The Time Traveler

30 Oct

Advice to men: question ‘protector, provider and priest’

ObserverUncategorised,
The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis What I’m going to say here might upset some people - I say it nevertheless. One of the requirements for ending gender-based violence is for men and women to being to see things through each other’s eyes. Another is that we men begin to embrace traits that were once seen as feminine, such as gentleness and nurturing. To do this, we will have to break down the very concept of gender itself. Often, we grow up believing that men are one thing and women are something completely different. Indeed, I grew up thinking the same…
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10 Oct

Hair today, gone tomorrow

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The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis The Namibian media last week reported that about sixty pupils who were sent home from Outjo Secondary School for transgressing the school's rules on hair had returned to school. Said one of the boys: ‘We shaved our hair. Some of us did not want to return to the school but we didn't have a choice so we shaved it.’ It was rumoured that one white pupil with long hair had not been sent home like black pupils were. The school principal, however, said, ‘that was not brought to my attention.’ The situation reminded me of…
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18 Sep

The Creative Industries

ObserverUncategorised, ,
The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis From the spoken word movement’s start in Namibia until the recent Covid-19 outbreak, I routinely attended and performed at poetry nights in Windhoek. While not all the poetry was excellent, and a small amount was frankly terrible, some of it bowled me over with its lyrical genius. The movement also provided a start, or at least a boost, to many now-famous names in the music industry, including Lize Ehlers, and Mark Mushiva of Black Vulcanite fame. Last year I was privileged to be a judge at the Namibia Theatre and Film Awards. While some of…
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29 Aug

Not retiring to the penthouse…

ObserverUncategorised
The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis As pictures go, you wouldn’t expect a graph I was sent by a retirement fund to be dramatic enough to warrant a column in a newspaper, but here we are. On the x-axis was time, specifically my future age if the ‘Rona or other misfortune does not get me before 55 or so. On the y-axis was the amount of money my pension fund would have to pay me monthly, should I retire at any of the said ages. A horizontal grey line represented, in real terms, 75 per cent of my current salary –…
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25 Aug

Data is the new land

ObserverUncategorised, , , ,
The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis Data is the new land. In the past, and still often in the present, the ownership of land determined who would survive, who had the potential to get rich, who married whom, and who had the most potential to influence government policies. Now, ownership of the mass of data we generate and consume through the Internet increasingly determines the same things. Consider Uber, the biggest taxi company in the world. It owns not a single car or service station, and (except where national laws force it to do so) it employs no drivers. What it…
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07 Aug

Beyond donating a blanket

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The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis Over a thousand people were made homeless, at least one person killed, and over 200 homes destroyed when a shack fire tore through the settlement of Twaloloka in Walvis Bay on the night of 26th July. Since then, the response from Good Samaritans has been inspiring. Social media appeals and GoFundMe accounts have been started. Businesses and NGOs offered their premises as collection points and their vehicles as transport. Namibians of all walks of life have donated blankets, clothes and building materials. The response from middle-class Namibians, in particular, makes me a bit less pessimistic…
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10 Jul

The Noose

ObserverUncategorised,
The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis The punishment of hanging for murder was abolished in the United Kingdom way back in 1969, well before I was born, but technically it could be imposed for treason right up until the death penalty’s full abolition in 1998. Reportedly, a gallows was kept operational at a prison in South London and tested with weights every six months until the final abolition of capital punishment. In the time from 1969 to 1998, it was never used in anger. But it gives me the creeps now to think our family home at the time was just…
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03 Jul

Another lifetime

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The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis Do you ever wonder how it would have been if you’d lived another life? Like, if you had pursued another childhood ambition perhaps? For me, as a kid, I was interested in all things environmental. As it happened, my math marks weren’t good enough to get into environmental science, and I did also have interests in photography and writing, so I went to journalism school. Maybe by now I would be one of those ‘Save the Rhinos’ guys, or a Greta Thunberg-type, imploring the world’s people to listen to science more, and their wallets less.…
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19 Jun

Land of the free and home of the brave?

ObserverUncategorised,
The Time Traveler: Hugh Ellis I have very mixed feelings about the new US Embassy compound currently being built on a large plot of land in my neighborhood. On the one hand, the United States is a great nation. It's the nation of Barack Obama and Martin Luther King. The nation of the Wright brothers, the humble bicycle mechanics who built the first airplane. The nation of Neil Armstrong and Katherine Johnson, and all the others who got men to the Moon. My education would have been immensely poorer if it were not for the Americans who taught African history…
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31 May

The Time Traveler: Fixing social media

ObserverUncategorised
Hugh Ellis At one time of my life I had four social media accounts. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. Oh, and Tumblr for a brief while, and Tinder for a whole five days. Now I only have one, Instagram, and one is the right number of my mental health. Also WhatsApp, maybe, if you call that a social medium, but I only use the message service part of it - a glorified email, really. Unless your profession depends upon it (and many now do), I’d advise one social medium, for one hour a day maximum, is the right amount for most…
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