The Adventures of a Xhosa Princess

So, the second trimester begins, and I’m over the moon because our little Gummy Bear is growing and forming into an entire human being. I’m finally starting to feel more energetic and can stay awake for much longer. I’m even able to tidy up the apartment without feeling like the world is about to end, however, the reality of the pandemic hits me like a ton of cement bricks and I sink into prenatal depression - this is not how I planned to have my first viable pregnancy!   Before I even fell pregnant, we had decided that our children would be born in South Africa. I wanted my husband to be at every Gynae appointment. I wanted a gender reveal party, a baby shower, a baby moon and a baby pinkeln for my husband - only the gender reveal party materialized, and that too was by chance because ngithanda ukufosta. I also wanted to attend prenatal classes, pregnancy yoga and aqua aerobics, but that very quickly became a far-fetched dream.   We were stuck in a 65m2 apartment in t...

As stated previously, the first trimester, though coupled with a few mishaps, was blissful!   There were a few negatives though, and on top of the list is my fingers, face, nose and lips swelling TF up and hyper-pigmentation from those very early days. I’m beautiful and I know it, but pregnancy turned me into the ugliest duckling on this planet (laughs in ‘oksalayo muhle utoothless bear wami’), and because the pregnancy was our little secret, I kept hoping that people on my social media wouldn’t notice the puffy face. I was also extremely bloated at some point and when that bloat went away, I couldn’t stop my farts from coming out for weeks, lol! I sincerely apologise to my husband for having to sit through those because on some days, I too would lowkey die from the smell, kodwa isoja lifela empini, so I maintained my straight face.   Another negative for me was the constant pelvic pain I had from my uterus expanding as the embryo grew into a fetus and so forth – thi...

One of the most common concerns I would hear from friends when I announced that I am pregnant was “I’m so worried about you being pregnant and birthing in a predominantly white society”. This obviously made me worry a lot as well because of how often I would hear it, and it changed my entire perspective of pregnancy and childbirth in Germany to a very negative/dark one. I kid you not when I tell you that had this post been written 2 months prior, I would have said everything is SH*T; without even blinking or thinking twice about it. However, now that I have had time to process and debrief, I can safely say that my pregnancy journey was top tier.   My husband and I had been discussing having children, and though we did not put pressure on ourselves by deciding on a fixed timeframe; I wanted to fall pregnant on our pre-honeymoon which was scheduled for June 2020. Therefore, I started booking appointments in February 2020 with the Gynecologist and Traditional Chinese Medicine Pr...

Hi everyone, I’m back! … and I have news for days, so I hope you’re all stocked up on the beverages: non-alcoholic will do if you’re in South Africa, because it’s about to get JUICY.   Let’s get right into it - not only did I get married-married in November and December 2019, but my husband and I got a little too busy with other things during the German spring 2020 quarantine period instead of social distancing, LOL (that’s why I didn’t have time to blog for over a year). Yeah yeah, we have a 3 weeks old baby girl that's growing so fast, I might need a time machine to keep her young forever.   Now that we’ve settled into married life and our bundle of JOY is here and getting stronger and healthier by the day – I can finally share everything from getting married in Germany as an ausländer (foreigner), my German husband paying lobola and our lobola celebrations, family planning, and our TTC (trying to conceive), pregnancy and birthing journey with you, and I’m honestly...

Hallo! Hi! Dumelang! Sanibonani! Molweni…! I hope everyone has been doing well, hydrating and minding their business. I took a little break because life in Europe came at me sideways again. It’s been a constant battle between my health, learning German, finding a university near our hometown with the exact program I want to do, being a home executive (it sounds better than housewife), and and and. Just over a year into being a South African in the diaspora (or an expat – whatever you want to call it), and I think I have finally found my rhythm. I can boldly say I am back to blogging and being alive again 😊 . So much has happened in the last few months and I want to share some of it with you; so here goes an update into the life of Mumi (as our nephew; Master J, calls me). First and foremost, let’s all grab a glass (bottle is better) of wine, champopo, beer or water (not advisable) to hydrate and celebrate me passing the official TELC Deutsch B1 exam on my first attempt...

A generation or two ago, many young people of African descent - both at home and abroad - lament their parents' prudish attitudes towards sex. Most of them grew up around parents who never displayed their affection for each other in front of them, parents who never talked to them about sex except to warn them to abstain before marriage or they would be disowned. Sex was generally not spoken about in public, that is unless it was in socially sanctioned public spaces, but these spaces were very important. The spaces tended to be initiation ceremonies, where the youth officially became adults and had the knowledge and expectations of society imparted to them. Or they were marriage rites, in which pretty much the same thing happened. These initiation ceremonies were like schools in which the youth were taught society’s rules, culture and even history. The sexual aspect was just one part of it. This form of education took on various forms, but one similarity between them was that the...

... was ist das?? I´m here to tell you all that my December 2018 was cancelled, and the universe didn´t even have the nerve to inform me before time. Christmas markets in Germany are all that people rave about when they think about spending their December holidays here. I remember seeing videos and pictures of these markets on-line and thinking ``yeah B! that´s going to be my life, and I´m going to the market every single day for the food and glühwein (warm spicy wine)``. The excitement I had when I learned that one of the Christmas markets is 100m from our front door - I could even smell the spicy air and taste the glühwein before the market was set-up and opened. It was all fun and games till I learned that everyone forgot to inform  me that no one really gets to enjoy these Christmas markets because EVERYONE works till the 23rd and is back at work or school on 2nd January the following year - that´s literally just enough time to go for a coffee or smoke break! I don´t even ...