Interview 22 | November 2011 | woman this month While the world might revolve at the same speed as it did a hundred years ago, the pace at which we live seems to increase exponentially as time goes on. This is the age of fast money, search engines, social networking, eBusinesses, viral advertising and conspicuous consumerism. We’ve learnt that if we want something, often all we have to do is Google it. But in a society that understands or expects instant gratification, what happens when we discover that success can be taken away as quickly as it was bestowed upon us? If I learnt anything from my interview with DJette Kiwi, it’s that if you want to live out a dream in a world that moves as fast as this one, you have to have more than one of them. Although Kiwi’s first dream was never handed to her on a plate — she trained extremely hard and competed even harder to become an Olympic hopeful in the art of Judo — she knows more than most what it means to feel the carpet pulled out from under your feet and to have to start again from scratch. DJette Kiwi stumbled into judo by accident. “I had two brothers”, she jokes, “I needed to learn self-defence!”. In fact, Kiwi had always had a competitive streak — “I was already doing kick-boxing and someone suggested that judo would be more appropriate for me”. Her tiny frame means that her reach is pretty small — not ideal for the boxing, but it turned out that she had a natural flair for judo and quickly became good at Dreams can be built in a day and broken just as easily. No one said life was going to be plain sailing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the ride. Believer Daydream Natasha Bird
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