I Am Still Battling With Sickle Cell Disease
Growing up, I was always treated differently. I wasn’t allowed to play sports, and my mom always forced me to wear thick sweaters. No matter how hot I felt, I could never take it off because my mom did not want me to catch pneumonia.
Irrespective of the precautions I…
Diary of a Village Girl: Creating Hope in my Community
I have always had the urge to go back home to Malawi and be part of the builders of my community and the country at large. Though born and raised in Zimbabwe by Malawian parents, my love for Malawi developed when I arrived there in 2004, still a child…
Siphiwe Sithole tells us about the idea that transformed her life
That I would become a farmer was just not on the radar. I did not see this coming. I trained as a journalist at Rhodes university and went on to do a postgraduate diploma in advertising and marketing. After that, I worked in different marketing and public relations positions…
I want to make my husband happy, to honour his name, to give him a child
It hurt a lot last time,
I had to walk into that pharmacy and explain the wound and how it got there. The pharmacist looked at me sideways, and I understood. I probably would have done the same thing.
I hope this time will be better. She looks gentler, younger, and…
Black girl magic: How I started treating my IBS with my hands
As someone who had sangomas (traditional healer) as grandparents, the idea of natural and alternative medicine has never been entirely new to me. The older I become, the more confident I am about traditional, natural and alternative routes for healing. My upbringing in Pretoria, South Africa gave me a…
Let’s talk about Abortion bans and human rights violations
Growing up Catholic has made conversations about abortion rather uncomfortable for me. Surprisingly, the discomfort isn’t necessarily from the catholic church’s perspective on abortion laws but rather the fact that I consider myself a prominent human rights scholar who is avoiding an issue that clearly incites human rights violations….
What is “good” air quality and why is it important?
As a bit of a nerd about all things health-related, I was seriously surprised when I opened my weather app one day and saw a warning that the air quality was poor. Living in France, the second biggest city near the ocean and nature, I always imagined and assumed…