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Spicy Love & Christmas Wishes – Featured Blog

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Today’s posts from our featured Port Elizabeth Blogger:

Spicy Love & Christmas Wishes by Keep Passing the Open Windows:

20151124_195645In the spirit of trying to not always be too political for the sake of extended family members who are starting to find me terrifying (*giggle*) I thought that I could talk about food today. Yay! Food…

My folks have a lovely lady from India staying with them at the moment. She’s been shadowing my dad and learning a bit more about how the Herbalifers on this side of the world do things at The Rink Street Wellness Club. I have loved having her around here. It’s always so 20151124_193714great having long conversations with people from different countries. There’s something extra special about it.

Of course, as happens to all of us when we find ourselves in foreign lands, our guest is struggling a little with the food that is completely different to what she is accustomed to. I, in turn, convinced my folks to take her to one of my favourite places to eat in Port Elizabeth: Raasoie. I then crashed their party because: Raasoie.

I love the way you get to eat in this place and I can’t help but think that I wish we could skip the whole rah-rah-rubbish of the usual Christmas fanfare which includes tons of work and even more mess and just hang out at Raasoie for the day. We could hang out around a huge table with bowls of korma and tikka masala and paneer and and and…yum… And then they have these awesome little table fire pit thingies that you use to cook your own kebabs on. I love this sort of social style of eating. Little bits and pieces all over the place. No stress just a lot of happiness and flavour.

It just seems a little more fun to me. Possibly that makes me a bad….what? Christian? Human? White person?

I think I might be ok with that.

Now I just need to convince the rest of my family members to skip trees and tinsel and Christmas crackers for Indian food and wine. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Maybe I’m just a little crazy…

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Read more here: Keep Passing the Open Windows

Trying to Understand by Keep Passing the Open Windows:

12282898_10156325099905094_590776597_nI keep seeing refugee-versus-veteran memes on social media at the moment. It seems like a viable bit of indignation. Surely it is ok to think that we should take care of our own before we take care of others? That doesn’t seem wrong, if you can turn a blind eye to the racism that inspires the observation.

What I don’t understand though, is this: Why are there so many homeless veterans? These are American (or Canadian) people. Where are their families? Where are their friends? I don’t understand how this can be so bad. Why are families and friends not opening their homes to these people who are sleeping on the streets? It doesn’t make sense to me. These people can surely not be all alone in the world. Not all of them. If nothing else they surely have fellow veterans in their lives.

In this situation I can’t stop thinking about possibly my all-time favourite book: How to be Good by Nick Hornby. In it, the protagonist’s husband has a sort of spiritual awakening. He encourages his neighbours to each adopt one homeless teenager as a way to help alleviate the homelessness in his home town. I loved that story so damn much. It was the height of absolute beauty to me. I’ve read that book four times already. It remains one of the most inspiring works I have ever experienced. And I’m not even sure if it was meant to be inspiring! (I’d love to ask Nick Hornby about it sometime)

Maybe, if people feel that their governments are failing them, they could consider taking things into their own hands. Take a veteran home with you. Change someone’s life. Just one. If each person bemoaning the money spent of the refugees at the supposed expense of the veterans were to step up and do something then the veteran problem might be alleviated in no time.

We can change the world without our governments. We can change just one person’s whole world. It’s too easy to point fingers from our couches about how the world should be run. 

Do something.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Take in a veteran.

Take in a refugee.

Be the reason that someone gets back on their feet.

Be the change.

 

Read more here: Keep Passing the Open Windows

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.