What a ride
Meet the inventor of the sidecar ambulance and clinic The road has been long and winding – from a north London workshop on a chilly morning into the imagination of a Saudi prince, on to the rural home of Nelson
The anatomy of a scapegoating
Motorbike sidecar ambulances and clinics are one of the best things to come out of the Eastern Cape. Yet certain quarters are trying their best to bludgeon the life out of this initiative that reaches into the heart of rural
Giving wings to scraps and threads
Multi-talented Kathryn Harmer Fox has found her way to fibre art. Or maybe fibre art has found its way to her. Either way, we are grateful. Some days, Kathryn Harmer Fox’s paint box is scattered all over the floor of
What we need now is kindness
Where is the acknowledgement that we are frightened and in pain? Why are we not comforting each other? This reality demands a new kind of intelligence from us. No-one alive has been here before. Let me rephrase: unless you are
Facing up to the new normal
If you’ve wondered why and how to make masks, then this post is for you. Making facemasks almost broke me. Apparently I saw the need for cloth masks to help in our battle against the coronavirus pandemic some time before
The mask makers of Rhodes Village and Zakhele
Celebrating ordinary people emerging as heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic Long before the dust started settling on the mask-or-not debate, people in Rhodes Village and its Zakhele township in the mountains near the South Africa-Lesotho border were crossing old barriers
What will you do when it comes for you?
Let’s talk about stigma – you know, that nasty human tendency to shame groups of people as outcasts because it makes you feel better than “them” and somehow protected from “them”. Stigma remains a defining feature of how we have
A tale of two viruses
About 30 years ago, when the first stories about HIV and AIDS emerged, I was a health reporter on the Sunday Tribune in Durban, the main city of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. This province initially seemed to be hardest hit as
Clothes with Karma in the time of the virus
We touch in so many ways, just not physically Tessa is at the garden gate and we lunge at each other. I want to hug her and kiss her, smack-bang on the lips (it’s a South African thing). Then we
The power of needle and thread
The art of sewing is stepping out of the closet as we take a stand against mindless consumption of damaging fast fashion. The need and desire to sew rests deep in my bones. I learned to love it, very young: