They want jobs...

The light and darker side of Zimbabwean unemployment.

A few weeks I was working in a place called Mufiri in Chivi district. While I was busying myself with the issues of my employer an elderly woman came up to me and asked me for a few minutes of my time. She wanted to know if the organisation I work for hired university attachment students and if I could assist her son find a place. I politely explained that recruitments are the responsibility of the Human resources department and that was not my department. The only assistance I could give was that of taking her son’s CV to the relevant department. Delivering the CV was well within my control, everything else was not. 

Just as I had finished explaining she started to cry. Real crying mind you; tears, sniffles and all. She explained that her son had been looking for attachment for eight months now and he was at risk of deferring his studies by a year if he didn’t start soon. Deferring, she explained, was not an option because it meant that she would have to pay his university fees for additional year and she simply could not do that because the fees were already putting a strain on her salary. She explained that he was willing to do his attachment for free, just as long as it was done. I stood there motionless for a while wondering what to do, a stranger was sobbing and sadly save for playing the part of delivery woman I had no  concrete assistance I could offer. I couldn’t bring myself to mislead her into thinking that I could do more than I actually could. And so I tried as best as I could to comfort her and assure her that at the right time he will find the right placement. So she handed me the CV and I drove off with a heavy heart…

On a lighter note…. A month ago another gentleman casually walked into our office and demanded to know why he hadn’t been hired for a job he and many others had been interviewed for. YES, according to him he was aware that the successful candidates had since started work and he wanted to know why he hadn’t received a call for him to start work as well. He was so certain that he passed the interview and got the job. Someone must have simply forgotten to call the bloke. This sadly was not the case.  What a rare blend of guts, confidence and desperation.