These boots are made for kicking

Connection is the buzz: with self, the world, your surroundings, your people – connect and we’ll help you like even those you don’t.

Just take a deep breath… I’m online doing a “Stanford University” course to get in touch with my world.

But I know this American has no cooking clue. How can he understand we live in a country where our “fight-and flight” never sleeps – even on his “deeper” level?

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How can he comprehend we never feel “safe”? Simple.

His subconscious is not constantly triggered. He lives in a normal society where a mass shooting is classified as three people, making international headlines.

Normal here is making it home safe in broad daylight with your cellphone still in your pocket if you dared walk.

Normal here is seeing the horror of a gang rape but knowing phoning 1011 is just not the answer. They won’t heed the call.

Normal is having a wall, electric gate and private security with AK-47s on speed dial. Not that the American believed me.

Or maybe he just wanted me to connect on that “deeper” level.

Deep breathing works – just not for me as I told him. I put my bare feet on the floor and get grounded. I’ve never been a fan of shoes – especially brown ones (forgive me, Alta).

Colour, heels, zips and boots have always left me cold. I’ve always loved the earth playing hell on my heels.

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And I was validated by a Mohawk princess I found in a newspaper clipping dated Natal Witness, Thursday, October 27, 1977.

Carol-Ann Brant, “arguably the most attractive delegate attending the World Wilderness Congress in Pietermaritzburg”, using her Red Indian name Ka Jih Tsi Yoh, had it against shoes.

She told the likes of conservationist Ian Player “in spring, Indians remove their shoes and those of their horses because they believed the earth was pregnant and her body should not be harmed”.

Modern agricultural equipment “are not used because North American Indians believe it will slice open the breast of Mother Earth”.

My girl, this direct descendant of Chief Thayendanega, who died shoeless, I’m sure, in 1809. So don’t kick up your heels.

Kick off your shoes and get grounded with me. Let’s not tread softly in our country’s mud.

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