Tag Archives: Human rights

Day 431

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. – Unknown

It’s 6: 45 PM on day 431 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself All-Bran Flakes with banana for breakfast, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck – prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, feed myself rice and curry for lunch and tweet about my campaign some more– still no luck.

Today I was doing something – I forgot what – and it suddenly occurred to me how many people help me every week so from this week onwards every Friday – except for when I’m in India (8 December-2 January) during which time I will not be active on this blog (Jenelle Ramsami – a model who just happens to be hearing impaired – will be sharing her experiences on a ‘Guest Posts’ page that I will create) – I am going to list everyone who’s helped me – both in my real and online life – from one Friday to the next (if you’ve helped me in any way on any given week and I don’t to mention you please know that it is not intentional) . Take a look:

Gratitude Weekly November 18, 2011

Thank you God for always being here for me.
Thank you mommy for helping me do things I have not yet learned how to do.
Thank you daddy for paying for everything I need.
Thank you Neethu –my sister – for kicking me in the butt when I feel sorry for myself.
Thank you Kevin –my brother – for carrying the laptop from the bedroom to the dining room every morning so that I can use it.
Thank you Amanda – our housekeeper – for helping me when mommy and daddy are at work.
Thank you Christian Hollingsworth, Chrissy Pappas, Kimber Beach and Michael Carr for their donations to my campaign.
Thank you Stan Faryna, Kurtiss Locker, Nancy Scott, Ramon Thomas and Georgina Pazzi for retweeting about my campaign.
Thank you Patricia Singleton, Justina Valentine, Roy Pearson, Bonnie, RockstarsTribe, Tim, Laura, Polished Girlz, Pali Raj, Brian Elliot, Colette Caddle, Amy Hale, Start Your Novel, Khanh and Peter Tran, Stan Faryna and Susan Mazza for tweeting/retweeting links to my blog posts.

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 430

Leave a reply

You can’t blame someone for what they learned growing up – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 5: 43 PM on day 430 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, drink coffee by myself, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck – prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, feed myself rice and curry for lunch and tweet some more about my campaign – still no luck.

Two days ago I read Arun Shourie on his tale of cerebral palsy and enduring love written by Amrit Dhillon – an article about a father’s unconditional love for his son and the struggles he and his family faced raising a child who has Cerebral Palsy in India (a special thanks to Andi over at Bringing the Sunshine for including a link to this article in Sun-Beams: November 13, 2011 where I found it) – and in the article Arun Shourie – the dad – talked about how parents of special needs children in India basically hid their children from the outside world and refused to talk about them when I read that I realized that my father being ashamed of me had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the country he grew up in suffice to say I feel a whole lot better about myself now than I did two days ago – all this time I thought my dad treated me horribly because of something I did when in reality he was just treating me the way people treated disabled people in India when he was growing up. Do you still believe what you learned growing up even though you know in your head that it’s complete nonsense?

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 429

Leave a reply

Sometimes love is saying no – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 7: 08 PM on day 429 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself bread and scrambled eggs for breakfast, prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck – feed myself rice and curry for lunch, listen to music – Exit Wounds by The Script (see lyric video below) – watch TV, feed myself Chapati and vegetable curry for dinner and brush my teeth once more.

Yesterday I read Dinnertime on Love That Max where Ellen wrote about among other things how Dave – her husband – usually caved into feeding Max – their son – at dinnertime – Max has Cerebral Palsy and most people who have Cerebral Palsy have a hard time doing the simplest of things – and although I knew that Dave was only doing what he was doing out of love there was so much I wished I could tell him so I’m taking the opportunity to do that now Dave please refuse to help Max do things you know he can do himself he will thank you for it later when he’s living independently and has his own job (I wish my parents had done that with me growing up may be then I wouldn’t need to practicing how to eat with a fork at the age of twenty). Do you things for your children because you want to feel good in the moment?

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 428

Leave a reply

Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children.
— Oliver Wendell

It’s 7: 06 PM on day 428 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck today but Michael (@USMMariner) made a donation of $50 yesterday (it’s the second time he’s donated) – thanks Michael 🙂 – prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, listen to music, feed myself rice and curry for lunch, watch TV, feed myself spaghetti with sauce for dinner– I did it with a fork made a bit of a mess but nonetheless I am proud of myself 🙂 – and brush my teeth once more.

Yesterday my siblings and I were discussing sleeping arrangements – my sister moved to my brother’s room for the duration of her exams and now wanted to sleep there even after her exams were over – my sister said to my brother who wanted his room back after her exams you can move back in two years after I’m gone to which he said then I’ll have to move back here – the room I slept in (my mother has this crazy idea that someone always has to sleep in the same room with me how old does think I am five I may not to be able to do much physically but I am an adult) – which is when I interjected and asked my brother what makes you think I’ll still be here he replied you’ll be here until I leave and although I was taken aback by his brutal honest I REALLY appreciated it because the rest of my family just dance around the subject of my future they’ve made no secret of the fact that they expect nothing of me – my parents frequently say our money is your money because they don’t believe I will be able to provide for myself and be a contributing member of society (they are going to be VERY surprised). Have the children in your life said things that you wouldn’t dare say?

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 427

Leave a reply

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

– Kahlil Gibran

It’s 7: 01 PM on day 427 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself All-Bran Flakes for breakfast, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck I tweeted with both hands so I got do a good deed and practice doing something I needed to do at the same time 🙂 – prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, feed myself rice and curry for lunch, tweet about my campaign some more–still no luck– and brush my teeth once more.

Yesterday I was reading blogs written by parents of kids with special needs and in every one of them there was a paragraph in which the parents talked about letting go of the dream – the life they imagined for their children – which is where I think my parents got stuck I have moved on and made the best of a bad situation while they are still mourning the loss of a dream but here’s the thing regardless of the fact that I am not living my parents’ dream I am turning out alright I guess what I am trying to say is that you should let go of the dreams you have for your children because God has a bigger plan. Are you raising your children to be who you could have been or who they were meant to be?

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 426

Leave a reply

All good things must come to an end. – English proverb

It’s 7: 10 PM on day 426 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, prepare and publish my Kid of the Week feature, prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, feed myself a chicken nugget sandwich for breakfast, work on this blog, feed myself chicken biryani for lunch, read the latest posts on Bird on the Street, Bringing the Sunshine and Chasing Rainbows, feed myself yoghurt for dinner, brush my teeth once more and tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – Anonymous made a donation of $21.54 this morning –thanks Anonymous I know who are but I won’t mention your name since you put it down as Anonymous on the website.

A few days ago I found out that Westlife – my favorite boy band of all time – were breaking up and in honour of of their fifteen years together I am going to share with you some of my favorite Westlife songs not only because it is an end of an era of innocent music –not one Westlife song is explicitly sexual– but also because I’m grateful to them for creating the soundtrack of my life. Take a look:

Best of Westlife 1998-2009

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 425

Leave a reply

Always follow your first instinct – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 7: 26 PM on day 425 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself pancakes with coconut and sugar for breakfast, drink coffee by myself, prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – Chrissy (@ChrissyPappas) made another donation but this time it amounted to $111.11 in celebration of the 1’s (thanks Chrissy ) if anybody out there can top that I will put up a banner of their website and link to it (unless the website contains porn or violence) on my Sponsors of my Campaign page – help my brother study for his exam –did you know they now teach marketing in fifth grade as part of Economic Management Science (EMS) a lot has changed since my fifth grade days LOL :)– feed myself a chicken nugget sandwich for lunch, work on this blog, feed myself spaghetti with sauce for dinner and brush my teeth once more.

Yesterday I received a message from Kurtiss (@kurtissl) which read in part thanks Nisha, this is a great concept, I won’t sign up b/c I have no idea how to accomplish something like this. – I had asked him if he would be willing to participate in Make A Difference Before Christmas – after I read that I realized that I should have given people ideas on how they could make a difference when I first wrote the post about Make A Difference Before Christmas (I thought about doing it but then I second guessed myself and decided against it) so to remedy that I have compiled a list of things you can do both with and without money to make a difference. Take a look:

10 Ways You Can Make a Difference Without Breaking the Bank

1. Click to give – there are websites on the World Wide Web (the one’s I visit daily are Bhookh and The Hunger Site) where all you have to do is log on and click (sponsors pay for your click).

2. Instead of “googling” when searching – use Good Search and these guys will make a donation to Spreading Joy. (Use the link above that will take you there)

3. Thank a Police Officer today (hopefully NOT while you are getting a ticket!)

4. Hold a yard sale and donate half of the proceeds

5. Baby sit for a friend/neighbor for free.

6. Serve a meal at a homeless shelter or women’s shelter

7. Mentor someone – have you started your own business? Are you an expert in a certain field? Share that talent!

8. Smile at everyone you come in contact with today.

9. Offer to let someone ahead of you in line.

10. Donate blood.

11. Give a handwritten note of encouragement.

12. Start a Gratitude Journal – leave it out for others to see as they visit you.

13. Call someone who is not feeling well and talk until you make them laugh.

14. Visit with the elderly or someone who can no longer get out as much as they’d like.

15. Give a thank you card to someone who has made a difference in your life.

16. Run errands for a new Mom (or someone that is sick)

17. Pick up trash you see as you are.

18. If you have money to spare donate to my campaign, the United Nations World Food Programme or Kids Caring 4 Kids.

(Note: In the list above 2-17 are courtesy of http://newsblaze.com/story/20101123103825toms.nb/topstory.html)

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 424

4 Replies

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives. ~Clay P. Bedford

It’s 8: 29 PM on day 424 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself baked beans on toast for breakfast, prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck – feed myself a chickem nugget sandwich for lunch, tweet about my campaign some more–Christian Hollingsworth over at http://smartboydesigns.com/ made a $107.69 donation and I am calling on everybody to follow in his footsteps even if you can’t donate $107 you can donate $25 and participate in my Sit for Water event which is taking place tomorrow– feed myself rice and curry for dinner and brush my teeth once more.

As you may or may not know South Africa has eleven official languages and since I like sharing what I know I have compiled a list of commonly used Xhosa words – Xhosa is an African language that is commonly spoken in the Eastern Cape (I had to learn it while in boarding school because the kids there didn’t speak any English). Take a look:

Xhosa 101: Words and daily conversation you need to know to survive in Eastern Cape, South Africa

Xhosa words translated into English for beginners. The accuracy of these words is not guaranteed, but care has been taken to provide an accurate or closest translation
SIFUNDA ISIXHOSA			WE ARE LEARNING XHOSA
Amagama esiXhosa			English words
Mama			Mother
Bawo/Tata			Father
Molo			Hi
Kunjani			How are you/How are things?
Sikhona			We are fine/We are here
Igama			Name
Mna			Me
Yena			him/her
Wena			You
Bona			Them
Dadewethu			my sister
Mfowethu			my brother
intombi/intombazane				unmarried woman/girl
Inkwenkwe					boy
Umfazi		married woman
Indoda		Man
uxolo/ixolo	forgiveness/peel
Enkosi			Thank you

Daily Conversation
Ndifuna ukudla	I want food
Ndifuna ukutya okunesondlo	I want food with nourishment
Ndicela undibonise umzi ka…	Please show me the house of …
Iphi imbizo?	Where is the meeting?
Ndifuna ukukhwela uduladula	I want to ride in/on a bus
Baphi abantu abadala/abakhulu	Where are the older people of the house
Lumkela inja	Beware of the dog
Imini nobususku	Day and night
Waphukelwe yintliziyo	He/She has a broken heart
Uvelemva	One who appears last
Inja phandle	Dogs out!

(Note: The information above is courtesy of IsiXhosa Dictionary)

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 423

10 Replies

Small Actions X Lots of People = BIG CHANGE ~ Unknown

It’s 6: 23 PM on day 423 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, drink coffee by myself, prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, give our housekeeper computer lessons–she told me a few weeks ago that she would love to learn how to use a computer so I offered to teach her although I hadn’t had the time to do it until today – feed myself rice and curry for lunch, listen to music – I LOVE The Script their songs are about things we all go through – and tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck.

Last night I was watching the 7 o’clock News on which they showed the Make A Wish Foundation handing out teddy bears to kids in the oncology unit as part of their Show You Care initiative ahead of the festive season and a few hours later with that as inspiration I came up with Make A Difference Before Christmas –an event in which everybody participating has to do one good deed a day until Christmas Day – Tiffany (@TyphannieBieber) and Cindy (@notjustagranny) already agreed to participate (thanks guys) if you’d like to join them fill in the following form:

[form form-2]

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 422

Leave a reply

You probably won’t reach your goals exactly when you thought you would but you’ll get there eventually – that’s what I learned today 🙂

It’s 6: 28 PM on day 422 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself baked beans for breakfast, prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature, work on this blog– I ruined the sidebar and had to start all over again – feed myself rice and curry for lunch, feed myself yoghurt for dinner, tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – Chrissy (@ChrissyPappas) made another donation – thanks Chrissy :)– brush my teeth once more.

Today I saw the date –11/9/2011– on the bottom-right of my laptop’s screen and I just started to panic because I only had almost a month left before we left for India and I still had three things to achieve on my ‘Short-Term Goals’ list (see below) but then I realized that there was still a lot of time left before we had to leave in which I could achieve my short-term goals leaving my long term goals for next year. Are you the kind of person who sets goals and then gives up because you didn’t achieve them exactly when you thought you would?

Short-Term Goals

 To brush my teeth – partially achieved – I can brush my teeth just fine but I need someone to help me lean over the sink so that the toothpaste ends up in the sink and not all over my shirt ‘[MUST BE achieved two Sunday’s from now (October 2, 2011)]

 To sign my name on a document (I never write anything out I always use a computer/laptop) – achieved

 To type with both hands – needs more practice – I have been typing with only my left hand so long that it’s hard to break [MUST BE achieved two Sunday’s from now (October 2, 2011)]

 To eat and drink by myself – partially achieved/needs more practice – I can feed myself with a spoon and drink from a mug and glass but feeding myself with a fork and knife is still difficult [MUST BE achieved two Sunday’s from now (October 2, 2011)]

(Note: This list was created on September 11, 2011 and edited today)

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!