Author: phumzile qwaqwa

  • Is this a door or a window?

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    Back in primary and high school my mates and I had a tendency of being super excited on matchday. If I’m honest, much of the excitement had very little to do with the game. We were mostly excited by the prospect of seeing beautiful girls we weren’t familiar with from the visiting school. We’d have…

  • I just don’t mind looking foolish

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    Last night I was sharing testimonies with my cell group from church, and I kept getting the same reactions. “Wow.”“No way.”“Are you serious?” I get these a lot. And I understand why. There’s the story of a stranger who paid R95 000 for my university fees in 2019 – someone who, to this day, wants…

  • The luck feels earned

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    I am typing this on my phone at about 20 000 feet, staring out the window at the sea below… we have maybe 15 minutes before we hit the tarmac at Cape Town International Airport. A young woman next to me keeps pressing her phone against the window trying to capture the view. I am…

  • Am I Even Playing to Win?

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    I am typing this exact sentence in the wee hours with only my right hand. I have a fleece over my thighs and a dodgy-looking black beanie… because the streets are cold. Why only one hand? Because my left hand is resting on my cheek, deeply disappointed and annoyed by a football result. I’ll be…

  • My new baby

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    I recently had a baby. I’ve always wondered what kind of parent I’d be one day. As much as we all love our parents, I think we sometimes punish them harshly for their mistakes and forget that it was also their first time. Yes, you may not be the firstborn… but you are unique compared…

  • Ten steps behind

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    When I was 8 years old my mother enrolled me in an English-medium school in town… a school where everything was taught in English, including English itself. I was coming from a village school five minutes from home where we even learned English in IsiXhosa. This new place was a different world. You were even…

  • The purpose of life is a life of purpose

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    I recently came across a stat that stopped me mid-scroll. People in their first year of retirement have a 40% higher chance of getting a stroke or heart attack than people who are still working. That’s not a small number. And it made me wonder… what exactly happens to a person when they stop having…

  • Everyone has lost their tastebuds

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    When I was 15, I did something stupid.The irony is, I thought I was being smart. I was in Grade 10, and we often had to write essays for different subjects. One day, our Life Sciences teacher gave us an assignment: The Effects of Deforestation. Because it had the furthest deadline, I told myself I’d…

  • You Don’t Lose People by Being Wrong

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    It’s surprisingly easy to make enemies. I use the word loosely here… I mean people who simply end up disliking you. And I’m becoming more convinced that it doesn’t take much. One subtle way this happens, one most of us probably never notice in ourselves, is the need to always correct people. To always prove…

  • How to have original ideas

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    by

    phumzile qwaqwa
    in

    If you’ve been around computers long enough you might have heard the term “bug” – a flaw or error in a software program that causes it to behave unexpectedly. There are debates over who coined it. Some credit Thomas Edison in an 1878 letter. Others credit Grace Hopper, the American computer scientist and mathematician, who…