A Letter to my 18-year-old self

The 2^nd of August was my 35th birthday. I’ve seen heads of states being interviewed on their birthdays. Since it strongly looks like I’m not important enough for anyone to ever want to interview me on mine, I will do that myself. And why the hell not? I also have an opinion.

My interview of myself is in the form of A letter to my 18-year-old self. 

Dear Carlotta

When we are young, as you are, we envisage a life full of excitement and fulfilled dreams. In reality, growing up is not that much fun. It comes with a host of problems that are difficult to solve. At your age, when the going gets tough, all you need to do is run to your parents and they will pull out all the stops to ensure your problems are solved. When you are older, you will have to figure things out by yourself, you will also have your own children running to you so that you can pull out the stops for them.

Some of the problems you will encounter in life will emanate from decisions that you make now. So think carefully about the choices you make at this stage of your life. Select your friends carefully, they should be good and few. You gain nothing by trying to fit in, or being a member of a clique. It is of paramount importance that you view the world with your own eyes. Don’t hate someone because someone close to you thinks that person is bad, neither should you befriend people who other people think are wonderful. Use your own discretion to rate people, foster your own relationships.No matter who you hang with, be yourself. Don’t allow your ideals to be overshadowed by your sisters, friends, parents, husband, or whoever. The world is full of bullies, multitudes of them. There are people who get by by stepping on other people’s heads to get where they want to go, but don’t back down when you feel strongly about something. I believe we stand out as individuals because of the unique way we perceive the world, so fight tooth and nail for what you believe in.

Even though you have to stand firm by your beliefs, being rigid is not always a good thing. There are times when you have to be flexible enough not to insist on having things your way, but mostly only to people who also make compromises when it comes to you. There has to be a balance. Like ticks, some people will take, take, take, from you, and one day you sit down to think and realize, “Oh my God, they never give!”

When life’s problems come, don’t be too quick to consult other people on how to solve them. Go with your gut. People can be really mean. They come dressed and smelling like sheep when they are actually wolves beneath all that. Not everyone who smiles at you has your best interests at heart. In the process of trying to solve your problems, you might end up making lots of mistakes. If you do, well, hope you learn from them. Rather make your own than go through life blaming other people for giving you bad advice. Some people act all helpful but gossip and laugh at you behind your back. Your distress could serve as entertainment in some quarters.  And some people like giving advice that they wouldn’t use if they were confronted with a similar problem, advice that will come back to bite you in the butt.

When calamities come, and they will surely come in their dozens as you grow older, keep calm. You will be able to work out solutions when you sit down quietly and think. Don’t fly around like a headless chicken, the vultures that are ever hovering will spot you and descend on you to prey on your weaknesses. Solve your problems from the root. Merely scratching the surface is like painting a house to cover up the cracks. Old sins cast long shadows. One day those cracks will rear their ugly head; much wider, deeper and harder, if not impossible to fix. Be your number one fan. You can’t support things that are unappealing, so be the best that you can be by making healthy choices. Find a hobby that you are passionate about. That way, you won’t be desperate for company and your happiness will not be dependent on somebody else.  Exercise and eat healthily – a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.

A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips Pic by Ni Shu

Start at your age, it’s easier that way. Growing up, make-up was associated with prostitutes, but don’t be intimidated. Invest in a good bright lipstick, foundation, eyeliner, and good hairstyles because when you look good, you feel good about yourself. But cosmetics cost money, so you will have to work hard to be able to afford the good things in life, no freeloading. Don’t be a kept woman, not even if you marry a billionaire who persuades you to stay at home so that he can look after you. Most men want women to depend on them financially so that they can keep them under their thumbs, keep them dangling on a string and control their movements like they are handling puppets. You did not go to school to learn how to play cheerleader to somebody else’s career.

Earning your own money will ensure that you are self-sustaining and won’t have to knock on people’s doors or spread your legs for disgusting men as most girls your age do to get money. Live within your means. Human beings usually have ulterior motives when they give assistance. A lot of aid comes with conditions attached. Read Robert Mugabe’s speeches about Western Aid to Africa.You will be expected to be eternally grateful, and in some instances, every willing and unwilling audience will be told how you would have come to nothing if you hadn’t received that help.

Run your own race – don’t use other people’s achievements as a standard by which you should measure your own success. You don’t know their story and how they got to be where they are, maybe they had to kill someone or sell their souls to the devil. In line with this, read the Desiderata and commit those wise words to heart.

You won’t always get what you want in life. If what you want doesn’t come your way, rather than wallow in self-pity, take what you can get. There are usually other options in life, even though some of them might be unorthodox. You have but one life, no rewinds, no second takes, so you have to make it count. You have your own place under the sun and don’t really owe any explanation to anyone, except those that treasure you and have your best interest at heart. Having to prove yourself, fight for your place in other people’s lives or prove other people wrong is strenuous.

There comes a time in life when we have to shed some people from our lives regardless of how close we were to them for years, the way snakes shed their old skin, the way we shed unwanted weight. Yes, that’s what some people are, excess baggage we need like we need a hole in the head. You must never ever impose yourself on people who don’t appreciate you. Rather spend as much time as possible with those who think the world of you. Being around people who exude negative energy is rather toxic and will make you second-guess yourself, tip-toe on eggshells to avoid offending them. Trust me, regardless of how good you act around them, these people will always find something to criticize and make you feel small and unsure of yourself.

People who overtly show you that they don’t want you around them are saints in comparison to those that come into your life convincingly calling themselves your friends. When you look closely, you won’t find anything friendly about them. Sometimes they just want to criticize everything you do, or they just want to be under your skin, in your hair, everywhere, until you begin for feel claustrophobic. They are like vampires that will sap your energy till you want to run for the mountains. Yet usually, it’s people like these that have acute insecurities of their own and believe their candles will shine brighter when they blow out yours.  Don’t allow them,don’t be shy to rectify the mistake you made befriending them by running for your life!

Then there are those that radiate rays of sunshine on the gloomiest days and give real meaning to life. Hang on to these ones and never let go. There are people that make you wish you had enough resources to clone them so that you can have your very own certified copy of the original that you won’t have to share with anyone. When you meet people like these, don’t be a parasite. Smother them with your love as you also absorb what they give to you. Take as much love as you can get when you find fountains of it, bath in it, slurp it, eat it and store lots of it in your reserve tanks for rainy days. There will be days when you look left, right and centre and can’t find love. This would be the time to ruminate all that you had before to minimize the sadness. As they say, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Too much clutter leads to a chaotic life. Don’t hang on to stuff you don’t need, small clothes that you think you will fit into one day, books that you think will be useful in future, and especially men that debase you. A man that has a roving dick, who after cheating on you, turns around and says, “Babe, I love you, I didn’t mean to hurt you, it was a genuine mistake,” deserves to be kicked in the teeth. You should ask him, “You love me so much you had to demonstrate that by going to bed or to sofa with another woman? A genuine mistake like breaking your mother’s dinner plates, like you are just walking, minding your own business and you trip and fall and find yourself naked on top of another woman with your genitals entangled? Please talk to the hand!” Cheating is never a mistake, it’s always premeditated.

Speaking of men, you come from a culture that believes you should hang on to your virginity like your life depends on it and preserve it for the precious man who will marry you. That’s really crappy advice if you ask me, because in our scandalously patriarchal society your future husband is certainly not getting the same advice. If anything, he’s busy deflowering other people’s future wives.  If you want to keep your virginity, do it for yourself, not for some faceless man. Keeping your virginity is by no means your ticket to marital bliss. Women still get cheated on, physically and emotionally abused, among other marital atrocities, even if they were virgins when they met their husbands.  If you want to lose your virginity, do it for yourself and in your own time, on your own terms because it’s yours. Sleeping with someone because you are afraid of losing them is making yourself cheap. You will still lose him if he’s not supposed to stay.  If you don’t want to, that ought to be respected. If the guy doesn’t, then move on quickly.

It is, however, wise to delay the onset of sex. They say you have to kiss a few toads before you meet the prince. A few years from now you will look back at the people you dated. Trust me you will gag and ask yourself, “What the hell was I doing with a hobgoblin like that?” You will hate yourself if you slept with a toad. Life is a gamble, you can also discover much later that you let the man of your dreams slip through your fingers and stuck with the one of your nightmares. It’s all about sleeping with one eye open and having eyes at the back of your head when dealing with me. You also need to have a good relationship with God so that he can lead you to the right one.

One of my favourite hymns is Brighten the Corner Where You Are by Ina D. Ogdon. Some of the words go:

Someone far from harbour you might guide across the bar…

Just above are clouded skies that you may help to clear

Brighten the corner, where you are…

You’ve been blessed with some very wonderful people in your life, people who will never turn their backs on you, your angels without wings. Be that to other people. Make people believe there’s God because of what you do for them.  But as you do so, remember the line between being helpful and being taken for a ride can be notoriously thin.

It is good to be kind and helpful to others, but take care of Number One first. There are times when it’s perfectly OK to be selfish. You might neglect your own interests for other people’s sake, but when stuff hits the fan, you will realize that those same people don’t give too hoots about your issues.  Trying to act all saintly to others while your own life is in jeopardy is tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot. Don’t fight the fire at your neighbour’s house while your own house burns down.

With lots of love

Older, wiser, more hardcore Carlotta

We are Africans, not Bulldozers

WE HAVE a door that has been giving us problems for a while, so we invited a carpenter who stays in our area to fix it. Lo and behold, he brought along his wife, two hyperactive kids, an older one, and their dog. I’m sure the cat wasn’t home when they left, or else it would have joined the procession. That has to be the height of being unprofessional.

This carpenter, like us, is from Zimbabwe. I suppose he just assumed it would be OK for us to get to know each other’s families, and that would not have been wrong. But he didn’t ask if we wanted to meet his family and whether it was convenient to bring them at the time he brought them.

My husband and I always argue about just rocking up on people’s doorsteps without prior arrangement. While driving to one place or the other, he might just decide to drop in on someone who stays along the way without calling first. I’m against that. What if people don’t feel like entertaining that day? What if you just budge in while they are in the middle of a fight, or about to have sex? “We are Africans,” he always argues. “In our culture you don’t need to give appointments. We are hijacking white people’s culture by demanding appointments”, he says.

Culture is supposed to be a good thing that defines us and fills us with pride, but I wouldn’t be caught dead celebrating something that corners the next person. It should be something we are keen to impart to our children and hope they pass down to their own. But with the way it’s revoltingly misrepresented, especially by the menfolk, if I never hear anyone mention doing something in the name of culture, it will be too soon. I have noted that people usually put down all oppressive machinations to culture, because they can’t think of another way to justify their cruelty.Men demand that women behave or serve them in a certain way because “culture says this and that”. It’s time we told the men in our lives, “OK so culture says that, but you are not culture, so what do you say? Do you feel this is fair at all?” If a man loves his woman, he should also want to know what she says and how she feels about everything that affects her, not just enjoy lording over her because culture put him in that advantageous position. Culture, my foot. What about love, friendship, and harmony in relationships?

I’m not one to just take to other people’s cultures for the sake of it, but I don’t hesitate to adopt those attributes I regard as positive. I, however, categorically deny that I’m representing another culture by demanding to be treated fairly and being given notice when people plan to visit me. That’s just how I prefer to have things done. I would not like to enjoy life at the expense of somebody else. I do not like showing up on people’s doorsteps unannounced, and I certainly don’t want anyone showing up on mine unannounced either, particularly if they expect me to wait on them. I’m really not prepared to run around cooking and doing all sorts of things impromptu. My life is hectic enough without people imposing themselves on me.

There was a time when I was studying for important exams and some people called to tell me they were at my gate at home. I told them I was at the library, expecting they would do the right thing and head back where they had come from. “We’ll just park outside and wait for you,” they said. I did go back, bowing to the pressure of not wanting to seem unAfrican by turning away visitors. I resented their company that day, even though they are very dear to my heart. Why didn’t they use their phones to call me about their intention to come before just showing up? I’d have let them know I was not available. I really wanted to study!

This has been a long and winding tale, but the bottom line is this: I’m really outraged by people who put down bad habits or behaviours to being African, to culture. Behaviour like some men demanding that their wives wash their dirty underwear, skid marks and all – because African women are supposed to do that for their men, encouraging obesity in women on the premise that a fat woman is really the ideal African woman. There’s a host of them and I abhor them all, especially bulldozing into other people’s houses without appointments because “Africans don’t need appointments, they are very accommodating”.

Silence is not Always Golden

Robin Williams’ death brought to the fore how little we know about mental problems, and how much we need to speak out when we have heavy stuff bugging us. I feel that our society is too cautious with discussing issues regarding mortality, worse when it’s suicide. It’s actually taboo to openly discuss it, even when people are at the funeral of someone who killed himself. Close relatives would rather attribute the death to another affliction than reveal that one of their own killed himself. Having a suicide in the family is associated with evil spirits. People prefer to skirt around serious discussions but it costs lives to keep quiet. Silence is not always golden.

I listened to Billy Crystal deliver a moving eulogy of Williams and marveled at the different ways in which our societies handle suicides. I knew just a little about how people in my part of the world handle funerals of people who would have committed suicide. When someone dies, people wail and some throw themselves to the ground to express their grief. Even those who didn’t really like the deceased will put up an act of bereavement, just so they won’t be viewed as witches. But after someone has committed suicide, people are actually not allowed to cry. A person who commits suicide is buried almost like a dog, no coffin should be bought, and no vigil should be held. It is believed that the person would have chosen an undignified exit from the world, so there should be no dignity bestowed on them.

I wanted to learn more about this way of doing things and consulted my father. As soon as I mentioned that I wanted to know more about how burials of people who committed suicide were conducted, he immediately became cagey. He interrogated me about why I was talking of suicide and I explained that I only wanted to write about it. He was not convinced and only responded two hours later, after careful consideration, I’m sure.

He said culturally, giving a person who has committed suicide a decent burial is like condoning what he would have done. Just literally throwing him away is meant to put his family members off suicide, because no-one would ever want to be buried like that. After one dies a natural death, his belongings are distributed amongst relatives so that they can have keepsakes. But when someone kills himself, all his belongings, clothes, and blankets are buried with him because people fear his spirit might still be lingering on his earthly possessions and might induce more suicides. If the person hangs himself in the bush, a grave is simply dug beneath him, the rope is cut and he indecorously falls into the grave. That is believed to make the deceased realise that his relatives were revolted by him and his choice of death, thus he wouldn’t come back to haunt his living family and push them to commit suicide too. I heard that traditionally a person who hangs himself is supposed to have his corpse beaten up first before the rope is cut. I don’t know if that is still practiced.

I just thought all this bad treatment of corpses is rather sad. Regardless of how someone dies, I believe they deserve a decent burial. Just because someone has died in a way we view as unacceptable doesn’t mean we have to forget all the good things they did while they were still alive.

Abusing corpses doesn’t help, talking about the scourge that is suicide helps. People are, however, not likely to come forward if they feel suicidal for fear that they would be viewed as being possessed by evil spirits.

"It's My Life" are just songs Bon Jovi and Dr Alban sang, not a mantra to live by

ROBIN Williams’ suicide was really shocking and heartbreaking. He touched a lot of lives, made a lot of people laugh, even when he had pretty heavy stuff weighing on his soul. He made us laugh till we cried, especially in MrsDoubtfire, which my siblings and I watched ad nauseum.  Yet he felt his life sucked so much that he didn’t even want to breathe anymore. In our naivety, we usually think rich people have it all, but here was a very rich person taking his own life because he felt he had nothing to live for. It’s extremely sad that he made people around the globe laugh, yet he could not make himself happy.

People all over the world commit suicide for various reasons, some which stop you in your tracks and ask yourself why someone would want to kill themselves for a flimsy reason like that. I found the suicide statistics from South Africa quite daunting. According to the South African Federation for Mental Health, there are approximately 8 000 suicides a year. Suicide is ranked as the third greatest cause of unnatural death in the country, with around 230 people trying to kill themselves daily, while 23 succeeded. For something that takes so many lives, shouldn’t organizations and governments be making as much noise about suicide as they do about Ebola, HIV and Aids?

According to the article, research showed that psycho-social factors such as untreated mental illness, substance abuse, family problems, trauma, rape, and poverty could contribute to suicidal feelings. The World Health Organisation found that despite the high number of suicides across the globe, help for people thinking of committing suicide was not prioritised in the public health system.

I know a good number of people whose loved ones took their own lives. It leaves people in pieces. My friend Alex’s brother committed suicide by taking rat poison. Alex said this left the family in a very bad emotional space:

“It’s a very painful experience and it leaves you with a lot of questions like why, how come, where did it go wrong? The saddest thing is you keep blaming yourself…’I could have done this or that, maybe it could have been a different outcome.’ You always wonder and sometimes you just try not to think or talk about it”, he said.

The brother had expressed his suicidal thoughts, and the family had tried to support him. He appeared to have changed his mind after the talk, so it came as a surprise when he killed himself anyway.

“I wish he had given me or the family more time to help him because we were trying to talk and help him as soon as we realized we had a problem. The problem is such issues don’t give you time,” said Alex.

I just wish people would talk to those close to them, and accept help, when they feel they are hitting brick wall after brick wall in their lives. There are solutions to most problems we encounter in the walk of life. And when there aren’t, then we need to accept that there are some crosses that we carry throughout our lives without ever putting them down. Everybody has them, some have worse. They are burdensome, but we can figure out how to make life beautiful, or at least passable while carrying those crosses.

For me, suicide can range from deliberately killing oneself using a method of one’s choice like hanging, throwing oneself in front of a moving train, taking rat poison, slitting one’s wrists, whatever. The most popular weapon of choice in Swaziland appears to be weevil tablets.

Suicide can also involve living life on self-destructive mode, making a chain of reckless choices, until one loses it. People who live like this are the kind of people, who when they die, are referred to as having dug their own graves. One might feel so overwhelmed by life’s problems and start drinking or abusing drugs so much that they become a worthless individual who loses possessions like phones, jobs, wife or partner, and eventually life itself. This loss of life can be a result of driving under the influence, brawls, or some other irresponsible behavior. Others might get so rash that they get promiscuous and end up contracting HIV and be so embarrassed or depressed that they won’t take medication. They will die a slow and very painful death.

When people commit any form of suicide, they feel worthless and that nobody cares or can help them. But these are not just their lives. Every time somebody dies, there are people who suffer massive heartbreaks; family members who have precious memories of the dead person, friends who grew up with the person, or people from the person’s past who would have hoped to reconnect at some point. There are a lot more people involved in our lives than we know. Nobody is a “nobody”.  Everyone has people that care about them. They might be few but they are there. And help is there all around us, if we look in the right places. I think people just shouldn’t get hysterical in crises, so that they can have the presence of mind to look for healthier options, not suicide.

My friend Peace Mwelase aptly put it when he said, “I wish we could read our obituaries before we died”. That would surely make us realise that there are people who regard us in high esteem in this world and love us very much, regardless of our status in society.  Our lives are so intertwined with other people’s, so much that we can’t really claim that our lives, in all entirety, are ours. When people commit suicide, whether quickly or slowly, they die together with bits of other people’s hearts, those who value them regardless of how little they thought of themselves. So essentially they would have murdered themselves and other people's souls.