Wetlands Poetry

Ode to Borrowdale Vlei/ Wetland 



What have we done?
The wild places, they are all but gone.
Vast spaces teaming with life,
are now covered in tarmac and ridden with strife.
We cut off our life blood in the name of progress,
and all we have left is an urban circus.
Our rivers, our wetlands, our grasses, our trees,
now malls and car parks, polluted with disease.
Mother Nature's beauty has been raped and subject to pillage,
with man's mines and dump heaps and burgeoning village.

Wintry Poetry

Winter of My Soul

Trees stripped to bare branches
with leaves that swirl at their roots.
Stark blue skies, with a nip in the air,
chills me as I step outside in my boots.
Inside it is winter but I stoke my inner fire.
Although a season of death, it won't quell my desire.
A hope for life, a need for a reason to be.
Where has my hope gone? It remains to be seen.

Chinese, Shona & Women's Heritage

Well I feel a bit of a hypocrite as I am doing a 100% better now and so many people continue to send me encouraging words. Thank you to all who have. I realize what an amazing support network is there for me. Need to think about that next time and try stay focused on the good. Watched this TEDx talk here on "Why aren't we awesomer?" and it is food for thought and to think about how one thinks - quite a good challenge. Think I need to try talk about my thoughts more before they become too overpowering and destructive sooner. Will be seeing my psychologist this coming week.

Yesterday was a busy day. I made a rare appearance at Lucy's Writing Group and shared my poem (will post it in a minute). There was the Winter Fair on at the same time at the Christian Counselling Centre and I saw another good friend who also suffers from depression and who had had a not so great week too. In the afternoon I went to my first Chinese lesson at the Confucius Centre at the UZ. I didn't realize that the other half of the lesson was a Shona lesson so I had a double whammy of languages and culture. The Chinese was really interesting - it was explained that the different characters in writing stem from drawings of shapes. Mountains, eyes, moons and body postures all are involved and there are literally thousands of strokes forming words and letters. The most complicated with all eight strokes pronounced yong means forever and as our teacher said, if you want to learn Chinese it will take forever as it is so complex. Eeek, a bit daunting. The pronunciation really is something. I did actually already know ni hao and xie xie - hello and thank you, from teaching a Chinese boy English.

For Shona I really need to get over my prejudice and try again at learning it. After learning it for 9 years at school my vocab is embarrassingly pathetic and I still have trouble with basic conjugation and negatives and tenses. Will try and see how I get on. The lessons were free so I will try keep going and it is a great opportunity if a little ambitious. The Shona theme continued into the evening as I had been invited to go to a "Women's Heritage Society Hall of Fame Inductees' & Society Inductees' Congratulatory Winter Dinner of the Year" - yes quite a mouthful and a half!!  I hadn't been home long before the friends who invited me came to pick me up. I had misread the email they'd sent inviting me and I missed the part saying dress smart. I went to get in the car in my jeans only to see they were dressed in black tie attire. I had to back track and quickly go get dressed up smarter.

I needn't have worried about making them late as when we got to the Rainbow Towers Hotel we were the first people there and the event only started 2 hours later. Ran on true African time, it is a bit of a given. We were the only pale faces but it was an interesting evening. A Women's Heritage Society World Organization had apparently been started - not sure by who. Some women from Zim had been nominated to the "Hall of Fame" and then others as "inductees". They ranged from Augustus Chihuri's wife to the lady from the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA). The lady from ZERA hit home by saying as an outreach they were providing sanitary towels to women in a refugee camp as the women there had had to use leaves as a make do solution. A lady from the Tourism Authority though went a bit off track by giving us a sales pitch for titanium pots which are supposedly healthier to cook in. It was an interesting evening.

I found it interesting that in both Shona and Chinese culture the woman has lower status. The Chinese symbol for woman is based on a woman kneeling.

Facing Monday and a new week. Got to just try not let things get on top of me and have things to look forward to.

Recovery

Thanks for all the support, encouragement and kind word from people around the world to my previous post. In hindsight I can see I have a loving support network but one of the hardest things I find when I am in the depths of depression is telling people and letting others know how I'm feeling. I retreat and hide away from the world and go into an inner shell which feels desperately lonely and hopeless.

I guess I should try take preventative steps when I feel the horrible familiar feeling coming on me again. Someone has challenged me to try think of what things give me moments of relief and can help towards coming out of my depression. One of the most therapeutic things is being with my animals. When I get home my dogs without fail give me a fanfare of wagging tails and my Elsie does a wiggle with a leaf in her mouth that she has found just for me. They are very precious.

I'm not usually very talkative when low so facing people is a major hurdle. But I need to get out otherwise I can sink even lower and become more isolated. When I have things to look forward to it can help but then there are occasions when I just opt out of everything and would rather not go.

Guess all of this makes it hard for you to know how to help. The best is just a small message and patience with me for when I am ready to face the world again. It is nice to just know you are there.

Climbing out of the pit

After being on a high for the last while I hit an all time low last week while out in Marondera. Each morning I woke up with dread and had to put on a smile and pretend everything was fine during the day. I didn't feel like making conversation and inwardly felt like crying. When I got back to town on Friday evening I sank onto the couch and dissolved into a flood of gut wrenching weeping. I haven't been this low for quite some time but the feeling was all too familiar and the hopelessness was overwhelming.

I struggled to get up over the weekend and on Monday I had to put on my veneer of all is OK. On Monday night though I tried to commit suicide by swallowing all my elanzopine. I had read that if you take a heavy dose you can go into a coma. I just wanted out and not to have to face life anymore.

Well since you are reading this you can tell I didn't go into comatose slumber but I was rather wonky on Tuesday and didn't go to work. I am a little bit better today, I just hope I can climb out of the pit I descended into and I dread the return of depression. I will have to go see my therapist and my doctor is keeping an eye on me.

Hypomanic

The last couple of weeks I've been on a high and it reached a level of hypomania. I became uncharacteristically louder in my speech, a bit psyched up and overly enthused and said a few inappropriate things. I also became a little boy crazed and was rather vocal about it. My therapist said I should just enjoy the ride but my psychologist has upped my meds and said I should have told her sooner. I had a rather complicated dream whereby I was involved in a sex experiment for science and it involved a friend of mine. In hindsight I should not have told my friend about it but I thought it funny at the time. When Freshlyground were unable to enter Zimbabwe for HIFA on the grounds of their "Chicken to Change" video, I became caught up in the hype and drama of it all.

When I get into this mode I worry about what will happen next and how far I will go. I am aware some of the things I say are inappropriate or insensitive but at times I can't stop myself. I start not sleeping properly and my mind just won't switch off. I also begin to think a little too highly of myself and feel invincible. I do wonder when I get off the high what sort of low is going to follow.

After giving up on the exotic Canadian-Iranian as a love interest - yes, I became rather enraptured by a visiting guitarist and my infatuation went to the extent that I attended his guitar workshop even though I have never played the guitar in my life, I set my sights on a local person. I have since realized though that it probably is a good thing it is likely to never become much. I went on a false hope to a music festival last weekend and on viewing them in that intoxicating environment decided perhaps not. Harare does not have that many eligible bachelors at hand. Oh well, perhaps it's just as well in my current euphoria.

Optimistic

This week I'm on a high as things are going well, I'm getting out and about and friends from overseas are visiting. I'm busy again which seems to be when I thrive. Took a personality quiz and if it's anything to go by I'm supposed to like to be on the go and kept busy. Saying that though did enjoy time out last weekend and getting my paint brushes out.

It is nice to have people from outside Zim visit as I have been feeling a little cut off from friends abroad. Would love to visit Cape Town and the UK but right now my budget won't allow it. Am adjusting to working full time again. It is the first full time job I've had since Switzerland. Sitting in an office till 5 is a bit of a challenge and having less time to do my own thing is a bit stiffling after working part time from home. It is nice to work in an office though and have work colleagues.

Looking forward to HIFA at the end of the month. It is the highlight on the social calendar for Harare. The program is available on here.

Following the international hype, Harare has produced its version of the Happy Youtube video. Love how it's captured aspects of the city what with the vendors, school kids and petrol attendants filling generators. Have a look if you haven't seen it on Youtube. It is bound to put a smile on your face :)