Again, beyond the virtue of formality, we dress and speak with a frightening indifference. I have for years now, built resentment against myself for my inability to stress and forego anger in the social function of time. Agitated, frigid and collapsing the future matters, not to those plucked before they ripened. When things played simpler in life, a great joy filled the world; the use of greeting fun belted beyond my imagination. It was full of secrets that presented the natural manoeuvring of my behaviour to become a person who always admired lively events. We would jolt consistently as mischief youths through the town and leave the wake of our laughter in the streets of Sam Nujoma Drive beyond the circus of Zoo Park. Down the line that crossed the midnight moon and the frivolous music of ‘The Catch’ formed a greasy gang, that might have taken one of too many a night.

With such fracture now behind, my thoughts engage better teachings about life in Namibia, a fallen asunder could not even align with the disgrace of a failing nation, the politics crease our moral circumference, the social dirt stains every youth who has the hope to endure better circumstance that is elated. We stare at each other and find false faith in relationships that falter every bit of dignity, we admire and possess. The lies which fill the cups of our minds and overflow into a river of toxicity begin with a bottle in hand and the promise of a good time, but the physical realization when things go bad is a state of bad taste. How could I promise you something I have never experienced, those noble enough found their calling in revolutionary chants that fall on ears too tired to listen, too scared to react and too confused to know the proper accord of the goal intended. It is better to recline on start-ups that are neither worthy nor beneficial in the long run, I have an ordering business for clothes, and I sell sweet treats made of plump nectar honey and full cream but lacking in desire or at least the happy kind.

Those fortunate enough to fall on the other half of a dire situation and still better, seem scared to fall to the will of their life. The sacrificial necessity requires consistent hushing down of their insecurities by reminding us that we don’t have what they have and could never possess the same intellectual prowess to take it away from them. I cry and realize the death of souls slowly drowning in debt yet still pulling a brave smile. If capitalism was the mother of all parents, then she has failed African children, the most.

You kids speak with no respect! When we had a giant leap in our step and fought war to war against imperialism and oppression the blood of my sister watered my sorrow, my brother fell beyond the grave and straight into a spitfire of hollow emptiness because they had taken away everything from him by the time he passed, indeed he was an empty body when he died. At the grave which held our family lineage in Okavango, we buried alive a few souls with those dead and gone. I am one whose heart has aged gruesome to the worry of my comprehension, now at advanced numbers in accumulation I deserve the back pay of my struggle. I do not claim an inheritance from things I did not work for, the resultant profit of my struggle is to enjoy the limits of resources available.

I remember when things worked below my ability and life revered those with lighter skin tones, I would seek solace in the arms of a bottle every now and again at the local Shanti. We created an atmosphere which stank from the hills to the white man’s house kilometres away, they would round up pulling back and forth in regional police vehicles that disrupted the psychological liberation of forgotten worries; now here and close they stink like blue litmus paper draped in sickening oppressive mixtures breeding a European style to their stalk. I believe that a man is a deposit of all the environments they encumber, they would scream: “go home you savages”, ugly beastly things that have no culture except primitive proportion. One wonders if these proceedings had affected them to unknowingly behave in more brutal ways than savage animals themselves.

A coming-of-age story that highlights the advance of a nation about to collapse from the lens of a 20-something-year-old showcasing the ills of the youth and the nation in general.