Communities of the Kalahari

The inspiration, first and foremost, for telling my story starts at home. It was further motivated by the many communities I lived within throughout the years.

There is an urge to understand young people of today. It has been said that young people are lazy, rude or just don’t respect others, which can be true in many ways, and not so in many other ways. We grow up in different times, places and environments which have a huge impact in our lives.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to how youngsters live today, I can name a few: young people are bored, unemployed, still live with their parents, have no privacy at home which means their houses are just too small to have their own rooms and they say they are being ignored and misunderstood. There is a very complicated gap of communication in households between parents and children.

In the earlier times on farms, every single person had a job although we earned much less compared to what most people earn today. Since that time a lot of people have moved from the farms to more ‘civilised’ villages and small townships. This made getting employed today very difficult and complicated as there are a lot more people living together in one village or township. People are now more dependent on government than before. Government is not able to provide jobs for everyone; certain educational levels are now required to be able to get a job. There was a lot of information that was withheld from youngsters in previous times than today; information is available almost everywhere and youngsters are well informed.  

In earlier times we were exposed to many valuable aspects of life on the farms. For example, veld and plant knowledge, knowledge about animals, their grazing and living conditions and a lot more. Today so many young people are exposed to what is happening in the world today and that is what they react to.

A lot of family values have changed and the transformation of our land has had a huge impact on people’s lives.