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 close to depletion and no one had bothered to plan and find new ore resources. It no longer made any economic sense to keep the mine open, it had become unprofitable, and multinational mining companies don’t do unprofitable. That’s not how capitalism works. 300 people were out of a job (myself included), for the second time in my relatively short life, I was getting retrenched. I was still in my late twenties; retrenchment was something that happened to people in their fifties. Who mostly don’t give a shit because they’re already set for retirement, they take their cheques and go back home to become full time farmers.

 

I wasn’t too sad, in all honesty, I was starting to hate the job, the novelty had worn off. I had contemplated if I really needed the job the night before, inviting insomnia into my bed. The thrill of blowing shit up had long subsided, replaced by the stress of backstabbing and sabotage, worse still, from my own people. Blacks! Always first to pull down their own, even if they stand to benefit from your rise up the ranks. But, in a sinking ship, it’s every man for himself, even the rats will jump overboard. 

The older folks wasted no time, packing up their stuff and heading to their buses so they could head home and wait for their severance packages. The middle aged folks started tearing up, wait, who am I kidding? They cried, like professional mourners at a funeral, but with mortgages and kids in school, retrenchment is the last thing you want to hear. That left us, the youngsters, to contemplate our next move and to think about our own problems. Those of us with degrees gathering dust, would then need to dust them off and get back on the job hunt. Personally I was very calm, this had happened before, that’s not to say that a part of me wasn’t angry. I would have to start over, for the third time in my life. Basically my life had become a circle, whilst my peers lived their best lives and marched forward on their chosen paths, I spun back to the same spot like a broken CD – I was fucked!

The first time I was retrenched, it was also a melanin deficient guy who broke the news, over the phone. 3 months after I had buried my younger brother, it was starting to look like my life was degenerating into a sequence of unfortunate events. This particular guy had an English accent, had taken a chance on me and invested quite a lot of time in my development. So, I wasn’t as bitter then as I was the second time around. I had acquired a unique set of skills that were invaluable. Plus, I still had this aura about me, I had the invincibility of youth cloaked around me. I embarked on the search for a new job with experience on my CV, something I didn’t have before. This time, the aura had dissipated, the cloak like my youth was waning. The only thing I learnt was how not to get hurt, oh, and lifting stuff. I went to the change rooms to pack my stuff; there wasn’t much to pack, I threw the letter into my backpack. I waited for my bus home with the other youngins, we tried our best to cheer each other up. But, I knew how hard the next part was going to be, after my first retrenchment it took a year and a half before I got another permanent job. When I got home that day, I downed a few bears and started packing, I wasn’t going to waste money on rent, I gave my landlord his notice and in two days I was packed to move back home. I left the city with neither love nor money to my name, with my tail tucked firmly between my legs. My life had entered another opalescent phase, my future had never looked murkier, life had humbled me. No matter how many times life humbles you, the taste of swallowed pride does not taste any less bitter.

 

At home, the gravity of my situation started to sink in, picking up the pieces would be much harder than I first thought. My severance package was swallowed up by my tuition fees, I was two years into a three-year bachelor of English degree and doing quite well. However, I wasn’t sure where tuition for the final year would come from. The last time I had attended an interview for a job in mining or exploration was two years earlier. It would have been easy to wallow and sulk under my self-created cloud of self-pity, but I kept calm, I tried to think only about the things I could control. The thing about unemployment is that it is hardest on your state of mind, that shit fucks with your head! It messes with psyche and sanity long before society starts to remind you that your worth is less because you are jobless. Unemployment should be reclassified as a human rights violation. You start to think that the only thing you will ever be is wasted potential, and that is when depression starts to lull you in and slowly sink its claws into you, that is when you are truly fucked.

Never the less, I kept trying, and three months later, the weirdest shit happened. I went to the ministry of education’s offices in Omaheke on a Friday morning, common sense dictates that you never go to government offices on Fridays, because they become ghost towns. I went to make an inquiry about my applications for a teaching jobs, obviously all my applications were unsuccessful. I went home, I spent the rest of the afternoon in deep contemplation in my room, staring at the wall, like I was waiting for it to say something. Two hours later, the secretary of a high school in Otjinene called to say that she had my CV in her hand, she said they desperately needed a science teacher, and they needed me to start on Monday. I called the principal – a man who talks like a politician, and we had the strangest conversation. I accepted the job, I didn’t even know where Otjinene was, I didn’t know what was waiting for me. So, I did what I always do, I packed my life into a bag and took off to venture into the unknown. That’s how I ended up as an accidental educator. Me! someone’s teacher, just saying it sounded wrong.