I first went to South Africa passing through into Swaziland to look for a nursing job.I had no intention of staying there i had no love for the place it just felt so allien to me maybe thats the feeling you get when one gets to a new place. Call me naive. As i had no place to stay in Swaziland and the stay was expensive since i had to convert my Zimkwatshas into rands, and Malangenis. That meant i could go to KwaNgwane for a few days then back to Jozi.
During my short stay in Jozi i was one morning mugged in broad daylight at 100hrs in the morning had a cellphone and the last ten rand i had in my pocket rudely taken away from me in broad day light in full view of the public. For the first time in my life i had the police stop me get a dog out of a car for me and i searched.The search felt like the deepest invasion of privacy i have evr encountered in my life. i felt like i had been rapped. These were the most traumatic six months in my life. I suffered from post traumatic stress disorder i got very paranoid when somebody ws walking behind me, i felt jittery even though i knew who was walking behind me, i was loosing my mind. I got missed by a kombi in the city centre near the small street exit , thats when i looked at my life and saw that i was no longer who i was.
I remember visiting this friend of a friend he seemed to be doing well he rented a single bedroomed flat by himself, had a big flat screen tv, and a big hi-fi system and a fridge. What he said, made me re-evaluate my situation and think twice about where i was falling into.He told me that if you are a professional, and when you get to jozi, you see yourself drowning untill you get to a point where you decide to get any job that comes your way, go back home and start a new, otherwise your years of training will be a waste.That hit home as i had swapped my nurse's unifrom and skills for a shovel and mortar mixing skills. I went home the following weekend and started to aply for jobs in Australia got a job and left Zimbabwe for Aus i have not looked back ever since.
Why i am writting this is because of the sad scenario that we find ourselves ,and other fellow Zimbabweans in today. We are talking of 22 people dead to date the number has not stopped rising. We find learned people who were forced by the unrewarding enviroment in the Zimbabwean workplace to move to SA, being killed and maimed by the scam of this earth just because they were not born in SA. It is a sad scenario.Even here in Australia there is no gurantee of safety, just last weekend there were racist pamphelets posted in maill boxes targerting AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS in Sydney.So dire are our straits that we are damned if we stay put at our motherland and still damned if we leave.
This is a sad scenario that only us understand. I know fully well that most of the people live in SA because they have no choice. Our prayers are with you guys in SA MAY THE LORD SHOW THE LIGHT TO THOSE PERSECUTORS.WE PRAY THAT WE MAY ALL BE SAVED FROM THIS PAINFULL EPISODE. WE FEEL YOUR PAIN AS WE SEE SOME OF YOU GUYS IN THE VIDEOS AND PICTURES I CANNOT HELP BUT WONDER WHY WE HEARD WE HAD TO BE REDUCED TO SUCH. ONLY GOD CAN SHOW US THE WAY NOW.
