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There's a lot of coverage in the media about cheating partners today. President Jacob Zuma's second wife is alleged to have had an affair with her bodyguard, and Springbok rugby player Andries Bekker is also alleged to be cheating on his wife of two years. And why do I care? Because stuff like that is grist for the mill for my OneLove campaign blogging.Currently, I'm asking my readers on several

I've just read several articles about how SA youths are at risk from HIV infection ( because of having multiple cconurrent partners & not using condoms) and from alcohol and drug use. To give you a clue, here are some highlights:41% of learners had at least two sexual partners, 12% used alcohol or drugs before sex, and 13% had sex at the age of 14.A shocking 52% of learners had an abortion, 19%

I was touched by Sally Cameron's post, "I benefited from Apartheid - Did You?"Sally says: "There are a few responses one can have as a white South African. You can deny that you had any part in it, you can say you did your bit. I was still at school, but did any of us do enough? You can be guilty, but let’s be honest, guilt helps no-one and is immobilizing. You wallow in it and yet nothing

Baby is still visiting me for her school holidays. She's had a number of friends visiting/sleeping over since the beginning of the week, so the house is busy, noisy, not as tidy as usual. Love it!This morning I woke up feeling chatty, so I started a number of discussions on groups I manage. Feel free to join in any of the discussions by clicking on the hyperlinked text:OneLove - If you felt

When I was 19 years old, nearing the end of my third year at university, my childhood sweetheart confessed that he had made someone else pregnant. He said he was sorry; the affair was a big mistake; he loved me but was unfaithful because my school was over 350km away from home and he was lonely. He asked me to forgive him and promised never to be unfaithful again.I think the thing that scared me

I'm furious, because I've had to play a dishonest game and pay a bribe. And yes, I am going to report these people when my business with them is done. Here's the story:In May last year my partner had a car accident, where a municipal truck collided with his car on a street corner. Thankfully, no one was hurt and the driver of the truck never denied that it was his fault - he ran a red robot. The

Got a press release from a PR agency telling me about Where You Are: Project Swaziland, an initiative that aims to highlight the impact of HIV & AIDS on children in Swaziland.Forwarded the info to a client for possible partnering, but not sure what else do with the info, though it interests me a lot. I think part of the attraction for me is that it's a combination of a fundraising project, there

Care2 just launched a free Click to Help Haiti, partnering with respected international relief nonprofit Oxfam to help fund emergency water and sanitation services for survivors of last week's devastating earthquake in Haiti.Please click today to help the people of Haiti: http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/AFt0H/zkf6/AIq3lYou can also help by publishing this link on your blog and network, so that

Back in the day when I used to work for an advocacy organisation and then later, an organisation that helped to raise funds for non-profits, my biggest frustration was that there were many people I could not help. Reasons were that:The organisations I worked for were not donor organisations. They were advocacy organisations and/developed solutions that allowed companies and individuals to give

LauraKim over at Female2Female is organising a Christmas party for 60 Children at Othandweni Children's Home ( part of the the Johannesburg Child Welfare) and she'd like your help. She says:"Those of us with children know how infectious the excitement of Christmas is aswell as the look on a childs face when opening a gift is priceless. So PLEASE join me and get involved in this – its R100 and a

I've been invited to join a panel of judges of the 2009 South African E-Commerce Awards. The Awards are run by Jump.co.za, a South African online shopping search engine."These awards have been designed to recognise and reward those companies and organisations that have demonstrated excellence through the use of the Internet, with specific emphasis on E-Commerce. The Awards are open to South

I have two posts about Kwanda on:Female2female (A South African bklog for women by women) - Kwanda: Making Our Communities Look BetterRiehLife (Janet Grace Riehl's blog) - Kwanda (Wealth & Growth)More guest posts will be coming soon. And many thanks to the people who have agreed to host on me on their blogs to talk about Kwanda and my writing life. Much appreciated.

Finally, I'm able to chat about the new project that I'm currently developing a site for. As I said, it's a reality TV programme that aims to make a difference in communities across South Africa.Anyhoo, I'll let the Soul City Institute tell you about it through a media invitation that was sent out today............................................................................................... Read the rest of this post

Tomorrow is International Youth Day, a day that gives the world an opportunity to recognize the potential of youth, to celebrate their achievements, and plan for ways to better engage young people to successfully take action in the development of their societies.In line with this, I'm posting a video which highlights the challenges girls in Southern Africa face. Entitled: Girls At Risk, A

My Digital Life is hosting a blogging fundraiser called “Keeping Jozi Cozy” to support a community initiative to raise funds and collect blankets for the street children of Johannesburg.The event takes place from 25 July at 15h00 to 26 July at 00h00, at the Tri-Anglez Pub and Grill at the Honeydew Shopping Centre.I wish I could take part in the blogathon, but the 25th is my birthday and I have

I finally finished the first phase of a client blog, and it is now ready to be heavily populated before we launch later this month. Yay me!Working on this project was not easy. I don't have an intuitive understanding of the client and what the organisation needs, and for many reasons I won't go into, I've had difficulty building rapport with them. So I just had to rely on my brief and give them


1. Give what you want to receive. The flow of Abundance is already all around you. To step into this flow is easy. Give to someone else the very thing you would like to receive. And give it freely without expectations of receiving, as if you already had more than enough. If you want more kindness in your life, be kind to someone, if you want more happiness in your life, make someone else happy, if you want more money in your life, share a little of what you have. Give it away easily, like you already had all that you need and there is plenty more from where that came from. 


2. Trust and know. The next step is to trust and know you have just stepped into the flow of abundance and are now aligned with what you want. Know there is more than enough to go around. 
 


3. Take Action. Participation is an important part of Abundance. While you are knowing you are now aligned with the flow of the abundance you want, it is also important to participate and help make things happen. Follow your inner knowing and your intuition and do your part to help create the abundance you would like to have. Continue to participate until you are receiving what you want.
 


4. Be Grateful. Gratitude is a vital step in the flow of abundance. It is a powerful magnet which keeps us in the flow and aligned with receiving all the wonderful things we desire. Fill yourself with gratitude all the time, even about the small and seemingly simple things in your life. There is always something to be grateful about. When you notice a little of what you want flowing to you, take a moment and be grateful for what you have received, regardless of how big or small it may be. Be grateful and say thank you. 



5. Pass it on. When you receive a little abundance take a moment and pass some of it on and assist someone else in feeling a little more abundant. When you pass on some of what you receive, do it easily as if you already have more than you need, expecting nothing in return. When you pass it on in this way you are now starting the process all over again and have once again taken the first step to "give what you want to receive." In this way the flow of abundance continues and becomes more and more each time.

Martin Espada

Martín Espada

The Soldiers in the Garden

Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973

After the coup,
the soldiers appeared
in Neruda’s garden one night,
raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
From the bedroom window
they could have been
the conquistadores of drowned galleons,
back from the sea to finish
plundering the coast.

The poet was dying:
cancer flashed through his body
and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames.
Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs,
Neruda faced him and said:
There is only one danger for you here: poetry.
The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest,
apologized to señor Neruda
and squeezed himself back down the stairs.
The lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.

For thirty years
we have been searching
for another incantation
to make the soldiers
vanish from the garden.

At Isla Negra,
between Neruda’s tomb
and the anchor in the garden,
a man with stonecutter’s hands
lifted up his boy of five
so the boy’s eyes could search mine.
The boy’s eyes were black olives.
Son, the father said, this is a poet,
like Pablo Neruda.
The boy’s eyes were black glass.
My son is called Darío,
for the poet of Nicaragua,
the father said.
The boy’s eyes were black stones.
The boy said nothing,
searching my face for poetry,
searching my eyes for his own eyes.
The boy’s eyes were black islands.

• ISBN-10: 0393062562
• ISBN-13: 978-0393062564

I was born in Havana and that single event pretty much defined the rest of my life. In the U.S., I'm Cuban, Cuban-American, Latina by virtue of being Cuban, a Cuban journalist, a Cuban writer, somebody's Cuban lover, a Cuban dyke, a Cuban girl on a bus, a Cuban exploring Sephardic roots, always and endlessly Cuba. I'm more Cuban here than I am in Cuba, by sheer contrast and repetition.

I'm very tired. It's been a hectic week, and today even more so, as I attended the Community launch of the OneLove Campaign in South Africa.But I feel that the hard work was worthwhile, so i'm not complaining. It's gratifying to see the content of the OneLove web site grow. The site is starting to make sense, and I feel good knowing that i had a strong hand in developing the site.Today on the

Litany at the Tomb of Frederick Douglass
Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York
November 7, 2008

This is the longitude and latitude of the impossible;
this is the epicenter of the unthinkable;
this is the crossroads of the unimaginable:
the tomb of Frederick Douglass, three days after the election.

This is a world spinning away from the gravity of centuries,
where the grave of a fugitive slave has become an altar.
This is the tomb of a man born as chattel, who taught himself to read in secret,
scraping the letters in his name with chalk on wood; now on the anvil-flat stone
a campaign button fills the O in Douglass. The button says: Obama.
This is the tomb of a man in chains, who left his fingerprints
on the slavebreaker’s throat so the whip would never carve his back again;
now a labor union T-shirt drapes itself across the stone, offered up
by a nurse, a janitor, a bus driver. A sticker on the sleeve says: I Voted Today.
This is the tomb of a man who rolled his call to arms off the press,
peering through spectacles at the abolitionist headline; now a newspaper
spreads above his dates of birth and death. The headline says: Obama Wins.

This is the stillness at the heart of the storm that began in the body
of the first slave, dragged aboard the first ship to America. Yellow leaves
descend in waves, and the newspaper flutters on the tomb, like the sails
Douglass saw in the bay, like the eyes of a slave closing to watch himself
escape with the tide. Believers in spirits would see the pages trembling
on the stone and say: look how the slave boy teaches himself to read.
I say a prayer, the first in years: that here we bury what we call
the impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, now and forever. Amen.

~~~ Martín Espada

If I was a drinker, I'd have several glasses of wine. But I'm a teetotaller, so grape juice will have to do me for this private party.And the reason for my celebration?The web site for theOneLove Regional Campaign went live today. I still need to do a lot to populate it, but we have a shell to start with and i'm fairly happy with the result.For the curious, OneLove is a unique campaign that aims

Finally I can give the details of the BIG PROJECT I've been working on since mid-December.It's a web portal of OneLove, a Southern African Campaign that began rolling out across southern Africa in October 2008. The campaign began in Tanzania and will cover Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The campaign aims to get us thinking and talking