Through My Eyes

I need to exercise deep caution when penning my thoughts these days. My naïve outlook on life has shifted and most of the time I see the world the way it is, contaminated, captured and toxic.

Yes there are beautiful glimmers of true beauty and wonderment that exist but they have hidden themselves in spaces that are hard to reach, they too are hiding from the darkness and extinction and it is getting harder and harder to find them.

The heartbreak of loss is real.The notion that nothing will ever be as it was, is overwhelming. The world has changed so rapidly and has left us all to fend for ourselves. And the uncertainty is too great to bear.

In the last couple of weeks, we have been experiencing some serious anomalies in the sky. If it?s not the noisy and frightening thunder of the military jets that have been flying over our heads, its weird and mesmerising fairy lights that have graced our night sky.

I can?t help but feel that something sinister is brewing. It?s that feeling of unease and trepidation that is building up in me and I have difficulty regulating my breath: the Daily Maverick?s headline today; ?The scale of South Africa?s murder problem is truly horrific ? more than three times more die per 100,000 in this country than in African nations such as Nigeria, Congo and Ethiopia, all of these are countries fighting low-intensity wars.?

?The Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, announced that in the last three months of last year no fewer than 7,555 people were murdered, 3,144 of them by firearms. To put this in perspective, some 7,199 civilians are believed to have died during the first year of Russia?s invasion of Ukraine, a conventional, high-intensity conflict involving indiscriminate missile attacks on blocks of flats and the site of gruesome executions, which has captured global media attention.?

We are currently back at stage 6 load shedding, our inverter is down and the thunderous plumes of the diesel generator hums to the rhythm of someone?s far away hysterics. Living so deep in the valley, we often hear people?s suffering here as it rolls down the open space into the soft murmur of the ocean.

The post traumatic stress caused by lockdown mandates and lies have only now started to surface. The deaths caused by depression, job losses and the inability to contribute to the general welfare of our loved ones is beyond comprehension ? seven attempted suicides recorded in just one week in Tongaat, what is that about?

Yes, there is hope, a slight glimmer of hope but it is getting harder and harder to find it. Keeping our faith is profoundly important. Keeping our loved ones near is essential and taking care of those that we can help, is paramount.Communities have become such an essential part of our positive mental health, as families struggle to cope with the basic life chores.

Communities and the power of humanity, is the only way we can continue to function as we realise that our government can no longer be trusted and even our doctors and healthcare practitioners can no longer be believed after the Covid-19 shenanigans.

I write this with a heavy heart, as I try to piece together my own future. The words of an Auschwitz survivor reverberate in my brain, ?Auschwitz did not fall suddenly from the skies, it was all tiny steps approaching until what happened here behind me did happen,? said Holocaust survivor Marian Turski, during the main commemoration ceremony in front of the so-called ?Gate of Death? of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Oswiecim, Poland (the place of my birth). ?Do not be indifferent when any power or government infringes on extant social rights,? said Turksi. ?Otherwise you won?t even notice when you and your heirs suddenly see an Auschwitz falling down from the sky.?

Let us unite as a community and support one another in these truly uncertain times.