Inspiration coming from Lira and Nelson Mandela

Due to Nelson Mandela's 95th birthday falling on Thursday, July 18, I started listening to South African music a lot. I even changed my Twitter name to that of my South African alter-ego, Siyabonga Mthimkhulu. I listened to some house, kwaito, hip hop, jazz, R&B and gospel music from Mzansi. Heavy on the rotation was music from Lira. Yeap, the one I met in South Africa. She's simply the rockas. My father is also in town and he's been listening to me rock Lira in the car all the time. Yesterday, I made him watch Tsotsi, my favorite movie of all time. But these occurrences didn't drive me to write this blog post quite like what happened this morning. I was listening to Lira's Captured Tour CD along with my father on the way to work. And then the song started ---

"I have a dream, a dream that lives in me. A gift that is given to the uniqueness of me. There is a path, a path made just for me and I walk it faithfully, though not certain where it leads. But I keep pressing on, I keep moving on, a force within me keeps me going strong.".

This song is called "Valley of Darkness". When I listen to Lira's music, I constantly repeat Ngiyazifela, Hamba and Something Inside So Strong. The latter song was sung to honour Nelson Mandela. There's a YouTube clip around this. Today, I repeated Valley of Darkness 6 times, or how many ever times I needed to before I finally got to work. You can listen to the song on YouTube too.

The lyrics I posted above talks about "a force". Trying to figure what the force is is a whole discussion. I believe it's the vim. The lyrics sang by Lira after these lines are "Though I walk through the valley of darkness, I shall not fear, for I know you walk with me". This makes it seem like "you" or this force is religious, or God. But this force could very well be inside of you, your inner inspiring force. Your inner motivational power.

I believe Nelson Mandela had a lot of this. That's why he goes around striking poses like this in the picture. If he lived in Ghana and these times, he would be saying "more vim". I looked around for Nelson Mandela quotes on his 95th birthday and found this which I tweeted. I wanted to blog about Nelson Mandela's birthday on his birthday but I was busy doing various things. I did blog about on his birthday on his 92nd birthday. Too bad I couldn't find a picture of Lira and Madiba together. I did find one of my South African crush Terry Pheto with him though so that should suffice. :-) I'd leave you with that Madiba quote I discovered last week. It captures that inner force very well.

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall" - Nelson Mandela #MandelaDay.
— Mighty African (@mightyafrican) July 18, 2013