Tag Archives: Hunger

Day 275

One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good – he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad – he and the world is destroyed. – Maimonides

It’s 7: 29 PM on day 275 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself a banana for breakfast, make sandwiches for Virginia’s Sandwich Run – I decided to make the sandwiches during the week because I never know if our housekeeper will show up on Saturdays anyway I would like to take this opportunity to thank my sister for helping out today … I love you sweetheart you are truly a masterpiece in the making 🙂 – tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck 🙁 – watch TV, feed myself rice and curry for lunch, watch some more TV feed myself a banana for dinner and brush my teeth once more.

A few months ago I promised myself that I would donate 25% of my earning to charity when I started earning some money and although I can hear my father in the back of my head saying are you nuts you can’t give away 25% of your money this is only your second paycheck I will stay true to the promise I made to myself because at the end of the day if all we do is take and take and take some more there will come a day when the world will have nothing left to give. Are you tipping the scale to the good by giving to the world more than you take?

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://twitter.com/Nisha360

If you’ve given to my cause or you can’t give now, please help me by sharing my cause with others. You can tweet about it like my friend Stan Faryna. This is the tweet he uses: @Nisha360 is a brave, smart young woman trying to make a better world for us all. Please help her do an amazing thing. http://bit.ly/hC7vOu

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!

Day 270

Day 268

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Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think. – Horace

It’s 8: 50 PM on day 268 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself a chicken nugget sandwich for breakfast, create and publish Virginia’s Sandwich Run only stopping to feed myself rice and curry for lunch – I spent three whole hours trying to get the page title in the center but in the end I decided that it didn’t matter where my title was as long as my message was clear 🙂 – watch TV, help my brother with his homework – to Laura (@laurajteacheroz) I totally have a new respect for what you do I only had to do it for an hour and I felt like pulling my hair out LOL 🙂 – feed myself Puri and chicken curry for dinner, brush my teeth once more and tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – still no luck 🙁

Yesterday I heard the story of eighty-two-year-old twins, Helen and Ellen, who started The Love Kitchen – a non-profit organization dedicated to providing meals, clothing and emergency food packages to the homeless, homebound and unemployed people of Knoxville, USA – twenty years ago and that has inspired me to stop procrastinating and launch Virginia’s Sandwich Run – a page on this blog dedicated to our late housekeeper, Virginia, which aims to raise enough money to make 48 sandwiches a week for the people in our current housekeeper’s neighborhood – today regardless of the fact that I don’t have enough time to do so. Do you postpone making your dreams come true because you don’t have all your ducks in a row?

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://twitter.com/Nisha360

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!

Day 249

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I am unique in that I see the best in everybody – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 7: 13 PM on day 249 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself a polony sandwich for breakfast, make sandwiches for the people in our housekeeper’s neighbourhood (if you have no idea what I am talking about refer to ‘Day 184’) – we made 3 loaves worth of sandwiches and sent her home with 2 extras loaves we didn’t have time to make sandwiches out of all 5 loaves but it’s really ok life’s too short to sweat over the small stuff 🙂 – feed myself a banana for lunch, finish preparing my Kid of the Week feature for Sunday, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign –no luck – go to physiotherapy – I was so stiff I didn’t exercise for three weeks I vow to exercise every day for the rest of my life I know I’ve said that before but this time it’s for real 🙂 – watch TV and feed myself rice and curry for dinner.

Today I woke up and asked my mother if she could buy five loaves of bread so that I could make sandwiches for the people in my housekeeper’s community – I usually did it on Saturday but Nandipha – our housekeeper – told me she wouldn’t be coming to work on Saturday because she had to attend her cousin’s funeral – and the first words out of my mother’s mouth were she probably eats them followed by my sister who said how do you know she doesn’t sell them and in that moment I remember feeling so offended on Nandipha’s behalf because here she was at twenty-one years of age coming to work and helping me in spite of the fact that her one-year-old son had died just a few weeks ago and all my mother could say was she probably eats them. Do you choose to see the worst in people at every opportunity?

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://www.twitter.com/nisha360

if you’ve given to my cause or you can’t give now, please help me by sharing my cause with others. You can tweet about it like my friend Stan Faryna. This is the tweet he uses: @Nisha360 is a brave, smart young woman trying to make a better world for us all. Please help her do an amazing thing. http://bit.ly/hC7vOu

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!

Day 243

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If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can’t buy. – Author Unknown

It’s 8: 56 PM on day 243 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to go open a bank account – my father was in such a rush that I didn’t even have time to brush my teeth but when we got to FNB the staff were so pleasant that it almost made the stress of getting there worth it the woman who helped us didn’t even mind that my signature was far from perfect so to the staff at FNB in Vincent Park, East London I say THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE EXEMPLARY SERVICE… YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME 🙂 – make sandwiches for the people in our housekeeper’s neighbourhood (if you have no idea what I am talking about refer to ‘Day 184’) – after weeks of not making sandwiches due to the fact that our housekeeper’s son had died we were back making sandwiches once again although I didn’t do much of anything except take slices of bread out of the packet and hand it to her – she was running late and both of us decided that it would be quicker if she made the sandwiches but I didn’t mind because I was doing something 🙂 – feed myself Chapati – an unleavened flatbread – and Kadala Curry – made of brown chickpeas – for lunch, start to prepare my Kid of the Week feature for tomorrow, feed myself Chapati – an unleavened flatbread – and Kadala Curry – made of brown chickpeas – for dinner, brush my teeth, watch TV and continue to prepare my Kid of the Week feature for tomorrow.

This morning I woke up thirty minutes before my brother and just watched him sleep for the longest while thinking about the fact that Lauren – Brennan’s sister – would never again get to watch her brother sleep and feeling grateful that my brother was healthy and alive because although I often feel like killing my brother I live with the knowledge that I would kill for him in the blink of an eye. Are you the richest poor person around or the poorest rich person around?

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://www.twitter.com/nisha360

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!

Day 232

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Feeling guilty that you have things that other people don’t have won’t change anything– that’s what I learned today

It’s 8: 08 PM on day 232 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself a polony sandwich for breakfast, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign for a few hours – no luck – continued writing my novel – I started last year and have every moment of it so far 🙂 – feed myself rice and curry for lunch, watch TV and feed myself Batura – deep fried bread – for dinner.

Today I was feeling a little hungry so I asked my mom to go get me something from the kitchen and as I was eating I felt bad because I knew that not everybody was that lucky which is why I have decided to create Virginia’s Sandwich Run – an upcoming page on this blog dedicated to our late housekeeper, Virginia, which aims to raise enough money to make 48 sandwiches a week for the people in our current housekeeper’s neighbourhood. Do you feel guilty about inequality but fail to do anything about it?

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://www.twitter.com/nisha360

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!

Day 217

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Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need. – Khalil Gibran

It’s 9: 59 PM on day 217 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself a bread and jam sandwich for breakfast, watch TV, listen to music – I love Keith Urban’s songs because truly we all live in this world and all of us can relate to love, hate, pain and heartbreak 🙂 – feed myself rice and curry for lunch, watch some more TV, continue reading Boundary Lines – the second book in Engaging The Enemy by Nora Roberts, feed myself noodles and vegetable curry for dinner, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign and read some more.

This morning as soon as our housekeeper came into work I was like an excited toddler I asked were the sandwiches enough to feed everybody (if you have no idea what I’m talking about refer to ‘Day 215’) and she replied smiling at my enthusiasm yes, they were and they said to tell you thank you and I just stared at her not knowing how to respond to gratitude they told me to take a photo of you because they want to see what you look like she finished as she went off to do house work and in that moment the frustration I felt on Saturday while making the sandwiches seemed insignificant compared to the joy I felt knowing that those sandwiches meant so much to them. Are you generous in spirit?

Day 215

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You cannot be your mother’s confidant – that’s what I learned today 🙁

It’s 9: 36 PM on day 215 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself a bread and jam sandwich for breakfast, , make sandwiches for the people in our housekeeper’s neighborhood (if you have no idea what I am talking about refer to ‘Day 184’) – it was a nightmare we had to make 6 loafs because 3 wasn’t enough I ended up crying out of frustration which was embarrassing to say the least hopefully it won’t be like this next week:) – tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign for a few hours – no luck today – feed myself rice and curry for lunch, watch TV and watch She’s Out Of My League starring Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve, T.J. Miller on DVD – it was about learning to believe that you deserve the best in life and although the storyline was really sweet the raunchiness of it all ruined the movie.

Sitting at the dining table making sandwiches my mom looked at me and said your dad left me in the rain and told me to go into the hospital with someone else – they were meant to go visit this kid who had been in a scooter accident together – he looked at me and said who would go anywhere with you my mother continued wiping her tears with the inside of her palm and in that moment I suppressed the urge to wring my father’s neck and attempted to soothe my mother but after an hour of hearing her whine I was reaching the end of my rope and blurted out either get a divorce or shut up not because I liked or even loved my father but because I didn’t have the strength to carry my pain as well as hers. Do you burden your children with your problems?

Day 208

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It doesn’t matter how old you get what you parents say will always hurt – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 9: 55 PM on day 208 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself bun and baked beans for breakfast, make sandwiches for people in my housekeeper’s community (if you have no idea what I’m talking about refer to ‘Day 184’ ) – everything went off without a hitch I guess it’s true what they say there’s a first time for everything LOL 🙂 – tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign for a few hours – no luck – feed myself rice and curry for lunch, listen to music, watch TV, feed myself Chapati – an unleavened flatbread – and tomato chutney for dinner and tweet about my campaign some more – still no luck.

Today my mom and I got into an argument and although I don’t remember what it was about I will never forget feeling like a ten-year-old in a twenty-year-olds body when she said all you have to do is lie around. Do you inadvertently hurt your children with your tongue?

Day 202

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You should do what you know is right regardless of what anybody else says – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 3: 10 PM on day 202 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself a banana for breakfast, survive a five hour road trip back to my hometown of Lusikisiki (see picture of our journey below) and eat rice and curry for lunch – I let my mother feed me just this once because I didn’t want to make a mess in my aunt’s living room.

Today when I was in the car on our road trip a friend of mine send me a text via my sister’s cell phone and my father overheard me saying to my sister tell her I got the bread and he asked what’s this about bread so I reluctantly told him that my friend and I were approaching bakeries to see if they’d be willing to donate bread to enable me to make more sandwiches for my housekeeper’s community (if you have no idea what I’m talking about refer to ‘Day 184’) and all he could think to say was I will buy the bread otherwise people will think we are eating the donated bread and in that moment I came to a maddening realization that all my father cared about was his reputation. Are you guided by other people’s opinions or your own intuition?

My 16-year old sister - Neethu - and 10-year-old brother - Kevin - in the backseat of our car

The security area of Nelson Mandela's house in Qunu - his hometown