Category: Breakroom
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That Kind of a Woman
I asked my mother if she ever thought she’d find herself sitting naked on a toilet in Africa with a shaved head and a tattoo on her hip. She thought about it. No, she hadn’t, she said. She and Dad have come to visit us and their grandson for three months. Her head was not…
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Getting Dissed by a Dolphin
Growing up, there were two kinds of kids in the world: kids who had been to Disneyland and kids who hadn’t. If you were in the first group, we poor kids naturally hated your guts. My own family’s version of a vacation was a 13-hour non-stop drive to Salt Lake City to visit relatives…
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The Sangoma
The clapping of their feet on the pavement reached a crescendo as they rushed into the alley where Prince hid. They looked wildly to the right and left. They wailed from deep in their gravel throats, the beads clacking in their hair, on their necks, on their arms. Prince crouched in the weeds, knowing that…
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Nannies: Paranoia
Every night before she leaves to go home, our nanny makes a joke about taking Spencer home with her. I don’t think these jokes are very funny. Call me paranoid, but with each new joke I get a little more uneasy. It’s not in A’idah’s favor that she wears these thick-rimmed bifocals that make her…
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Watching His Children Mourn Him
The night Nelson Mandela died, a violent wind blew dark clouds across the yellow sky in Cape Town. The air here is never completely still; it brushes against your face with the weight of the sea every time you step outside. Once every few weeks it’s so windy that the flower sellers pack up early,…
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An art collage that measures public sentiment
Aleta Michaletos was interviewed on the Africa News Network last night about her collages and their unforeseen connection with Nelson Mandela. Michaletos began making the collages in Pretoria, SA in 1989. Mandela was still in prison, and politics were tenuous. Clashes between supporters of the ANC and the National Party erupted in anonymous bombings throughout…
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Keeping Warm in a Smallpox Blanket
Don’t bother wasting education on people (Africans, in this case) who don’t need it because they are meant to serve. That’s what a minister of education meant when he said, “Education ‘must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life,’” as quoted in Mandela’s autobiography. We all call bullshit, his argument is…
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Nannies
Rich people have nannies. I’m not rich. I became rich when A’idah told me that she charged $20 per day to care for my infant son, clean my house, and cook me dinner. When I was six years old, a cashier at the grocery store paused before taking the food stamps from my mother’s hand.…