Simply BJ...

Simply a FAN!!

How can you be so passionate about a sports team? My team just lost a game on Saturday dashing all hopes of playing in the playoff's and my world has just come down with it. Now I have a rough idea what those Brazilian fans feel when their soccer team loses in the Cup le Monde (World Cup). Man am so pissed that my season is over over, till next season as in I don't even care who plays or who wins anymore. How did I even get here?

I suspect this is very temporary and in a few days I will be looking forward to the playoff''s and quite possibly even root for another team. OK, hold it there now, am NOT a fair weather fan and I will continue to support my home team come next year. I'm just pissed that they lost and especially how they lost. DANG!!!

So much for the whining, Let me take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year.

Just go get 'em folks. And whatever it is, that you do out there strive to be the very best or at the very least, give it your best shot and try have some FUN too.

Always, nothing but the best.

posted by Shaggy @ 12:05 PM 8 comments

Brother Jero - Chapter 2

This next chapter takes a look at life at this much talked about school which was the moulding arena and spring board to my next life. Thank’s for your great comments on Chapter 1. I will now jump straight into it.. Man !! They were not at all kiddin when they said that this was the school coz it really was.. I will try paint you a picture and leave it to you to decide..

This school had a cadet force, an armoury & a shooting range, a 9 hole golf course, a fully equipped gym, martial arts & weight lifting, cricket & horse racing, rugby, soccer & hockey and a huge cross country circuit within the school perimeter. It was a huge huge school. Wednesday afternoon’s were blanked out as shopping time. You filled in a chit and went out to town, did your thing and came back. The school bus brought you back or else got private means to get back and if you chose not to go out of school, studied. We sent all our clothes to the Laundry twice a week and our bathroom linen was provided by the school. The school had two dress codes for Sunday/Special days and regular dress. For meals we had yorkshire pudding on Sundays, french toasts & scrabbled eggs every morning for breakfast, eggs, sausages & fries on Friday dinner, a lot of mashed potato’s all around and murram once a week for Monday lunch which all ended up at the pig sty. Did I mention we had a farm ranch with dairy cows & pigs. Enough, enough I think you really get it. This was certainly a good place to want your little boy to grow up in. OK, just one last one just for the kicks.. and yes we did celebrate thanksgiving with a formal Turkey candlelit dinner on the last Thursday of November. Man.. it really was designed to be ‘The Place’… but here comes the big BUT!!!!

It was far from all that, from where you are unless you were in the school you must be going NO, NO, you are lying right? No they didn’t. Yes we did, we had all this and then some. But it was the worst 12 months of my life as I walked into what would be comparable to a torture facility and all those other flashy things were the bait to lure innocent bright kids in. This was the worst bullying school perhaps in the history of time, we are kind of sworn to secrecy not to get into all the details just in case the govt. or the UN opens up an inquiry, but there are thousands of guys now scattered all over the world who will never ever forget what they went through. A taste of it would be an early 5am wake up call to hit the swimming pool in freezing tempratures, then came the much dreaded loud TOP BOARD call, this was a call from one of the senior boys to have all the 1st formers line up and go up the 3 meter board and jump into the deep end of the pool where there would be 3 to 4 senior boys waiting for you to drown you. Just writing this sends cold shivers through my entire body.

Many guys never talk much and probably never will and if they do, never say what exactly happened to them, and just give you a taste of what happened to them just like I did. The full story may never be told BUT it was indeed a very very grim picture & time. We cried every single day and if you went out on Sunday to be with your family and your parents brought you back in the evening, the mere sight of the school board brought tears to your faces. My mum knew and she used to held my hand and asked me to hang in there and I did, my dad either pretended not to see, but you know what, it was all too loud not to see or even hear. One time I walked out of the car and ran into the dorm with my bag full of nice warm ‘grab’. This was immediatley snatched from me, slapped several times on the face and dared to ran out and tell them, I waved goodbye to my family through the dorm window just so that they did not see my tears. Some boys quit but most went through this and we hold a strong bond and every time we get together, I promise you at least one story pop's up, and we just laugh it out knowing fully well that was not at all a funny time in our young lives…

It’s amazing what happened after the first year, because we all practically took this journey towards becoming real men in the very true sense of the word and shaping our futures. Am pleased to say now that many do very well and we all are very proud of our schooling heritage. We were shaped early and are ready for anything the world throw's at us and that is the hallmark and the pride of all the alumni’s. Now you know a lil bit of my background and I’m now ready to share with you some of the crazy & funny shit that I go through every single day. Each day is a true blessing and a sign from Sir G to continue to work hard and do good to positively impact the world around us. The legacy we leave behind should be such that people should be left saying that one day there was this one fine son of a B_____ who was really good at what he or she did.

Go get ‘em folks… Chapter 3 is in the oven….

posted by Shaggy @ 7:50 AM 16 comments

Brother Jero - Chapter 1

I take this time to welcome you all to my world, a warm & hearty intro is in order but I'm late and feel the dire need to catch up with all ye faithful bloggers who have really spiced up this world we live in by sharing all so interstingly your world. Mine’s from the Old school too and school of hard knocks like a few of you, where at my tender age am learning to tell people honestly how I feel about them and part with niceties & words like I love you. Words before that were indeed foreign given that our folks rarely embraced let alone kissed and never used such endearing words.

Mine’s been a miraculous journey from almost rags to riches in all facets of life, from very humble beginnings where the furthest a kid was allowed to dream with all due respect was being a cop, teacher or a city council officer. Where fights were the norm and if a weekend went without a major fight we created one. At 7 yrs old I was a member of gang, fighting others kids from the other estates and you needed a visa to cross my estate no matter who were. We trained in martial arts & fought each other for practice. We trained all the new stuff that we saw from the Bruce Lee movies. The older kids & Shamshoe (a respected blackbelt) were the coaches and we could flat out kick butt. We set up wire traps to hang motor cycle indian sales-men (mare-kwa-mare) & this other loud & annoying kau neighbour who had a scooter and always came home drunk for a thrill. We stole whatever the fruit-for-season was from the soko’s. Against all this adversity at 11 yrs, I made a consious decison to cut across the grain. And this is how it all happened…..

One mid morning with my homies in the very late 70’s tired from a full morning of bird hunting with our feya’s we got into a rather surprising discussion about high schools given that the older boys were now getting into high school. And ‘innocent’ me just listened as they spoke about the schools, back then Pumwani & Aquinus (AQ) were the schools to go to since they had good football & basketball programs. Then one boy asked if we had ever heard of this posh school ya wadosi where they eat sausages and eggs for breakfast every morning and the showers have shampoo and automatic brushes for every one yada yada yada. That caught my eye and I listened keenly…..

Long story short, most of my buddies then have since been in & out of jail for crazy shit like armed robbery to car jacking etc. And am told some are still in prison, some are crack heads and some are dead from rubbing shoulders with the flying squad. BUT against all odds a few years later, I ended up at that posh school that we all were talking about. I picked it as my first choice with Pumwani & Aquinus as my 3rd & 4th choices just incase I never made it to my 1st or 2nd. This was the turning point of the Trials & Tribulations of Brother Jero....

Stay with me folks coz it gets really tasty and interesting, take this journey with me, welcome once again to my world……….

posted by Shaggy @ 11:31 AM 6 comments