I'm really excited to write this post!
I was asked a while ago to be a keynote speaker at the UNESCO/IIEP Conference in Paris. It's all about education and involving the youth in strategising to improve education globally.
I have my speech sorted....although it did take longer than expected. Here's the situation: I finished my speech and everything was cool and then I discovered that my computer decided that it's not important to save anymore, even though I totally clicked save and proceeded to eat my speech. So, after much stress and hysteria, my speech is done. Whew!
We are leaving just after 8 tonight and will arrive early tomorrow morning. Quick stopover in London (most stressful and expensive visa for a 7 hour stay we've ever had, by the way) and then PARIS!
Exciting times lie ahead. I'm positive that Erin and I will have plenty of stories of a lifetime to share when we get back.
Pictures and updates will follow.
See you on the other side.
:)
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
The beginning of the end...
I know I haven't written in a while...my bad. Things have been crazy and I haven't really had time to look sideways. I'm sorry you fell of my radar but you're back on :)
Since my last post so much has happened - I turned 18! WOOHOO!! So I am now legal. How legit? I couldn't celebrate my birthday in typical fashion because I was writing prelims and I wrote English on my birthday, Maths the next day and then History the day after that. History was on a Saturday. We were not happy chappies. It was a bad week.
However, we still went out. Not as bigscale as you would expect. We just went to Banana Jam and had a really rad time with like our family members and friends which worked out to 21 people. So, still pretty epic. The next day (when I was writing my maths paper) our grade head came to me and said "you really shouldn't be going out during exams". You can imagine my surprise. She then proceeded to say that if it was somebody's birthday celebration it was okay. "It was MY birthday!". Then she was chilled. It was really awkward for a while.
To celebrate properly we are having a party on Friday with all my homies. It's circus themed so we are busy making the house a circus. Not much of a stretch ;)
Prelims were a MAJOR thing that took over every second of my life for those three weeks and weeks before. Every time I was doing something to relax, I was thinking that I should have been studying and the amount of work I had to do.
Prelims are over now. Thank heavens. They were really average. But, you know, I'm looking at prelims as a trial run for finals. I messed up some things in prelims and I can learn from those things and not do them in finals and do much better.
That's my theory, anyway.
I'm on holiday now. Well, sort of. I don't have to go to school but I'm doing work at home. Preparing for finals. Fun times.
Some cool things that have happened recently are that I, along with our Lavender Hill Ambassadors, addressed the City of Cape Town Council meeting. It was really interesting to see how things work in those kinds of meetings. The best thing was that I couldn't get to the podium so I had to sit up at the top. I was given the seat where the Deputy Mayor of Cape Town sits. How cool is that? My topic was peace and inclusion and our four ambassadors spoke about their project on gangsterism. It was an amazing experience and when we were finished we got a standing ovation from the councillors.
The next big thing that's happening in my life is that I have been asked to be a keynote speaker at the UNESCO Conference in Paris in October. I'm so excited! I'm going with my sister. It's going to be EPIC! It's the first time I am travelling without my mom. It's an interesting time in our lives and it's the start of my claiming more of my independence.
We are leaving on the 13th of October and getting back on the 21st. It's going to be a crazy and amazing week that we will no doubt remember for the rest of our lives. Now we're just waiting for our visas and then we're all set.
Just because we live the crazy life that we do, four days after we get back from Paris I write my first final paper. It's enough time. I work best when I'm under pressure, anyway. I would have had my awesome experience before finals and then I can knuckle down and achieve what I want to in the end.
:)
Since my last post so much has happened - I turned 18! WOOHOO!! So I am now legal. How legit? I couldn't celebrate my birthday in typical fashion because I was writing prelims and I wrote English on my birthday, Maths the next day and then History the day after that. History was on a Saturday. We were not happy chappies. It was a bad week.
However, we still went out. Not as bigscale as you would expect. We just went to Banana Jam and had a really rad time with like our family members and friends which worked out to 21 people. So, still pretty epic. The next day (when I was writing my maths paper) our grade head came to me and said "you really shouldn't be going out during exams". You can imagine my surprise. She then proceeded to say that if it was somebody's birthday celebration it was okay. "It was MY birthday!". Then she was chilled. It was really awkward for a while.
To celebrate properly we are having a party on Friday with all my homies. It's circus themed so we are busy making the house a circus. Not much of a stretch ;)
Prelims were a MAJOR thing that took over every second of my life for those three weeks and weeks before. Every time I was doing something to relax, I was thinking that I should have been studying and the amount of work I had to do.
Prelims are over now. Thank heavens. They were really average. But, you know, I'm looking at prelims as a trial run for finals. I messed up some things in prelims and I can learn from those things and not do them in finals and do much better.
That's my theory, anyway.
I'm on holiday now. Well, sort of. I don't have to go to school but I'm doing work at home. Preparing for finals. Fun times.
Some cool things that have happened recently are that I, along with our Lavender Hill Ambassadors, addressed the City of Cape Town Council meeting. It was really interesting to see how things work in those kinds of meetings. The best thing was that I couldn't get to the podium so I had to sit up at the top. I was given the seat where the Deputy Mayor of Cape Town sits. How cool is that? My topic was peace and inclusion and our four ambassadors spoke about their project on gangsterism. It was an amazing experience and when we were finished we got a standing ovation from the councillors.
The next big thing that's happening in my life is that I have been asked to be a keynote speaker at the UNESCO Conference in Paris in October. I'm so excited! I'm going with my sister. It's going to be EPIC! It's the first time I am travelling without my mom. It's an interesting time in our lives and it's the start of my claiming more of my independence.
We are leaving on the 13th of October and getting back on the 21st. It's going to be a crazy and amazing week that we will no doubt remember for the rest of our lives. Now we're just waiting for our visas and then we're all set.
Just because we live the crazy life that we do, four days after we get back from Paris I write my first final paper. It's enough time. I work best when I'm under pressure, anyway. I would have had my awesome experience before finals and then I can knuckle down and achieve what I want to in the end.
:)
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Reunions and weird situations
Last week I went with my mom to East London. I was asked to speak at Mercedes Benz' Graduation of their learnership programme for people with disabilities.
It was a great experience. I met awesome people and had a really good time getting to know some of the people who were on the programme. I even got asked if I would 'consider' one of the graduants. That was interesting....
Going to the airport is always interesting as a disabled person. There are always challenges to overcome, but most of the time it's just hysterical.
I won a bet against my mom about where the Steers is, which was cool.
On this particular occassion, it was pretty normal with a little bit of weird. When we went through the boarding gates, they searched me, which is normal practice but this time was different. First, I had to wait for them to search another person, a woman who was probably close to 90 years old and they asked her to stand up out of her wheelchair. It took a while....
Then it was my turn to be frisked. All in all, it was a really weird situation. She said hello and whatever, and then she asked me to go into this little room, which was not normal. So I went and they closed the door behind us. It felt very sketchy, actually. I think she was new on the job because she had a supervisor and she was very.....eager to do her job and, rubbed her hands together before she started.
Nothing dodgy happened, it was just a really weird experience.
After that, it was normal. We are kind of frequent flyers and we know every one of the PAU people. It's really cool. It's like a family reunion every time we go.
It was a great experience. I met awesome people and had a really good time getting to know some of the people who were on the programme. I even got asked if I would 'consider' one of the graduants. That was interesting....
Going to the airport is always interesting as a disabled person. There are always challenges to overcome, but most of the time it's just hysterical.
I won a bet against my mom about where the Steers is, which was cool.
On this particular occassion, it was pretty normal with a little bit of weird. When we went through the boarding gates, they searched me, which is normal practice but this time was different. First, I had to wait for them to search another person, a woman who was probably close to 90 years old and they asked her to stand up out of her wheelchair. It took a while....
Then it was my turn to be frisked. All in all, it was a really weird situation. She said hello and whatever, and then she asked me to go into this little room, which was not normal. So I went and they closed the door behind us. It felt very sketchy, actually. I think she was new on the job because she had a supervisor and she was very.....eager to do her job and, rubbed her hands together before she started.
Nothing dodgy happened, it was just a really weird experience.
After that, it was normal. We are kind of frequent flyers and we know every one of the PAU people. It's really cool. It's like a family reunion every time we go.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Bloemfontein...
Two weeks ago - I think - I went with my mom to see our Pay-it-forward Ambassadors in Bloemfontein and Kimberley.
Now, being the people we are, clearly there was drama and hysterical situations that we found ourselves in. It started at the airport, when we were 10 hours late for our flight...
haha.
So we had to book another flight. We made the last flight to Bloemfontein for the day. We made it by 10 minutes. EPIC stress session, right there.
After arriving in Bloem we were so hungry and decided that we would go to Debonairs. I know, this sounds like a really boring story that serves no purpose, but I promise, it gets entertaining round about now.
My mom went in to order. Average. It took ages, so she came out to see if I was still in the car and not being stolen. All was good. But....there was this man....he was the car guard. He used a really annoying whistling direction system, which would be effective if anybody knew what the different whistles mean. Keep in mind that I had been sitting in the car for 30 minutes, listening to this idiocy.
I was getting sufficiently frustrated with this man. Especially because I can't get out of the car to clear the earspace. He was having a good time though, so thumbs up to him for having fun at work. What made this situation a whole lot more ridiculous was the fact that he only had one properly functioning eye.
Now, for me, I don't put a whole lot of faith in a partially sighted car guard.
Something else I didn't understand was that he was wearing glasses...
He already has one eye that is covered (probably due to surgery or something), which means that he does not need glasses for that eye, which means that the eye that was assumably 'functioning properly' was, in fact, a lot less functional than initially predicted.
This made me have no faith in the abilities of this man to direct cars. I wasn't even sure if he could see them. I try hard not to judge but looking at that situation, I'm just saying...
The rest of the trip was quite normal. Except for the fact that we stayed with people that my mom last saw 25 years ago - that's a long time because I wasn't even alive then! So naturally we stayed up until the early hours of the morning. We had to catch up. Erica, Chris and Mariet were amazingly welcoming.
Our Ambassador groups are amazing! Yvette (our facilitator) does such an incredible job with these young people. Thank you, Yvette.
After the Ambassadors meetings had finished, we met Kendra, who is six years old, has cerebral palsy and goes to a mainstream school, and her family. They are moving down to Cape Town at the end of the year. I'm so ampd!
I went with Mariet and her friends to the movies. We watched 'Magic Mike'. I'm not sure what we were expecting to see in a movie about male strippers, but our expectations were too high. The only way to deal with the awkwardness of that movie was hysterical laughter. We were pretty good at that. I had fun, though, and now I have memories of that Bloemfontein trip that I will not forget. Even though some I would prefer to forget...
:)
Now, being the people we are, clearly there was drama and hysterical situations that we found ourselves in. It started at the airport, when we were 10 hours late for our flight...
haha.
So we had to book another flight. We made the last flight to Bloemfontein for the day. We made it by 10 minutes. EPIC stress session, right there.
After arriving in Bloem we were so hungry and decided that we would go to Debonairs. I know, this sounds like a really boring story that serves no purpose, but I promise, it gets entertaining round about now.
My mom went in to order. Average. It took ages, so she came out to see if I was still in the car and not being stolen. All was good. But....there was this man....he was the car guard. He used a really annoying whistling direction system, which would be effective if anybody knew what the different whistles mean. Keep in mind that I had been sitting in the car for 30 minutes, listening to this idiocy.
I was getting sufficiently frustrated with this man. Especially because I can't get out of the car to clear the earspace. He was having a good time though, so thumbs up to him for having fun at work. What made this situation a whole lot more ridiculous was the fact that he only had one properly functioning eye.
Now, for me, I don't put a whole lot of faith in a partially sighted car guard.
Something else I didn't understand was that he was wearing glasses...
He already has one eye that is covered (probably due to surgery or something), which means that he does not need glasses for that eye, which means that the eye that was assumably 'functioning properly' was, in fact, a lot less functional than initially predicted.
This made me have no faith in the abilities of this man to direct cars. I wasn't even sure if he could see them. I try hard not to judge but looking at that situation, I'm just saying...
The rest of the trip was quite normal. Except for the fact that we stayed with people that my mom last saw 25 years ago - that's a long time because I wasn't even alive then! So naturally we stayed up until the early hours of the morning. We had to catch up. Erica, Chris and Mariet were amazingly welcoming.
Our Ambassador groups are amazing! Yvette (our facilitator) does such an incredible job with these young people. Thank you, Yvette.
After the Ambassadors meetings had finished, we met Kendra, who is six years old, has cerebral palsy and goes to a mainstream school, and her family. They are moving down to Cape Town at the end of the year. I'm so ampd!
I went with Mariet and her friends to the movies. We watched 'Magic Mike'. I'm not sure what we were expecting to see in a movie about male strippers, but our expectations were too high. The only way to deal with the awkwardness of that movie was hysterical laughter. We were pretty good at that. I had fun, though, and now I have memories of that Bloemfontein trip that I will not forget. Even though some I would prefer to forget...
:)
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Just a little bit busy
I know it's been a while since my last post. Okay, a long while, but life has been so busy I haven't really been able to update you guys. I'm sorry.. So, I'm writing now, in my room and its pretty much dark because of the kind of crappy weather we've been having lately. It doesn't inspire much creativity, but hey. Life goes on through the rainy days.
I honestly don't have a lot of exciting news. Quite sad actually. But.....I applied to university (not sure if I've told you but here's to reinforcement) and I handed in my results and other stuff they need and now we are waiting, somewhat patiently, for the verdict...
I also recently did by NBT. That was a mission in itself. I guess I should be used to it by now that being disabled often comes with hurdles, but I'm continuously surprised at how hard life can be. I'm going to put that down as 'positive thinking'. I registered, just as everybody else, and waited for my test day to arrive. Two days before, my mom phoned to ask about accessibility and stuff like that. And she was told that I can't write with everybody else because I need extra time.
Don't freak out.
I did. But in retrospect, it actually worked out better in the end, the way that it was organised. I wrote my test and now....we wait for the results. They say it takes two weeks to get them, so on Tuesday we will see.
The major thing that is on every matric pupil's mind - well, hopefully - is prelims. Oh my goodness, they are very soon and I don't know about everyone else but I am stressing. I have five weeks until they start and we are still getting work to finish. I'm really not sure where to fit it all in.
These 'holidays' have been crazy. Kind of like when people take the day off and end up doing work anyway. We have been given a lot of work and needed to finish it in the holidays. Mostly, projects that we were given a while ago. But I am very good at the whole procrastination thing. I realised a couple of days ago that I can't do it anymore. Result = stress!
I may be overplaying it a little bit, but it's fun :)
My plan is to study for exams from now so I can kick prelims' ass! We'll see how well that plan works out when life starts interrupting again...
:)
I honestly don't have a lot of exciting news. Quite sad actually. But.....I applied to university (not sure if I've told you but here's to reinforcement) and I handed in my results and other stuff they need and now we are waiting, somewhat patiently, for the verdict...
I also recently did by NBT. That was a mission in itself. I guess I should be used to it by now that being disabled often comes with hurdles, but I'm continuously surprised at how hard life can be. I'm going to put that down as 'positive thinking'. I registered, just as everybody else, and waited for my test day to arrive. Two days before, my mom phoned to ask about accessibility and stuff like that. And she was told that I can't write with everybody else because I need extra time.
Don't freak out.
I did. But in retrospect, it actually worked out better in the end, the way that it was organised. I wrote my test and now....we wait for the results. They say it takes two weeks to get them, so on Tuesday we will see.
The major thing that is on every matric pupil's mind - well, hopefully - is prelims. Oh my goodness, they are very soon and I don't know about everyone else but I am stressing. I have five weeks until they start and we are still getting work to finish. I'm really not sure where to fit it all in.
These 'holidays' have been crazy. Kind of like when people take the day off and end up doing work anyway. We have been given a lot of work and needed to finish it in the holidays. Mostly, projects that we were given a while ago. But I am very good at the whole procrastination thing. I realised a couple of days ago that I can't do it anymore. Result = stress!
I may be overplaying it a little bit, but it's fun :)
My plan is to study for exams from now so I can kick prelims' ass! We'll see how well that plan works out when life starts interrupting again...
:)
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
My speech in Chicago
I thought it would be cool if all of you could see what I said to all the cool people in Chicago. So, here it is:
I’d like to start by saying thank you for giving me this amazing award. It’s such an honour to be recognised for the work I’m doing with differently abled people in South Africa.
I was born in 1994 and in my country we are known as Madiba babies, as this was the year that Nelson Mandela became president of the new South Africa. It’s even more special for me to be getting this award from Mr F.W. De Klerk, who worked with President Mandela towards a more equal society. I am so grateful that I was born into a democracy. I do feel, though, that people with disabilities are still living in our own form of apartheid.
We are segregated from society not by choice but by a lack of accessibility and acceptance. These are issues that I, through The Chaeli Campaign, am working at getting more accessibility in all places as well as changing the attitudes of able-bodied people. It’s also important to educate people about the abilities of people living with disabilities. My main drive is for differently abled people to be included and accepted the way we are, because we cannot change our disability but we can change the way people see our disability.
I believe that we can do it. We can make disability just another trait instead of a reason for exclusion. We need to work together to make it happen. There’s a song by Nickelback that says “What’s worth the prize is always worth the fight” and I know that the prize of inclusion is definitely worth the fight.
Thank you.
I’d like to start by saying thank you for giving me this amazing award. It’s such an honour to be recognised for the work I’m doing with differently abled people in South Africa.
I was born in 1994 and in my country we are known as Madiba babies, as this was the year that Nelson Mandela became president of the new South Africa. It’s even more special for me to be getting this award from Mr F.W. De Klerk, who worked with President Mandela towards a more equal society. I am so grateful that I was born into a democracy. I do feel, though, that people with disabilities are still living in our own form of apartheid.
We are segregated from society not by choice but by a lack of accessibility and acceptance. These are issues that I, through The Chaeli Campaign, am working at getting more accessibility in all places as well as changing the attitudes of able-bodied people. It’s also important to educate people about the abilities of people living with disabilities. My main drive is for differently abled people to be included and accepted the way we are, because we cannot change our disability but we can change the way people see our disability.
I believe that we can do it. We can make disability just another trait instead of a reason for exclusion. We need to work together to make it happen. There’s a song by Nickelback that says “What’s worth the prize is always worth the fight” and I know that the prize of inclusion is definitely worth the fight.
Thank you.
Back to reality
I had an amazing time in Chicago with all the incredible people I met there. I told you about them...
But now, we have been back in SA for 2 weeks. It took us nearly a week to recover from our 30 hour travelling stint. I'm telling you, never do anything like that. It's a stupid idea. Especially for a disabled person - it just gets ridiculous.
I'm back at school. And it's as hectic as it ever was. Probably more. We are now a week away from our first matric exams. So, as you can imagine, everybody is pretty stressed out. The situation is pretty much like this:
We get more work, we complain about doing it, procrastinate doing it, then we sometimes end up NOT doing it (some of us do this as a form of protest, at least it links in with the history syllabus). We don't really have a lot of time to study for the exams...
I'll be the first to admit that my most used study method is CRAMMING! It seems to work for me most times...just because it has to. This year I'm trying to be a little more prepared for exams than I usually am, so I am cramming earlier and then going over it slowly, closer to exam days.
Today marks 9 days before we write our first paper.
Wish us luck.
:)
But now, we have been back in SA for 2 weeks. It took us nearly a week to recover from our 30 hour travelling stint. I'm telling you, never do anything like that. It's a stupid idea. Especially for a disabled person - it just gets ridiculous.
I'm back at school. And it's as hectic as it ever was. Probably more. We are now a week away from our first matric exams. So, as you can imagine, everybody is pretty stressed out. The situation is pretty much like this:
We get more work, we complain about doing it, procrastinate doing it, then we sometimes end up NOT doing it (some of us do this as a form of protest, at least it links in with the history syllabus). We don't really have a lot of time to study for the exams...
I'll be the first to admit that my most used study method is CRAMMING! It seems to work for me most times...just because it has to. This year I'm trying to be a little more prepared for exams than I usually am, so I am cramming earlier and then going over it slowly, closer to exam days.
Today marks 9 days before we write our first paper.
Wish us luck.
:)
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