Biancia´s 18th Birthday

We had a lovely tea with the family and Bianca at 'Green with Envy' restaurant to celebrate her 18th on the 12th of December. Sr. Agnesfrom Marian Hill was also present. I offerd Bianca the ring I took with me to Portugal, which was 'present' when I read my 'intervention' titled Pathways to Peace at the Conference on Worldwide Migrant Women. So, she laughed when I said that I was not giving her a 'book', but a 'story'...

 

Baby Joshua

Im hereby introducing you to little Joshua! One day old! Mommy is looking good too! Praise the Lord! Luke and Luisa are so proud of him and so loving!

Post Lisbon Conference Update

I am back!
I survived railway strikes and other dramas. Good news, the World Wide Migrant Women Conference in Lisbon on the 24th and 25th of October was a success. Thanks to Dr. Jose Cesario and Dr Manuel Aguiar, Dr Rita Gomes and the leader of our literary panel, Dr Maria Beatriz Rocha Trindade and others, including all the participants from countries all over the world, such as Brazil and Lebanon.
   The feedback that I received for my intervention, 'Pathways to Peace - the tale, dialogue... and what else?' was very positive: 'excellent', 'brilliant', were some of the comments.
Other good news: I´m the happy granny of my sixth grandchild, Joshua (´Bringer of Truth´). A tiny and content bundle of joy. My daughter is well after some upheavels and my son, who was quite ill, is now on the path to recovery. Hopefully, my heart will soon settle too.
  More later...

Continuing the story of my life....so far!

Not much news today- still sorting out papers and updating filing. My move to Dawncliffe more than a year ago followed by ‘the flood’ has taken its toll. By flood I mean the burst washing machine pipe that caused water to flow and in a few minutes cover all the floors of my small cottage with at least 10 cm high of water. When I woke up at 5.00 am to a funny glu-glu sound, as I got out of bed my little feet were greeted with a bath of cold water! Yes, I did wake up quite quickly!

    The cause? Extremely high water pressure and a burst rubber pipe. O, well the other problem was that as I had just moved in, I still had books and papers in boxes on the floor! Can you imagine the rigmaral? Four days later I still had papers hanging on the washing line, held by some surprised pegs never imagining being used to dry paper! Then it was the filing back everything… which as you can imagine was done in a bit of a rough shoddy manner.  

   So now I have to go carefully through papers and re-organize the whole thing.

   Anyway the light is starting to shine at the end of the tunnel and hopefully in a week’s time ‘all will be well’ and I can concentrate in creating my new book of poems, perhaps including some  stories and some quick stroke style of drawings.

   Wish me luck!

    I went yesterday to the book launch of Sarita Mathur’s ‘Once again love – Reconnecting with the heart’. I was impressed. She seems genuine and her poetry based on her experience after an unexpected depression, is inspirational.

  I was reminded of a book by Stephanie Dowrick, ‘The Universal Heart’ which I found helpful to sort out uneasy relationships.

  ‘Till next time… Be good!

   One of recent limelights was to have gone on a visit to the Marianhill Convent with Ruth, my daughter’s sister-in-law who still calls me ‘mamazina’ an anglicized manner of sying ‘mamazinha’ which in Portuguese means ‘mommy’. And more… like the inauguration of the remembrance wall there, for the German community (who started Marian Hill) …Gaby, my daughter-in-law was the one who had the idea methinks…more about it later.

Conference in LISBON after all!

Good news! I have decided not to go to Canada but I have now received an invitation to go to a conference in Lisbon on the 24th October to do with the theme of Portuguese Women Migrant Worldwide and Citizenship called 'Mulheres da Diaspora' (portuguese). I was invited by Dra Manuela Aguiar. the trip and accomodation will be sponsored by the Secretariat of the Communities. I am grateful and excited. Now I must prepare my intervention.

Latest news

Still very busy, some exciting things in the pipeline, hopefully by the end of August will be able to update my friends on it. For now would like to let you know that I should soon have a website created by the already mentioned Andile Ndlovu, a second year Literature student who decided to 'put me under the limelight', not to be recognized' he says, ' only after I die, like Fernando Pessoa.'... Don't worry I am not bursting with pride, because let's face it 'I don't know!'...

One thing, I nearly went to this conference in Canada in September, to do with the message of Fatima in 1917, under the sposorship of my dear son, Mario, but changed my mind at the last minute, although as a friend said, 'but this is the culmination of what you have been focused on', meaning my studies (Science of Religion) which I did through UNISA .It is interesting that there will be about 27 speakers and some 8 of them are not even Catholic. One was in the Peace Corps in Rwanda.More about it later.

Portuguese writers at University of Durban

June 10 -Portugal day. I was reminded of the Durban Portuguese Writers' Literary Tourism Trail, started by Dr Betty Govinden who invited me to assist her and so we had a workshop at UKZN with the students,myself and some of the writers in 'Pathways of Feeling'.. Imagine that now AndileNdlovu, one of the students participant in our first workshop at UKZN, wants to make me the theme of his research/project!
Anyway... more about it later.

Sunday Tribune review 21st April 2013 -Vivian Attwood

Sunday Tribune review 21st April 2013 -Vivian Attwood

Late news

2013-03-06  I am waiting for another review by a newspaper editor.
I was pleased that a private school has bought the book for their library.
They found it to be very interesting and better for being local. 
I must start my marketing ... a schlepp.