Work – Page 2 – PurplePretoria

The first day of my Z’s school was an exciting one. It was difficult as well, for me, because he would be leaving our four walls to join and be part of another community on his own, a community which I would not be part of. For the first time in his and my life, I would only get to hear about it, his new life at school. I was beginning to become secondary in his life.

The first week of my work felt something like this. I noticed many things as if for the first time and for others, an actual first time and in a way it reminded me of Z’s first day. How dressed up he was in his clothes and his new shoes that his father had bought him, how scared and excited he felt. How he felt like changing his mind when the car stopped- right at the gate where his teachers came to get him.

We took him up ourselves and as we stood outside the door of his classroom, about to leave, he had a look on his face- of fear, doubt, uncertainty, apprehension- not horror but close. And then, the swings distracted him and he was home again, in the familiar territory of playing. In the evening we came to get him, at the same time as his aunt- who had come with balloons and a milk shake in the car and pictures- many many pictures. In the flurry of activity, I looked down and saw his new shoes, they were torn beyond repair, unrecognisable. The sand pit had shredded them. I felt bad for his father who had taken such meticulous time and pride in choosing them and buying them.

On one of the days this past week, as I drove Z to school, he noticed that the police drove on the other side of the road and drove ‘faster faster’. I allowed the use of the word silly for the first time- from me, in description to the police. Silly has been a constant exclamation adapted by him from Peppa pig- a British cartoon- where the children constantly refer to their parents as “Silly mummy!” or “Silly daddy!”!” Z also noticed that “they need to make the road from our home [as] good as the driving road because it makes mummy’s tea pour”. Then later, as I came close to my work area, I saw an expatriate, on a red plated boda-boda complete with a helmet as any serious expatriate would wear when riding a motorcycle. As I brake peddled the car on the downward slope of a punctured road, he toddled past, shoulders hunched in the brief morning drizzle and I wondered if he knew something we didn’t.

The thoughts I have before I drop him to school are ones of teaching, being an example, what I can or can’t say in the traffic because he repeats it to me later- Mummy! This truck! It’s driving basides and basides!”, what we sing, how he is doing when he is sniffling about or coughing. Then I reach his school, and his teachers, passive-aggressively whisper- “He’s early today”. “Early?” I ask. “Yes” she responds, looking up at me as if I have caught her by surprise. “We try!,” I say, with an unaffected shrug. She doesn’t know that arriving in itself is an achievement. As I drive away, I think about how I can be earlier. I think about the baby at home.

Today, I thought about John Gottman’s theory of contempt. I think about how it feels to be vulnerable, to rely so heavily on someone when in need, emotionally and physically. I think about how it feels to be the one, the one who is needed. I think about how it feels to be the one who is moving, doing, being important [or as Z calls it- “I’m doing impoitant work as he fumbles through the keys on the laptop”] and whether I would run or stay. I think about Issa and Lawrence- Lawrence at his worst (poor and slumped over a desk in yesterday’s clothes) and Lawrence at his best (Lawrence the app creator, gymed and groomed] and what happened in between. I think about this movie Give it a year- that I watched, pausing in parts and finally switching it off because it was tainting my churchmosphere with its coarse, vulgar British humour – about this writer’s-blocked writer and his jet-setting wife and what happens in between. I also think about friends, about how there are friends who are good for laughing with but will never allow you into their pain and about how there are friends who are best for pain but in your good times they find it hard to be around you. I think about how Ugandans have a renewed vigour for work on Monday like a New Year’s Resolution but which dwindles by Wednesday. I think about the price of fuel, of a possible civil unrest, nations faraway, hair, the things I heard at lunch time, things I understood as if for the first time.

“I learned more about who I was from my [enemies] than I [learned] from myself. “

She wanted to be like everyone else. She didn’t understand that she never would. She was not just his perceived eyes and ears, she spoke too. And most times, she spoke as if she dared not say too much.

It would always be hard to tell whether a smile was meant for her or her father, whether it was for a calculated purpose or a genuine acquaintance. Any careless remark she made could be used against her in the unofficial office group. Isn’t it the trend on Whats app,to have side chats about group chats and groups about groups? Her careful demeanor did not help matters because she always seemed to sit in judgment over them as they spoke.

There was also a thumping of chests you know. Some who shunned the smiles and came straight for battle. They wanted her to know, that she was not her father and they would never bow to the Lion’s cub.

And so she waited in vain, that one day some conversations would not be reserved for when she left the room and that one day she would not have to prove her right to be there. But this was a privilege of those for who had not received either a silver plate or spoon. They comforted themselves with the belief that they had worked singularly to be where they were. They allowed themselves and their kind, the chance to learn, to make mistakes. They were allowed not to know, some things, but for her not to know, it was damning, eternally damning and crudely satisfying.

Now, the boss was a well known man, well known among his peers, well known in his field and well known to his long time friends. It was this well known man from whom, in her adult life, she had created a caricature of who he might be; generous, humble, kind and good at what he did. As a child she and her siblings had seen him watch CNN or Sky Sports during late evenings when he came home from work. On the way to school, when he took them to school, only BBC Africa spoke. Sometimes, he commanded them to stop being lazy and do some housework. But most of the time, they only peeped at who he might be, when he sat among his friends and in a confusing state of awe when he danced, because it was the only time he let himself be free, with joyful abandonment.

It is therefore easy to see why, when he, for the first time spoke about what her destiny would be, she had listened. She was not cut out to be a journalist, no, she was too quiet and calm. What would she do with a Literature degree- her mother had piped in- “A professor of English perhaps?”

In a few seconds, for he never spoke longer than a few minutes to them, the past ten years of her life came to pass- a Bachelor’s degree in Law.

When she chose her electives, she did so like someone who, having committed to the Historical Foundations of Roman Dutch Law continued to receive kisses on the mouth from Poetry, Literature and Foreign Language. But after darting from class to class, she found herself intrigued by both the introspective dissection of the human condition and an introduction to the external machinations of the world.

She realised quickly in the first week of work as a lawyer that uniformity, conformity and YES SIR was more important than self expression. If she could just blend in and maybe even disappear within the multitude of grey coats, she would have done very well. As a comment to an opinion she had written about regulations for a nuclear power plant, she had told the boss that she did not believe that the country was ready for a nuclear power plant. It was too dangerous an attempt. He laughed. Not in a loud boisterous way, not in a prolonged pretentiously-amused way, but like a scoff that said she had a lot to learn.

At first, it was hard to be the kind of person who was interested in another people’s business. At first, she read the notes, letters and papers until she dosed off. Four years had come to this, she thought, 6:00 a.ms, coffee, a uniform and always having to please. That was how she was initiated into the working-life cycle.

Money was, …well, she had no idea what to do with it and when it did increase, it made her fearful. What did it mean? Had she done enough to deserve it? Money had always been intangibly in the vicinity- building houses, paying school fees and plane tickets, buying cars- but now that it was in her hands, it made her wonder just how much she weighed in money.

For a long time, she remained a stranger in the workplace, not knowing what role she was there to play, not sure what she was supposed to be fighting for or if she was supposed to be fighting. It was strange, she thought, that all this time we took in school without knowing why.

She had been an intern in another work place before, during University holidays. The money was a token, the work- non-existent, smiles abundant and she had made more friends in three weeks than she would in 5 years at the Boss’s place but she had not been the Boss’s daughter (1). She had been just another intern.

Quote by T.D Jakes from Don’t Let The Chatter Stop You.

Tag: Work

Contempt

The Boss’s Daughter (2)