South African History( till the boer war ) As A Series Of Bar Fights

On Table Bay Road one day Jan Van Riebeck decided he wanted to open a pub as there was no place for his lads to have a drink on the way to the night club down far away called" The Indian Ocean".  It took him a while to estbalish this pub because the Khoi Khoi living in the area wern't too fond of the idea of there neightbourhood being an area for drunken lads to refuel on their way to the pub. After taking all the clean water and hot water supply from the Khoi Khoi. Van Riebeck decided he wanted to turn Table Bay road into the ultimate pub crawl lane, there by maximizing his profit. Every white man that wanted to settle on Table Bay road got a pub to run at his own accord, this pissed of a lot of people in the area as there quiet life style was now being distrupted by drunkard Dutchmen. Some tried to compromise and negotiate with them but inevetiabley they all ended up smashing into the newly established pubs and pub owners homes and stealing. This backfired horribly as the drunk and rowdy Europeans decided to do the same and continue their pub empire further past Table Bay Road. The Dutchmen wanted to maximize their profit and brought people to be beer wenches in their pub land, mostly African but also Asian.

The British, being notorious for seeing something good and taking it captured Table Bay Road and its extensions and decided they wanted to control the ultimate pub crawl land. Dutch people didn't like this because, it meant that they had to server English Beer and speak English and wern't allowed to run into the peaceful neighbourhoods and steal things to sell in their pubs. However, the English had trouble forcing the Dutch to serve Dutch Beer.  Later on, some shit went down  not in the Dutch peoples home land,   that gave the Dutch control again of Table Bay area. This made Dutch people happy, as they could now serve Dutch beer again. This was short lived and the ultimate pub crawl plan on the way to "The Indian Ocean" was handed back to the British.

More Brits moved into the  area and the Brits made it so that the Dutch had to actually pay the people working in the pubs and that the people working there had to stay there learning how to either a) run a pub, b) pour the perfect pint c) manage finances 4) how to DJ 5) how to cook etc. Dutch wern't happy so the Brits gave them an area for them to set up some pubs called the Zurrfeld that the Xhosa occupied only in the summer.

The British, being advocates of "keep calm and carry on" told former people that worked for  pubs ran by the Dutch that they could bring them to try if they were being miss treated and the Dutch got really pissed off, accusing the Brits of being nosey basterds. This caused the Dutch to flip shit and go " FUCK IT I'M LEAVING!" and loaded up their cars with cheap nasty Dutch beer, their wives and pub workers to find somewhere where they could set up their own Dutch bar hopping district . En route to do this,  they ran into a bunch of lads collectively called the Zulu who seemed to think they were from Sparta and were going on a bit of a lads tour rapeing, drinking excessive amounts,  and performing dance of the flaming asshole wherever they went as they went.

One night, in a bar in Zulu occupied area the Dutch walked in confused about where this bar had come from as several years earlier they had been in the same spot and there were no bars there. One of the Dutch lads, Pieter Retief went up to the owner of the Zulu pub, Shaka and went " Who the fuck are you mate?", Shaka turned around smashed a pint glass in his face, screamed " COME AT ME BLUD" and Retief died, Andries Pretorios then smashed a pint glass in Shaka's face and Dutch and Zulu's  proceeded to glass each other till blood ran out of the pub and the pub was forced to shut.

At this point the Brits, the defacto problem solvers they like to think they are, deiced they should probably create several areas for the Dutch to have a Dutch bar hopping district and be Dutch. This was a bit problematic, as some Dutch people wanted bigger bars than others leaving some with holes in the walls and the Brits let the people who use to work for the Dutch work for themselves.

Meanwhile not so far from Table Bay Road, a young girl had a prophecy from her ancestors about how to get rid of the English.  "If you set fire to all the supermarkets  and drink all the beer they won't want to be here any more and you will be independent". Some people believed her, and mass alcohol poisining ensued and the Brits were forced to pump everyones stomachs and help them rebuild their lives.

In the shadow of all this, a little man named Moeshoeshoe was asking the British if he and his own people could have a tiny strip to run their own pub crawl street that reflected his peoples drinking culture, the Brits said yes.

Things were smooth for a little bit, until Absinth and Grey Goose Vodka were discovered hidden near all the bar districts in which bar owners would send people to go get the goods and bring it back. At this point, the Brits once again decided to try keep everyone calm buy naturally taking them over again and pumping them full of tea. However, a group called the Griqua which were a mix of Africa people with  Dutch drinking culture felt they should control it cause it was closest to their bar hopping district.

The British and Dutch pub crawl areas decided that they controlled the Absinth and Grey Goose and that everyone else can suck it. That went tits up, very quickly when drunk roudey Brits and Dutchmen started running into each others pubs smashing bar stools over one another's heads, glassing one another and punching each other in the face, this went on for about 4 years.

After the police showed up, to figure out who started the fight it was concluded that a posh English twat, Cecil Rhodes threw the first punch in attempts to take over the Dutch bars that were sitting on top of the Absinth and en route to an area which use to have a lot of Absinth, Mashonaland.

Cecil was in a bad mood and he was sick of dealing with the locals in the area taking his pubs business and got involved with politics .  He said, they could not work or be involved in British or Dutch bars. He also stated that they had to have a certain level of education to work and participate in anything important in the pub districts. Most importantly, he made it only possible for  Dutch and British  bars to have 1 pound jager bomb wednesdays and sell imported alcohol.  All other bars were only allowed to serve cheap horse piss larger . However, the Brits and Dutch would advertise the local bars and make sure they got customers too( this didn't really happen though).


More to come in final exam time. Sorry its grossly simplified, i got the idea from the economist. after they did WWI and WWII as a bar fight.

Janet: The story of an African child

In September, a good friend of mine and I were going to by a text book for one of our classes and we were catching up over what we had been up to over the summer. He is African by birth and I was telling him about how amazing how different the kids are there in comparison to here and he said something thats stuck with me, " It's because they have to deal with so much more and have way more responsibilities and by the time they are six they are full time mothers." That sentence has been in the back of my head for the past five months now and about two weeks ago I was looking over my photo's of a gazillion African babies and I found a series of photographs, of this 1 child, Janet that shows all the different dynamics of  children in Africa ( and other developing countries) and what makes them so special.

She has a strong face and a stronger personality.
 I met her at Plaster House after she came for surgery
where she became my friend and helper.

This is Janet, aged six. Here you see a little girl, happy and healthy as can be. 

Here you see a little girl who is scared, frightend,
 sad like many other children

Here you see a little girl who has seen far to much for her age, who has grown up fast, and who although she is young, she has probably had a tough life and her face shows it.

Here you see a little girl who cares for those younger than her with pride, and enthusiasm. When this picture was taken, my friend Maria had just finished reading the kids stories. Janet walked over, picked up the books and carried on leading the children in story time.

Here you see a little girl, being silly, cheeky. Like a child should be.

Finally, here you see a little girl, so happy and so content  with life and enjoying the simple pleasures.
Like she should be, like all children should be.

This is one of the many children who I met during my time in Tanzania, one of the may children I grew to love as my own, and one of the many children I will never see again.

Academics and Children: One and the same.

It is now the middle of the semester and mount homework is now in full view and I have yet to reach base camp.  Highlights of the past month have included having a bubble bath and learning how to poach an egg. Needless to say, my life is a ABSOLUTE RAVE right now and is much more exciting than Ibiza. I am currently in the process of writing a literature review which is due tomorrow at midnight and I have another one due on friday.  For those of you who have not written and academic literature review, all it basically is is looking at different peoples opinions who think they are right about a certain  issue. Then you basically say why they differ and whose argument is best.

When you get to the later half of your university degree readings multiply at a faster rate than than rabbits do. It has come to my attention now after reading several hundred articles that there really isn't much of a difference between academics and children.

Case in Point.

When you're in primary school person A might make statement say, " Manchester United is better than Liverpool"
Person be responds " no it's not liverpool IS SOOOOO The best"
A retalliates " Yeah they are liverpool is SOO stupid just like you"
and the conversation goes back on forth between calling people idiots until an ultimatum is give, most likely a lie all, all designed to shut the other person up. So, person A might say something like " WELL MY DADDY IS BEST FRIENDS WITH ALEX FERGURSON AND HE SAID THAT THERE THE BEST TEAM IN THE WHOLE WORLD". Person B shuts up and accepts defeat that Manchester United is better than Liverpool.... ( which is super obvious anyways) and person B will try find someone again to prove that Liverpool is better than Manchester United.


As you work your way through university you get quite good at making arguments, wether it be through and academic paper, a debate over facebook on a article someone posted or at a bar after far to much beer. Those  who really enjoy arguing and are good at it continue climbing the academic ladder until the get a PHD, or as I like to call it  Professional Hassler's degree. I call it this because once you decide to become an academic  when you'r not teaching, all you really do is hassle other about who is right and who is not, much like children until you deliver and ultimatum which is distorted to fit you'r opinion on a matter but in a much more formal fashion. Case in point

Prof A argues the cause of Africa is poor because of colonialism, prof B responds by saying no its slavery because slavery created tension. Instead of battling it out in the playground like kids they instead sit in their offices and get in a scholarly article tag war, in which they basically attack each other through a series of academic articles that other academics will either read, or make their students read. These wars can go on for decades, unlike playground wars and eventually one academic will win by either finding something true or seeing something that is loosely true and manipulating it to their advantage. The academic who lost  will find someone engage in the next academic battle with in hopes to convince them that his theory is right.

So to conclude academics and children are one and the same , they engage in arguments, children are less formal academics, the both distorte things in one way or another. Academics spend far more money that children but all they want to do at the end of the day is prove their equals that they are right and they are wrong.

On that note I leave you, and I hope to God that my professors don't stumble upon this and I suddenly find myself entrenched in an academic war, where they are trying to argue to me that they are superior to children. If that's the case I will make it clear that I do not hold Professional Hasslers Degree and nor do I have any desire to for that matter.  Should they persist,  I will do my usual when someone is trying to win an argument that I can't be bothered having, look at them, try change the subject and go " quite frankly I don't give a sh*t".