Dear Friends and family,
2009 has come and now it is all but gone. What a year it turned out to be for me! But before I get to it, just a quick note about this annual missive of mine: It has always been an unspoken ambition to shorten the length of the note, knowing as I do that not everyone enjoys reading rather lengthy and boring letters from anyone... so I am hoping that it will be quite a pleasant change to see a shorter note from me this year. The reason is less noble than the above may suggest, but I won’t go into it. It will just lengthen the letter unnecessarily...
So, back to 2009, the year that was. As those of you that I wrote to last year will remember the year ended on a rather heavy note for me. While I am always hopeful and always look on the bright side, the amount of uncertainty surrounding this year was just too much for me and I wasn’t in the best of shapes mentally as 2008 came to a close. However, as the saying goes, time is a great healer. Soon it was January and the New Year had to be faced. I sought a mentor to help me with the issues that I was facing and was privileged to have Mr Frank Giese, an entrepreneur agree to play that role which he ably did. By the middle of the year, I was in much better spirits and was feeling like a young boy again: ready to face the world and all its challenges. As luck would have it, my responsibilities also increased about the same time as I took on the bigger job that I had been hoping for since I came down to the Cape of Good Hope in April 2006. So, as it turns out and from a professional point of view, what I had forecast to be the perfect candidate for the ‘annus horribilis’ of my life to date turned out to be not so bad after all. In a sense it is a candidate for the minor “annus mirabilis” categories for my life to date, because it was actually a good year (, although it definitely is not THE one).
Work is such a large part of our lives that it sometimes can overshadow all the other things that we do. Many people that I know define themselves by the work that they do, using their professions to describe themselves. For me too, to an extent, my professional life is quite a big deal. However I have always tried to have a good balance between work and so called ‘life’. When the direction of my career seemed to be quite uncertain and work was not providing me with enough satisfaction, I found myself seeking and getting quite a lot of support from my family. However as the year progressed and the demand of work grew, the scarcity of time and the need to maintain that balance became quite acute and required more conscious effort: something that I had initially taken for granted. This has not been made easy by my taking on my first private paid programming job, developing a piece of software for a Mozambican distribution company. Gladly, I am well supported by both Codilia and Dante, who now unfortunately believes that the normal thing is for his dad to spend some time on his laptop doing work every day of the week when even when he comes back from the office. Of course this is definitely one of the things that I am not too proud of, and hope to work my way out of as the New Year begins.
One of the main reasons why I have always maintained a very positive outlook towards life is my total belief in the existence of a Creator God who is interested in His creation and directs it towards its beautiful purpose and end. Whilst I am aware of the possible contradictions that such a belief brings about for others, and for me to the extent that I try to reconcile it with my belief in the scientific method and the power of science especially in the contemporary world, 2009 reinforced my belief in this God. In the turmoil of the earlier months of the year, He provided strength through my family and the support of our Zimbabwean prayer group, my fellow Catechists at the Parish of the Resurrection, our Faith and Light Community at St Theresa’s and a number of friends who showed me concrete examples of his Love. Not only that but later in the year, He blessed me with the job that I had been fighting for, for almost a year and in this recessionary environment he made it possible for us to not only keep our heads above the water; we are actually exiting the year much better off than when we started it all. Now as the year came to a close, I was also given the great responsibility of being an extra-ordinary Minister of the Eucharist for our Parish adding to my other responsibilities of being in charge of music for the Sunday 10:00 Children’s Mass and my ongoing work as a catechist. Yes, I have worked hard in order for some of these things to happen, but so have many others who have not had the same privilege. So, as the year comes to an end I really cannot help but state what may not be as obvious to you as it is to me: I feel quite blessed and I do not know how I can thank God for such great blessings as he bestows on me.
The one thing that I traditionally consistently neglect in my life is my physical well being. As most of you know all too well, I have almost no knowledge of any sport beyond the superficial and my own engagement in anything remotely physical is quite limited, if not non-existent. One would say I am averse to sport. Whilst I have dabbled with the gym in years past, I have never enjoyed it and in fact, Codilia used to clap hands for the guy in this one “coke light” advert in which the voice artiste asks the viewer to “clap hands for the guy who paid his gym fees and actually went’, because for two years I had a Virgin Active gym contract that I could not get out of, and so paid, but seldom set foot in their local gym. So it should come as a surprise to many of you that this year I finally found something physical that I quite enjoy doing: cycling. I am actually trying mountain biking, which is extremely hard, especially for a very unfit person like me. It’s quite a pleasant sport though, when you get the hang of it and, if you live in Cape Town, there are some very gorgeous Mountain biking trails around so that you get to exercise and enjoy some of the best views in the world at the same time. Anyway, I am so serious that at the end of October this year I actually participated in a triathlon as the Cyclist in our team. You will need to know that I got the prize for “Staying longest in the saddle”, a euphemism for having been last, but as my wife says, since they only give prizes to the first three and to the guy who comes in last, I should make sure that I practice with a view for not being too far from the rear in future events...
OK, I promised a short note and this is two pages quickly getting on to three, so I will quickly pen off before it becomes too long. Three pages should be an improvement from the previous 6 or 8... I normally take time to use this note to reflect on an important philosophical question that would be on my mind at this time of the year. In recent days, the biggest question is around legacy: my own legacy. Clearly this is not a new question as I have touched on it to an extent in previous years, however this year the issue seems more urgent. I have spent most of this past year concentrating on me more than I have done in any other year of my adult life. I have had the least amount of contact with all my friends and relatives, excluding those that I live with than I have done in the past and this has prompted me to ask the questions: “Who am I?” and “How will I be remembered?” once more. I mentioned briefly in the third paragraph, how we use work to define us to a large extent, but I am also acutely aware of how, as an African following some aspects of the Shona culture, I am also defined by relationships and so a major part of my legacy will have to do with how I am faithful to these relationships. At this point, I feel as if I am failing a major part of my purpose by not maintaining, cultivating and utilising these relationships that I have to their full potential...
Anyway, let me ponder on the above question some more, and hopefully as the New Year progresses I will be better placed to explain what my real issue is. For the time being, I continue to look forward to 2010 with a lot of hope for an even better year than the present one has been. As I have already said the current year has been quite good on a number of fronts, made especially well by my ability to have been productive in almost all spheres of my life. Looking ahead, I would like to be able to see the end of what looks like the genesis of a pot belly on me and I would also like to get back in touch with all the people that matter to me: not in cyberspace where possible, but in the physical world where real memories can be shared again... But then again, what is real... (a question for another day). My wish to you for 2010 is that you may never lose sight of the things that are important to you. Keep chasing your dreams, and be blessed.
With warmest regards
Farayi Kambarami