Category: Africa

First published in Viewpoint, March 2014 Issue of the Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand. Reference as: DeSouza, Ruth. (2014). Enhancing the role of fathers. Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand, 20(2), 26-27 (download 3.2 MB pdf DeSouza Migrant Dads). Mkono mmoja haulei mwana. A single hand cannot nurse a child. Kiswahili proverb I spent the first ten […]

At the weekend it was my parents’ wedding anniversary. They got married in Dar es Salaam and one of the distinguishing features of their wedding was the hockey stick “guard of honour” that their friends created for them outside the church after the service (my Mum played hockey for Tanzania). The family capability and Goan cultural propensity to excel at sport (take […]

I was honoured to be invited by the African Community Forum Incorporated to attend and speak at an event on March 10th 2012 to celebrate International Women’s Day. I have written elsewhere about my links with East Africa. Briefly, I was born in Tabora Tanzania and lived in Nairobi, Kenya until the age of ten, when my […]

In almost thirty years of being a nurse I’ve learned that what one person thinks is helpful can be coercive to another. “Help” is complex, raising questions such as: how has the helper negotiated the relationship? Does the helper understand the problem? Do the people being helped agree with the helper’s framing of the problem? […]

Originally published in:  DeSouza, R. (2011). ‘All of me meets here, an alchemy of parts’ – Negotiating my identities in New Zealand. In P. Voci & J. Leckie (Eds.), Localizing Asia in Aotearoa (pp. 231-245). Wellington: Dunmore Publishing. He could not see that i could be both … The body in front of him was […]

This piece was originally published at Tangatawhenua.com http://news.tangatawhenua.com/archives/14051 On October 3rd 2011 as part of the series: Are we there yet? These articles are being written as a prelude to the election in November, and focus on the ‘wish list’ of Generation Xers; their hopes, dreams, aspirations and vision for New Zealand society. I have […]

The ocean is what we have in common: Relationships between indigenous and migrant people. This piece was previously published in the Goanet Reader: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 Legend has it that Lord Parashuram (Lord Vishnu’s sixth incarnation) shot an arrow into the Arabian Sea from a mountain peak. The arrow hit Baannaavali (Benaulim) and made […]

This piece was previously published in the Goanet Reader: May 22nd  2005 We often think of migration as moving between two places, my story is one of many journeys that spans the generations. I was born in what was then Tanganyika and is now Tanzania, into a Catholic family originating from Goa, India. As a […]