A few years after I obtained my first full-time employment, I started to have some interesting encounters with my mother. I was working almost five hundred kilometres away from home and would visit home once every three or four months. Normally, the visits would be around month-end when I had received my salary and could afford the trip.

It was routine for the family to first have breakfast together in the morning. Then my mother would take me around the family property to show me jobs or chores that she wanted me to perform for her during my time at home. The jobs were anything from quietening a creaking door to painting some wall that she felt needed some paint. At times she would want me to chop or prepare firewood for her or mend some part of the fence. My father was a very competent handyman and had taught us skills to fix or repair a whole host of things.

But from my childhood days in my rural village I have always had a problem with people doing jobs just to dispense of energy or deflect the attention of those who would see you do nothing and label you lazy. So my mother knew that her chances of getting me to do her jobs without actually tasking me to do them were next to nothing. And I am sure that I was used to seeing her become noticeably frustrated as I took time to, first, join her on her tasking trip, and then even more time to complete her chores.

I must say here that the single most frustrating aspect of my life in the village as I was growing up was to find that we had no knowledge shops. We had no credible or easily accessible knowledge sources that we could approach for cutting-edge information or knowledge that could be the difference between success and failure in your life. We were expected to follow those older than us, even on issues you could see clearly that they were out of their depths. And many young people simply did not have what it took to ask the right questions or display the right behaviours to deal with the charade. I was later to encounter the same farce in both my school and work environments where the expectation was that you would follow position rather than competence.

So there was no visible or trusted path for children from the village to follow, which increased their chances of success in the modernised life we live. I grew up wanting to find out what the contributing factors for the endemic poverty we lived in were and what could be done to alleviate it. So I spent the bulk of my time doing two things. I was either speaking to – some good people still say arguing with – people or poring over some learning material. From there I would relax a bit to ponder the issues or lessons.

It was mostly these ponderings of mine that used to get my mother and her kind to be a bit hot under the collar. They just could not stomach the idea, let alone the sight, of a young and healthy man sitting and doing nothing. But I came to admit that slowly my behaviour was upsetting my mother. Although I believed in the correctness of what I was doing, I could not close my eyes or mind to the fact that the relationship between me and my mom was taking stress.

It was customary for me to give money to my mother at the end of the month as my contribution to the family upkeep. When the complications in our relationship started, I hit on a plan to try to fix matters once and for all. I went home one time and waited for her to task me as usual, which she did. I went to do the jobs she wanted and finished them as soon as I could. My mother was full of smiles. Later she gave me more work to do and said she was happy to see that this time I had really come home.

It was my practice to give money to my mother before my departure from home rather than upon my arrival at home. Soon the time came for me to return to my place of work. We went into our usual goodbye meeting and I gave her half of the money I used to give to her. She wanted to know why I was giving her half of the money I was supposed to give to her. I told her that I had paid myself for the jobs I had done for her.

She wanted to know why I had paid myself so much for a few hours of work. I told her I had paid myself my normal rates as a skilled worker. She nearly fell off her chair when I told her that I normally made my money from the time I spend reading and thinking and that since she chose to disturb me at critical times, I also could not make enough money on the day. She was quite upset and told me that the money I was giving her was not enough for her needs and those of the family.

In the end, I gave her the money she wanted. But not before she promised to manage the business of her family better. Since then I have had only a few problems dedicating time to doing what I believe to be my main responsibility in the family, namely learning and planning. What is even more, nowadays when I ask if I can assist her with some work, she tells me she has somebody who can do the job at the right speed for the half the price. And I am always happy to see someone from the neighbourhood, who probably needs the pocket money, perform the chores I used to perform for my mom.

But the icing on the cake for me remains the fact that a permanent space has been created in the family for the younger people who want to pursue learning as their chosen value-add area. Partly as a result of generational gaps and dysfunctional educational systems, many children still fail at school because the family environment provides no space for learning or balanced development.

I sincerely trust that not every case will need money to unlock the necessary learning space. I trust that in many cases only patient persuasion and creativity will suffice. It needs to be done. It rarely happens on its own.

Gibson Sakong
Executive Chairman – Montshepetja Academy