Bitter sweet December

I love December as much as I hate it. My memories of December's past are a cocktail of  irony. It's a melange of the best and the worst, although the latter prevails.  

My uncle Abed died in December, unexplained and under a cloak of unknowns. he was my favourite uncle, it sucks that I never got to know him intimately. I inherited his favorite pair of shoes (Don't ask), the finest made pair I'd ever had. I had them for a year, never dared to wear them until I had to. Somehow I naively thought he wouldn't like me wearing them. What if his spirit still lived in them? Ah, the naivety of youth. So they collected dust until I couldn't patch the holes in the soles of my school shoes - the result of too many 7 aside soccer games on the netball court. I hate December as much as I love it.  

My younger brother Natangwe died in December, unexplained and under a cloak of unknowns. Just like our uncle before him, he left this world and we still don't know the intricacies of how and what happened. He would have been a month close to his 25th birthday. I Hate December as much as I love it.  

It's been 2 years and I still have to remind myself to refer to him as 'the late', my head refuses it more than my heart does. The saying goes, "Time heals all wounds." That's total bullshit, some things don't heal, they just hurt less and less as time decays. Letting people go is hard. When you lose someone close to you, you spend so much time clinging to the memories of the dead, that you might just forget to make memories with the living.  

In Memory of Jafet Natangwe Iiyambo (Jan. 1989 - Dec. 2012).  

Rest in power little brother.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10.5 in a straight line – The Namib Naukluft Mountains.

Image
A mountain is nature's way of saying take the long way round (Scenic route) May 2012 (The following actually happened, I kid you not) My head was stuck so deep in the map that I was closely analyzing that I hardly noticed when the car stopped, I kept staring at it as though a road to our destination would magically appear. “Why have we stopped, we’re not even a quarter of the way there?” I asked myself. No roads existed to where we wanted to go, just a frighteningly deep valley beyond the rocky hill where we stopped. As I got out of the car all I could see was grass, huge hills and the shadow of three big mountains on the horizon. I glanced at the GPS as I was lacing up my boots while Patrisia grabbed our back packs, what I saw hardly pleased me. “Agreed,” she said as she went left with her technician, and I went right with mine. We agreed to meet at the exact spot where the car was parked at the end of the day.  “10.5 km’s to target,” my technician said with unres
Read more

Trends of deadly passion

I am sure most of you have heard of the phrase ‘a crime of passion’. The reservoir of modern wisdom that is Wikipedia, defines it as “ a violent crime, especially murder, in which the perpetrator commits the act against someone because of sudden strong impulse such as sudden rage rather than as a premeditated crime.” Wikipedia also states that the act, as is suggested by the name ( crime passionnel - from French language) is often associated with the history of France. However, such crimes have existed and continue to exist in most cultures. Namibia has seen a rise in the murder of young women, usually by their partner in an intimate relationship. Yes, boyfriends who kill their girlfriends. Usually siting a sudden rage brought on by a quarrel or spat which drives them to commit murder. I’ve been in relationships, and girls are weird. So I can understand how frustrated a guy can get, women are frustrating at times it’s like they are from a different planet. They can drive
Read more

Namibian education system language policy - 5 things that could go wrong

A month or two ago, or even three; time feels like it’s moving slower these days. The Namibian Education Minister announced a radical change in language policy, English would no longer be the medium of instruction in the lower primary phase. This means that from grade 1 – 5 children in the Namibian Education system will be taught in their mother tongue. I know what you are thinking, you’re probably going, “Why not? Children should be taught in their local languages.” Which is not necessarily a bad thing, research has shown that mother tongue education improves language acquisition and learning in general. However, no research has ever been done in Namibia to prove this. As it stands, there is no empirical evidence to prove that mother tongue education will work in Namibia. We seem to be copying South Africa who have a similar policy in place, South Africa has also lowered pass requirements from high school to improve results (not pointing fingers, I’m just saying). You’re prob
Read more