquisitive and are very skilled at drawing information from people. This trait also makes them naturally intuitive. Combine this with their remarkable memories, and we see an advanced, analytical personality. However the Virgo needs balance in their lives otherwise they may become short-tempered, impatient and self-serving. Virgo's are excellent teammates in work and social activities. They work well with others, although they freely express their opinions (even when unwarranted).

I totally agree with this: Virgo is ambitious and strives to always know more and have more. This is in their eternal quest to bring order to chaos. Even if order is obtained from an outsiders' point of view, Virgo will not be settled for they have a very active mind that is always thinking and can never be silenced.
I believe we VIRGO's try to hard to solve other people's problems and we feel good about ourselves when we acomplish something. we do however have those moments when we just want to be left alone.

ART

I LOVE ART!!!

I have hidden in the shadow of the truth.

I have hidden in the shadow of the truth

by Boipelo Mokoke on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 9:41pm ·

I have hidden in the shadow of the truth 4 so long dat it suffocates me and the little voice insyd of wants to scream but only i can hear it...you were thre but merely 2complete da picture dat has nw faded with all da luv you once claimed to have.
I have hidden in the shadow of the truth 4 so long dat i dnt knw wat hurts da most,da fact dat u livin or dat the memories still sting and hurt soo much even thou it happend a lng tym ago...dey say with tyn wounds heal believe me dey heal only for you to remove the dry skin and take care of da wounds while the marks left are constantly reminding you of the chapter you so badly want to close.

I have hidden in the shadow of the truth 4 so long and my mistake was dat i loved you..your mistakes are endless and hurtful to mention...oh how i luved thee i close my eyes so i cud remind myself of the thngs i used to luv abt u bt i knw dat man is no longer in you...pls let me not see you or i wont control my emotions..while u read dis dnt thnk i haven't let go of dis pain or da memory but i have and tried to pray abt it...lost a gud man 1nce coz da pain was jst eating away at ME but as i write this i feel happy coz God has forgiven Me and i wish you all the best...xoxo love BOIPELO

Zapiro's cartoon

First it was the shower cap on the president's head now the painting by Brett Murray called "The Spear', has inspired Zapiro to come up with this version of the issues about whether or not the painting is racial or just disrespectful to our president.

I AM AN AFRICAN- POEM

Today is Africa Day and i thought this poem by our former president Mr Thabo Mbeki will do some justice to allow us to enjoy and embrace being African and proud.

I am an African.
I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.
My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.
The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of the veld.
The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day.
At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito.
A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am an African!
I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a people, perished in the result.
Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again.
I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me.
In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.
I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.
My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.
I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.
I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns.
I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.
Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African.
I have seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one redress a wrong that had been caused by one to another and the other, to defend the indefensible.
I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in His image.
I know what if signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and who, sub-human.
I have seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be what one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had improved themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy.
I have experience of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and impoverish the rest.
I have seen the corruption of minds and souls in the pursuit of an ignoble effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity.
I have seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of other human beings.
There the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality - the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain.
Perhaps the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learnt to kill for a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal welfare.
And so, like pawns in the service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars.
They kill slowly or quickly in order to make profits from the illegal trade in narcotics. They are available for hire when husband wants to murder wife and wife, husband.
Among us prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past - killers who have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled and the old, the rapacious who brook no obstacle in their quest for self-enrichment.
All this I know and know to be true because I am an African!
Because of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines.
I am born of a people who would not tolerate oppression.
I am of a nation that would not allow that fear of death, torture, imprisonment, exile or persecution should result in the perpetuation of injustice.
The great masses who are our mother and father will not permit that the behaviour of the few results in the description of our country and people as barbaric.
Patient because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines.
Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be.
We are assembled here today to mark their victory in acquiring and exercising their right to formulate their own definition of what it means to be African.
The constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes and unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our Africanness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender of historical origins.
It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.
It gives concrete expression to the sentiment we share as Africans, and will defend to the death, that the people shall govern.
It recognises the fact that the dignity of the individual is both an objective which society must pursue, and is a goal which cannot be separated from the material well-being of that individual.
It seeks to create the situation in which all our people shall be free from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one national group by another, the fear of the disempowerment of one social echelon by another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anybody their fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny.
It aims to open the doors so that those who were disadvantaged can assume their place in society as equals with their fellow human beings without regard to colour, race, gender, age or geographic dispersal.
It provides the opportunity to enable each one and all to state their views, promote them, strive for their implementation in the process of governance without fear that a contrary view will be met with repression.
It creates a law-governed society which shall be inimical to arbitrary rule.
It enables the resolution of conflicts by peaceful means rather than resort to force.
It rejoices in the diversity of our people and creates the space for all of us voluntarily to define ourselves as one people.
As an African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit.
Our sense of elevation at this moment also derives from the fact that this magnificent product is the unique creation of African hands and African minds.
Bit it is also constitutes a tribute to our loss of vanity that we could, despite the temptation to treat ourselves as an exceptional fragment of humanity, draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom of all humankind, to define for ourselves what we want to be.
Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness.
But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after!
Today it feels good to be an African.
It feels good that I can stand here as a South African and as a foot soldier of a titanic African army, the African National Congress, to say to all the parties represented here, to the millions who made an input into the processes we are concluding, to our outstanding compatriots who have presided over the birth of our founding document, to the negotiators who pitted their wits one against the other, to the unseen stars who shone unseen as the management and administration of the Constitutional Assembly, the advisers, experts and publicists, to the mass communication media, to our friends across the globe - congratulations and well done!
I am an African.
I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa.
The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear.
The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share.
The blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of despair.
This is a savage road to which nobody should be condemned.
This thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent that has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes.
Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now!
Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!
However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!
Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can stop us now!
Thank you

JO BORKETT COLLECTION

I love their designs JO BORKETT is by far my favourite when it comes to classy and elegant wear..ladeis feast your eyes on this.

Is the Masai Tribe deteriorating?

Source: Young Maasai men in hunting gear..picture from Google

The warriors of the Masai were responsible for much of the territory expansion as they conquered their neighbours, or stole their cattle.


The powerful Masai faced a downfall towards the end of the 1800s. Not only was their population devastated by years of drought and epidemics of small pox, their lands were taken from them by the Kenyan government.
Much of their territory was taken to form wildlife preservation parks, like the Masai Mara game preserve and the Nairobi National Park. The Masai's land was also reduced by the arrival of white settlers who claimed land for their ranches.



Cultural Changes in the History of the Masai


Not only was their land taken for settlers in the 1800s and early 1900s, missionaries became a common sight. They came to try and "civilize" the savage Masai whose bare dressing habits and other primitive habits shocked the white people. Today, a large number of Masai have converted to Christianity, but haven't actually changed any of their traditional habits because of it.
With the loss of their land, many Masai are no longer able to survive in their old ways, and are now forced to find "modern" jobs in order to earn a living. They are often employed as local tour guides, and many Masai are involved in tourism by performing dances and selling hand-made beaded jewelry.
Though their time of prominence in Africa may be over, the Masai survive to remind us of the proud and prosperous people they once were.

In all the information i read about their culture i look up to the women in a Maasai Tribe because as an African Maasai the woman has to do more work compared to her husband.This has been the tradition since the history of the Maasai people. A woman does not own any property. While she refers to property as "ours", in reality every cow, every sheep, every goat, every donkey and land is owned by her husband. She is proud of her husband's property. in our time we today we all want to own something to make us feel superior and important., but times have changed even the way of living for African have changed due to many reasons like socio and economic reasons to name a few.



On a lighter note, we should all try to find out as much information as we can about our different cultures so that we are able to pass down knowledge to our grand-childern. Adapting to modern ways shouldn't could our past because in order to move forward you should know where you come from.Be proud of who you are. :)

my love for art

 i have an undiscovered love for ART!! photography is such a beatiful art only people with an eye for it will and can appreciate it the most...alougth some art works are not inspiring i can imagine the muse artists get when a fresh idea comes to mind.... Whatever your talent make sure u use it BEAUTIFULLY!! because that's your GOD given talent.

Maya Angelou's poem

This poem best describes women!!! Enjoy and be proud of being a WOMAN in this woorld where we are not fully recognised.

 

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Maya Angelou