TokisoM Writes

Lerato Mogoatlhe's memoir, Vagabond - Wandering Through Africa on Faith , on her African travels is really a story of faith, courage and acting on your dreams - regardless of how wild they are. Mogoatlhe goes against everything what we have been socialised to believe about travel, especially as women and even more of our own continent - Africa.  Her solo adventures begin in Dakar and she already sets the scene for what is going to be a series of anecdotes of her showing up in different countries with no money, no solid plans of where she would be hosted and just a dream of wanting to be in the different places. The courage to travel this way allows her to meet so many people who, I believe were extra kind to her out of shock (and curiosity) that this young black woman was in their home town without the usual itinerary constraints.  Vagabond is not written to glamourise her African experience - instead, as a reader - you are given first row experience of her personal discovery ...

I am a mom to a toddler and in the three years of parenting - I can confidently say - I do not know what I am doing. My mission since deciding to become a parent has been to research as much as possible about different parenting styles and therefore work on developing mine. I first read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother when I was still toying with the idea of parenting 9-years-ago. I was fascinated by what she described as the Chinese method of parenting and raising high performance children. The question I had then, and the question I am left with today after rereading the book is: is my duty as a parent only to mold my child into a high performing person by any means necessary?  Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is highly capturing, funny and filled with cringe moments. Chua goes into details on what motivated her to be an extreme parent, the goals she had for her daughters, her fears of the western influence on her parenting and the really dark side of her c...