Boutique.

I was not deterred by the squatter camp resemblance. The smells wisped through the air with a mixture of burnt corn, evaporating sweat, musty and freshly washed clothes and dust. I didn’t bat and eyelid at the screaming babies or the yelling vendors. The sun beat down on all of us, blazing above with all its glory. This was an open-air, rubbage-dump-like, second-hand-clothes trading-floor. It was about the size of a soccer field. There were hundreds of little “stalls”. Each one consisted of a piece of black plastic, that was piled high with clothing, laid over the rocky bare earth.

I would draw in a deep breath, smell the odor that only this place had, and find my sense of power. As many teenage girls do, I loved to shop. I was in control of things here; I controlled my money; I controlled what I chose and sometimes I even controlled the prices, I didn’t care how long it took, I would find my bargains. That look of determination would enter my features just as it does any teenage girl who loves to shop. But while they were gracing the aisles of luxurious malls and delving through racks of modern, designer clothes, I was swooping down towards the ground rummaging through mucky, “nearly-new” clothes. Everything was at my feet; I had to hunch down to sift through the pyramids of clothes. We fondly named this place “bend down boutique”. All Zimbabweans knew this was the name for it. The irony of it being a boutique was something to giggle at and the bending down speaks for itself.

Like many girls do I had a shopping buddy. Her name was Rosie. We were kindred spirits when it came to “BDB”. We were also best buddies, she was a year younger than me but we did everything together. We weren’t in the same classes in high school, but we made up for lost time at lunch time or on the weekends. Our budgets were limited but we thought it was worth the sacrifice. We saw it as many women see thrift-store shopping, time consuming but well worth it. My favourite moments were ones when we would find outrageous fashions from the nineties and hold them up to our bodies.

“ Look at me, Rosie. Puffed sleeves really suite me; don’t they?” I would say, holding up a giant pink and blue flowered blouse with oversized inflated shoulders. “Awwww, what about this awesome neon green and orange track suite?” Rosie would counter, with matching tops and bottoms. “It would really suite you, Amy.” I would chuckle at her antics and then keep rummaging through the clothes. Our “friends”, the vendors, would laugh with us and hold up items they thought we would like. Once in a while we did like them, but most of the time they would be tiny mini-skirts with mesh tanks tops, or something like that.

We shopped together because it was more fun that way. It may have been because our parents thought it was safer if we weren’t alone. We never felt threatened. The vendors new us by name. Sometimes they called me “Rosie” and Rosie, “Amy”, “White girls all look the same.” We didn’t mind. I found it just as hard to remember their names. Eventually I remembered some names, Amai Bertha or Sekuru Love-more. We usually remembered the names of the peddlers that had the “best” clothes. Some of them would even fold piles of shorts and shirts, and make it easier to look through the clothes.

All the clothes came from Europe and mostly America. Africans often don’t question where things come from, and we didn’t. In our young, teenage, shopper’s minds, we were simply excited to be able to afford “new” clothes. Once in awhile I would find something with a Goodwill tag on it. I am not sure how I knew what Goodwill was, but I did. I remember slightly flinching at the thought that these clothes may be meant for someone other than me. But it wouldn’t stop me. I never really wanted the Goodwill clothes anyway because they weren’t new. I considered it more of a feat to find something with a price tag on. Once in awhile I would find a shirt with a $20US. I had no idea what the exchange rate was but I knew that the 400 Zimbabwean dollars I would pay was well worth it. At that time $400Z would have been about 20 cents in the US.

Time-after-time I would receive a marriage proposal. Glistening white smiles would greet me and offer their hands in marriage. I would always smile and politely decline, knowing I would be back and they would ask me again, so the offer was always on the table. I never really thought they were serious. But I secretly wondered if I said yes what would happen. It’s very normal for white girls to be proposed to; it seems there is a hidden agreement that we won’t say yes and they know that. I think it was more of a joke to them, to see if they could really get us to say yes.

If it wasn’t a marriage proposal, it was clothing one, “Amy, I have good body-tops for you today, body-tops, body-tops, body-tops!” I never was sure what a body-top was, but I always smiled and thanked them. Somehow we all found pleasure and security in this distorted way of shopping. As many thrift shoppers do, Rosie and I went almost every Friday afternoon. Once in awhile we would beg either of our moms to take us after school, and sometimes we went on both Friday and Saturday. For us, it was an adventure we wanted to see if there were new things, or get great deals. We also didn’t have much else to do, so this was a form of entertainment.

Around the time of the 2004 Olympics, Zimbabwe had a swimmer, Kirsty Coventry; she won one gold, one silver, and one bronze. This was very unusual for Zimbabwe; she was one of the very few who has ever represented our country. Needless to say, her name was everywhere, even at BDB. For a few weeks whenever I would I go to bend-down I would have everyone yelling at me “Kirsty Coventry, Kirsty Coventry” and waving swimming costumes in the air. A sales pitch that was somewhat unusual, however, it must be noted that I was one of the few white girls who shopped at bend-down, if I was white it was assumed I was a swimmer. I was a swimmer, but second-hand swimming costumes weren’t something I wanted to purchase. I did purchase a yellow Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt. I had no idea what Abercrombie and Fitch was, but even though I didn’t, I still felt like I had “status” because of it. As women often do, they would ask, “Where did you get that?” and I would always reply, “bend-down”, knowing I had a one-of-a-kind item.

My Abercrombie T-shirt had had quite a journey. It was one of those that did have a Goodwill tag on it. How did it get from the original buyer to me? Year after year many Americans will purge their closets of unwanted clothing. Americans, on average, give away or throw out 68 pounds of clothing and other textiles each year, 2.5 billion pounds total, according to the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles trade association. This clothing is often donated to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. If the Salvation Army or Goodwill does not sell my T-shirt, what is its next destination? It is sold to what they call brokers. The brokers are the ones who divide the clothing into bundles depending on value and type of clothing. These brokers then sell the bundles to foreign countries such as, Japan, Chile, Tanzania.

So there I was sitting on the black plastic. I would fumble through shorts, t-shirts, jeans, socks, bathing suites (swimming costumes) and even underwear sometimes. My mom would come with us sometimes. I was often embarrassed with her shopping choices, Rosie and I knew the “good-stuff” we knew what to look for and what not to look for. My mom, however, had no problem shopping for underwear. We would tell her to quickly buy it and put it in her bag so that no one else would see her. Like any teenage girl I would say,

“Awww mom that’s disgusting, you can’t buy someone else’s underwear.” To which she would reply, “I will wash it, and its in perfectly good condition, so why not.”

There were so many in-between brokers for the clothing, that no one knew the clothes weren’t necessarily meant to be given out for free. It was legal for them to be sold and re-sold and re-sold. No one seemed to know that Zimbabwe banned the second-hand-clothes-trade in 1994; this was 2004. If Zimbabwe had banned the trade, then that meant the country could not buy straight from the brokers. To get the clothes they would have to be smuggled in through neighbouring countries. Zimbabwe may have banned the clothes trade, I speculate, for two reasons: one, if the government had no way of “sharing” the profits of this trade then they would want none of it. Or, they were afraid of constant foreign export and what that would mean for exposing all the other corruption within the country.

We always washed our clothes from BDB. In fact, most of the time we washed them two or possibly three times. Once I had this black t-shirt with a picture of a cartoon character on the front. I loved it. Cartoons were very “in” at that time as well as the fact that we couldn’t find them in Zimbabwean stores. The shirt had terrible pit-stains and the smell was abominable. I tried to get the stench out. I tried everything, hot water wash, cold water wash, spray and wash, spray deodorant on the shirt, another hot water wash; nothing worked. The shirt had to be thrown out. Sometimes our bargains didn’t quite work out.

Everyone was so friendly and willing to bargain that I never imagined any of them smuggling those clothes in from Mozambique. Police continued to increase security at border posts, so how were the clothes still coming in? The police were willing to take bribes; they were always willing to take bribes; the clothes still came in. Often if the clothes were confiscated, they would still corruptly be shared amongst police and end up in the markets again.

The customs officials at the border posts are also smuggling through these clothes. Customs officials are said to make less than US$200 a month but they are buying posh cars and houses because of smuggling. Police are said to earn less than custom officials and so they make more money by smuggling also. It has been said that smugglers prefer to work with police officers because they demand less than customs officials. The smuggling has become more and more serious over the years. Smugglers have made this their livelihood and will do anything to keep it that way. It has been reported that they have become “mafia-like” in their operations. They work at night and they have confidantes among security officials. They even have vehicles with cameras that are sent out as “spying missions” before they transport the clothes.

I never thought about the fact that buying things from this market restricted my business in normal stores. My family could never afford the clothes in the normal clothes stores, Meikles or Edgars. Most of the clothes in these stores were not made for skinny white girls; they were made for the more voluptuous figures.

However, in neighbouring countries like Uganda the national textile industries are not surviving. Used clothing is said to account for 81 percent of garment purchases. Different African countries are dealing with this issue differently; South Africa cut off imports in 1999 and Nigeria, Ethiopia and Eritrea have imposed certain bans on the clothing. Although the clothes were banned in Zimbabwe, they were still everywhere and still to this day are helping the decline of the local industries.

I had hoped that my little yellow Abercrombie t-shirt had made it to me through the correct means. Sadly, when things goes through so many loopholes to get to an end there is often at least one corrupt step in the path. Did it start with the re-sale of freely donated clothing in the U.S? Or end with the smuggling of this clothing from African Nation to African Nation? That is a hard line to define. While all that illegal trade was going on, Rosie and I simply shopped. We were oblivious to the means in which our favourite clothes came to us; most shoppers are.

Cheese Scones

Nana was the cooking queen in our family. Whenever we went to Nana’s our mouths would water at the thought of the foods she would make. She made ginger-nut biscuits that had no nuts but were full of gingery goodness, moist chocolate cake with raspberry jam in the middle and dollops of fresh, whipped, cream sprinkled with chocolate flakes on top. Milk tart, with its sugary crust dough; the sweet milky custard filling was covered with cinnamon and served cold with a good cup of tea. Cheese scones, however, oozing globs of cheese with thick slabs of butter on top, were a family favourite. A weekly gathering without these scones would have been unusual.

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces self-raising flour

Nana was always in the kitchen. Her kitchen was small and nothing special. It was bright and inviting; it felt yellow. The kitchen door was the one the cousins ran in and out of because the main front door was always locked. I was a middle child. I refused to associate myself with the younger ones, so I was always tailing along with my two older cousins and my older brother. The kitchen was the easiest place to get to the bathroom, the dining room, the bedrooms, and Nana’s bedroom. Nana was always busy in there working with the maid, Aggie. I was too obsessed with what my cousins were doing to pay attention to Nana. I remember seeing Nana—out of the corner of my eye—always sieve the flour. For a moment I would stop my hiding and seeking and watch her. Tap, tap; tap, the sieve would go on her strong hand. The flour would fall ever so delicately into the bowl, as if suspended in time, it was what I imagined snow to look like. Crack, and egg would fall into the middle of the flour and I would realise my impending doom if I did not hide, so on my way I would go.

• 2 teaspoons baking powder

Nana always got the measurements right. She never made flat cakes, or ones that rose terribly high and then caved in the middle, like I did. At the age of seven my family moved away from Nana and Poppa’s house. This was the age I began to cook on my own. I tried to do everything she did, but mine still never came out like hers. I was an extremely stubborn child. I insisted that recipes needed not to be followed. I knew that all recipes had flour, sugar, baking powder, oil and anything extra one wanted to make it something special. My “extra special” was green food colouring, or no sugar, or sometimes omitting baking powder. Mom began to ban me from cooking unless I agreed to follow a recipe, because everything I made was inedible. Nana knew her recipes by heart; she always had the recipe nearby but she hardly used it. Maybe that was where I got the idea that people didn’t need recipes. But, I have also carried this stubborn streak with me. Or maybe I finally inherited Nana’s cooking skills. Now, I follow a recipe slightly but I add things, as my heart desires. I smell, taste, and sometimes touch, to see what ingredients are needed; Nana did this too. I did learn, in my experimental six to eight years, that there are some things that cannot be “felt” into a recipe. Baking powder was one of these. Many times I omitted baking powder, as I wasn’t convinced it was truly necessary. My cakes would resemble a large, flat, spongy cookie if I left it out all together. If I added too much, which I did to a chocolate cake recipe, it would rise tremendously in the oven and then immediately sink in the middle when removed from the oven. Although Nana didn’t teach me this lesson directly I still think I learnt it from her. Some things can be “felt”; others cannot.

• 3 ounces butter or 3 ounces margarine

Nana had fresh, creamy butter to spread on the scones when they were finished. This may have been why I hardly ever made scones; I couldn’t eat them without butter. In our house we could only afford margarine. They sometimes say that genes skip generations, when it comes to food this is very true in our family. Mom never inherited Nana’s cooking abilities or her taste buds. Mom has an iron stomach and can eat anything after it’s expiration date. Mom also had to make do on a very limited budget and that is why we only ever had margarine. When I was a teen I would sometimes be able to coerce mom into buying butter, then I would make scones. We would all devour them as if we hadn’t eaten anything good in months, but without butter nothing is worth eating.

• 11 ounces strong grated cheese

Strong cheese was the key. Nana’s scones were always so cheesy; mine never seemed to be as cheesy. Was it the type of cheese? Once again we never bought the good quality stuff. Or was it simply that we never had a full 11 ounces of cheese to use? Although I only made these scones rarely I was always so frustrated that I didn’t have Nana’s magic touch. At fifteen I had given up the idea of green cakes, or baking powder-less recipes, so I was convinced my food should have tasted as good as Nanas. It might have been that I was fifteen and she was fifty, but I never would consider that fact. I never asked for advice, or for anyone to help me. My two younger sisters hating cooking with me; I always gave them dish duty. I would never really let anyone interfere with my art; this was how Nana was too. It wasn’t that she didn’t want company but that she was creating in the kitchen. It’s hard to interrupt someone, or try to “help” when they are crafting something dear to their heart.

• 6 fluid ounces milk

I think Nana always used measuring cups to put the liquids in. She may have had a small measuring jug too, but I think its measurements were worn off the side so it was easier to use measuring cups. I also used measuring cups. However, the one-cup had to be used with delicacy. In my “younger” less experienced days I had tried to melt a cup of butter on the stovetop in the plastic measuring cups. Luckily I caught the disaster before the cup was completely deformed. The bottom of it was full of little holes and the handle had a nice, perfectly rounded hole melted right out of it. I used that cup for years and years; I learnt the fine art of pouring liquids fast into the cup over my bowl and then decanting it. Probably not the most accurate measurement, but it seemed to work.

• 1 dash pepper

A dash means different things. To some it’s a pinch, to others, it’s half a teaspoon, and to some it’s a simple shake of the shaker. Nana had a sixth sense about the dash; she knew the perfect amount. There was never too much or too little. The dash was where freedom was allowed, where judgment calls had to be made and where sensitivity to little grandchildren played a part.

• 2 teaspoons mustard powder

Colmans’ Mustard is what we used. I am not sure if that is what Nana used. In fact, I am not sure most of the time what Nana used, or how she did things. She just made perfect meals, and baking; we gobbled it up. I never baked with Nana, not once when I was little. I gleaned things from her as she talked about the recipes while we ate them. I learnt to bake through eating. When our family would drive the four hours to go visit Nana, she would always pull out the stops with her best recipes. Without realising it, I would eat and analyse. I would then go home and try to recreate her creations. I never cooked with Nana back then, mostly because we grew up far away from her, but also because she liked to cook alone as I did.

I have baked with Nana once. We made cheese scones. It was Christmas 2009. I hadn’t seen Nana in 7 years. Nana and Poppa had moved to New Zealand and my family had moved to the States. My two sisters were there, my parents my husband and Poppa of course. We were at my parents’ house in the mountains in Colorado. My family had been bragging to Nans and Pops for years of how good a cook I was. I was terrified to finally cook around my idol. The recipe had to be adapted for high altitude—Nana needed help—so I shyly offered to lend a hand.

Directions:

Prep Time: 35 mins

Prep time took much longer than the 35 minutes that the recipe said it would take. We were in no rush and we also had constant disruptions. Nana slowly grated cheese. It wasn’t the “good-cheese” and so it was very crumbly. Dad kept coming in to “taste-test” the cheese, so Nana had to keep grating more, as I stood by trying to defend the cheese with a random swat here and there. Dad always has to “taste-test” things to make sure they aren’t poisonous for everyone else. I never bought that reasoning when I was little and I didn’t that Christmas either, but I indulged him as we had enough cheese. I wasn’t so generous when cheese was once-upon-a-time scarce. I had to convert the ounces to cups—I am mathematically challenged and so that took a while. Mom and Dad have a conversion chart taped to the pantry door because this a problem our family often runs into. I couldn’t figure it out on the chart, I asked Poppa to double check, as well as Dad. They stood there quizzically studying the chart and got nowhere. So, to the computer I went; Google had a fast answer: 11 ounces was 1.375 cups, approximately one and a third cups. We also needed Google for high-altitude methods; for 8000 feet we needed to add three to four tablespoons of water for each cup of liquid, and we needed to decrease the baking powder by a quarter of a teaspoon. Poppa came in and needed a whole scientific reason behind this method. He wanted to know exactly why more water needed to be added, he was convinced that one would need less water for high altitudes. I tried to come up with one, but I am also far from a scientist. I Googled once again and gave him the reasoning. According to thecookinginn.com,

First at higher elevations, water boils at a lower temperature, thus requiring you to cook longer once you hit boiling (and the time it takes you to prepare your recipe). For example, the water's not as hot in Denver as it is in Boston, even boiling. This is the reason, when cooking in the mountains, your coffee and hot chocolate can be merely tepid, even though the water was boiling. Second baked goods tend to rise faster, requiring a change in the proportion of ingredients used in leavened foods (such as breads and cakes). Sometimes, you may need to adjust the baking temperature in your oven as well!

This was not sufficient enough for Poppa, and I didn’t have the time to keep Googling so we left it at that and he went on to question my other siblings about altitude and its affects on cooking. We also had to figure out the American equivalent to self-raising flour, for each cup of flour we needed to add half a teaspoon of baking powder and half a teaspoon of salt. Needless to say, after figuring all this out the preparation time took closer to and hour and a half rather than 35 minutes.

Total Time: 50 mins

All the mathematics threw both Nana and I off. We are both free-spirits in the kitchen and having to work everything out proved to be rather exhausting. We took a break. Nana couldn’t stand for very long and so we sat in the lounge with a cup of tea and let the ingredients rest for a while. I enjoyed this moment thoroughly. I got to just be with Nana; our main goal was cooking, but I got to glean from her, listen to her and share my life with her. It was something my childhood lacked, but we made up for lost time quickly, even in just this simple recipe.

1. Sieve the flour and dry ingredients.

When Nana’s energy was renewed we hit the kitchen again. I watched her for the first time—since that one glance—sieve the flour. I have always sieved my flour. Many times to make sure there weren’t little maggots in it. I watched Nana tap the sieve ever so gently on her hand; the dusting flittered down into the bowl. I knew the recipe would turn out perfect because Nana had sieved the flour.

2. Mix in the butter or margarine.

Nana gave me a special gift that Christmas. She went to Wal-Mart and picked out the best whisk she could—I already owned a whisk, but I didn’t tell her that—she told me that anything could be done with a whisk. Nana never used a hand beater and she had never heard of a Kitchen-Aid. She would just hold the bowl tightly in one hand and go to town with the other one. She became wonder woman with that whisk, beating the life out of the hard sticks of butter, eggs, and cookie dough. She could whip anything into submission with a whisk.

3. Add grated cheese, mix well then add the milk in slowly.

Nana added the cheese, what was left of it after my Dad had snuck in and out of the kitchen, and I added the milk. She of course, whisked it altogether.

4. Mix into a dough, pat with hand then cut into shapes. (I like to add cheese to the top of the scone too).

Nana always used her hands—for everything. I have the same disease. So we showered the counter with flour and pounded the dough with our fists. (The other day I finally found the perfect scone cutters, just like Nana had when I was a child). Nana had some cutters years ago; they were almost a flower shaped with lots of little curvy edges. They were the perfect size, about three inches wide and one inch tall. When we baked the scones at Christmas we didn’t have the cutters. So we moulded each doughy mess into the best circular shape we could. This took a while as we had made a double batch to satisfy the masses.

5. Bake in the oven at 230 degrees C until risen with lightly golden tops.

230 degrees was 440 F. This seemed a strange temperature so we rounded up to 450. Just because the scones were in the oven, it didn’t mean the hard work was over. Nana wasn’t used to Mom’s oven so she checked them every two to three minutes. She hardly ever opened the oven, because she said that let all the heat out. She had the oven light on and would get up every now and then to check. This is a gift I did not inherit from Nana. Once they are in the oven, I often forget about them; a timer is my best friend. However, even though there was no time limit on the scones we both knew when they were done. It was as if an imaginary device went off in both our heads and we simply knew. Golden brown and risen perfectly, we took our creation out of the oven. Nana hardly let them cool before taking each one off of the cookie sheet with her bare hands and placing it on the cooling rack. I helped her, but they were hot.

We let them cool just a little before we decorated pretty plates with them. We both had a plate with piping hot scones on them and we served them with globs of butter and a little extra cheese on top. We watched the family devour Nana’s famous cheese scones with joy, something deeply satisfied both of us, good food had been served and enjoyed.

I have always baked with Nana in my heart and my head. Everything I have cooked has had her stamp on it. Somehow, I learnt things from her without ever cooking with her. I will treasure the moment I did bake with Nana. Our two cooking worlds came together; we baked as if we had always baked together, and in a sense we had.

Drowning Daffodils

Spring has decided to hold out on me this year. It is as if I am playing hide-and-go-seek with Spring. It has been hiding and I have been seeking. I find myself quite mad at Spring, it likes to play these games. Once in awhile it will come out of its hiding place, giggle at me, and then go back into hiding. This hiding has been particularly cruel it is as if I am a five year old and Spring is ten. It has the best hiding spots, and I simply cannot seem to find it. It has toyed with me by sending some clues here and there, little Daffodils that have come with their smiling yellow faces to great me. I have smiled back and have found myself thinking I must be close to finding Spring. I follow the path of Daffodils knowing I must be close. But then spring sends more tricks, it sends torrents of rain. My little Daffodils hold out, trying to help me find Spring. April is upon me, another clue. but then Spring hides behind winter and sends the worst kind of joke, snow. My heart drops, as the Daffodils can no longer stand the games. They too stop look for spring, they close their dying yellow petals and hide from the weather. All I can think of is, il fait mauvais, it is simply terrible outside. While I know Spring is just around the corner, I have become to weary of looking. I must simply pull on my wool coat and refuse to plays games with it. When it is ready it will come, it will find me, I will not find it.

Flown high from the castle of my heart.

In the three years I have been at Moody my flag, the Zimbabean flag, has flown three times. Each time I have found myself spiraling down the deep, dark tunnel of missing.

My heart, I can only describe, feels suspended from my body. It does not belong to this land I now call home. I lives apart from me. Yet, I have to get it back. So daily I pull on it's strings begging it to belong to me and this land. Many-a-time it obeys. It allows me to forget and love where I am. But then suddenly, on its own accord it will disapear on me. I search for it, I look high and low. It has gone to a place i cannot go to. One i have longed to return to but never have. One that is ingrained in my memories, and past. Is it part of my future? I do not know. My heart tells me it is, that it belongs to me as I belong to it. But my life must be lived in seperation from it.

The flag is flying today. As it waves back and forth in the spring air. I allow my heart to leap 5 years into the past. I revell in past events and moments. My eyes drip here and there and I remember.

I must keep moving though, i cannot stand and stare at the flag forever. There is a life to be lived here and now. I can only hope that my heart allows me to live in two worlds; that it is gracious to me and helps me to give to both then and now. But for today, it is not so gracious i stare into my past and long for a taste of days gone by.

Life loves.

I am having a terrible tangled of a time trying to figure out what's next. So far my life has not been one smooth road. The lord has taken me on many a path that i never dreamt would come my way. I have so many passions and loves. At the moment two are very prevalent, photography and people. I am not sure what this means, or where the Lord is directing me. Some days i want to throw everything out the window and take pictures forever, then others i see the Lords hand guiding me to graduate school, to study counseling. I know in the end it will all work out, that He will lead me where i should go. But i just don't know how to figure out these loves of my life and how they fit into what i should do with my life. I'm glad He knows, even if i don't.

Soundtracks to our lives.

I was on the train the other day, listening to my new favourite movie soundtrack. This soundtrack is peaceful, quiet and sometimes slightly daunting. It helps me think and process all that is going on around me. To be honest it makes things come alive; makes things jump out at me. It may make me a little more dramatic than i usually am, and may also make me feel like i am living my own move, but i like it. It takes me at least an hour to do my regular travels on saturday, so i usually play the soundtrack twice. This time the music bothered me slightly. Often the songs don't end because they are designed for a movie. When you are watching the movie you don't notice that the songs don't end, but when you are simply listening you do. Then my mind wandered to this movie that the music comes from and i realised i don't like the ending to the movie. It is sad and depressing; not the usual happy-go-lucky ending we like.

Why is this all important. Well, as the music continued to lull me on the train, my mind continued to wander. We as humans don't like things that don't complete themselves. We like things to come full circle, a beginning and and ending. It makes us feel stable and balanced. Most of the time, we don't like movies with sad, abrupt, or even strange endings. Things must end in a somewhat level ground. Why do we do this? Our lives are never perfect, they often don't end in a complete perfect circle. Things are messy, painful, strange and unclear.

I couldn't help but think that it is because we were not originally designed for this imperfect world. Often people are annoyed at romantic comedies because they are too "perfect", yet we all long for that "perfect" life. Why? Because we were supposed to have that "perfect" life. We were meant to live in a stunning garden, eat fruit all day, love our spouses with an unconditional love and never be ashamed of our bodies. We were meant to walk in perfect union with our maker and have a relationship with Him that never fails.

One day, in heaven, we will have this perfection. I think it is natural to long for it in this world; for our songs to have a great start and a wonderful ending. We may not always get it in this life-time. But i for one, am grateful that one day my circle will come to a full complete; perfect end.

Colourful promises.

So Today i saw my first double rainbow. I must say it was somewhat of a supernatural feeling. I've seen my fair share of rainbows, but not like this, it was the kind that takes your breathe away. Where you know the God is whispering down His promises. I have been having a rough time lately, knowing i am going into another time of great transition. My thoughts have been muddled, my heart jumbled and my spirit low. Living a normal day, i happened to glance outside and see this beautiful sight. My heart lifted in an instant, knowing that the God i trust makes promises He keeps. He is constant, He is loving and He will never leave me. This i know. I was so encouraged to be reminded of this. This God i serve is one who makes covenants with His people, these oaths are stronger than anything man can imagine. Looking at that rainbow, i can only imagine what Noah felt, a promise that God would never flood the earth like that again. A promise that they were safe and protected, a promise that has lived to this day and will for an eternity longer. I am so thankful i serve a God like that!