Losika Writes at ABC Australia!!!

“A man’s gift makes room for him, And brings him before great men.” – Proverbs 18:16

Losika Writes has truly opened many a door for me and has brought me before great men, and women hehe. I have had the opportunity to go to ABC Australia Melbourne studios to not only talk about my passion project of ensuring that every African child growing up in the diaspora has books in their native language, but to also talk about important issues of motherhood and general practice. I am looking forward to where all this leads and hoping the universe guides me as I navigate what I truly believe is a calling.

Support our side hustle and know that when you do, you enable us to fulfil our why.

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Our first market…

Losika Writes had its first market at the One Beat One Love festival and it was awesome meeting and having chats with people who are interested in celebrating cultural diversity in our beautiful Melbourne city. Cultural diversity week allowed us to meet with multitudes of people coming together to acknowledge the flavour we all bring to our society. The conversations were eye opening and we got to meet so many people who champion diversity in workplaces, on book shelves and everywhere else.

“It is NOT our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences” Audre Lorde

We are looking at having many more markets and excited to meet everyone who ventures to our little corner of the world.

Losika Writes Markets

Melbourne market

My dreams for Losika Writes…

I know they are not Martin Luther King kind of dreams but I thought I would put it out for the universe to digest and hopefully fulfill.  One day I will reflect and hopefully tick all of them off woohoo.

I have a dream,

– that one day Losika Writes will be as well known as Penguin books, Oxford books etc

– that people will support small businesses just as much as they support the billion dollar companies that don’t represent them or even invest back in them

– that one day Losika Writes will have a variety of mediums through which we can disseminate all the well known but also lesser known beautiful languages

– that one day our kids will proudly speak Setswana/Ndebele/Zulu etc as we often see people speaking Spanish/Italians without having the pressure to speak English because they are talking to non-Africans. Imagine Miss Universe Botswana answering the questions at hand in Setswana, how cool would that be?

– that we invested in the education of our little ones from preschool age and not think it was only right for them to see one language as they are developing their own

Those are my dreams for Losika Writes and the brainchild behind this seemingly crazy venture so support and help the dreams become reality.

You are never given a dream without being given the power to make it come true.

-unknown-

 

Reflection- How language shapes the way we think…

I am one of those people who is always reading and when online, I do get carried away with opening new tabs. I must admit, I will often have more than 100 tabs open at a time… oops. I do then make time to read through each tab and most of the time, find beautiful gems like the TED talk by Lera Boroditsky, a cognitive scientist, about “How language shapes the way we think.” On finding out there are about 7000 languages on earth, my next thought was – how many of those languages are found in print? How many of these languages become extinct every decade because speaking that language “is not as cool as speaking a foreign colonial or adopted language?’

Having attended private school “aka English medium” in all my primary and high school education in Botswana, you wouldn’t have to look far to find people who were not keen to speak the local language despite living amongst people who spoke the language. To then have age mates who elected to only communicate with their children in English whilst living in Botswana was a very interesting phenomenon for me. To top that off, you could find a Kagiso married to a Kelebogile but having kids called Andrew, Katherine etc to help the kids “adjust in an English world”. The understanding of the above decisions was that being a monolingual, English only speaker, somehow made you more intelligent. English is a great language and one that can allow communication between multitudes of people globally, but we shouldn’t let the knowledge of English, be detrimental to Setswana as a whole.

Sadly, on reflection and more so after watching the Ted talk, all that is apparent to me is that we are probably gradually making our language extinct and hence the real ambition behind Losika Writes. To try, in my little corner of the world, to take our beautiful Setswana off the endangered list. Support the movement and buy your little one some books at www.losikawrites.com.

Enjoy the TED talk and looking forward to your opinions about the topic discussed.

Giving thanks where its due…

 

Have you ever marvelled at the genius that is Google?

Have you ever wondered how it works to sort out the vast amount on information and hone in on exactly it is that you are looking for?
I don’t claim to understand all of Google but as a small business owner who owns a website, I have been trying to learn more about the machine that is Google and basically trying to learn how to please the Google gods. All this whilst obviously juggling being wife, mummy, daughter, sister, friend, doctor etc. I am very grateful to have found a gem of a teacher in Kate Toon (a copywriter in Sydney) who has made understanding of the machine easier by organising classes into palatable, bite sized chunks that are practical and slowly transforming Losika Writes into what I envisioned it to be when I started it.
I thought I would write something to celebrate her and her website….
Whilst you are in the mood to celebrate – get shopping at www.losikawrites.com or have a taste by getting our ebook version.

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” -William Arthur Ward

A candle loses nothing by lighting another- James Keller

Our first magazine feature!!!!!

We celebrate all milestones and this one is no exception.

We have been featured on MamaMag Eastside issue for April/May 2018 discussing the importance of “Keeping Language alive.” Grab your copy/read our article online and please support Losika Writes as we strive to celebrate our language diversity.

Our books are available as English only text or bilingual (Tswana/English and Ndebele/English books)

Losika Writes website – www.losikawrites.com

MamaMag link – Keeping Language Alive – page 42

 

 

 

Celebrations all round…

Losika Writes is proud to announce that we have made an e-book version of the Savannah book… Wooohooo!!! We are working on more books having the e-book format as well as increasing the languages on offer but until then we hope you can support our side hustle and get yourself or your kids/nieces/friends/neighbours a copy and writing a quick review about the books.

Below are the links to get you to the books (board books and the e-book versions).

Happy shopping and have a great week ahead!!!

1. Losika Writes website
2. Google Books
3. Google Play 

 

 

 

 

Book binge…

The clock struck midnight on 31/12/17 and I wrote down my intentions for the year following through with my “Write it down and make it happen mantra”. One of those intentions was to challenge myself and find out how many books I would read in one month. This was an upgrade to the previous year’s plan which I had truly accomplished of reading a book a month. By the end of 2017, I had read 30+ books of many different genres so I thought I would get a great start to the year and see if I could read more than 4 books for the month of January. Well, I am pleased to say I managed to read 8 books in the month of January, a record I am not sure I will ever beat with work back in full force and without the long commute to work I used to have. This count excludes the multiple books I have been reading on repeat for the little one or the Losika Writes books we have just published.

I thought I would do a quick review of each book and rate it to complete my book binge month.

How to break your own heart- Maggie Alderson

This is a chick flick kind of book about a lady who has been married for 15yrs and then finally realising that despite never actually discussing parenthood with her husband, she is really keen to have a child. She is sick of the “missionary sex once a week with a condom” routine her husband has developed and seems content with. The book explores the people who come into her life as she tries to assert herself in her marriage.

3 stars for light-hearted reading but not much substance although I don’t think it was meant to be a book about substance

Mad about the Boy- Maggie Alderson

This is a chick flick book about a couple and their toddler son who migrate from Europe to Australia only for the man of the house to declare that he has been queer all along and would like to move in with his boyfriend. The book then follows the deserted wife as she tries to get her mojo back by jumping in bed with some guy she met at the gym.

2 stars- this book just got weirder and weirder as you read and one minute I was about to stop reading, but I had to finish the book. From the criminal investigations, the gay purple haired uncle and the bookstore antics, I felt there was too much going on.

Don’t Bitch, Just Get Rich- Toney Fitzgerald

This book is about changing your perspective about “what the universe has dealt you and getting on with life”. There are 7 people who enroll for a class through which they discover why their lives are stuck in a rut and what they can do to change things

4 stars- this book highlighted to me that we are all given 365 days a year during which we can choose to wallow in despair about the hand the universe has given to us, or we can choose to work towards something positive.

Hush Little Baby- Joana Barnard

This book is about a little baby who is found to have a broken arm and everyone in the home has something to hide. He is then taken out of his parents’ house as investigations on whether this is a case of child abuse occur and things start to unravel.

3 stars for the let down of an ending after setting up the story for all ¾ of the book only for the ending to leave you wondering what the? Is that it?

Secret Keeping for Beginners- Maggie Alderson

This is another chick flick book reinforcing that “all that glitters is not gold.” It is about a family of sisters who all have little secrets of their own they are not ready to divulge to each other whilst all putting up a façade that they all have their shit in order. Eventually, the secret longing for another man, the queer secret of one of the sisters and the true extent of how broke and in need of help the other sister is, takes a toll on the family and they have to come clean to each other.

3 stars for the light-hearted reading and true illustration that no family is “perfect”.

Bush Doctors- Annabelle Baryley

This is a collection of reflection stories of doctors that are practicing medicine in rural and remote Australia and how everyone started on their journey to become doctors as well as how they ended up doing rural medicine.

4 stars for the enjoyable book and insight into how people choose their career path and how great a role chance plays into who we eventually become.

Leaving home- Jodi Picoult

This is the shortest book of the lot. Basically, it is a compilation of short stories about transitioning from home ie leaving for college or burying a child.

3 stars for the beautifully written stories, however, as they are all short stories, by the time you get into the meat of the story it is then quickly finished.

Leaving time- Jodi Picoult

Now Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite authors and her book Small Great Things is one of my favourite all-time books. This book, however, is a confused mish-mash of ideas and a great disappointment. Parts of the book are a documentary about elephants of Botswana, my birth country, a book about a young girl looking for her mother, a psychic trying to get her mojo back and a private investigator who is trying to solve a cold case. At the end of it, I was tired of the storyline as I felt it kept switching from one to another.

2.5 stars- a great disappointment by a great author

Pants on Fire- Maggie Alderson

This is a story about a young lady who runs away from a cheating fiancé to try and start a new life in Sydney, Australia. She is immediately thrust into a very fast lifestyle of queer mates, loose sexual relations, drinking and drug use and eventually gets spat out after the merri-go- round ends.

3 stars- I guess it’s about a lifestyle I would never be interested it so I really could not relate.

The Scent of You- Maggie Alderson

This is a book about a perfume blogger who sees and experiences the world through her sense of smell. Her husband moves out of home under mysterious circumstances only to be found out that he has been going to work as usual and living not too far from home. The book then follows lady of the house who smells her way to another man’s arms and all the challenges she faces as she transitions to being a ready to mingle single mother.

3.5 stars for the perfume recommendations at each chapter and for the education about the making of perfume.

On closer inspection, the books I read for the month of January were light-hearted chick flick type of books and I suppose they reflect the season and mood I was having at the time. With everything else being hectic, sometimes you just want to get lost in a silly, frivolous book and escape into its pages and I must say, I really cherished reading each book although admittedly some were more enjoyable than others.

I challenge you to try and find out how many books you can read in a month too…

 

*Images from Google

 

Introducing Losika Writes

A while ago, I wrote a blog entry about ” Write it down and make it happen “ This was about how important it is to make your intentions known to the universe and working hard to make those intentions a reality.

Well, we have been working hard on one of those many “intentions”, hence the sporadic blog writing, and it is with great pleasure that I now let you in on a little secret…

Inspired by our son Losika, we have developed a collection of children’s picture books, some of which are bilingual (Tswana/English, Ndebele/English) to help in passing down our beautiful language to the next generation.

We are proud of the quality product and hope that you enjoy reading the books, as much as we have enjoyed creating the collection. We are continuously working to add to the collection and look forward to your support…

Head to Losika Writes and use discount code #LAUNCH to get a 20% discount on all the books…

Adult tantrums

I know they say that you go through the terrible twos and then after that, you apparently learn to regulate your emotions. Well, I currently have a 3-year-old and I can attest that although the tantrums have eased somewhat to what they were from about 18 months of age, we still have periods where someone is clearly losing the plot. How I cope with it is to think that he is briefly possessed by an energy he cannot control and as a way of asking for help, he has to cry and throw himself on the floor. Usually, this is not anything a cuddle won’t fix. I guess it is still somewhat expected at his age though so it’s all good in a way.

Have you ever, as an adult, had a moment where you feel like you were having a tantrum? For example,

• You enter into a store to browse and potentially buy something only to have the store attendant follow you suspiciously around the store as you might not look like the “type” of customer who would buy anything, or they do the exact opposite and don’t even acknowledge your presence. You figure its best to leave the store without buying anything although there might be something you would have bought had they been more welcoming.
• You go for dinner and have to ask for every minuscule thing for your table despite everyone else having the menu/water for the table/glasses/cutlery being brought to their table without having to ask. You then leave the restaurant occasionally before the food arrives and often without leaving a service tip.
• You are a patient and present to the doctor reporting that “I need antibiotics for my sore throat” as a presenting complaint only to storm off yelling profanities when the doctor makes a clinical decision that your ailment is likely viral and they will not be prescribing any antibiotics “in case the infection goes to your chest next week” illustrated in my previous blog Things I wish patients knew…
• You are driving when another driver cuts you off and suddenly you have to make them pay for what they did by honking the horn, flipping the bird, driving erratically and yelling profanities at them.
• You are invited to a party at a certain time only to get there at the time stipulated or a few minutes later and people are still in the early stages of meal prep and the party is at least a few hours from being ready and you think it might be better just to leave. You are thus unable to enjoy any of the party as a result and spend the day on your phone or sulking.
• You come home and despite your partner being home all day and you at work the whole time, you found the house in the same state as you left it in the morning and the dreaded “what’s for dinner?” greeting you at the door. You have a shower and go straight to bed after making yourself a sandwich to see if your partner will sort something out for themselves.
• You have been leaving hints everywhere about what you would love for your birthday/mother’s day/anniversary/Xmas only for someone not to heed your advice but instead get you something you feel you have no use/need for. You smile whilst slowly dying and trying to control the emotion inside.
• You have been dating for a few years and have been talking about getting married but your partner is not proposing “at the perfect time”. You have been overseas together, spent times in secluded beaches/on top of the Eiffel tower/on the edge of the Grand Canyon or other “perfect proposal locations” where you were pretty sure he would pop the question only to leave empty-handed.  You don’t want to ask him when he will propose but you sulk for a little while after every disappointment.

These are some examples that have happened to a few people around me and, I must admit, may have occurred to me at some point and make me realize that there are things called adult tantrums. It can be really hard to regulate your emotions when you are in certain situations and sometimes you end up crying/yelling/sulking in response. I have read an amazing book called Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff by Richard Carlson, (reviewed on my blog entry titled Books I have fallen in love with… ) and sometimes I can’t help but be carried away by my emotions despite knowing that whatever it is will certainly not matter in a few months let alone in a few days. I, however, thought I would pen a little something to say, it’s okay, adult tantrums happen to the best of us. The key is to acknowledge them for what they are and learn not to dwell on the negative mood for too long. Hopefully, with time, you learn to identify it early and diffuse the inner tantrum before it becomes a full-blown meltdown.