We worked so hard, spent so much time in weight room and in camps to be where we are today. We wanted to come out and be as good as any team in the state, to prove we could hang with any team at any time.
From the neck up is where you win or lose the battle. It's the art of war. You have to lock yourself in and strategise your mindset. That's why boxers go to training camps: to shut down the noise and really zone in.
The lack of livelihood opportunities in refugee camps pushes many people to embark on dangerous journeys in the quest for a better life.
What I quickly discovered is that our so-called new South Africa has as much material for a story-teller as the old one. The landscape hasn't really changed. Who is in power now is different to who was in power then, but the squatter camps grow like cancer, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
When I was 4, my parents took me to see a musical, and I was like, 'I want to do that!' I started doing all sorts of musical camps and a lot of professional theater. I took dance classes for 10 years, too - I was never the most amazing kid in the other classes, but tap stuck with me for some reason.
The training camps are tough, going through that.
Dictatorships do cut down on rape, and pillage, not to mention sexual harassment, by the simple expedient of sending people to labour camps for life or cutting off their hands without a trial.
Before this learning experience, I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty, the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons, and liberals who supported them.
Obama's ascendancy unhinged the radical right, offering a unified target to competing camps of racial, nativist and religious animus.
I spent time in refugee camps in Southeast Asia, and in the projects of Chicago. I've been to State dinners with Presidents. I met the Queen of England on a beach in Anguilla. No one is any more valuable or important than you are. No one is more important than your family and your friends.
