WARNING: ALCOHOL KILLS!!!

The time is 20.30 monday evening on the 1st of April. As the call comes I am thinking "somebody delayed their April fools prank, what can Sboniso say at this time of the night that can get me running a fools errand?!"

I picked up and on the other side speaks Lunga. He is completely freaked out I can hear it in his voice as he starters, struggling to catch his breath "bhuti Eddie, bhuti Sboniso ucule..uculekile akanyakati" He is unconcious and cannot move at this time? Why now? What could have happened? This does not make sense to me. The phone cuts off and I immediately call back just to get the missing details of this delayed prank, because even when you know a person is lying to you, your curiousity makes you try and get the full details of the lie before you can dismiss it.

Lunga picks up before the second ring starts: "Hello?"

"Lunga, just tell me what the problem is. Why is he uncounsious? What happened?"

Lunga does not know. He found him like that in the kitchen and struggled to get him up. It was no prank. I could hear the voice of Nomvula crying in the background beckoning for her brother to say something , all to no avail.

On Friday afternoon Sboniso and Lunga got a call from Samantha, my younger sister who is a student at TUT Nelspruit campus saying they were celebrating a friends birthday at Cayotes, ShisaNyama in Nelspruit. They rushed to town and found all kinds of booze set up on the tables and were told they could help themselves to whatever they liked: Spirits, Ciders and Beers only. My younger brother Sboniso, just like my older brother Sfiso and Sboniso's twin brother from another mother, Thando, all do not like eating when they are drinking. Their excuse is that they lose appetite for food once ghey start drinking but sometimes they tell you the food makes them sober up and that to them defeats the purpose of drinking: "We will eat when we go to sleep" my older brother would say "Not while we are still drinking. Nyofa wena because you like food so much." "I am a drinker not a eater", Sboniso would say. And when they get home, they are ususally too drunk to eat and they just fall asleep until the next day.

This is what happened with Sboniso on this day at Cayotes. They got back home in the early hours of the morning and he in particular, slept until the afternoon. When he woke up, as he relates the story later, he tried to eat his dinner plate from the previous night but he felt the food could not go down. He thought maybe if he got one beer to cure the hangover, then he would be able to eat. He went and got a court, 750ml of beer and drank it. The funny thing is that after he finished the beer he did not feel hungry anymore. He looked at the time and thought, it is afternoon anyways, good time to start drinking so he went and got another two courts for himself. This time Lunga is feeling like "nuh, I can't drink today, I'm recovering from last night" and watching tv. Sboniso plays some music for himself and tries to call up some friends or a girlfriend to chill and drink with, with no luck until a friend he was hardly considering for some reasons known to him alone, gives him a call telling him he has a bottle of Skyy Vodka, if he can bring some mixers, they have a party. Of course the mixers mean more than just the drinks. You cannot have a party with just guys now, can you?

My brother got dressed up, called and directed a few female friends to his friend's place and headed the same way himself.

By 23.00 their vodka was done so they went to the nearest tarven for a few more drinks and found there was a good time there and stayed on. The funtime went on till 02.30 with my brother not getting any skirt to take home with yet again.

He was woken up in the morning by his good friend Banele who got his missed call from the night before while he was at work doing a nightshift. They spoke and Banele said he was on his way to pick him up, he needed Sboniso to accompany him to this two church girls who wanted him to drive them to church. They went and met the two lovely girls dressed for the Lord. Dropped them off at church then went to the complex to get a six pack of beers to chill. Four beers down Banele felt like sleeping so he dropped Sboniso off at home with the beers and drove home. Sboniso chilled alone for about an hour watching a movie, still not thinking about food until he fell asleep with an open beer in his hand.

He woke up at around 8pm opened his phone and texted his girlfriend to come over. That is when he realised he might need some energy, so he walked up to the kitchen to try and fix himself something to eat.

He reached out to the fridge as he normally does to look for his dinner plate that gets stored away whenever he is not home for dinner. He felt a tinge in his finger, then it spread through the whole hand, then suddenly he felt like his whole arm just got electrocuted, then his whole body. A cold sweat covered him. He felt woozy and suddenly his vision got blurry. A thud was heard as he fell flat on the floor on his back. He could not see anymore. He tried to call out for help but the words escaped him. He screamed but even he could not hear his own screams. His voice was gone. His sight was gone. He felt the way one feels when they are caught between a dream state and a waking state; you know when you try to wake up and you cannot? You tell yourself that you are now moving your arm but it does not move? They used to tell us it was because there was a spiderweb going above our sleeping heads, but we never saw them when we finally woke up. However what Sboniso was going through was worse than that. He could feel himself getting weaker. He could feel the energy slowly leaving his body and thought to himself, "this must be what death feels like" and started wishing he had spent the weekened with his son instead. He saw himself hovering over his helpless body looking at it twitching uncontrollably on the floor. He could hear Lunga and Nomvula rushing to his aid. He could hear his younger siblings troubled voices calling for him to open his eyes, 'say something, get up! Just do something to show you are still alive damnit!'

The trauma the kids must have felt watching their older brother's helpless twitching body on the cold tiled kitchen floor without a shirt on. Lunga rushed out to get help and soon they were at the local clinic. The clinic could not help them, they said he was critical so they reffered them to the hospital "though it will be too late for him if you wait for the ambulance, they take a long time to get here." said the concerened nurse on duty. They had to drive him there on the neighbour's car. On their way to the hospital his mouth moved as if he wanted to say something, they feared he might be trying to say his last words so they asked him to save his energy until they got to the hospital. Lunga's phone and Sboniso's phone both ringing off the hook! Concerned family members worried and trying to get an update but Lunga could not get himself to pick up any of the calls. He wouldn't know what to tell everyone just yet. His young big head was swelling up with worry. He was praying and crying at the same time. He could hear himself crying, but he was unaware of the short prayers he was sending out on his brother's behalf asking the Lord not to take him just yet.

They arrived at Robs hospital and found the line was long with injury patients; a long line of bleeding people who appeared more emergencies than a semi-unconscious young man pushed on a wheelchair. Lunga went up to the reception and told them they have a critical patient who was reffered from the Kanyamazane Clinic. Fortunately they could attend them quick after checking their refferal letter. The nurse checked for his pulse and opened his eyes to check on his pupils then quickly rushed him to a room and connected a drip on him. She then explained that "he had been drained of all bodily fluids and his internal organs were slowly shutting down. He would be okay though since he is now being re-hydrated. What happened? Has he been poisoned?" she asked.

This reminded me of something that had happened to me a few year ago when I was still living alone. I arrived home drunk after having finished two bottles of red wine in one night. I was at a party with some friends, hence so much drinking. I can barely finish a single bottle on an ordinary night. Two bottles was too much. I woke up in the morning feeling too weak to even get up to piss. I felt so dehydrated I could hardly open my eyes: I could feel the eyelids scratching on the eyeballs as I tried to open them. When I tried to open my mouth, I felt the tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. My mouth was that dry! I was hungry! Starved even but I could not get up. I thought maybe if I went back to sleep for another hour I could recuperate. I tried but when I woke, I felt worse than before. I had to get something in my body but I could hardly lift my own hand. Luckily my cellphone was just under my pillow so I reached out to it and called my sister. When I tried to speak, I felt fumes, like petrol fumes come out of my mouth and the voice forced itself through my dry throat. It sounded gruff and horse like a horse's voice. It hurt my throat to speak and I suddenly realised I had a terrible headache. I could not lift my head. I could not get up from the bed to go piss but I was breathing. My sister came through and splashed water on my face, which suprisingly boosted me a little, then gave me a glass to drink while she fixed me something to eat. It took me a whole 24 hours to recover from that. The whole day I was not my full self.

Alcohol is easily accessible in our communities and it is taken for granted so much so that even little kids have ready access to it. We forget how dangerous alcohol can be not only to kids but to us grown ups too. We have never had training on how to handle this dangerous substance. We were never orientated into this drinking part of life that many of us find ourselves having to maneuver through blindly relying on our own experiences to give us warnings and lessons on what to and what not to drink; when to and when not to drink! All of this is scary because we do not have enough lives for trial and error. With alcohol, you make one serious error, you could end up dying and your experience could be a lesson for others coming after you.

It is evident from experience that alcohol seriously dehydrates the body. That in itself is a danger since the human body cannot function without fluids. All internal organs need water to function properly and alcohol drains the body of its water thus leading to the chemical imbalance that is the 'drunk' state.

Also, alcohol is a digestif, meaning it speeds up the digestion of food in the stomach. This is why most of us feel hungry after drinking and we of course cannot drink without having eaten first. No one ever taught us to eat first before drinking, experience taught us that if we drink alcohol on an empty stomach we get too drunk too quick and wake up feeling extremely weak. This could have killed us long ago if it killed. Well it does in fact kill because that is supposedly how alcohol poisoning occurs.

Something very intersting I have learned very recently was that not all alcohol is for everyone, just like not all food types are for all blood types. I subscribe to the bloodtype diet lifestyle and have learned that as a blood type A, beer is poison for me. This is why I only drink red wine. But even the red wine is equally dangerous if I go over one glass a day (250ml). A lot of alcohol drinkers do so irresponsibly in many ways: one way is that they drink anything with a alcohol percentage. Always remember that the higher the alcohol percentage, the quicker it dehydrates you, meaning the quicker it can kill you, or at least weaken you. The higher alcohol percentage is responsible for making young man and woman cough like TB patients with weaker lungs.

I can go on forever on this topic but my main point was the dangers of the accessibility of alcohol in our communities without any available platforms for effectively teaching members of communities about its effects. I recently wrote a book titled The Coach which followed a group of young Chess players on a trip to a National Championship when they decide to experiment with hard liquor. Though a work of fiction, the book is based on actual events, occurences that those who work with kids can attest to having witnessed; groups of kids on trips clubbing money together to buy alcohol. Kids experiment with alcohol on their own without any supervision because they do it in secret. The secrecy of it is where lies the danger. I would not recommend that parents teach their children how to drink, but just like the sex talk which is promoted and encouraged, the drinking talk is also necessary. Children should get these lessons at home first before they make fools of themselves trying to earn street cred by proving they are hard drinkers. Alcohol kills. The warnings on the bottles are not direct enough.

Before I go, always remember to drink lots of water before you go to sleep if you have been drinking. Do this without fail, it might save your life.

Happy Youth Day South Africa
Happy Father's Day to all the father

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Youth Day Chess Speech

Last year on the 16th of June I was asked to Arbiter at a tournament in Embalenhle. Knowing that there would be a lot of young Chess players there whom I believe hold the future of the country, I prepared this speech:

On the day of the commemoration of the youth of 1976. It makes you wonder if there was no youth in '66 or '86, but that does not really matter since we don't know what their struggle was. The youth of 76 were confronted with a language barrier that threatened their hope of getting educated. It was to be set to law that all subjects in all schools, including black schools are to be taught in Afrikaans. A language that was as foreign to them as French is to most of us regular everyday South Africans today. All text books including mathematics, physics and accounting would be in Afrikaans and as such Afrikaans would be the medium of instruction. Upon realising the steepness of this struggle, upon realising the systematic blockade to education that the apartheid government was implementing, the 76ers never went crying to their parents and elders for a solution. They never folded their arms in hopes that the same government that declared apartheid lawful over 20 years ago would come to their senses. We all know what they did. They rose up to the challenge face front. They confronted the system laying their lives on the line all in the name of freedom of education, education in a language they understood. It might not seem like a big deal to you, it shouldn't. It wasn't your struggle. The fact that it is not your struggle is a testament to their achievement. The 76ers fought a good fight.

Every generation must wake up to the struggle of their time and dedicate their lives in ensuring that the same struggle does not affect the next generation after them. The founders of Embalenhle Chess Club realised that the struggle of our time lies in the mental development of the black child in the black community. They have learned that Chess was kept away from black communities for fear of its mental sharpening qualities producing formidable revolutionaries. Chess is a mental sport that trains one to think strategically and tactically. It is a mental exercise that keeps the brain fit and sharp. It teaches one to look for solutions by first understanding the problem. Chess is essentially a problem solving game and as such it was kept away from those whose daily lives were confronted by problems.

The founders of this club are what I would like to call Chess Activists. Their mission ,after realising the challenges within the systems, was to ensure that the black child has access to this mental sharpening game of chess. There are great systematic challenges to getting chess into townships and rural areas. There are federations in place who are meant to be spearheading such developments, but that is not really their problem. They focus on the cities and suburbs were the money is. But just like the 76ers who did not wait for their parents and elders to rise up on their behalf, the Embalenhle Chess Club founders took it upon themselves to rise against the challenge of their time as they see it.

Embalenhle Chess Club hosts the 16 June tournament in commemoration of the youth of 1976. This, I wish to believe is not only done for the reason of convenience given that the date is a public holiday. Rather I wish to believe that this is done first to remind themselves of the reason they started this Chess Club, thus on this day their mission is rejuvinated and their flame to light up the mind of the black child re-ignited. Secondly it is to remind you youth of today that the youth of 76 had a mission which was to rise against the most pertinent struggle of their time, and since you've never been forced to learn in a language foreign to you, they succeeded.

You might be wondering what your mission could be because everything seems fine from where you stand. Well to you I say at some point you will need to come out for more oxygen from that vacuum you are living in. And when you do come out just look, listen and decide as Stimela would say. As you look you will realise that gender based violence makes being female a trauma. If you listen you will hear that tertiary education is losing value as graduates are turned streets sweepers while drop outs are living like kings. Then you'll decide whether to be a part of the problem or the solution.

There is nothing worse than a Chess player without a mission or direction in life. They are like a soldier without a battle to fight. You will find them starting up useless arguements about girls, cars or rap just to have something to argue about. Their minds are working over time and sadly they have no substance to work on. Chess has an innumerable number of benefits for the developing brain but the brain needs to be fed substance to digest after its daily training. The problem with young Chess players today is they read only Chess books and then expect that Chess will make them smart. Chess helps develop high level understanding, but how will you truly appreciate the implications of that if you have never picked up a philosophy book to read?!

Chess players, especially the young ones, please make it a point that every week you read something other than a Chess book for your brain to digest on. Your brains are sharp and quick but they lack substance. Feed them, hopefully then we will all learn never to take anything for granted. Through reading we will attain enlightenment. That enlightenment will teach us never to take anything for granted. We will learn that lives were sacrificed and endangered in order for us to have the right to name our kids in our own languages. We will learn that people died so we could have access to higher education, the same education that is now turning into a mockery. Sacrifices were made just so women could be recognised as equal to men and have all the same rights as men, the same rights that men are now violating in the name of love. The problems are all around us waiting for you Chess players, skilled problem solvers to take the initiative. It always starts with one person convincing another, then it snowball's. I picked up on the Chess for Community Development Movement and engaged a few friends. We now have Msogwaba Chess Club, the Home of Champions. Seriously, all the top players in the province, most of them champions are from Msogwaba Chess Club.

It is on you now to find the struggle of your time, solve it so that the future generation never even hears of it. And if they do, they should not believe it was ever as serious a problem. Because why else are we here if not to make life easier for those that will follow after us?

There is nothing worse than an ignorant youth that grows up to become ignorant parents who tell their kids to accept the status quo, "it has always been like this", they would say "who are you to think you can change it alone"

Well next time you tell them, 'I dealt with worse on the Chess board, this is nothing to me. I'm a chess player, remember? Solving problems is what I do best!' Then you go and work out the necessary combinations to tackle the problems of your days. Young Chess players are the future. The future needs thinkers like yourselves. Just make sure you don't waste your powerful brains thinking only of Chess problems. Let us not forget that chess is merely a tool for sharpening up your minds. Use those minds to bring change not only in your homes but also in your communities. You can be the difference. Here's to Chess! Here's to Young people. Mostly, here's to Young Chess Players!!! Tomorrow looks brighter in your hands.

Sadly we were too pressed for time and I ended up being unable to deliver the speech, this is why I decided to share it here in hopes that some young aspiring chess player out there will read it

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Men teach Women Lead!

I remember just last month my teenage nephew asked if I could teach him how to play Chess because he wanted to impress a girl who was a Chess player. He has recently moved here to stay with my niece, my mother and myself. My niece is a really strong Chess player who has even travelled internationally to play Chess representing South Africa. So when my nephew asked me to teach him, I referred him to his cousin whom he has gotten so close to and spends so much time with everyday; this would make their quality time more productive since they will be sharing Chess wisdom. I was not prepared for his response especially since I assumed he had so much respect for her after she had taught him how to cook; I mean they spend so much time chatting and laughing together and I expect that this means they have mutual respect for each other.

Before my nephew moved to live with us, my niece and I would share the house chores equally between the two of us. We would alternate between cooking and washing dishes: on days that I cooked, she would do the dishes and vice versa. So when my nephew came, I told him he would inherit my share of the house chores, he agreed but he unfortunately could not cook, which I thought was shameful (in the words of Chimamanda Adichie : "I have never thought it made sense to leave such a crucial thing, the ability to nourish one's self , in the hands of others.") So I asked my niece to teach him, and she did and now he is a good enough cook. We enjoy his cooking every second day. So naturally, when he asked if I could teach him Chess, I though the same teacher who was good enough to give him the cooking skill and is as equally skilled in Chess could do the job but he refused saying "I don't want to be taught by a girl!."

At the local Library I had taught some grown ups how to play Chess and they were getting the hang of it, steadily grasping the concepts of the game and getting some confidence as they started winning some games against untrained visitors who have learned how to play from under a tree somewhere! As a way to demostrate to them that they were not there yet, there was still a lot to learn, I would bring in some of the kids I had taught a while back who are really good players and they would embarass the grown ups who would approach the game as if their life experiences gave them an advantage over the Chess board. The week before, I had brought an eleven year old boy and he had all of them begging for mercy.
In the following week I brought my niece who was 13 at the time, two years older than the boy. As soon as she came in I could hear all the men claiming "I would not be beaten by a little girl in Chess. If she beats me I will quit and never play Chess again." She beat them all. They were all heartbroken, sad and confused. Instead of being proud of this brilliant girl they chose to make her feel as though she had done something wrong embarrassing grown up man.

I remember my mother used to tell me how she was always the best learner in all her classes growing up. She excelled in everything and always took first position until she reached Form 1, (Standard 6, now Grade 8) and her father, my grandfather told her he was not going to waste his money sending a girl to school. He thought it would be a waste of money that should be used to buy Cabbage instead. He rationalised his actions by explaining that as a girl, my mother will be taken as somebody's wife and leave his house to take care of another man's house. Which was true to some extent, but even as she moved to live with my father, she still provided for her father and mother and even became financially responsible for all her siblings. After she left my father, she came back to be the head of her father's house carrying all the household responsibilities including building them a proper house. That is because she managed to take herself through school while working in the farms as a kid.

The barriers are shifting but the perceptions still seem to be one sided

South Africa has just created history by introducing its first ever cabinet with an equal number of female ministers as that of male ministers. This is historical and groundbreaking considering the plight of women to be recognised as leaders and generally be offered equal opportunities to prove their abilities. There was a time when South Africans were hopeful to get a woman President but then hey, getting equal representation in the ministries is also good enough. We have to always remember however, that the war for equal recognition is far from over. We still live in a patriarchal society and the sad part is that these female ministers will have to play by the already set systematic rules that favour masculinity.
They will have to work with men who grew up not wanting to learn cognitive mind sports from their female cousins and men who grew up believing that losing to a female was an embarrasment. These women will have to lead men who refuse to be led by women and it would be sad to find that there would be some women too who prefer male leaders to women leaders, because they too are daughters of the same society that raises these men.

The biggest challenge, I believe is the changing of people's perceptions about leaders. In our societies, almost all leadership roles are automatically associated with maleness and females are expected to play the supportive roles. It is in our movies; it is in our schools; it is in our churches; it is in our homes and even in our politics. For as long as the words "Starring", "Principal" , "Pastor", "Head" and "President" trigger a male image, we have a long way to go.

It is the responsibility of these female leaders to uplift the image of women in society by becoming more visible as leaders and unapologetically more vocal and feminine in their leadership styles. I have had the pleasure of watching a video of some powerful women in business explain to their audience how the modern office environment favours the leadership qualities mostly attributed to women: such attributes as compassion, emotional intelligence and transparency among others. The visibility of female leaders using attributes traditionally associated to women to win trust and garner support from the nation will be necessary to convince the girl-child that they do not need to become masculine in order to become leaders, they are enough as they are; such visibility will be very crucial in challenging and possibly changing the stereotypical leadership image.

I personally feel that the most impact could be made by changing the system which favours a specific gender and challenge completely the stereotypical images of both genders. If the trend setting pioneering move is to be truly admirable, it should be signed into law that every cabinet should have at least 50% female representation. Five years is a very short time for making lasting impact and completely challenging leadership stereotypes. We have learned that in the USA, although the 2 terms served by former President Barrack Obama helped in eliminating colour from many young people's visualisation of the word "President", to the many old Americans it has served as an 8 year systematic glitch that had to be over compansated for. We have to worry aswell that if the women who will be serving as ministers have no powers to influence systematic change, their time in office will soon be considered a glitch that needs correcting by the many bigots that surround us. Even so, it will not be a surprise if next election we get a female president with a cabinet of 90 per cent male ministers. As long as the system is geared towards masculinity, having female leaders will make little difference because in trying to prove efficiency the female leaders will also appoint males to other supportive leadership roles.

If we look at the fact that the minister of Basic Education in the past five years or so has been a women and yet the stats showed just last year that even though women made up over 72.5 percent of teachers, only 37.3 percent of Principals were female (www.africacheck.org). This numbers maintained the perception that Women Teach while Men Lead. So in essence, women teach men how to be leaders while the men in their leadership roles try to surpress the women keeping them as their subordinates.

So as much as the responsibility to change the perceptions is in the shoulders of the appointed ministers, it also rests in the shoulders of each teacher and parent to be cognisant and attentive of the ways their words and actions maintain or challenge these imagery stereotypes.
These subliminals are embedded in the ways we react when a girl-child has cracked open her cellphone to remove a simcard or memory card versus when a boy-child does it. This could be in the way we are "understanding" when a girl-child loses a Chess game to a boy-child and find it "unbelievable" and awe inspiring when she wins- it is even destructive when we find it to be embarassing to the boy-child if he loses to a girl-child. Infact, I have noticed that as a result of this, it becomes more painful to the boy-child when he looses to a girl-child. This is because the boy-child feels like he has lost more than just a chess game; he also looses his image as a potential "man" and appears weak to his peers. This is why in practice some of them even try to cheat when they see a checkmate looming. Some break up the pieces in some half-baked show of bravado. In some instances, a few have quit playing Chess for real.
These are some phenomena I had first witnessed when I first took my Chess kids to the district federation's Chess tournaments. I would be surprised by the caucasion kids' breakdown after they lost to my kids. These kids would cry hysterically that the arbiter would have to find their parents to calm them down. The loss would break them, it appeared as if loosing to an African child shuttered their whole reality: it challenged all they had learned or had been taught as true about themselves in relation to the African child or about the African in general. Of course, after a while the kids from this distric stopped crying, they had gradually unlearned the lessons that hurt them and learned new ones. We continued to play other districs and had the same effect on the caucasion kids of both genders as well. It was exciting being responsible for changing social perceptions through the Chess game.

I am hopeful that after this 5 year term, the perception of the political leader would have changed, if nowhere else, at least here in Mpumalanga where the premier is also a Women. The truth is, it is not that women have not been leaders and rolemodels in society, it is only that their roles of leadership have not been recognised as such and not quite celebrated as the roles played by men. It is important for the dream of any child to remain alive and seem possible, that they see and witness role models that look like them.

A lot could be said in this topic but I am afraid I might loose direction if I continued. I will leave the rest for you to add on the comments section. I have daughters and sons that I wish could one day read your comments and feel the paradigm shifting.

I have no idea who made this but I feel it has some significance here. What do you think?

Some references:
https://africacheck.org/reports/women-teach-and-men-lead-gender-inequality-in-south-african-schools-examined/

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