They say that patience is the exercise of faith. They say that while you wait, the seed of faith will be grown so that it will have the strength to remove the mountain. What they don’t tell you is that patience is hard. Patience is difficult. The ability to just wait is the hardest thing for one to endure. Or is it?
I find myself in that stage. The just waiting stage. I honestly hate this province to the bone. But I realise that I need to wait. I look back at my life and I remember the goals that I set for myself. None of them included being an employee. But here I am. And for that to change, one needs to wait.
The waiting game is difficult because you do not have control over the situation. Once the seed is in the ground, there is nothing you can do but wait for it to grow. Yes, you can water it. Yes, you can pour fertilisers over it. Yes, you can create some shelter over it to protect it from birds and bugs. But, fundamentally, there is nothing you can do once the seed of faith is in the ground.
I really wish I could go home. Or back to KZN if I can. Interestingly, my mother once said that it is good to read about successful people but it is important to remember that their lives are their lives, not yours.
I took this position to come to Gauteng believing that I needed to come to Joburg. Every successful Black South African millionaire I admire is based or has been based in Gauteng at some point in their life. I believed that the same will be true about me. I believed that for me to tap into my millions, I need to go to Gauteng.
What I did not realise is that this place is not for me. I am a country guy. I am those people who enjoy sitting in the sun, even taking a nap in the sun too. I am those people who enjoy walking in undisturbed pieces of land. I am those people who if I were to be hungry, walking into my neighbour’s home to ask for bread will not be an anomaly or seem strange (Not something I will do, a bit too introverted for that, but the possibility of it is true).
Yes, it is true that even in these small towns and villages there are crimes. Sometimes, the natures of these crimes are horrendous and downright evil. It is true that our small towns and villages have been neglected so badly that they do not have the basic necessities anymore. Only when load shedding started affecting the middle class in the cities did the country realise the realities faced by millions of forgotten South Africans, only to be remembered when it’s election time.
Yes, the countryside is not the best place to live if you enjoy life’s easy conveniences. But I am one of those people who do not enjoy those conveniences. I remember one friend of mine told me that he misses living on the farm. I asked him why and he said that to him living on the farm forced him to be close with his family. Yes, it was a shack in which they all slept in one room but he said that compared to living in the city where everyone minds their own business, he’d rather live in that one-room shack. And true to his word, he went back to his grandma’s shack and helped her monetise the vegetables she grew on her little piece of land. I truly admired him for that.
The city is fake. Trees have been replaced with concrete walls. Grass has been replaced with concrete bricks. You know, in the first month, two things stood out. The first one was the amount of homeless people that roamed the streets of Joburg. Yes, there are homeless people everywhere and when you read the Bible, there were homeless people even then. But it was scary how homelessness in this province is normal.
You know, when you see the memes and videos making fun of these people, we consume the content and brush it off. It is when one got to this province and realised just how normal it is to drive down a street (and even a highway) and there’s a homeless person walking by.
I remember my former boss in KZN had a real passion for helping those who were forgotten. She had a real passion to assist wherever she could. She did not mind getting her hands dirty just to help the helpless. Yes, I once saw a community-driven food scheme in this province that gave me hope that at least, humanity still exists in some pockets of this plastic province.
The second one is extremely guy-ish in nature but it definitely stood out. I found it shocking how fake the women are here. Yes, not all of them but I’d say a good 7 out of 8 of them. I found it weird how these women, are materialistic and equate a man’s masculinity with the non-living objects that he has. Very guy logic here but please bear with me.
Yes, there are women in the Free State and KZN as fake and materialistic as most women here in Gauteng but the key difference between them is clear. Women from these “backward” provinces still desire the good things in life and want a soft life too. But one thing I noticed is that they demand from a man is a man to build them a home and family.
Women this side too want a home and family but they will want a home with a 100cm inch flat screen TV and a BMW or VW parked outside. Women from rural areas and small towns really do not care whether you are in a GTI or in a Corrola. What’s important to them is that they want a family and a home. They are dating with the fullest intention to marry.
Not so much for women this side. Yes, they have the desire to be married but most of them do not have the fullest understanding of what marriage constitutes. How do you desire to marry when your best friend runs the streets every chance she gets? Are you ready to sacrifice that friendship for the family you desire to build? One cannot be naïve about such realities.
I noticed how successful marriages cut off any influence that might affect their marriages, directly or indirectly. I have witnessed some couples even cut off some family members because those family members bring a toxicity that is detrimental to their marriages. At first, I didn’t understand but now that one is at that age where marriage is the next step of life, one totally does get it.
And one, to a great extent, understands why. One understands why a lady would leave her home in the villages of Naledi in QwaQwa and be someone else in Gauteng. One used to see slight variations of this at university where girls from deep KZN would arrive on campus wearing long dresses but during the course of the semester wear short dresses or jeans.
It boils down to the human need to fit in. We, humans, are social creatures who survive by being in a pack. We need to be in a pack, a social circle of some kind. So these women will arrive in Gauteng and they are told that the pretty girls are the ones who are seen at Sandton, Parkhurst or somewhere else that’s for the rich. And to blend in, they are told that the cheap chemical bomb from Shoprite won’t cut it. They need to go to some boutique and spend all their savings on some bottle of perfume.
And some maybe do not fall for this narrative, but they fall for the “independent boss lady” narrative. That a woman must be commanding and demand attention when she enters the room. That’s the only way she can be respected in the workplace. So this woman takes on this cold persona because that’s what boss ladies do. And the ironic part is that actual “ independent boss ladies” are the friendliest and nicest people you’ll ever meet.
The reason why I went guy for a moment and unrightfully stereotyped Gauteng women is because as a man, we do everything in our power to attract a woman or women. So if you are surrounded by women who aspire to be “independent boss ladies” and inherit the toxic traits associated with it, as a man you will aspire to be as cold and heartless.
If your cup of tea is in the glamour girls who always, even to buy bread, wear layers of make-up and their conversation is about the latest gossip and judge people by the clothes and cars they drive, you too as a man will take up this persona to be materialistic and attach your masculinity to the material objects that you acquire.
Hence, for me and men like me, it is better to be in the rural areas or the small towns of the country. We aspire to be a man who will build a home and family. The woman we date will probably try to push us beyond our limits but she will be content if we can only provide her with a single room and two-plate stove. Undoubtedly she will push us to improve our careers and earn more but most importantly, she will make that single room into a home.
Go to any township or any village in QwaQwa or Bergville, you will see this reality. A friend of mine once said that city girls are beautiful because they evoke lust in a man. And then he said rural girls are beautiful because they evoke love. Depending on the emotion that motivates you as a man, you will pick the woman for your soul.
Again, I touch on this because it plays a vital part in who man becomes or aspires to become. For men like me, this province does not hold any virtuous attributes that one aspires to attain. And herein this the link to how this post began.
Patience is the exercise of faith. It is easy to be patient when your faith is under good soil. It is hard to be patient when the soil is so hard that the seed of faith finds it difficult to sprout the first bursts of life. It is hard to become the person you believe are when the environment you are does not believe it or rejects it.
You see, if I switched and aspired to materialistic wealth or became cold-hearted because “CEOs are ruthless”, this province will be heaven. If I switched and would settle for a woman who won’t take my surname but give me a child, this province will be heaven. If I switched and measured my success and masculinity to the materialistic measures that society uses to judge people, then trust me, this province will be heaven.
Unfortunately, men like me are not like that. Yes, we want the Lambos but we are fully aware that there’s more to life than that. Yes, we want the Jordans but we are fully aware that there’s more to life than that.
Even though I have committed questionable mistakes before, relocating to Gauteng is truly the biggest regret in my 29 years of existence.
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