The Heartbreaking Unfairness of Poverty

Dear all I met Nyebho during rehearsals for a theatre play in Grahamstown (now Makhanda), in 2000. I was the live musician for the play. The director picked on Nyebho, or should I say, there was difficulty between them. What I sensed was that he possessed almost an uncontrollable urge to express. He could do …

The story of Mira’s birth, seen through my perspective

By Joke Debaere As my pregnancy was coming to an end, I often googled “water, breaks, signs”. Facing the Big Moment, Google was my refuge. Just like it had been the first couple of weeks. I had found a Dutch website that compared the growth of my fetus week by week with a piece of …

of heart and mind

by Joke Debaere As my presence on stage has been fairly silent the past 4 months and will be more silent than usual in the coming ones, I wanted to give you some news about the novel I am writing, which is the reason for the break I am taking from the stage. I can …

On the life and death of a mother

My mother passed away on Tuesday morning. Many of you have known her, or know about her. I mentioned her illness a while back. Yesterday, I wrote a message about the impact and significance her life and death has to me, but had a feeling I needed to write this intro to put things in …

Starbucks Tears

by Joke Debaere A couple of weeks ago, a waitress in a Starbucks asked me whether I wanted the milk foam on my cappuccino wet or dry. I had to ask her three times what she meant. In the beginning of our conversation, all she could do was repeating those very same words: “Whether you …

about cancer and death and life (follow up)

Perhaps I should start to accept that writing these newsletters have become a rather loaded event for me. I often, through the years, expressed the wish and even promised that HA!News would become more regular. Yet it refuses to. Especially after the last letter on “the Golden Voice” relating the “miracle” of a dramatic turn …

about cancer and death and life.

This is going to go deep. You need more than your left brain to read this. It is about cancer and death. And life. Up and down and up and down she went since she was diagnosed with cancer eight years ago (I knew her intimately for a brief while a decade ago). Up and …

Andrew Peters

Some years ago I wrote to you about Andrew, the stray guitarist of Grahamstown, notorious for his way to talk people out of their money. “But also notorious” for his character, his strong musicality and the colour he added to the town. Andrew was my first black friend. And for those of you who may …

images

fleeting a european tour the grahamstown festival dvd's of a bbc documentary on nazi germany too many to absorb, too many to sort expect for this one droning theme: humanity the alps majestic, cold, sharp, clean and beautiful we drove there, felt the snow, the heights, the picturesque hitler had his holidays in the alps, …

Nyebho

Nyebho is short, without looking like less. He is lean, extremely well toned, more so for someone who suffers hunger on a regular basis. Nyebho is an actor. And that is how I met him: on stage. He was acting in an Afrikaans play, struggling to bits with the language. I suffered watching him. Not …