Watching Whales and Dolphins in Southern Africa, Noel and Belinda Ashton

Today is World Oceans Day – 8 June, and while I am firmly ensconsed inland, I can at least read about the ocean and its wonderful and amazing animals.

Watching Whales and Dolphins in Southern Africa by Noel and Belinda Ashton

My late aunt owned a flat on Summerstrand Beach with a sea view. I often sat with her and watched the whales and/or the dolphins. It was a special time which reminded me of my honeymoon at the old Birkenhead Hotel where whale watching was a much touted activity. We actually did see some whales. There is now a Whale Museum in Hermanus to cater to the people from all over the world who arrive in Hermanus to enjoy this activity.

Noel and Belinda Ashton have written a book, Watching Whales and Dolphins in Southern Africa, which is sure to be a hit with those lucky enough to live, like my late aunt, with a sea view, or those who enjoy spending their leisure time along the ocean. Apparently Southern Africa has some of the best land-based (making it affordable for anyone who can get to the sea shore) whale and dolphin watching opportunies in the world. This is because of our geographical position close to the Antarctic, the fact that we have two oceans from which to chose, together with 3 000 kilometers of shoreline.

The book gives the usual classification stuff, together with the various other scientific bits and bobs necessary to proper understanding of the whole order, and more particularly the species we are likely to encounter, together with hints and tips for watching them and information to assist in identifying them.

Noel Ashton is an enviromental geographer who has specialised in whale and dolphin morphological mapping, together with some exquisite scientific illustrations. Belinda Ashton is a environmental journalist with a track record of working towards whale and dolphin conservation through the Oceans of Africa programme. Archbishop Desmond Tutu launched the Ashton’s Sacred Ocean anti-whaling campaign in the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town.

The richly illustrated book is useful and informative and I know that it would have pleased my late aunt, herself a scientist, to have a copy and I dedicate this review to her memory.

 

Title: Watching Whales and Dolphins in Southern Africa

Authors: Noel and Belinda Ashton

Publisher: Struik Nature

Year: 2012

ISBN: 978-1-77007-957-1

Recommended selling price: R130

Website: www.randomstruik.co.za

Terry Pratchett’s Snuff

Regular readers of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld fantasies will need no encouragement to buy this quirky whodunit.

For them it will be familiar territory and they will already be fans of Pratchett’s wonderful sense of humour and wacky thinking which make him such a masterful story-teller.

Snuff is that addictive (because of the nicotine) tobacco substance often sniffed by old ladies. It makes them sneeze. It also means “to extinguish” as in to snuff out a candle. In this extinguishing context it has the sinister overtones of death. To “snuff it” means “to die”, often before one would do so if it were left entirely to natural causes, as in “snuff movies”.

The book involves a tobacco plantation in Howondaland where Lord Rust has been forcing goblins to manufacture cheap cigars. Vimes who is on holiday with his son, Young Sam, at the family mansion of his wife, Lady Sybil, teams up with a constable, Upshot, and they arrest the criminals and, through the philanthropic work of Lady Sybil, the goblins get granted proper rights as citizens by all major nations.

The parallels with South African society are all too obvious to those of us who wish to see them. The long arm of the law for the most part is corrupt. Look out for the abuses of the privileges that go with powerful positions, the misappropriation of monies entrusted to people who should be using them for the good of all, the turning of a blind eye to the mistreatment of others on the grounds that they are not human. Yes, the goblins smell and are dim and steal. South Africans have lived with these prejudices before. We have pledged that we never will again. But some things are part of humanity’s base desires wherever they find themselves. We as a society need people like Vimes.

Pratchett, in an interview, once said that he never goes looking for plots, they smack him in the face. We need not go looking for parallels; they smack us in the fact.

Perhaps this book should be a textbook at the South African Police Academy for there are many practical lessons for good police work. It certainly makes a very nice departure point for people looking at ethical questions relating to the treatment of others. The bottom line, however, is that this is a rip-roaring fun novel which will definitely appeal to almost everyone who enjoys a somewhat bizarre take on their fantasy reading.

Title: Snuff
Author: Terry Pratchett
Publishers: Transworld Publishers (Doubleday)
Distributors: Random House Struik
Year: 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-61926-4

Every Parent’s Nightmare

Bruna Dessena is a paramedic who has seen child abuse. She has served as a Childline Counsellor and is an activist on the subject.

I trained as a Salvation Army officer and then went to my first appointment in Sidwell in Port Elizabeth, a very socially depressed area which had been working class before Ford closed their factory but which teemed with unemployment, poverty and social evils when I was there in the late 80s and early 90s. In my first year one of the little boys in the Sunday school told me about his ‘bad dreams’ where a bogeyman stood at his bed every night and hurt his bum. His mother had recently remarried. I wish I had had this book back then, for my feeble attempts to report the matter to Child Welfare brought about only the report that “The child has clean clothes and enough to eat. There is no problem.” I failed that child. This book will help others not to fail the children who turn to them for help.

Written sensitively for parents of children who have been abused, as well as other adults such as medical people, ministers of religion and teachers, all of whom sometimes come across the problem, it outlines clearly the steps needed in order to properly remedy the situation as best one can.

It is a highly readable volume, written matter of factly without any form of sensationalism. It takes only an hour or so to go through the text which covers the signs of abuse, the grooming process used by abusers, how to deal with the problem, how to support the child, and what the legal process involves, although the emotional stuff will linger for a lot longer. This book should be owned and read by every teacher, medical person, and worker with people’s social, physical and spiritual needs as well as every parent.

Title: Every Parent’s Nightmare

Sub-Title: The essential guide for adults dealing with child abuse

Author: Bruna Dessena

Publishers: Quickfox Publishing

Year: 2010

ISBN: 978-1920-39705-0

Recommended selling price: R115.00

The Upward Spiral

A New Age self-help book.

The Upward Spiral is a self-help book. Its stated aim on the back cover speaks of reprogramming the chip we all carry in ten practical steps. It is written in the first person, her personal testimony, and reveals lessons as learned by the author, Val Toledo.

This is Val’s first book. She is a teacher, corporate trainer, motivational consultant and transformational coach. She is also a wife, mother and sister – a real woman.

The book itself draws on Toledo’s spiritual philosophies, some of which are found in New Age thinking in the writings of Deepak Chopra, Carolyn Myss, Gregg Braden, Louise Hay and others and some of which are found in the increasingly popular Kabbalah espoused by, inter alia, Madonna. To make sense of the book one must accept the basic premise that we are constantly spiralling up and down as we balance our energies in this miracle called life.

The premise continues that as we change our own vibrations this has an impact on those around us. We choose to change them and commit to the change. We write our stories, find our chips and connect with our essences. We rewrite our chips, hold our space and align our new chips. We hold our upward spirals and question them, moving to unconditional love and not demanding any particular outcome.

The word “resonance” is used in several places. The Upward Spiral certainly resonates with me in places, but by and large I find it airy-fairy and unsatisfying, perhaps because I am only reading it, not actively trying to live it. For those who have a spirituality which does relate to this, the book is comprehensible, well-written and very accessible.

Title: The Upward Spiral
Author: Val Toledo
Year: 2011
ISBN: 978 0 620 49063 4
Recommended Price: R145

The Everyday Wife

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is a talented poet, writer and performer and her volume of poetry is a delicious word treat.

I envy the ability to capture vivid images in just a few words as evidenced by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers in this book of poetry.

The Everyday Wife is a look inside the life of a woman as she relates to those around her. She makes herself frighteningly vulnerable and very, very real and there can be few people who do not respond positively to this honest and clear inward look.

Whether the discourse is large and general such as in the poem Eating Times Two which looks at the heart of hunger in Africa or intimate and personal such as in The Middle Promise where she talks about sex and approaching menopause, she conveys deep thoughts with such richness, yet with a marked economy of words.

I first came to know the work of Phillippa Yaa de Villiers through her staged work, Original Skin, and I find her to be a generous artist in terms of the volume of emotion shared and the depths which she is willing to plumb for the sake of her writing. Original Skin is autobiographical, tracing her life as a mixed race child growing up as the daughter of a white family who adopted her in apartheid South Africa. It doesn’t deal with her life as a writer and performer for which she is well known.

She has a lovely way of blending the literal and figurative aspects into a concoction of passion and humour. She, like good comedians, takes what we all observe around us, and puts a spin on it which is unique to her but perfectly common to all of us. We simply never thought of it “that way” before.

I thoroughly enjoyed this little volume of poems and will return to it from time to time to greet old friends and get to know them better. Incidentally, this volume comes complete with a postcard bookmark showing the cover. I just love books which have their own bookmarks.

Named for the great African Rain Queen, Modjaji Books is a fledgling publishing house which makes rain for women writers from South Africa.

Title: The Everyday Wife
Author: Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
Publishers: Modjaji Books
Year: 2010
ISBN: 978-1920-39705-0

Back to Work

A political science book by former president Bill Clinton has a message which is interesting to South Africans.

Bill Clinton’s new book, “Back to Work,” is an argument for a strong national government. It is a defence of Democrat policy and a reminder that when Clinton was in power things were good economically.

It is a practical look at how Clinton believes the USA should go about restoring economic growth and creating new jobs. Some of the ideas might even work in South Africa where job creation is a very necessary part of any economic plans our politicians devise. Clinton says that a smart government is needed for a strong economy – and that spending cuts and increased tax revenues are necessary.

The book is mostly comprehensible to me, which means it has really been pitched at people who have a limited economic understanding. It is plain speaking in lay terms.

Clinton certainly did much to fix his own administration’s fiscal problems. He reduced the federal deficit, overhauled welfare, and made inroads into the problem of unemployment, as well as increasing the USA’s global competitiveness. He admits that he did not regulate financial derivatives which were later to prove to be a huge problem. His proposed formulas for creating jobs and addressing the debt problem look rational to me. Some of them are, Clinton admits, speculatory.

The section I found most interesting from a South African point of view is the rankings which show the USA falling behind in education. “We simply are not doing what we have to do to stay ahead of the competition for good jobs, new businesses, and breakthrough innovations.” That rings so true for South Africans as well.

As the back cover says “Work is about more than making a living … it’s fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people.”

Title: Back to Work
Sub-Title: Why we need smart Government for a strong Economy
Author: Bill Clinton
Publisher: Hutchinson, London
Distributor: Random House Struik
Year: 2011
ISBN: 978-00919-4414-8

The Fat Years

A good fictional read set in contemporary China.

Like 1984, the famous book by George Orwell, this science-fiction style book was set in the “future” of China, 2011. Fortunately the terrible events set out in The Fat Years did not come to pass, but the central theme of the book is still relevant. The book was, of course, banned, but the novel enjoys a lot of underground popularity. The interesting thing is that the Chinese themselves are reading this book and questioning what is going on in their own country.

The premise is that a collective amnesia overtakes an entire country relating to a period of one month. Something terrible took place in that month. The protagonist, Old Chen, sets out to find out what happened and to try and understand why everyone is so happy. The material prosperity China has been enjoying since the sixties with a booming economy and an increasingly free individual society while the west is experiencing times of serious economic woes is part of the story. Old Chen is aided by Little Xi, a dissident with a son who toes the party line.

Of course in China the theme of collective memory loss is relevant. For example no public discussion of the official version of the events like those of 1989 is permitted. Can a nation progress without confronting its own past? The novel is highly pertinent to South Africans who are nervous about the degree to which South Africa’s government follows China’s orders.

From my point of view the best thing about the book is that one gets a real feel for what China must be like today. Armchair travelling as I like it – through a jolly good read.

Title: The Fat Years
Sub-title: The Notorious Thriller They Banned in China
Author: Chan Koonchung
Publishers: Transworld Publishers (Doubleday)
Distributors: Random House Struik
Year: 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-61918-9

F*kken gaan slaap

A book of Afrikaans bedtime poetry most parents will enjoy.

The illustrations, print and entire look make this book appear exactly like the kind of book you would read to your children. However, this wonderful book of bedtime stories is definitely not for your children, or anyone else’s children, but it does sum up how many a parent feels about “bedtime”.

Written in four line stanzas, the first three lines at the beginning of the book are typical of the kind of poetry you would read to your child, while the punch line contains the instruction, complete with expletive, for your little angel to sleep now. Gradually the first three lines drop to the first two lines, and for one verse only, the first line is child-friendly, then all the lines are about the parent.

A perfect gift to take to a baby shower, or to welcome the new baby into the home.

The book was originally written in English as “Go the Fuck to Sleep” and is also available in English. It was translated by Cas Vos, himself a grandfather who sympathises with the sentiments in the book.

Title: F**ken gaan slaap
Author: Adam Mansbach
Illustrator: Ricardo Cortes
Translated: Cas Vos
Publishers: Penguin
Year: 2011
Recommended Selling Price: R126.95
ISBN: 978-0-14352-877-7

Eish! But is it English?

 This book will interpret South African English for both South Africans and English speaking foreigners.

It is true that the minute an Englishman opens his mouth, he makes some other Englishman despise him (George Bernard Shaw, paraphrased). However, the same might be said of South Africans. There is no doubt that we form many of our opinions of people based on their accents, their grammar usage and other verbal clues as to “class” and “status”, as well as race and even religion. I know someone who swears she can tell a person’s religion from their vocal expression, and I’m not talking the odd “Oy vey” or “Mazeltov” here.

This book examines the South African dialects we encounter presently, together with a look at how they differ from the historical dialects and the stereotypical dialects we like to imagine we know. Coconuts, mother-tongue English speakers who happen to be black, but who do not speak a black language, are considered in some depth. Multilingual people and how they use the English language, together with people who are second and third generation immigrants in small absorbed communities or in large separate communities (mainly South African Indians) all feature.

The book falls just short of academic, not given in any way to poking fun at any of this, but still being readable and comprehensible to people who have not studied linguistics as a subject.

I found the section on “Code Switching” fascinating. This is the mixing of languages and styles of languages. There are appropriate and inappropriate uses of “code switching” and it serves to foster a sense of identity. I grew up in an era when mixing of languages was strictly frowned upon and despite having studied at an Afrikaans university and worked in Afrikaans-speaking workplaces it was always the purity of my Afrikaans as much as the unflattened accent which betrayed me as a non-native Afrikaans speaker. Now I understand that what was needed was a liberal smattering of English to make me sound Afrikaans. That and “the paralanguage that goes with it – the dress, the style, the attitude”. Ok, a liberal smattering of English and an elegant serp at the neck fixed with ‘n mooi goud brooch.

The section on words looks at the impact South African words, from wherever, have made on English. “Tsotsi”, “dagha”, “donga”, “sangoma”, “indaba”, “veld”, “kloof”, “dassie” and “bokkie” amidst many others are examined.

Over all I found the book non-judgmental, interesting and informative. It is going to interest those who particularly like words and language. It is not a suitable Christmas present for anyone else. It will bore them.

Title: Eish but is it English?
Sub-Title: Celebrating the South African variety
Authors: Rajend Mesthrie and Jeanne Hrommik
Publisher: Zebra Press
Year: 2011
ISBN: 978-1-77022-178-9
Recommended Selling Price: R180.00