Conversation with a colleague last week left me feeling relieved and consoled just a tad. She still hadn’t found a job. Many will wonder why that is good news. Well, I am jobless too and so are most of my former classmates from University. The fact that so many of us cannot find employment makes one feel that it is not because of not enough effort, but that the jobs just aren’t there.

I will not plunge into “the day in a life of a job seeker” kind of narration, but I tell you, no one has it tougher. With the unemployment rate running riot at 80% and companies continuing to relocate and scale down, what hope is there?

Armed with your Degree, you no longer wait to scrounge for newspapers to seek out job adverts and apply. Instead, you visit any and every organization you can find, press your CV into their hands and bug them for a job. Any job, even voluntary because you just can’t bear the silent stares back home anymore.

Sometimes you are lucky to be offered a job as a shelf cleaner in a small downtown supermarket, and if your gods smile down on you, you might find yourself at the highly esteemed position of till operator. But then your conscience just won’t allow you to do this kind of work after four years of starvation and hard work at the University. You lose your job the same day because you just aren’t motivated enough.

A visit to another organization looks hopeful – for a while. Until the interviewer starts making apparent innuendoes about having sex with you before you get the job. You think to yourself, so that’s how so and so got their job . . .

On your unlucky day, you will probably meet Jack, rolling in a white BMW blaring loud gangster music. He was one of the dullest and most idiotic people in class back in college; got himself a repeat. But then again, his father is a prominent business man or Minister. And isn’t that Jill, wearing expensive clothes? She opened up her legs for the right people, as they used to say back at Uni.

Tired, hungry and disappointed, you make slow progress towards the expectant faces back home. You dread getting there, but it really is getting late and last time, your phone was snatched right off you in these streets, in broad day light too. Will you ever make a living innocently in this place? The idea of joining the rest of the bandwagon in South Africa is highly tempting. But all those stories of xenophobia and general abuse of Zimbabweans, keep me here.

This entry was posted on June 18th, 2007 at 10:37 am by Natasha Msonza and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.