the heart of a black woman has always been a mystery. I have been searching it myself, 21 years its been. some days, i am close enough to feel the warmth emanating from it.  other days, like today (and yesterday and the day before that), it is as mysterious as God himself.

anyone who asked me 2 years ago whether i would return home, i gave an enthusiastic reply with so much certitude you would think God had told me His secret yet glorious plan for my life.  I was a bLaQ woman after all; my heart was born of the soil of Swaziland. And there my heart would return.

A year passed. A year of Times of Swaziland every evening, the Swazi Observer every now and then (usually to clarify a story from the former) plus NewAfrican, BBC Africa....anything, you name it. I had my hands on it. Like a gathering storm, daily i grew infuriated at the blatant injustices, also the more obscure ones, being loaded on the backs of bLaQ woman. 

I grew increasingly disgusted by the moral degradation of our leadership, by the structural deterioration of your families, by the utter disintegration of our communities. Is this it, what i call home? What i am so proud to belong? Is this my destiny?

The storm broke out, and I wrote, infuriated, to the Times of Swaziland a scathing article about the hopelessness of our country. the hopelessness of true leadership. the embezzlement of the peoples' confidence by our very own king. I was on fire...stomping my feet and trying to shake the world back into order. 

Then it stopped. I was tired. Weary. A defeated soldier of a just cause. Had my bLaQ heart finally calloused? Had i given up? Did i become one of those, who leave the country never to return, GLAD to escape?Had i forgotten the orphaned and the vulnerable, the elderly, the university students, the underpaid factory workers, the faithful taxpayers, the...the..? Had i forgotten home?

I rebuked myself the other day for being a hypocrite. I wear my pride on my sleeve, and yet, i have forsaken my own home. I had become a comic replica of those people amongst whom i live today.

It's back to bLaQ.  It's time to make a different noise. I may scream my lungs out, but you know what? Last week, 20 Mercedes Benz were delivered into my country where a 6 year old me in unprivileged circumstances cannot get education. Last year, it was BMW. Next year, what is it going to be? Will i simply sigh at the headlines, or will i work to stop this daylight robbery?

We have been patient for too long, cried for too long, and still we are not heard. It's TIME.