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Showing posts from March, 2018

Picking up the pieces_The accidental educator

Read this to get yourself up to speed “ All day staring at the ceiling, Making friends with shadows on my wall. All night hearing voices telling me, that I should get some sleep. Because tomorrow might be good for something .” Unwell x Matchbox twenty.  January 2016, Friday One song defines my despondent relationship with myself, unwell by Matchbox twenty. Of all the rock bands I was listening to in my teens, that song resonated the most because it finally allowed me to make peace with myself. I came to terms with what I had always known but people around me, even my own family struggled with. I realized that it’s perfectly okay to be weird, to be a little abnormal, I was not crazy. Uniqueness and crazy are not mutually inclusive. That song was playing in my head for a good twenty minutes on a Friday afternoon, which I had spent lying on the bed staring sideways at the walls in my bedroom, my happy place since I moved back home. I was looking at those four walls as tho

Picking up the pieces

Disclaimer : I am going to get emotional, so bear with me. Two and a half years ago, a melanin deficient guy with an Australian accent told me that I no longer had a job. That Monday was the 15 th day of the 9 th month, the worst memories are the ones I have the most vivid recollection of. I hardly slept the night before and I was very uneasy. I hopped on the bus to the mine, I was tired, I was always tired, it had become my default setting. On arrival, I knew something was up the minute I saw that every single bus was on the premises. Mine workers only gather in mass number for two things, (a) Christmas parties or sports days, and (b) Demonstrations/Industrial actions. Instead of getting our work briefing that morning, we got letters – 30-day notice. The company was shutting down: citing declining commodity prices, declining profits, and declining production as the reason why they could not manage with the increasing costs. It didn’t help that the mineral reserves were