Category: Health

To sea or not to see

The 8th of June is World Oceans Day.

Thought to celebrate this day I’d share some cool facts.

Did you know that around 70% of the world’s surface is covered by oceans?

There are 5 different oceans – namely the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean , the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Ocean.

The largest is the Pacific ocean and it covers around 30% of the Earth. The name “Pacific” come from the Latin word ‘pacificus’ – meaning peaceful.

Incredibly, around 70% of the oxygen that we breathe is produced by the oceans.

Only 5% of the oceans have been explored. Not surprising really when the deepest known area of the Earth’s oceans is in the Pacific, near Guam in the Philippine Sea at the end of the Mariana Trench, and its deepest point measures nearly 11km.

The Great Barrier Reef (the largest coral reef near Australia) measures about 2,600km and it can be seen from the moon!

We all know that oil spills in the sea are terrible and kill lots of sea life, but waste matter from sewerage and agriculture gets dumped into the sea too. This sometimes had all sorts of toxins in it that can cause dangerous types of algae (sea plants) to bloom in water near the coast. When these blooms die and rot they use up all the oxygen in the water and then there’s none left for the fish. These are called “creeping dead zones”

Some people just think of the sea as a huge dumping ground. Lots of other stuff (like chemicals) are chucked into the sea – and get eaten by the fish that you and I eat, which causes illness in humans (never mind what it does to the sea life).  It’s very scary how polluted the seas have become.

312 million kilograms of sea food is consumed each year! Our ocean resources are being depleted daily. People often imagine that the sea is full of a never-ending supply of fish but this is simply not so.

Please remember you can consult the SASSI website   and find out which fish are endangered or not.

To celebrate World Ocean Day we are going to make Sibo and the Sea available on the website  for you to freely read if you want to read more about the oceans.

Please only eat from the “green list” people!

Sibo

Pain in the butt

The last day of May is World No Tobacco Day.

Luckily I am too young to have to quit smoking because I’ve never started – but I know it’s a really hard habit to kick.

Truth is that smoking‘s bad for you. Not only can it cause lung disease, it can also cause heart problems and can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body too.

Luckily it’s now illegal to smoke with your children in the car – because second hand smoke is almost as bad for you as the real thing. At least people who smoke choose to do so. The kids who get to breathe their parental agents smoke have no choice. That’s just nasty!

Not only is smoking bad for people, it’s bad for environment and the animals.

Lately scientists have figured out that cigarette butts are one of the most abundant types of litter found around. That means there are plenty of butts out there. (Studies estimate that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year.)

Worse, it’s one of nastiest, deadliest forms of waste.

People who would not dream of pitching a cool drink tin out of the car window will happily chuck a burning butt out. Not particularly caring that it can set fire to something. And they do too – burning butts are often the cause of serious veldt fires.

People also drop them on pavements or into gutters, where the wind will blow them into storm waters and all sorts of other places.

Beaches are ideal for putting out butts. One huge ashtray – right? Wrong.

Or… they flick butts casually into water – dams, the sea and rivers.

Cigarette butts are tiny little bundles of toxins. In other words… poisonous. They get into our marine ecosystems and cause havoc with the wildlife and the quality of the water.

And we all know that water is extremely precious – right?

You know what is also really scary – even those people who put their cigarettes out in the designated places have no guarantee that their butts won’t also end up in the water. The bins get emptied. Butts are chucked onto rubbish dumps. Then they get blown around and it’s highly likely that they also end up where they shouldn’t.

Take care where you put those butts please people.

Sibo

 

More holidays…

Hope you are all enjoying being back at school again. If not – don’t worry – there is another long weekend coming up.

Around about this time of April there are some important days to talk about.

22nd of April is International Mother Earth Day. Actually we should make every single day Earth day because we only have on earth (duh!) and it’s not actually in very good shape anymore. Remember we can all do our bit by practising the 3R’s – reducing, reusing and recycling. Also by saving water where ever we can. Don’t forget to save electricity too – that also helps. Switch off those lights when you are not in a room and unplug your chargers when you have finished charging your appliances. How about planting a tree… a nice fruit tree. Just think how great it would be to pluck your own lemons, oranges, mulberries or whatever type of tree you want to grow (just check that it is going to grow well in your area first though).

25th April is World Malaria Day.  You might think that is a funny day to have because malaria is not an issue on the East Rand, but there are many areas in the world where it is a huge problem.  How scary is this… according to UNICEF: “Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds, about 3000 children every day. Over one million people die from malaria each year, mostly children under five years of age, with 90 per cent of malaria cases occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

Malaria really is an extremely nasty disease. It’s carried by a certain type of mozzie called the Anopheles mosquito and it feels a bit like getting flu – you have a fever, headache, get the chills, feel like throwing up and have achy bones. If you have been in a malaria area and experience any of these symptoms – you should go to the doctor or the clinic immediately.

Of course we all get bitten by normal mozzies every now and then. They are not dangerous but they are incredibly irritating and itchy. Here are a few innovative ways of dealing with those little bumps… tee tree oil, a dab of vanilla essence, Vicks, calamine lotion, spit, clear nail polish, aloe vera and some people swear that rubbing a peeled clove of garlic on the bite works well too!

If you want to know more about malaria – you can read my book “Sibo Fights Malaria” freely on http://www.sibo.co.za . Just click on the cover.

Enjoy the long weekend – stay safe!

Sibo

 

Magic Stuff

Did you know that vinegar really is miracle stuff?

You can use it for a number of things and it is much more environmentally friendly that using harsh detergents. It’s also something that most people readily have in their homes.

Here are a few different ways that you can use it when cooking – apart from putting it on your chips that is…

If you add a dash of vinegar to the water when you are boiling eggs it stops the white from leaking out if any of the eggs crack in the pot.

For leafy veggies that are wilted and all sad looking, try soaking them in cold water with a little vinegar and they will crisp up considerably.

You know how your hands honk when you have been chopping onions? Well… if you rub your hands with a bit of white vinegar you’ll get rid of that nasty smell.

Here’s another great tip – often eating veggies like cabbage, broccoli or cauliflower can make a person a tad “farty”. They say if you add a dash of vinegar to the water when cooking, it will not only perk up the taste but also reduce gassiness. This also works when cooking beans. Bean soup is always delicious in the winter but sometimes the “fallout” takes away some of the charm. Vinegar to the rescue!

Some other great uses for vinegar in the home…

Before you wash them – spray vinegar onto shirts or dresses that have those yellow deodorant stains under the arms– it helps to remove the discolouration. Adding a cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle of your washing machine rejuvenates bright colours. Acetic acid won’t harm fabrics, but it dissolves the soap residue that can dull dark clothing. It also acts as a fabric softener, a static reducer and a mildew-inhibitor.

Chewing gum that is stuck to car upholstery, rugs and carpeting can be loosened by rubbing gently with vinegar.

Vinegar can disinfect, deodorize and sort out just about everything. From shower curtains to sofa cushions, there’s not much that it can’t do. You can also spray it on the grout between your tiles, leave it for a few minutes, and then give it a scrub with an old tooth brush.

Wow! Who knew that sour old vinegar was such sweet stuff!

Hope these tips are useful for you.

Lots of love

Sibo

Creative Holiday Doodles

Yay! It is holiday time again. If you are looking for something cool to do – try this out. It’s really easy and lots of fun. Plus for once you can do it on your own and you don’t need parental agents to supervise anything.

All you need are: wax crayons, paper and a toothpick.

Start out small first just to see how it works and then work your way up to doing something bigger.

Fold a piece of A4 paper into half and then into half again so you have four little sections. (You can even cut along the folded lines so that you have four pieces of paper.)  If you don’t have any paper you can always use the back of a used envelope or something similar.

Draw up a pattern in the middle of one of your bits of paper. You could draw a diamond within a diamond within a diamond or use circles or squares or flowers or anything you fancy.

Then colour-in the different sections in using nice bright wax colours. Make sure you colour in the whole section of paper. (Have a look at the picture provided.)

When you have finished, grab the black crayon and colour over your already coloured in pattern.

No! Don’t worry – I have not gone mad – it’s part of the process.

Once you have a nice big black blob your sneaky canvas is ready…

Use your toothpick, to doodle little pattern. Or draw a picture… or even better you could draw an Easter egg and decorate it with doodles.

Then you could cut that out and stick it on another piece of paper or cardboard to make a pretty Easter egg card for your parental agents or somebody else.  You could even email a picture to me and I’d put it on my website. I always love hearing from people.

Remember – the 7th April is also World Health Day. I don’t know about you but I hate being sick – so it’s important to stay healthy.  It’s not hard if you get enough exercise, plenty of sleep and you can always nibble on fruit, raisins or carrot sticks instead of sweets and chips if you are looking for a more healthy option for snacks.

Happy holiday’s people!

Sibo

Random Acts of Kindness

I’ve been reading things about kindness lately and I was thinking that we sure could use a little more of that stuff in our world to make it a better place.  It usually only takes one person to start a domino effect.

It’s not hard to be kind – but it does take a certain mind-set. You can start small. By smiling – and we all know that it takes only 26 to smile and 62 to frown!

Smile at random people for no reason at all.  Usually 9 times out of 10 (unless that person is having a really bad day) they will smile back at you. And then you both feel good.

It’s contagious. You walk along thinking about the person who smiled at you and usually you are still smiling. So you end up smiling at somebody else too … and so it goes.

Of course, remember – it’s okay to smile at random people but kids should not stop and chat. And if anybody ever gets too friendly and makes you feel uncomfortable – feel free to tell your parental agent.

If you are at home, or in a shop and somebody drops something. You can bend down and pick it up for them. It takes just a little bit of effort.

You can offer to help your mum or dad without being asked. They might fall over and faint – but try it sometime – I bet they would really appreciate it.

Or maybe if you see somebody at school sitting by themselves looking all sad and lonely you could go and sit with them – even offer them a snack out of your lunch box if you have enough to share.

This is going to sound a little crazy but engaging in acts of kindness actually acts a bit like a medicine chest in your body…

Did you know, it is said that kindness stimulates the production of serotonin. This is a chemical that not only makes you feel-good but it makes you happy and calms you down.

Even better – doing acts of kindness produces endorphins—the brain’s natural painkiller!

They say that people who are always kind have 23% less cortisol (the stress hormone) and don’t get as old as quickly as the average population.

Research has even found that being kind lowers blood pressure.

Go out people and commit random acts of kindness!

Lots of love,

Sibo

Happy Days

Hope you all had a very HAPPY Human Rights Day on the 21st of March. Did you know it was also International Day of Forests on the same day? The 20th was International Day of Happiness.  I guess most people in South Africa were really happy on that day because they knew that the next day was a public holiday.

The 22nd of March is World Water Day.  Luckily we no longer have water restrictions because our dams are much fuller than they were at the end of last year, but poor old Cape Town is in a terrible mess.  They actually only have a few days of water left. Everybody there is saving water like crazy.

We all take water for granted but it really is very precious stuff. Without it we would all die. It is a simple as that.

Often people say that your body is made up of 95% of water. This is not true – babies typically have around 78% body water when they are born, but this drops down to 65% by the time they turn one year old. From then on it just gets less.  Elderly people have around 50% of water in their bodies. Also men have more water than women do.

Did you know that when you are feeling thirsty – you have already lost a percentage of your body water and are on your way to being dehydrated?  These are the symptoms of dehydration: dark urine, joint or muscle sores, crankiness, constipation, fatigue and dry lips.

In honour of World Water Day we are making my book “Sibo Saves Water” available to read freely on the website for the rest of the month. Just click on the link above and then click on the cover of the book.  If you have trouble opening it, try a different browser – it seems like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox do not open this file at the moment. If you ever wondered where water comes from, what happens to it and where it goes to…  read this book.

Please remember to still save water where ever you can. The really easy ways are to take a shorter shower, wash your car with a bucket instead of a hose pipe (yes – I know it’s not such fun but it really does save a lot of water) and water your garden either early in the morning or later in the evening. You can also recycle your bath water into the garden – but don’t use that “grey” water on your veggie garden please.

Have a great week!

Sibo

 

Pledge a Book Please!

We all know that South Africa has terrible road safety stats. 

The Minister of Transport Mrs Diplou Peters is always saying that children need to learn about road safety.  It’s true. They do. The Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga is always saying that children must read more. That’s true too – they should.

Here we are… pleasing two ministers with one book!

Sibo Looks Right is a book that contains all the rules of the road, including cycling – in a fun, easy to read manner.

Best of all – you don’t have to take our word for it – you can click on the link and read the book for yourself. Free!

Our plan is to get as many companies and people to pledge books – once we have reached our target of 3000 books (we’d love to get more than this too) we will ask people to honour their pledges and deposit the corresponding amount so that Lets Look Publishers can print these books and we can distribute them to the children.

Science Centres in South Africa have kindly agreed to help with distributing the books.

Here’s the crunch – we’d really like to do this BEFORE Easter!

So we need you to dash off and pledge a book – or two – or as many as you want to.

Challenge other people to pledge books too.

Of course, if you pledge more than 50 books  we can put your name/logo in the back of the book. If you pledge 1000 books – we can put your logo in the front of the book. There are great advertising and marketing aspects to sponsoring books.

If you read Sibo Looks Right you will see that Nash Nissan sponsored a large quantity of money towards our initial crowdfunding campaign and so their logo was featured in the front of the book. If you look on the back cover – there are more logos and names – these are all the lovely people who helped make this book happen in the first place.

Now we need to print more books and get them out to schools and children – FREE.

Let’s make this happen. Please! Pledge now.

A million thanks

Sibo

PS – The Sibo Series is already being read in schools and libraries around the country. In fact, The North West Province Education Department has just ordered more than 500 each of 10 Sibo titles and they are being delivered as we speak!

Start saving… NOW!

Hands up who saves?

I can hear you all saying – don’t be silly you usually have lots of month left over after your money and that there is none left to save. Or that you don’t have enough to live on, let alone save.

It might not be as hard as you think.

Here are some tips on how to start saving.

Write down everything that you spend. Record how much you spend – yes – every single last thing that you spend money on. Use credit card statements, bank statements etc to help you figure out what you do with your money. Once you have all your information – organise it into categories such as: rent, medical, food, clothing, car payments/petrol, entertainment etc.

Make a budget.  Now you know what you are spending, it is much easier to make a budget for all your monthly expenses. Do remember to budget in for things that don’t happen all the time – like getting your car fixed. If you are spending way more than you earn – then it’s time to figure out which are the non-essentials and start to trim them down a bit.

Plan on saving. The aim is to spend less than you earn.  You should try and plan on saving between 10 – 15% of what you earn each month.

Choose something to save for.  This is the fun part – you could be saving for short-term stuff – like having a holiday or a new car. Or things like a computer, cell phone, new handbag or a fancy matric dance dress. Then there is long-term saving – like for your education, your retirement or a deposit for your own home.

Decide on your priorities. No point saving for a holiday if you know you are going to need a new car soon. Of course, you can always save for more than one thing at once – you just have to be even more careful and clever with your money.

Pick the right tools to save.  Do some research and find out which place is going to safely look after your savings and make them grow. Most banks offer automated transfers – this way your money can zoot straight into your savings account at the beginning of each month and you won’t be tempted to skip a month.

Then sit back and watch those savings grow!

Sibo

A lucky girl

Mum and I got home the other day and our little neighbour dashed up to chat to me. She’s such a cute kid and always has funny things to say.

That particular day I noticed that her toe was all smooshed.

“Khanyi” I exclaimed, “Whatever did you do to your toe?”

She shrugged and answered that she had fallen and hurt it. I told her that she should be more careful with her little toes in future – they were not big enough to mess with.

“But I’m always unlucky!” she sighed. “I am forever falling and hurting myself.”

Mum and I looked at each other.

“Noooo…. You can’t say things like that! You have to think of yourself as being a lucky girl. If you think about being unlucky then that just attracts bad luck. Tomorrow you are going to have a good luck day. No more bad luck!”

But she just shrugged and said… “I’ll try – but I’ll probably have another bad luck day.”

We went inside and I felt sad that she is so little and yet she already has such a negative attitude.

Dad is always telling us about the law of attraction. Our minds are the most powerful things that we have. If we decide that we are going to have a good day – then we probably will.

But you, yourself, really have to believe this one hundred percent.

You can’t think in wishy-washy terms. You have to tell yourself that you are going to have a good day. Then you have to envision having a good day. The power of thought!

Of course, in my case it’s pretty simple. I envision eating a nice cold ice-cream at school. Then I take some of my pocket money to school and buy one. It’s a simple as that. The ice-cream man is there, the weather is good for eating ice-cream and I don’t lose my money. Everything works.

Or I see my maths paper in my mind’s eye with a nice big A+ on it. Or course I know that I’d put in a lot of work beforehand and could reasonably expect an A+.

Nothing worth having ever comes free or easy. We probably would not appreciate it if it did.

And on the odd occasions when you do fail, you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself down and try again.

Hope you all have a simply fabulous day! (Go on – imagine yourself having a fabulous day.)

Sibo