Category Archives: Personal

See someone asked me where I’m going and all I had to say was I was heading into the ass.

For the past few years my friends and I always shared blind jokes and how bad my sight was, was always something we could laugh about. But for the past few months I’ve watched the world around me slip further and further away, slowly turning into a blur.

Being behind the camera is a solace, except I’ve watched the lens start to lose focus. I’ve lost writing to the unbearable glim of my laptop and even being outside is starting to feel like I’m cutting through to my own soul.

Keratoconus

‘Keratoconus is a bilateral (both eyes) degenerative condition of the cornea, a transparent dome-shaped tissue that forms the front part of the eye. Keratoconus gradually causes the cornea to thin, bulge/protrude outward, and become cone-shaped. This creates an abnormal curvature of the eye called astigmatism. Symptoms may include blurred vision and seeing multiple images, glare, halos or light sensitivity (photophobia).

People with keratoconus typically begin to exhibit symptoms in their teens, and the disease gradually progresses over time. In the later stages, scarring can develop in the area of the corneal bulge or protrusion, which can further impede vision.

Occasionally, people with keratoconus can develop hydrops, which is a sudden break in the internal surface of the cornea that allows fluid to enter the cornea and cause it to swell. This can cause pain and a sudden decrease in vision.’

When I was young I couldn’t bare to watch tv under the light which meant spending a lot of time in my room sitting in the darkness alone. My family often called it being anti-social but they couldn’t sit without the light on so anti-social is what I had.

To normal people it’s just a light, to me it’s like your pushing a flood gate of pain straight to my brain and then comes the headaches. Since I was 16 I was always greeted intense summer migraines that have gotten more and more intense with time. 

See I tried to explain it, the pain it caused but that’s the thing about perception for those blessed to see is you can only ever see from a position of privilege. 

Also in an African family as a kid you almost never know what you’re talking about even when it comes to your own body. Which is something that I still find sad to say is still true as a young woman but that’s another story all together

(Ps: Parents don’t ignore your children’s pain, sometimes they know what they’re talking about. Their Body should be Their Choice)

For years I was greeted with the, ‘why don’t you just wear glasses’ conundrum. See the thing is I tried but glasses only cause me more headaches and dizziness. Which is something I could explain the time I was 15 because the reality is glasses and regular contact lenses don’t help with the corneal irregularities caused keratoconus. But it didn’t stop people from telling me that glasses would make it all better. Hell im 23 now and I still get the exact same remark almost every other day but seriously people IT DOESNT HELP. 

In order for me to actually be able to see, I need to do a procedure called cross linking which will ensure that the disease does not keep progressing ie) the world doesn’t keep getting blurry until well I can’t see anything. Then get scleral lenses —‘large-diameter, rigid gas-permeable contact lenses that are filled with sterile saline solution. While regular contact lenses touch the cornea, these special lenses rest on the sclera, the white part of the eye beyond the cornea. The saline solution fills in and corrects for corneal irregularities, creating a smoother optical surface and better vision.’

If this doesn’t work or if the disease has progressed too much then they will need to do a corneal transplant. A cornea transplant (keratoplasty) is a surgical procedure to replace part of your cornea with corneal tissue from a donor. Your cornea is the transparent, dome-shaped surface of your eye that accounts for a large part of your eye’s focusing power.

Living with Keratoconus has meant days where I can’t work because the light in my office is too bright and my head is too painful. It’s meant not being to read for long under any sort of light and therefore not being able to concentrate.

For the Past few months it’s meant not being able to stand behind the camera because everything is turning into one big blur. It’s meant walking home feeling dizzy and light headed because the sun has been in my face for one second too long. 

It’s meant watching my vision degrade every few months. Watching things that were once clear turn into more and more of a blur. Not being able to read my favorite books. Sometimes missing out on the conversation because someone started the sentence with ‘oh look.’

It’s meant having tons of awkward do you remember me conversations and why didn’t you greet me conversations when honestly, 1) I didn’t see you like literally I didn’t see you. 2) I didn’t recognize your face because again I’m not mean or vain or rude, I can’t see!

It’s meant not hanging out with friends much because I don’t want to be outside for too long and sometimes the lights are just too bright for me to stay and lying down in the dark is the only thing that feels good.

It’s been making jokes and pretending to be okay because even though I’m scared, I still have to work and try to have a normal life.

See I’m typing most of this with my right eye closed cause that’s the only way I can bare to see better even a little. I’m typing all this faced with the reality of continuing to lose my vision until there’s nothing left but the blur. 

Why?

Because see people are different and even with eye conditions, there’s not only short and long sighted there’s a whole host of conditions.

Because I’m blind isn’t just a mere joke anymore, it’s starting to feel like a looming reality. 

So get your eyes tested and screened. Find out how to take good care of your vision. Test your kids the time they are 10 so if anything is wrong it can be caught early.

For now I’ll catch you on the other end of the ass

Ps: if anyone asks about my sight direct them here.

In ancient Africa, whilst the man was the head of the family, the woman was the center of the family. The mother brought the family together and was often the intermediary between the children and the father. Mothers, sisters and aunts would bring the whole family together often during large feasts.

In Ancient Egypt Women could own property and were legally at court, equal to men. Many women worked and in some cases even ended up in high society some even becoming Pharaoh.

In the modern era as nations were colonized women lost their rights. When once they were respected and honored above everyone, Queens in their own right, the family unit was threatened and many lost the basic humanities that were once awarded to them.

When I first read this question; ‘ How do African Women Engage The World and Create A New Paradigm’ I thought of all the How’s.

Until I realized that it is no longer a question of asking how but a time  of action and simply shifting the conversation.

We live at a time where people for decades have stood up and blamed society, blamed ‘them.’ When it is us who are in-fact a part of society.

In the same way that it is us in fact the people who make up the world. Around the world women in different corners are creating movements and shifting the playing field.

Like Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg who founded Lean In; a non profit organisation aimed at offering women the ongoing inspiration and support to help them achieve their goals.and has enabled women around the world to join together and ‘lean in.’

Now in Africa and right here in Harare Zimbabwe, Brenda Thoko Mangunda has carried this torch forward starting her own lean in circle and connecting women from around the city and building even smaller circles.

Women like Brenda, Sheryl and Sandra Kawodza who is the founder and manager of Eclipse Executive Selection and her own group of ladies called ‘Elite Business Women,’ have managed to not only engage the women around them in their own circles but have bridged gaps created distance leveraging the internet and utilizing platforms such as WhatsApp to build their communities.

These women and many others have gone out in a bid to amplify the voice of the African woman.

Pauline Nyasha Matambanadzo, Founder & CEO of PDP Consultancy P/L, also provides a series of Recovery, Re-imagine,  and Reboot resources under the Flagship #Re-Calibr8
Re-Calibr8 is specifically geared to empower women and young people facilitating and creating platforms for restoration from traumatic events.

Carol Marufu is the cofounder of Visual Sensations which is a production company that aims to spread positivity and spread awareness through the use of media channels such as films, tv/talk shows and online media hubs such as blogs and vlogs.

Being an African woman I am proud to be living at a time when we have so many women who are living breathing example’s of what the African Woman can do.

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

In this technological hub and digital space even with the use of the same platforms, the African voice has been commentary instead of the lead of the conversation. In the past few years as women’s rights have rose to the surface and women’s voices have been amplified the African woman’s voice has still bounds to go to reach the surface.

Whilst the world has been faced with social issues and spreading social awareness, a large portion of the African women are faced with seeking value addition.

Many women are still working from dusk till dawn in small towns in a bid to feed their families even in the face of a failing economy.

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Whilst others lucky enough are graduating from Universities around the world.

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Others even luckier are working but battling crippling pay gaps, sexual harassment or depression in communities that aren’t cognisant of mental health issues.

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For the African Women to truly engage the world we must first acknowledge that all African Woman are different, living in different conditions and facing different problems and that even as a collective we are constantly on different journeys in need of different things and it is up to us to acknowledge that.

We must begin to speak our own stories not only to the world at large but to each other beyond our networks and the small circles in which we are a part of.

“The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any.”
– Alice Walker

For women at large our story has been painted as that of being victims or in the rare case that we are painted as strong, it is with a brush that depicts strength as being tolerant, staying or being silent.

Why I started this piece with examples of women is because I have always believed in mentorship and that as young girls we can learn more from those who came before us so we can also pass it forward and thus they are my example of How.

Like mothers of olden days who would cook large feasts and invite all their relatives over, Sandra and Brenda have been able to become Mothers of Tribes that stretch beyond only women communities.

Sandra conducts monthly workshops where she invites people(men and women) to engage and discuss topics that encompass different trades and industries.

She also uses WhatsApp to create communities for different people from entrepreneurs to lifestyle and events, digital marketing and so much more. She has taken a social media tool and utilized it to become a connecting thread for hundreds of people across borders in many sectors and as Young people we can do the same too.

Carol Marufu through Visual Sensation has started a Women’s talk show called NoFilter which aims to bridge the gap between generations encoperating 5 women of different age groups from Gen Z to X and partnering with 263AfricaTV they aim to cross borders through the Roku platform and not only reach African Women in Africa but African Women across the world.

They also aim to utilize blogs and vlogs tailor making shows for social media distributed through Facebook and YouTube such as This is my story which shares stories of women across Zimbabwe.

They not only aim to support the voices of women generating conversations but sharing stories they want to partner with organisations and NGOs that women may not know of but may need access to.

We are the world and as an African woman in 2019 I say let us continue to lean in and engage with each other because only in communication can we grow.

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” -Laurell K. Hamilton

‘Live the life you dream of’

This has been my motto for the longest time and maybe for most people today is the day they are figuring out what their dream life looks like but I’m happy to say I’m still living it.

So even though I haven’t been a part of this challenge this is a question I just felt I had to answer #Day2 on #Day17 (better late than never right?)

What living my dream life looks like for me has always been being able to live my truth and completely unapologetically be myself.

Which sounds easy enough but growing up in a world where I seldom had control, over my voice, had no control over my life and no control over my own body, or my environment. Being able to write, to be a part of this challenge this is what my dream life looks like. 

If you’ve never had your control taken from you, this might sound like the craziest thing ever but step 1 of taking back my control was choosing to write.

When everyone else my age was in University I was trying to figure out the real world for the first time. For the first time trying to learn how to breathe when I chose to sell my laptop and my sisters and took a bus to South Africa with no plan and no money. 

See often when I talk to people they talk about SA being this unsafe place where there’s crime and violence in each corner but as life would have it; I found my self safer in this strange place amongst strangers than I had ever been at home, amongst the people that were family.

In this strange place I found freedom, I stayed at people’s houses who owed me nothing but they provided me everything, At home I had been caged, put in a psych ward (that’s a story for another day) and even more than that had felt what it was like to be violated deep within your soul.

Although I won’t yet share my story of what it feels like. I will talk about the effects of being a young black woman being silenced because if everyone goes through it then your pain can not possibly be real, your pain isn’t yours to feel.

You are given the usual questions, what were you wearing? Did you want it? Because even though it happened to you in your own home, a place that’s meant to be a sanctuary you must have still played a part somehow. 

In a previous blog post I talked a little about why we blame the victim, why it’s easier to imagine that she must have played a part than to accept that her control over the one thing everyone deserves to have power over, her own body was taken away from her. 

This is one part of the equation that we take for granted, because what if you couldn’t trust your own body to keep you safe anymore? What if you didn’t have control anymore, if you moved to go forward but a force much stronger than your own pulled you backwards, what if you were fighting to do something as simple as to brush your own teeth but you couldn’t move, what if you had no control.

Live the life you dream of…

My dream was to be free, free to be, free to breathe because when you have no control every single breathe that you take can feel so foreign. 

Speaking of events, today on my featured list I want to highlight an event hosted the Ballet School of Zimbabwe. Happening at the Ballet Centre, 109, East Road, Avondale every night at 6.30pm from Wednesday 24 to Sunday 30 September, 2018. This show features different dance schools on open air stage in the grounds of the center with tap modern, ballet, contemporary, hip hop and lyrical styles on display.

“Starlight Dancing”, which is the Dance Trust of Zimbabwe’s annual outdoor production was established over 35 years ago in a bid to provide senior dancers from all dancing studios an opportunity to perform (13+). It started as “Ballet in the Park” and was staged on the concrete stage in the Harare Gardens, later moved to the Ballet Centre and “Starlight Dancing” was born.

Approximately 100 dancers have been rehearsing different types of dance in order to provide an entertaining and varied programme.

Preparations are in full swing with the Masimba Group having erected the stage free of charge. The Dance Trust of Zimbabwe is very grateful to them – they have provided the stage every year since “Starlight Dancing” began. This weekend rehearsals on stage will take place and the finishing touches done. Over the years this production has been enjoyed both the dancers and the public so we hope that the 2018 production will receive the same amount of support.