Dear Poverty I wont introduce myself because you and I are well acquainted. We have spent far too many nights on the same sponge in my familys shack and far too many mornings sitting on the dilapidated couches wondering where transport money for school is going to come from. I greeted you. Im sitting here thinking about the number of times Ive been humiliated by you.:-( I can think of many times in my childhood when your invasive presence was a source of my greatest miseries. Two particular incidents come to mind. I vividly remember an afternoon in the year 2000 when your unwelcome presence showed up at my doorstep. I was sitting with a friend of mine Thabiso , enjoying the tranquility of a sunny day in a rural place called Koedoespoort. I continue to call home. It began to rain and of course, the corrugated iron that I called home had begun to collapse a while before, making allowance for rain water to seep through and create a pool on a floor id later have to sleep on with a rat-eaten sponge that had seen better days. Thabiso and I fetched buckets from outside to try to prevent the flow of water, but the viciousness of the rain knew no limit and before long, the floor was an ocean, debris strewn all across it. In the midst of that chaos, I felt warm water flowing down my cheeks. It was my own tears, tears that were now familiar with my plump cheeks. I was crying in the rain because Thabiso could not see my tears of shame and humiliation. That afternoon was the last time I ever hung around with my best friend Thabiso. The burden of humiliation was too much to bear.Another of your visits that is stored in the galleries of my mind is the one you paid me in 2004 when I was a grade 8 student at Sithenjisiwe high School. A weekend camp was organised for grade 8 students , a camp I could not attend because my mother(buried in 2007) could not afford to pay for me to go. I was one of painfully few students who could not go, and every day for the remainder of that year, those who went would rub their experiences in my pretentious face; a face that was pretending to be brave and nonchalant about the camp when deep down, pain and isolation was brewing itself, threatening to erupt like an angry volcano. And of course, how do I forget your visits in the not so distant past when you stood smiling as my family was hurled out of a place we called home,I still dont know how I survived years in dusty streets of. koedoespoort , how I lived through the experience of such extreme levels of hopelessness and still managed, somehow, to come out alive. I have spent many years of my life with you. Ive known you in ways most intimate. And while our unrequited friendship left me with bruises that I can still feel when I touch my most intimate parts, I am grateful for the scars you left on my young body, because I use them as a reference when i find myself tempted to give up on the cause Ive committed myself to(Education) . When the lethargy sinks in, I touch my scars and am reminded of what I left behind, what I will never return to. You also encourage me to fight harder, because I see myself in the eyes of those small girls nd boys in koedoespoort know not the taste of a decent meal; I see myself in the eyes of those small babies in my homeland who have given up on the possibility of ever being freed from the chains of inhuman conditions that theyve come to accept as fate. But I refused to accept you as my fate and I refuse to accept you as anyone elses fate. Ive never hated anyone enough to wish them acquainted with you. My whole existence is a form of resistance, a form of battle against your existence in the homes of my people. I see you. Yes, I see you walking around in my homeland , your head held high, your flamboyance oozing from your every pore. I see you making yourself comfortable in the homes of my neighbours and on those days when you feel daring, even gathering the audacity to knock on my door. Have I not warned you to stay away? Have I not told you that your presence is no longer welcome here? Nako ya gao e fedile poverty! Im thinking of you ths night. I am turning 25 just In few months . I bet you had planned to suffocate me and render me as hopeless orphan and as helpless as youve managed to do to my Family . But let me tell you something: I am not going to let you dictate terms on how my life will be led. I have made it my lifes mission to fight you at every turn,kea gana... and Im not going to rest until youre a distant feature in the narrative of Black life. Poverty, you are a path to which no one must be condemned. You take away so much. Above all, you have the endless capacity to dehumanise those who come into contact with you. You take away the very humanness of people. Your cruelty leaves one numb, helpless, defeated and obedient to a system that survives on your recreation and manifestation. But you failed dismally to reduce me to that, you failed dismally to reduce many of us to that. We have lived through our encounters with you and our sole purpose in life is to reduce you to nothingness, so that your memory is but a yonder distant reality that we discuss in a state of reminisce. Our children are not going to be familiar with you, we will never subject them to that inhumanity. I sit everyday with books mo pele gaka thinking about my future wife , whose actions and thoughts are still innocent, untainted by your presence. Ill die twice before i allow you anywhere near my wife! Ill die twice before i allow you anywhere near the next innocent generation of Afrikan sons and daughters to be familiar and accepting of your imposed, diabolical reign over this continent i call home. We are an army of young people, dedicated solely to fighting you, because Afrika deserves better; because despite what you do to us, the bruises you inflict on our humanity, we continue to believe without doubt, that another Afrika is possible and that we, we who were once subjects of your nefarious attempt to silence us, we who from time to time get visited by you, are the generation that will make history of your frequency.Nna pila pila you are my inspiration. My former English teacher sir Lekotoko Once said that the beautyful ones are not yet born? Well, they are. It is us, an army of truth agents, and we are the beautyful ones whose cause for your annihilation has only just begun! Watch out! Yours The one who refuses to accept your proposal of eternal friend friendship. PUseletso Goodwill Mogoros Kneilwe....
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 18:31:30 +0000
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