“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” ~ Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
She is the first woman to be elected president of an African country.
Another thing we decided to do this year was collaborations, so i hooked up with Boys of Soweto member and fashion stylist Bobo Ndima for a concept shoot “Good Morning Johannesburg”. Here are some shots from the shoot. Enjoy
Photography and retouching: Jeff Rikhotso
Wardrobe & Styling: Bobo Ndima
Lights: Lebogang Ditibane
Another thing we decided to do this year was collaborations, so i hooked up with Boys of Soweto member and fashion stylist Bobo Ndima for a concept shoot “Good Morning Johannesburg”. Here are some shots from the shoot. Enjoy
Photography and retouching: Jeff Rikhotso
Wardrobe & Styling: Bobo Ndima
Lights: Lebogang Ditibane
Another thing we decided to do this year was collaborations, so i hooked up with Boys of Soweto member and fashion stylist Bobo Ndima for a concept shoot “Good Morning Johannesburg”. Here are some shots from the shoot. Enjoy
Photography and retouching: Jeff Rikhotso
Wardrobe & Styling: Bobo Ndima
Lights: Lebogang Ditibane
More and more I feel creativity is a commitment to what you love. When the demons of doubt take over or whenever the stress of life and work bog you down and you feel like turning in, it’s the moment you refuse to give it up that’s when creativity happens. That commitment is akin to going to the gym or similar: you ache and you hate it and you want to thrown in the towel…but you head over there anyway and lift weights or run that last mile. It’s the same in all creative pursuits. It’s a privilege to do what you love, even in the little moments we have, so to cherish it is to commit to it. For it’s in the sticking with it, and with all the energies and time invested, you do get so much back. And it does bring joy, even if it’s fleeting.
“
| — | Toyin Odutola, Creativity Decoded. (via tobia) |
This is what the First Family wore for Easter, because no holiday is complete without high fashion. Sasha and Malia went with dark colors for the occasion (so brave), while the President and First Lady lightened up their looks for spring. Sasha’s necklace is the most enviable piece she’s ever worn.
Also notice that Malia is almost as tall as her father now — she and I should start a club.
Marsha Hunt (singer, model and novelist)
Marsha Hunt is best known as the poster child for the musical Hair as well as the mother of Mick Jagger’s first child Karis. Allegedly she was the inspiration behind the Rolling Stones hit “Brown Sugar” which she acknowledged in her 1985 auto biography “Real life.”
When Hunt came to live in Europe she found that people there called her an American, not an African-American or Black. She herself describes her skin color as “oak with a hint of maple”, and notes that “of the various races I know I comprise—African, American Indian, German Jew and Irish—only the African was acknowledged.” Hunt invented her own word to describe herself, based on the French word melange (mixture) and the word melanin: Melangian.
In 1991 Hunt said that there is a pain inflicted by the black community on itself, which it fears to communicate openly. She also says that living overseas for most of her life has made her a foreigner in the USA. She said, “I’m scared to walk through Harlem… more scared than you, because if I walked through Harlem with the weird shoes and the weird accent, I’d get my butt kicked faster than you. In a way, I’m the betrayer.”
The Origin of samba music history in Brazil, which today can be seen in awe at the vibrant Brazilian carnivals, can be found in Angola, Africa, from where it was brought to Brazil with the slave trading in the interval 1600-1888.
This is Africa, our Africa
A tale is told of two lovers who lived in the eastern Malagasy highlands during the 16th or 17th century.
The woman belonged to local nobility while the man was a peasant son of the slave family serving the noble class.
Like the adage love is blind, the two looked beyond their social differences to build a strong relationship to the point of wanting to get married.
At the time class appurtenance and social differences were unquestionable in various parts of Madagascar and their parents, just like in the Shakespeare’s play, would have nothing of the union.
The tale has been passed down from generation to generation, becoming an integral part of the heritage not just in Fierenana Rural Commune where this is believed to have taken place, but the island as a whole.
“Tired with the rigorous ban imposed by the society, the two lovers decided to commit suicide,” recounted Mr Rakotoarisaona, the 72-year-old deputy mayor for the commune, located about 200km east of Antananarivo.
The lovers, unable to take any more of the societal pressure, isolated themselves and ventured into a rocky area with a small water course, formerly covered by dense forest.
Local residents later observed strangeness on the suicide place, now called Tsitandrara in Malagasy.
The couple is believed to have jumped into a well in order to end their misery.
According to the myth, upon their deaths, the two reincarnated as eels.
[…]
The belief of the suicidal lovers transforming into eels has held strong, leading to the local community constantly honouring the eels.
According to oral traditionalists, such rituals have been held close to the eels’ home for centuries.
As the myth spread, people came there to simply regard the curious creatures or pray to the ‘supernatural beings’.
Christian missionaries considered the popular enthusiasm towards the eels as paganism and once attempted to shake the local beliefs.
“I remember very well the story telling of my grandfather. One fervent evangelist dared to fish the eels. He managed to catch the male. Nobody has ever seen the religious man since,” Mr Théodore Eric Lolah Rajoelina, mayor of Fierenana, told the Africa Review.
Other “unbelievers of myth” have also over the years reportedly tried to remove the sacred eels.
But tragedy happened to them, local residents said.
Such anecdotes pushed the community further to scrupulously respect the sacredness of the eels’ site.
The popularity of the mythical suicide area is today getting wider, though just a very few people in the country know the story behind it.
This Day in History: Sharpeville Massacre
On March 21, 1960, South African police officers opened fire on a crowd of black protesters who had surrounded a police station in Sharpeville, killing 69 people.
The Sharpeville protests began over South Africa’s pass laws, which required black South Africans to carry passbooks with them any time they traveled out of their designated home areas. The African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid organization of the era, planned for an antipass campaign to begin March 31, 1960. The Pan Africanist Congress, a more militant offshoot of the A.N.C., organized a campaign that would begin 10 days before the A.N.C.’s.
On March 21, Pan Africanist leaders in Sharpeville assembled a demonstration of 5,000 to 7,000 people, in part through intimidating locals to join. In the morning, they led the protest to the Sharpeville police station, where they demanded to be arrested for not carrying passes. Police reinforcements arrived during the incident.
Consider the “Bronze Blond Bombshell’ or “The Black Marilyn Monroe”, Joyce Bryant was the born the oldest of eight children in Oakland, California, to a mother who was a devout Seventh Day Adventist, but raised in San Francisco when she left home to live with her…
Louis Armstrong plays for his wife, Lucille, in front of the Sphinx and Great pyramids in Giza, Egypt.
One of the most freeing things we learn in life is that we don’t like everyone, everyone doesn’t like us, and that’s okay.
“
| — | David Bohl (via onlinecounsellingcollege) |
