The Other Side of Somewhere

After working with students on the SediSnap project, I am happy to announce the book of photography and poetry has been finalized and sent to a publishing company and we should have the books in a few weeks!  We are hoping to have a book launch in Mid-October before we leave South Africa. 

The title of the book is 'The Other Side of Somewhere.' The above photo was taken by Mpho Gorden Malakoane  one of our students from the Sebokeng Campus. His photo was selected to be the cover photo of the book! 

Below is a preview:

If you are interested in purchasing a copy please head over to our gofundme account 

http://www.gofundme.com/7f5sgw?preview=1

Failure For Success (An article written by one of my students)

The following article was written by one of the learners at one of the campuses where I work. He is a part of our newspaper staff and he wrote this article to motivate his fellow learners! This article will be featured in our next issue of the SedCol News! Enjoy

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Failure is the best way for us to learn and become a great success. Yep I said ti! If you choose, failure can be an asset in your life. It took THomas Edison 6000 attempts to successfully create the light bulb we enjoy today. When a journalist asked him why he hadn't given up as he had failed, he said: "I haven't failed but I discovered 6000 ways of not making a light bulb!" How incredible that Edison reframed 'Failure' and made it an asset to great success.

The reason why I write this article is to shift the perception that failure is bad and that failure should be feared.

In December, you may have read in the news that certain Grade 12 learners had failed their matric and committed suicide. In July you may have noticed the number of Sedibeng College students dropping out because they had failed their June Final exam. Failure can be a wake-up call to a person; it makes one hunger to win! Failure can become a great teacher for you to become a success. Make it your friend and your life will be an exciting journey.

Recently, I went to KFC to enjoy a great meal and some hot wings. What most people do not know is that when Colonel sanders, the man who began it all, was looking for funds to create Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) he failed to get funds 1009 times! Most of us would have given up way sooner! But because the man believed in his desire and dream, he never saw rejection as a failure but as a way to learn. His failure became a success. Today, there are around 15,000 KFC franchises in 150 countries and the company makes millions of dollars in turnover, if not more.

Maybe you have failed a couple of times achieving your dream, but you need to understand that failure is a great guide towards your success. Persist in your dreams, no matter what stumbling blocks you meet.

-Simon (from Sebokeng Campus of Sedibeng FET College)

Circle of Life- The Journey to Messina

The first paragraph of this blog is a quick preface for those of you who have never read my blog before. If you know the background story feel free to skip the italicized paragraph and go straight to my description of my weekend in Messina. 

I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to a white American woman and a black South African man. The last time I saw my biological father was when I was 3 years old. I spoke to him for the first time at 18. For the second time at 21. He passed away when I was 22. Finally at the age of 26, I am in his home land, South Africa. For the last three months I have been living and working in Vereeniging, South Africa which is the Gauteng Province. I have had the opportunity to meet and get to know about 5 of my family members. 1 uncle and 4 cousins. They also live in Gauteng. The rest of my father's family lives in Messina which is in the Limpopo Province, which is in north South Africa. The city borders Zimbabwe. I came to South Africa for two reasons: to teach with the Fulbright ETA program and to get to know my roots! Last weekend I got the chance to do just that! 

The search for the Missing Springbok

Haha my title sounds like a Nancy Drew mystery! 

This post is  explaining the second facebook status that I put up last week!  (To read about the first see my earlier post Eish)

Esther L Milanzi

March 6

After a really rough 24 hours, I am really grateful for the people God has placed in my life. I am weak without my support system. 

In order to understand this post you must meet Nala, our baby Springbok...

Eish

First let me explain two of my facebook statuses from last week:

See my next post for the second status!

Esther L Milanzi

March 5

Eish! — feeling exhausted.

For this you first have to understand what Eish means! It is a commonly used term here in South Africa to express exasperation. I use it a lot! Now, why did I use this on my fb status last week?

Well it all started with the adventure to the soccer game.

The national game of Brazil vs. Bafana Bafana! We had been excited about it for weeks. Two of our dear friends (who will remain nameless) organized the purchasing of tickets.

The game was in Johannesburg, which is only an hour away. The tickets were purchases by our friends last week... so we were cool. We left leave after work at 5 so we could get there an hour early...

Wrong. And more wrong.

30 before 30

This is a post I had on my former blog. I am adding to it now and reposting it on this blog because one of my goals was to come to South Africa  and it actually happened. It has been a month since I've been here and I think it is finally feeling real. I am feeling super blessed for this opportunity to experience South Africa in a personal sense (meeting my family) and in a professional sense (being here with Fulbright and working at an FET doing student development work).

Before I get into that I'll explain where the 30 before 30 came from...

Back in 2012, my boyfriend and I went on a road trip to Atlanta. We were going to a party of a friend of his, who was about to turn thirty. We decided to come up with a list of 30 things we want to do before we turn thirty! It was really fun and so far we have both checked off several things on our lists. 

When I created this list it was just something fun to do. But in the last two years, I have used this as a guideline to help me budget, plan and prioritize. The first step in making something happen is by figuring out what you want. Once you know what you want and you are willing to make sacrifices to make it happen, you are usually more than half of the way there. One of my life goals is to inspire people to make their dreams come true. I've found that the hardest part is helping people to verbalize and vocalize what is that they actually want. It is so common in our society today to just settle for what other people expect of you versus what you are capable and what you actually want. 

It is easy to get discouraged by circumstances. Yet over the years I have met so many people who refuse to let circumstances define them. Some of the greatest stories come from people who have failed and used that failure to fuel their future successes. 

Ok let me step off my motivational soap box and get to the post... I have a lot of dreams. Some seem super impossible and some I never thought I would be able to do, yet they have been checked off the list.  All I know is that dreams come true when you have faith and you are willing to work towards making them a reality!

A Day in the Life of Ubuntu

Whoa! How did 2 (almost 3) weeks fly by so quickly? My last post was a bit emotional for me and hard to share but I'm grateful for the positive and encouraging feedback from family, friends and even people I've never met.

This post is just to catch you all up on what I've been up to since moving to Vtown, which Vereeniging is affectionately called by most of the locals.

Good Morning, Gunk,  and God

Most of my mornings begin at 5am. I wipe the gunk out of my eyes and realize I'm up an hour before my alarm is supposed to go off. I begin to rationalize to myself how sleeping another 40-50 minutes will really benefit me. I usually vaguely remember how hard it was for me to get up the previous day when I faced this very same dilemma. I look back down at my watch. Crap. That argument I just had with myself took 20 minutes. How did that happen? What do I do... What do I do????

Haha I have always had this problem. It is not specific to my time here in South Africa. However, that is where the similarities to my day ends.

Once I finally drag myself out of bed, I try to start my day with mediation and prayer. This is something I have always tried to do but normally I'd hit the snooze button one too many times and I'd end up running around the house like a chicken with my head cut off (I need to post about how one of our chickens did end up running around the house... funny story)... Well, if I don't post about it now I probably never will. One of my roommates was home alone and heard a loud banging noise. Now imagine being in this big house with too many doors and windows to count and you are alone and hear banging that is coming from inside the house. My roommate grabbed a knife and tipped toed around the corner to find our biggest chicken, we named him snow shoe freddie, running around the living room. Haha! Good times.

Once I finish my meditation/prayer I have a sort of check list that I consult before I leave the house. It looks something like this: