“There will be mountains that I will have to climb; And there will be battles that I will have to fight; But victory or defeat, it's up to me to decide; But how can I expect to win If I never try.
I just can't give up now; I've come too far from where I started from; Nobody told me the road would be easy; and I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me” – Mary Mary

As he lies in his bed chuckling at some of the hopeless contestants on Idols SA, well brave…but hopeless, filled with guilt because he missed last weeks email, with his cap in his hand he screams from the top of his lungs….”I say what’s up my N****S”

Top of the morning to you all, as I am sure you have realized I am running very thin on material for my weekly emails…and he chuckles even more cos some lass is squealing “its not right but its ok”…and she sucks…anyhow, thanks to Teboho for helping me with suggestions, very deep and interesting. If you guys have any suggestions please do drop me a line

I was watching Carte Blanche yesterday and I got very disturbed. Now you guys know there are very few people more positive about this country than I, but sheesh some of the lawlessness that the Carte Blanche team reported has me very disturbed. There was a story done on gangsters who steal cars, spin cars on the roads illegally, steal policemens guns and no one even blinks an eyelid. But let the deputy minister of health catch a flight to Spain to find out about AIDS vaccines and boy will we make her pay. In principle its all good and well, guys that squander cash or spend unauthorized money should be brought to book. Guys and girls, lets be honest if that were the case we wouldn’t really have that many people working in the government at the moment, would we. I am not part of the inner workings of the government, but from what is reported, it’s a huge pity to see one of the ‘good guys’ being victimized as she is being and in my mind useless ones such as the current health minister run around as if the are queens of the castle, ooh I feel like breaking out into song…must be the reason why I’m queen of my castle…
Anyway, we shall overcome!!

So last week I had a great idea for an email. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the United States of Africa etc. I thought to myself, how much about this continent do I know, I mean like the basics, for example all the countries or at least most of them, what their capital cities are and who their leaders or presidents are. To be honest my honest answer was not a helluva lot. I decided that last weeks email was going to be an educational one, lets call it know your continent .

Below is a little spreadsheet I put together, with the capitals, the population size of the capital cities and who the leaders are. Study them well because there will be a quiz next week  (please if I have my facts wrong please do correct me)

Capital City Citizens Country President/leader
Algiers (Alger, El Djazâir, Al Jaza'ir) 1,600,000 Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Luanda 470,000 Angola Jose E dos Santos
Porto-Novo (constit) 185,000 Benin Yayi Boni
Cotonou (seat of gvnt)
Gaborone 140,000 Botswana Festus Mogae
Ouagadougou 650,000 Burkina Faso Blaise Compaore
Bujumbura 240,000 Burundi Pierre Nkurunziza
Yaoundé 660,000 Cameroon Paul Biya
Praia 62,000 Cape Verde Pedro Pires
Bangui Bangui 480,000 Central Africa Francois Bozize
N'Djamena (Ndjamena) 190,000 Chad Idriss Deby
Moroni (Môrônî (Arab) 19,000 Comoros Ahmed Abdallah M. Sambi
Brazzaville 620,000 Congo (Brazzaville) Dennis Sassou Nguesso
Kinshasa 2,800,000 Congo (Kinshasa) Joseph Kabila
Yamoussoukro 110,000 Côte d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo
Djibouti (City) (Djiboûtî) 62,000 Djibouti Ismail Omar Guelleh
Cairo (El Qahirah) 6,800,000 Egypt Hosni Mubarak
Malabo (formerly Santa Isabel city state) 35,000 Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
Asmara (Asmera) 360,000 Eritrea Isaias Afewerki
Addis Ababa (Addis Abeba) 2,400,000 Ethiopia Girma Wolde-Giorgis
Libreville 57,000 Gabon El Hadj Omar Bongo
Banjul 52,000 Gambia Yahya AJJ Jammeh
Accra 600,000 Ghana John Agyekum Kufuor
Conakry 770,000 Guinea Yansana Conte
Bissau 120,000 Guinea-Bissau Joao Bernardo Vieira
Nairobi 1,200,000 Kenya Mwai Kibaki
Maseru 14,000 Lesotho King Letsie III
Monrovia 430,000 Liberia Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
Tripoli (Tarabulus) 570,000 Libya Muammar al-Gaddafi
Antananarivo 370,000 Madagascar Marc Ravolmanana
Lilongwe 250,000 Malawi Bingu wa Mutharika
Bamako 700,000 Mali Amadou Toumani Toure
Nouakchott (Nuwaskshut, Noûâkchot (mr)) 135,000 Mauritania Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi
Port Louis 145,000 Mauritius Anerood Jugnauth
Rabat (Ar Ribat, Er Ribât (ma)) 1,230,000 Morocco King Mohammed VI
Maputo 900,000 Mozambique Armando Guebuza
Windhoek 148,000 Namibia Hifikepunye Pohamba
Niamey 250,000 Niger Tandja Mamadou
Abuja 300,000 Nigeria Umaru Yar'Adua
Kigali 118,000 Rwanda Paul Kagame
Dakar 165,000 Senegal Abdoulaye Wade
Victoria 25,000 Seychelles James Michel
Freetown 48,000 Sierra Leone Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
Mogadishu 260,000 Somalia Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed
Pretoria (Adm.) 1,600,000 South Africa Thabo Mbeki
Cape Town (Kaapstad) (legislative)
Bloemfontein (Judicial)
Khartoum (Al Khartum, Al Khurtum (sd) 930,000 Sudan Omar Hassan al Bashir
Mbabane (adm.) 41,000 Swaziland King Mswati III
Lobamba (legislative)
Dar es Salaam 1,100,000 Tanzania Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete
Lomé 160,000 Togo Faure Gnassingbe
Tunis (Toûnis, Tunus (tn)) 620,000 Tunisia Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Kampala 330,000 Uganda Yoweri Museveni
La 'Youn (El Aaiun, Al 'Ayun) 256,200 Western Sahara Part of Spain
Lusaka 1,000,000 Zambia Levy Mwanawasa
Harare (formerly Salisbury) 1,200,000 Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe

Don’t ever say I don’t teach u guys stuff .

Birthdays for the week
20th Jo Maree
22nd Smut and Rushda
25th Grant D
26th Charl and Gareth

“If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.” – Anonymous

That’s me for last week, I will definitely try and write something a whole lot more deep for this weeks email.

Big love and maximum respect!

Y

“Que sera sera”

Only a few days to go and my life resumes again. Roll on France 2007, roll on! For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about I am talking about the rugby world cup.

Whats up gangsters?? Another lovely day in Jozi comes to a close and the weekend is upon us! I must apologise for my no show last week.

iYo! I think I am in love …for maybe the third/4th/5th/… time this year! Did I tell you guys about the first 2? For some reason I don’t think so. Ok so I’m in love with a stripper…ok not quite, but speaking of strippers, I was in Cape Town last week and I have this married friend who doesn’t get out much, so we had planned to get a whole bunch of boys together and just go take in some art and have a few drinks after work on a Friday. They had Whilst at this ‘gallery’ my mate and I were in awe, ok what do we call my mate, I don’t want to unnecessarily drag anyone through the mud with me so I will give him a ‘common’ name, lets call him Simon… So Simon and I were in awe there was this young lass who was working the room…except us ofcourse. We were there for say an hour maybe 2 and in this time, she easily took over 20 people for a private showing of her dancing art. The time we went could never have been busy by any means. They charge roughly R150 for 2 songs R150x20 for an hour of work…that’s insane, and she was good at what she did so guys were stuck in there for 3 or 4 songs, that’s some good cash!

I digress…So let me tell you about these ladies. The first one, absolute belter in all respects, shy yet cocky, smart and blazing hot, but its one of those things that would just have been a problem, chaos, anarchy, fireworks, blood, love, retribution, vendetta, betrayal, it would have been messy,, that’s the beauty with age, when u realize something is going to be a problem, u just back down and bow out gracefully, girl no 2, she my friends, was the real deal, lovely lass, smart, and also blazing hot, cos I’m fickle like that. But guess what, she became my friend. Current girl, now there is the business right there. Same qualities as the first 2, think I have the same Modus Operandi…she is super styling! But eh to steal some text from facebook “its complicated” story of my life.

Do u guys know what all these 3 girls have in common? None of them knew/know that I was keen. (the last one for example no one knows who she is but me) Sooo wack! I need help…But wait Vaughan, wait, one day, I promise I will grow up!! J

So why did I write this for u all to read about my uselessness, well as I lie here I can think of no plausible reason, it was a thought running through my mind earlier today when I was wondering why I have been smiling a lot lately…moving swiftly along like the South Easter in Cape Town…

Oh no wait, I heard some funky drum n base on the bhudda bar CD Vol II, CD 2 song 9, wow, good ol days of F UCT, Rhythym Divine and Reality…just for those who wanted to do some exercise and take a jog down memory lane…ok now we can move along…

Speaking of complications. I think without fail every single week for the last year or so, there has been one headline that seems to have bought a permanent slot on the news, and that’s the ‘Conflict in Darfur’. Its such a big thing that that it has all of the worlds organizations holding meeting after meeting to try and find an end to the conflict. But what is this conflict all about? Yes many have lost their lives as a direct cause of the fighting or indirectly because of disease and starvation, many have been displaced from their homes, its been seen by many as genocide, ethnic cleansing, but what do the reports say? I will attempt to summarise some of the things that I have read…

Darfur is a region found in the North of Sudan. Sudan, for those of us who don’t know is the largest country in Africa. It shares a border with Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, Uganda, DRC and Kenya to the south, CAR, Chad and Libya to the west and Egypt to the North. The population size is roughly 28million speaking over 400 different languages. The religious backgrounds of the inhabitants are Muslim, Animist (people who believe in a natural objects, natural phenomena and the universe itself possess souls) and Christian.

It is reported that the country as a whole has been in conflict since 1956. What has been at the centre of this conflict, one might ask? It’s been a long time coming I guess. Some of the inhabitants of this country feel aggrieved. They feel victimized. They have feel they have suffered years and years of economic and political marginalization. They feel the government in oil and water rich Khartoum, aren’t providing them with much if any assistance at all. The current conflict is between the Arab Muslim government (the National Islamic Front) and a militia, the Janjaweed, (a group many see as funded and mobilized by the government) and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement (which is mainly Zurq (black)).

The recent conflict is said to have started on the 26th Feb 2003 when the SPLM attacked government targets. Their reasoning behind the attacks was that the government was ignoring their area of the country and oppressing them. ‘Them’ being black Africans. So I guess it’s now become more of a religious battle because the SPLM and the JEM are predominantly black Africans, and the government and the Janjaweed are predominantly muslim.

The Arab and Arabic speaking nomads are generally found in the north and south of the region. The central part is inhabited by Africans. For those that don’t know, parts of Sudan if not all of Sudan is as dry as Savanah, but u cant drink it, ok I rephrase, its as dry as that attempted funny. Water is a huuuuuge problem in that vast country. Finding habitable arable land comes at a premium. With the droughts of recent times, many more inhabitants of the northern parts have been forced into the central part of the region and that’s leading to a lot of conflict. Their issue is that Khartoum earns quite a bit in terms of oil revenue, but the only people that benefit from this revenue are the friends of the government - which is the southern part of Darfur as well as Khartoum and its surrounding areas. The inhabitants of the centre felt a tad hard done by. As a result they took up arms against government targets. These attacks were met with great vengeance and furious anger. There are reports of murder, rape and pillaging (to strip ruthlessly of money or goods by open violence).

Many a ceasefire has been agreed and many violated. It is reported that as many as 200 000 people have died either directly or indirectly as a result of starvation or illness as a result of this conflict. Over 200 000 people have been reported to have ventured into neighboring Chad, similar to Zimbabweans coming to SA. For a long time the Sudanese government opposed the deployment of UN peacekeeping troops in the region. As a result the AU mobilized a team. The area they needed to cover is large and as we know, resources are few and their mandate very limited…so they weren’t being as effective as they could be. International pressure is mounting and as a result they have softened their stance abit and are allowing UN and AU forces to run the peacekeeping efforts.

So bottom line current conflict was sparked by the lack of water and food but it was fuelled by decades of alleged marginalization.

If the email is all over the show…oops, there were plenty takes and pauses whilst I compiling this one.

Birthdays
7th Lionel Mac
12th Caroline B, Angela J
13th Sharpie
14th Degs
18th Lerato M
19th Cheryl and Rob Lee

“He used to say if I am not for myself, who will be for me. And if I am only for myself, what am I?” Hillel

Another week almost to a close u all be good now u hear!

Maximum respect and beeg love,


Y

‘que sera sera’ and not ‘kwe sarah sarah’ darkies!!

“Confusion that never stops, The closing walls and ticking clocks, gonna, Come back and take you home, I could not stop that you now know, singing.

Come out Come out upon my seas, the Cursed missed opportunities, Am I a part of the cure? Or am I part of the disease, singing…” – Clocks Coldplay

If you know the song you are probably singing along with it right now and if you don’t I hope you are like what the f***!! Cos that’s what I am saying! These words make absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, but I cant lie I love the song, hence y I am humming it at midnite!!

Anyway…I said what’s up my brethren. Another God given week plods along and I ask you are you where you want to be or are you at least putting in motion the plans to get there?? Or are you just plodding along like your week?? It’s definitely a question we need to ask ourselves every so often. All I will do is plant the seed you decide whether or not its worth your while to let it germinate or let it slide…your choice, just as long as you always remember that the life you live is a product of your choices!!

Another addition to the list, miss Matshego, heeeyyy and welcome. Any comments or suggestions please either mail me or go to www.mondaymail.blogspot.com

I feel like a proper chop! I said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s a full time job being black. Let me tell you a story that fills me with so much shame. I am just as wack as some of the stereotypes I preach against!! So yesterday, I am at the office, its well after 5 pm. I am sitting with the ladies we share office space with. All of a sudden without even a knock the door bursts open and in walks this young black man, followed by another with another lurking in the passage. The young man says nothing and just waltz’s over to the desk of one of the ladies, but with such confidence it could easily have been mistaken for hostility. After a bit of a miniature thought process effort, I sprung to my feet grabbed the bra by his arm and led me towards the door before he could do anything…do what exactly Yaw??!!

The poor guy was just a young man wondering whether we accepted CV’s for internships. My first thought was….DANGER. I could come up with a whole lot of excuses for my behaviour, there were a couple of guys wandering aimlessly around the building a few weeks ago…it’s a function of the current state of our society, blah blah fish paste, but I think it’s absolutely inexcusable!! Secondly, if I had taken the time to assess the situation properly, I would have seen that the other person who had come in with the guy was the security guard for our building, dressed in casual clothing. Eish!! I guess now I have zero reason to complain when the cops stop me and harass me cos they think I am an illegal immigrant!!

Anyway onto this weeks email. This weekend I managed to get my hands on the DVD the Secret (thanks Deen). I know there are a lot of people that think it’s the ‘antichrist’ but I don’t know to be honest. It’s at the least very thought provoking. I would suggest you watch it and take from it what you will. My belief is very simple. God can’t do everything for you, you have to learn to help yourself too and in a way this book/DVD, helps you get your head in a space where you can help yourself. I will steer clear of making this a religious debate, but I would suggest you read the book or watch the DVD and see if and how you can apply it to your life. The DVD doesn’t tell you anything particularly earth shattering, what it does do thou is reminds you of the really simple things which we all know and sometimes even do, but we just need to be reminded of it. But wait there’s more, what it does is it puts all these thoughts and activities into a structured format. Positive mind = positive life.

I definitely would recommend that you go and read the book or watch the DVD, particularly if you are in no man’s land in your thoughts and your life, even if you aren’t you will def learn a thing or two!

I tell you I couldn’t have watched it at a better time. Monday could possibly have turned out to be the biggest nightmare day in a loooong time for me, but with a coke and a smile and a bounce in my step I managed to get through it relatively unscathed, lets just say it involved dealing with public servants at the City of Joburg…but that in itself is a chapter altogether.

Anyway this week I don’t have a lot to say to you all and instead of waffling, I will just end off here and say hope you had a slamming week thus far and enjoy the rest of your week.

Birthdays
29th Sheya
30th Claudia, Will Lee, Eddie Marav

Maximum respect

Y

‘Que sera sera’