Bobby and I watched an excellent movie this weekend, courtesy of Netflix. The movie was City of God, and it's the story of a kid growing up in the slums outside Rio de Janeiro. The thing that stunned us was that the film could just as easily have been set on the Cape Flats. It was all the same : the poverty, the violence, the near impossibility of getting out of the ghetto. The similarities were eerie, even down to the immensely strong physical resemblance between the main character (Rocket, a kid who wants to be a photographer) and a boy I taught ... gosh, must have been 10 years ago now. I wish I knew what became of that boy ... I have a feeling that he ended up one of our NGO's success stories. I last ran into him one evening, a few months after Sophie'd been born and I'd resigned. So I'd taught him a couple of years before that. Anyway, my folks were visiting us, and we'd left Steven and Em at home with them, while the two of us and tiny-Sophie-in-the-sling had gone up to the university to listen to a talk about Kilimanjaro expeditions. Afterwards, Bobby suggested we get some fish and chips to take home to the others. I wasn't really keen on the fish and chips idea to start with,, and I was utterly not keen to stop in at the place he had in mind, which was in a dodgy part of Berea street, below that centre where the OK Bazaars used to be. It was dark, and it was late, and I'd just read about a whole series of carjackings happening down there. So I was quite jumpy while we waited for our chips, and really started to get extremely uneasy when a whole group of youths approached us. Only, it turned out that they were just coming over to say "Hi Miss", because one of the kids was actually Buthlebethu - grown older and much bigger, which was why I hadn't recognised him immediately - and just on his way to Australia to take up a scholarship that he'd won. If anyone deserved it, he did, that's for sure ... he was an orphan, grew up in a home run by the Salvation Army. He's the reason I always give to the Salvation Army at Christmas time, even though I think their anti-gay and anti-women policies are awful. I always remember Buthlebethu introducing me to his house father, and seeing the obvious love and respect he had for him ... It was beautiful.

Anyway, getting back to the movie, I was glad that, even though it did a good job of explaining how potentially good people end up doing awful things, it never fell into the trap of sentimentalising violence - you know, that whole noble gangster kind of thing.

In other news from this weekend, Bobby was in fixing-mode. He has put up a lovely swing in the front yard - it's absolutely beautiful - and has also put up our new hangboard. So, although vast swathes of our house are still practically unfurnished, we can now do as many pull-ups as we wish, whenever we wish. Those of us with the ability and inclination, that is.