Found!

My niece is out in Zimbabwe working on projects to do with theatre out there: she being someone who is busy, busy, busy, I never manage to catch up with her first-hand ..... but I thought she must have a blog somewhere if I could only find it! Well, after meandering around Facebook, I found her wall and the blog ..... SO ......

Auntie is watching you!

I couldn't help smiling at the similarity of our blog headings - hers is ZimAntics, and a lot more interesting (I strongly suspect we also have a concern about drains in common .... my back garden might have reminded her of Zim townships until recently ..... although out there right now that is no laughing matter: she was visiting with people who were treating cholera patients, though she doesn't do that herself. The history of cholera in this country is testament to the importance of drains ... )

Time I stopped .... anyone would think I was obsessed by them!!

She is convinced of the importance of the arts (and in particular theatre) in effecting reconciliation of the tensions out there. As she has always loved theatre it is great that she can do what she loves and find it rewarding (if very challenging). That is a bug I never got. The English tuition I had at school was boooring in the extreme, with the result that I know (knew!) more of German and French literature than of my own, an omission I always mean to remedy sometime. I know it was the teaching wot didn't do it because the one year we got a decent teacher my marks went up - too bad that wasn't the O Level year: I might have passed it. As it is I'm more likely to read about the ideas through philosophy just now.

The other bug I never got is the Africa one. I just find that culture annoying, probably because over here it's out of context (I'm sure what I find too loud coming out of people's car windows doesn't sound nearly so loud in the open air with miles of bush around you). And I disagree more than a little with multiculturalism and political correctness. I was brought up to be polite and kind to everybody I met, and I will do that, and it is part of being so to be aware of what the other person might need (enough not to give Muslim visitors sausages for tea, at least!) but the extent to which other cultures appear more favoured than the majority one is way out of line. To favour any minority is surely as much to treat them as different as unjustified discrimination; if you favour a minority you are still singling them out as different. If resentment (or worse still, support for the BNP) is the result, it is hardly surprising. Add to this the fact that multiculturalism appears to mean "any culture so long as it not white, European and Christian" and it's not surprising there's a lot of ill-feeling around (and people who don't deserve it will suffer as a result).

Time I got off the soapbox! I was burning the (past) midnight oil catching up with Izzy last night: I have spent more of the wee small hours online than ever I spent partying or writing assignments!!