Don’t
you sometimes wish that you were simple? Not giving two-pence for what happens
around you and the world over. Sometimes I do. It usually comes as a passing
feeling—transitory, I think, is the right word. Almost just like the feeling
you get when an attractive woman passes by. When she’s out of sight, you forget
you ever saw her. Perhaps the feeling that surged within you when you saw her
would return, perhaps not. Ignorance is indeed bliss.
When
I board a kombi home, I listen to an overzealous man (it’s always a man)
causing a din; he talks about what is wrong about the politics of our country
and what he—if of course afforded the handsome opportunity—can do to right the
wrongs. At times he makes valid points in his argument, but most of the time what
he speaks about is irrelevant and doesn’t make (a lot of) sense. The other
passengers are usually deferring, or is it that they just don’t have the energy
to engage in an argument after a long day at work? One is not too sure. All the
same, murmurs and grunts, mostly of approval I think, of the man’s speech fill
the kombi. Who dare disagrees with this public transport intellectual? For when
he speaks, a sort of passion burns in his eyes and he raises his voice above
any other and the roaring and old engine. It is as if he has convinced himself
that the louder his voice, the more valid his arguments. I listen
half-interestedly, but after the discourse (how dare you think of it as
anything less?) has ended, I say to myself; it’s not that simple.
I
turn on the radio at home and fiddle with the tuning knob, hoping to listen to
something interesting. But all I find is a boisterous pastor preaching about
prosperity. Prosperity this, prosperity that. Lower dimension, higher dimension.
“You are blessed!” he declares. “The poor have no one to blame but themselves,”
he warms into his sermon. Then I switch off my ears. I am a Christian, but I do
not think that it is that simple. Certainly not all poor people are like that
because they want to. For the sake of Heavens, I don’t reckon there’s anyone
who enjoys a life of squalor, I muse. It’s because they are lazy, someone will
say. I jerk my head to take a look at the speaker, and more often than not it’s
those wool-on-the-eyes middle-class bourgeois type, who’s had a silver spoon in
their mouth since birth. The Basotho people have a saying: “O keke ua utloa monate ua khoho u sa tsebe
bohloko ba tlala,” (You will never appreciate the taste of chicken meat if
you’ve never felt the pain of hunger). Others prefer to flaunt a rags-to-riches
story and I’ll note that that is more of an exception than the rule.
Poverty
is now stripped off its ecology and presented at its barest. Poor equals lazy.
Finish and klaar. No two ways about
it. So social class has absolutely nothing to do with it? How about bad
governance? The lack of adequate resources? Geography? Politics? They scoff and
say social deprivation stems from the mind. I say to them your minds are
deprived.
There
is a view spun somewhere in our societal circles that education equals money. I
say, humbly, that it does not necessarily follow. “I can’t wait to complete my
B.A degree,” and enthusiastic student will say, “so that I can have money”
(money here can be substituted with the word ‘rich’). Really? You think
education is solely about money-making? I ask. I beg to differ. Education ought
to teach you how to live, and judging from your talk, you haven’t learnt much.
No wonder why our society is so messed up, students pursuing education for big
cars, not for anything qualitative in value. It has been reduced to as a ride
towards ostentatious living—a kind of hedonism dominant in our society.
I
proffer my unsolicited advice that the best way to make money is to go into
business. That is where the money is made; in that dog-eat-dog world. A
balanced view of education is to see it as the nurturing of the mind foe its
own sake. Because, as they say; a head without knowledge is a heavy load on the
shoulder. Quantitative benefits ought to be secondary. You must think I’m a
deranged man, but just think about these matters.
Money
equals happiness, they will argue. I say not exactly. Fine, they’ll say, then
look at it this way: It is better to be unhappy and bogged down by problems in
a mansion than peace and quiet in a shack. I say, is that a joke? I would
rather have a piece of bread in peace and quiet than a banquet in a house full
of strife. We all as humans need some money to make ends meet; but I see money
purely as a means to an end than to pursue it purely as an end, which is what some
people do. Lend me your ear and do not misconstrue my words; I do not bar
people from living their lives as they please, but all I’m saying is that we
are not motivated by the same things. That is my story and I intend to stick by
it.
You
must really think I am a deranged man—philosophising because of want to do—but
thinks about these things. It’s not that simple.
