This Community Service Project wasn’t just a project for me it was something I do every day. It was giving back to those who have given to me. That’s why I chose Powerhouse Prayer and Deliverance Youth Ministry. Growing up in what was then and still is a group home, so that’s why this is personal to me. I was living there growing up and she gave me so much hope to be a good person and a better person. Even though I didn’t listen and had to find out the hard way. She stood by me and has never left me and is still beside me. She’s my hero and a hero to other young girls who were like me, thrown out on the streets because their mothers didn’t want them. Community Service you can call it that but I would call it lending a helping hand. Helping girls who were like me when I was their age, mentoring them to better than what I’ve become but yet to be. Cooking for them, teaching them how to cook, doing their hair, giving them my gently used clothes, teaching them everything I know about being a woman (with the exception of having kids). Helping them do their laundry, praying with them, being a shoulder that they could cry on, my heart just goes out to them because I feel that we can relate and my story then is their story now. So if we all did a little it would help a lot, a little bit of love goes a long way.
My Work is My Identity….Midterm
Looking inside me like Langston Hughes did in his writing Theme for English B, I don’t what I see. I know I don’t like and I have to change it. I’m vain on the inside because I let myself get so depressed because of bad decisions I’ve made. Unlike Lucy Grealy my face isn’t disfigured (I’m just comparing to say that I don’t like what I see as well) but I still see blemishes and flaws I don’t like. This assignment had put my mind in so many different places. I don’t have low self-esteem it’s just in the middle, and today I plan to do something about it. I let my identity get to me because I feel like I can’t live up to the standards of today’s society.
In today’s society people have many different standards to live up to. It also classifies us and puts us in all sorts of categories but truth be told when we go to heaven we are all going to be one, no different social status, no low, middle or high class, we will all be good souls with the lord. High society people get paid for having fortune 500 hundred companies and things of the sort. There are different societies for different incomes. High class people make millions of dollars a year while the middle class makes hundred thousands, and the lower class people just live check to check. Some people are just more fortunate than others, and the majority of them are born into it. I think what I do does defy who I am; I am a mother of two and a student currently seeking employment.
My identity is a 26 year old Black American student with two kids and no job. Why has my life come to this because of decisions that I have made in my past, not that I regret them but if I could do it all over I would’ve made a different decision on some things but not all. Being a mother defines the fact that I had kids at very young age and now I am struggling to raise them because I am a single parent. It doesn’t define the fact that I was brought up in the church with spiritual and natural guidance. My identity as a single mother says that I am working hard to be all that I can be and not being employed is harder. Not only is it hard on myself, it’s also hard to prove to others that I want my life to amount to more than getting child support from the fathers of my children.
My work is very simple but it can become complicated at times. It’s hard because what my kids need always trumps my needs as a student. I have to help them with their homework, get their dinner prepared, and make sure they bathe, clean up, and say their prayers with them. My homework always has to be done in the wee hours of the night. My life is not that hard but barely making enough money to get by. My identity is a reaction of me actions from the decisions that I have made in the past. Being in this class and reading these stories shows me that I have to live my life accordingly.
So if I was to thinking like Rembrandt Van Rijn did I would’ve painted a self-portrait for every decade of my life to realize what I’ve become so I can change it. He painted himself to see what he had become and every time he changed what he didn’t like about himself. I didn’t do that I just settled for less not realizing that it would stress me out and give me high blood pressure. So if I just took the time out to look in the mirror like Rembrandt and Lucy Grealy did or look deep inside my self like Langston Hughes I could’ve changed it before now. Looking deep down inside myself I have to be honest with myself like I haven’t been doing to change the things I can’t see but the things I can feel. Love myself before i can love anyone else be true to myself before you can be true to anyone else because if i don’t I will only be living a lie. These lessons that I am learning will apply to how I live my life from now on to make life better for my kids and myself, to help me succeed and get where I want to be in life and in my career field, and most of all to be proud of myself.
Zulu Traditions and Culture
My visit to the Orlando Museum of Art was different, yet wonderful and amazing at the same time. I experienced a whole new world of art and culture that I’ve never experienced before. I am ashamed to say that it was my first time going to a Museum (well one like that). It was an amazing experience and if wasn’t for this class I would not have even thought about going there. They exhibits were so extravagant and beautiful. The exhibits range from 19th Century Art and Culture all the way to present day Art and Culture, so many, so different from anything else I’ve ever experienced. There were many different cultures on exhibit in the Museum but I only choose to focus on one. I choose African Art and Culture to be my focal point of my assignment, even though I wasn’t allowed to take pictures I can only go from memory, as I sat there staring at each and every piece for at least 20 minutes, taking little notes here and there while reading the information about them.
There were various things on the African Culture and Art display that caught my eye. The first thing was the married women clothing and culture. Married women in South Africa wear very different clothing from them unmarried women. They wear isicholo’s-the hats for married women, made of straw and beads. Married Zulu women also wear skirts made up of cow hide also embedded with beads. Other Zulu women make their own clothes, the younger women’s clothing being more revealing. Zulu women do all the cooking, cleaning, sewing, fetching the water, collecting wood and taking care of the elderly as well as the kids. I have much more respect for this culture because they do a lot to take care of home, our way of life in America is so technoligical that we don’t do half the things these women do. They don’t have stoves, vacuums, cars, and etc…they do everything by hand and foot. When the zulu women clean they use cow dung to polish floors that does not have vinyl carpeting. They also carry water on their heads which is what they learn to do at an early age. They also wash their clothes at the river to save them some time and energy from walking back and forth. Their way of life is soo different in many ways. The man has a somewhat more domestic job such as hunting, and being a protector.
The Zulu men also have a way they dress as well which is very diffrent from the women in their culture. Zulu mens clothing are also made up of cow hide, which resembles their warrior uniforms. It is natural for a Zulu man to have more than one wife. Once again very diffrent from our culture, in America thats called being a bigamist and it is illegal. The only responsibilities of the Zulu men are bringing home the food and being a protector of his family as well as his village. In the Zulu culture they have the ceremonies(Reed Dance Festival) where the virgins would go and bring the Reed from the water to the Zulu King and there he choose his youngest wife. Zulu culture is different form ours, because women do not get a chance to pick and choose which man she would get to spend the rest of her life with, he is chosen for her.
In their down time, which they have very little, they do some things they enjoy such as church, beading, and sewing. Their culture is very distinct from other ethnicities. it is a way of life that everyone has to live by, or their fate lie in the hand of the Zulu King , which is their God their prtection their well-being and their strenght. In America, everyone makes their own set of rules as they get older but we all abide by the laws of our parents until we turn 18, or 21.
The children in the Zulu culture aren’t being taught the basic fundamentals like here in the U.S. they are also being taught how to survive and make a way of life. For example, the boys are being taught to hunt and protect, and the girls are being taught how to become women such as cooking, cleaning, sewing, carrying water on their heads, and being made wives at such an early age, which by the way devastates their fathers.
Beading within the Zulu clture is also a way of life. They often use beadwork to encompass a symbolic language whic may include reprimands and warnings, messages of love, and encouragement. Dfferent beads carry symbolic meaning also used during courtship. When women sew clothes they love using beads. Ancestors often use black and white beads, while they younger women use a wide variety of colors. The Ancestor Zulu women makes three special articles of clothing when a young woman gets married, and they are isicholos (married womans hat) a ubuhlalu (a cape) and a isidwaba (a pleated skirt) made of cowhide softened by hand.
This information was obtained from the Orlando Art Museum and also books that I used to study the Culture from the public library.
samanthadort 