By: Kwanele Khumalo
Worth Noting:
- I’m reminded of it everytime when people hate me without any cause. It comes to my mind whenever I try to please someone and in return I get negative reactions, gossips and etc.
- Let me tell you, people can hate you first time seeing you. I remember one day I was lost in Bulawayo around 8PM going to meet my friend at a certain lodge.
- I then passed near a house which happened to be having a guard who saw me and beamed a torch directly to me. As someone who grew up in my rural home, I saw no offense in just going straight to that house and ask for directions. I saw saviour in that guard.
Our former headmaster, Mr Dumisani Tsheza once told us that it’s natural to hate someone. He said sometimes you meet somebody first time and you never talked to him or her and you feel like saying foetsek to that person. Well we laughed and dismissed it as just one of the old man’s many jokes. Many people who knows Tsheza especially the former students at Sikhathini knows that he can’t finish a conversation without more than two jokes in it. But for me I always remember this one, wether it was a joke or a philosophical thought I don’t know.
I’m reminded of it everytime when people hate me without any cause. It comes to my mind whenever I try to please someone and in return I get negative reactions, gossips and etc.
Let me tell you, people can hate you first time seeing you. I remember one day I was lost in Bulawayo around 8PM going to meet my friend at a certain lodge. I then passed near a house which happened to be having a guard who saw me and beamed a torch directly to me. As someone who grew up in my rural home, I saw no offense in just going straight to that house and ask for directions. I saw saviour in that guard.
The man had a bouncing body fit for a good guard humble and innocent from the first sight. I greeted him and asked directions, he told me he never heard about that lodge before but I could wait he will ask his boss inside the house. I waited outside. He went in and came with the boss, the boss was hurrying, dialing the neighbors. He told me to stand up as I was now under arrest. Within some minutes I found myself in a circle of neighbors who were questioning me many stupid questions. Some were even threatening to beat me. From the boss I head that the guard told him he found me trying to sneak in using the small gate of their yard. Then if it was so, how can then he leaves a thief and went to summon people? He might be a stupid guard.
The boss started the engine, off they took me to Hillside Police Station. When we arrived there the boss told the police that he had encountered three break-ins in his house and he is sure that it might be me. And on top of it he said cables are being stolen at their place now they brought the suspect who happens to be me. But was I not asking for directions? Was my appearance not showing that I was an innocent person who was lost? Well the police saw that. That was hating at first sight….
Kwanele Khumalo is a poetry writer, novelist & a story teller.
Facebook : Kwanele Khumalo Mntungwa or Mntungwa kaMbulazi Poetry &novels..
kwanelekhumalo@gmail.com
COMMENTARY
HATING ONE FROM THE FIRST SIGHT
Thank you Mr. Khumalo for this Interesting and satiable work. My appetite for this tale-tale got out of hand at some point as I constantly got entangled in a mixed bag of emotions through out the pages of this story. I fell in love mostly with the realistic nature of it, the applicability and relatability as one can easily relate to what we encounter in our immediate livelihoods.
Hating One from the First Sight is one and the living prevalent phenomena which I attach a rendition of naturalism and innaticism
From this story however, sentiments I gathered, the events here in are not constrained on hate only, but inside there is extension of an element of a Topdog underating an Underdog. To this, there’s quick judgement of the innocent person just by reading from their outward appearance.
In as much as this narration is in sour and blameful tone, it never forgets to bring its comic effect on how the Guard and the boss react towards the speaker.
Thank God the officers managed to seal the situation in a more professional stance. But the way the speaker herein tries so hard to be so defensive, I wonder if he’s really was asking for directions!!!! One may have wanted to conduct further investigations since we’re only told the story from a point of view of the victim.
Are we really satisfied that the speaker was lost?
What if he was into some mischief, worse looking closely at the Setting of the story.
Well, these are some of the questions I wish detectives could have ask the lost man. Maybe they did, just that I was not there, I only read it from the plot.
COMMENTARY
The unfolding of the Story is beyond any real style can ever be. I loved the Setting of the story, the night itself tells amore to bring effect to the events that come after in the whole story.
The way the Plot develops, assists any reader to follow well with the events. Mr. Khumalo is so patient to walk with the reader through out the story, he dares not leave the reader to get lost along the way.
Characterisation is the only thing that kept Munsaka jailed in smiles, because Khumalo makes sure that he unveils the actions of each character so clear that one can easily be brought home through it’s Social life effect: use of local names to which one may be convinced that the characters are not fictional at all, whereas they might be.
Well, personally I don’t get surprised because I know Kwanele as a man who sees and enjoys his life in the countryside.
I don’t want to talk about Climax, Conflict and all, but what interests Fortune is how the conflict finally gets resolved at the end.
At the end of it all, the victim goes home happy and the reader atleast sleeps happy all because of how the story ends!!!!
Kwanele Khumalo known as Mntungwa kaMbulazi is a poetry writer, Story teller and a cultural activist from Plumtree. He is currently studying Journalism at the National University of Science and Technology, in Bulawayo Zimbabwe. Had penned down his anthology titled: # who killed grandfather? Which was nominated this year on NAMA nominations.
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