I visited my place of birth a month ago, and I observed different lifestyles of people who are staying there. I was taken down memory lane, when I was a little boy worry-free, hope made a promise for my future and life was joyous. The feeling of disconnection and the sense of being out of touch from my community, inundated me. Questions flooding my mind, how did I make it out of this place? Did I know what I wanted to be? Who was my role model, beside my mother who was straight with me that she wouldn’t afford tertiary education for me? Endless questions with no valid answers to change the current situation. I am a man now and I am here – that is a good thing, right?
These dusty roads of Ezakheni, Ladysmith – has made me a man that I am today – that is a fact. That fact still grounds me today, when I walk in the streets and greet a stranger with respect and humility. That is a norm and the best definition of UBUNTU to the core. The handshakes that you get are firm which is indicative of a positive health. The firmer the handshake the stronger the health. These dusty streets could have fooled me of how rich the people in this community are until I walked in to the pub and saw some of my former classmates faces written poverty with a shadow that says they have given up on life, lugubrious. To say that I was shocked is an understatement, I was oblivious.
I did an introspection of the situation mainly because my nephews and nieces seem to be a stone throw away a from my former classmates and this poverty – which I call the poverty of the mind. Telling them to follow my footsteps doesn’t seem to be enough and modelling my life seem to be too perfect for them and seemingly easy. Stretching my hand and tell them to take it seems to be the only option I have with an each-one teach-one condition. This solution is not proven but worth a try. Look my nieces and nephews are really smart and full of good ideas but they lack starting. As a cliche goes, failing to start make people fail. This is a journey of a million miles that I am embarking on, if it’s not me then who? I am taking the “Charity begins at home” cliche literally.
The baton has to be passed over eventually. What are you doing to prepare the minds of the successors that the baton will be passed on to? The truth is that whether you are prepared or not the baton will have to be passed on. Will your legacy live on after you have passed the baton on? Who will run your legacy when you can no longer run it? These questions needs no answers, they are just a reminder for you. This reminds of a snippet from Jack Ma (The Wealthiest Man of China) shared something of vital importance, “When you are 20 to 30 years old, you should follow a good boss [and] join a good company to learn how to do things properly,” Ma said. “When you are 30 to 40 years old, if you want to do something yourself, just do it. You still can afford to lose, to fail,” he added.” You can find the rest of the article here. I chose these age ranges from 20 to 30 and 30 to 40 because that’s where my nephews, nieces and I are of age right now, yours could be the opposite but you get the idea.
My ultimate goal is to see the youngsters running our communities as leaders, entrepreneurs, and game changers. Times have changed we need to perish the stereotype that when youngsters finish school they should move to the big cities and find jobs there, our generation did that as a result we lost connection to our communities and we started new lives in big cities. It is our duty to go back and rebuild the young leaders in our communities by showing them the value of the community by presenting opportunities that are in their finger-tips but cannot see. To prove that the big cities that we have gone to have invested a lot of knowledge in us to share, to sow back in our communities.
Now is the time to reinvent the wheel, the time to look back and invest in our communities. The youth is lost without us in our communities. The youth make their own decision that have no guidance because we are busy to spend time with them. The time to only go back to our communities because of funerals and weddings must come to an end.
Let us build – there is no ripe time than this.
Written by Mduduzi Mthanti