Mmegi

A veranda

Yesteryear: The verandah holds a hallowed position in many people’s memories PIC: SA-VENUES.COM
Yesteryear: The verandah holds a hallowed position in many people’s memories PIC: SA-VENUES.COM

Life is often as ordinary as the lifestyles we choose, the friends whose company we enjoy, and the last chapter of a spellbinding book we are loath to finish reading.

But, it may, for a moment, discard its propensity to be too ordinary if for instance, through a fortuitous discovery, we find within our homes a place of stunning juxtaposition: a place where we struggle most ardently with our thoughts and imagination, a place where our manners may be most restrained and yet still be a place where our happiness is most freed. At that time, even as we accept our ordinary life, we may wonder if, and then hope that, there is a way to make this ordinariness and ourselves inseparable for the rest of our lives.

Every once in a while, wondering can have this effect on us. Imperceptibly, it can make it possible that the past and present commingle, allow yesterday to linger ineffectually into today and permit the promises of the future to appear as if they are happening now. And because we are humans, in a small pocket of our thoughts, there will always lie hope. This hope will be held despite the odds that it may not happen. And then it happens, prompting a density of the realisation of the hope to start hanging in the air we breathe which we exhale in gratitude. This quiet seeping of the past and present into each other, this nursing of the hope that miraculously materialises, is often the reward of sitting somewhere.

Editor's Comment
A promising step for public schools, but...

For too long, the state of many public schools has been a source of shame. We have all seen the pictures and heard the stories of broken windows, unreliable water and electricity, topped by classrooms that are not fit for proper learning. The establishment of the Education Infrastructure and Management Company Ltd (EIMC) signals that authorities are finally ready to take this problem seriously. We must commend the government for this initiative....

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