Magreth Nunuhe
I THINK we should all just stay in our baan (territory) to keep the peace because everyone is experienced in his or her respective area. For instance, I have chosen journalism as my profession and I could have a field day with other journos on what is ethical, good or bad about news writing, but I cannot run into the hospital’s emergency room and demand that a nurse take off her uniform because she does not know what she is doing.
Yes, there have been moments when everyone has felt like grabbing some Home Affairs clerk’s throat especially if they look you up and down like you are a mosquito that needs to be squashed while you have been waiting over a year for your passport.
There are many professions where we think we can perform better than the incumbents who spend hours, days, weeks and years training to perfect their trade and sometimes we might have good reason to. But take the poor soccer players for instance, just go sit around Starlile fans in a stadium full of the Reds fans and although you have to unfortunately endure the vloeking and can throwing when the poor football players miss a goal, you should hear how some spectators claim to “play” better soccer than Christiano Ronaldo.
One looks at them and you wonder whether it is the ball that would be rolling on the grass or the big kapunda that looks like it has swallowed a full six-pack of beer.
Yes, we all have professions we claim to be good at or at least take great care to become experts at. We have news presenters aka anchors, fashionistas, musicians, politicians, dentists, security guards, also known as safety specialists, hairdressers or cleaners who now call themselves sanitary engineers.
But have you walked away from a situation where you were so angry that you felt like you could rip someone’s lungs out? Or were you ever in a verbal confrontation where you were lost for words but thought later, “Gons, I should have said this.. I am sure many of us later felt good that we maintained our composure.
The evidence could be there that you almost scratched each other’s eyes out like hardened /gamares, but there is nothing as horrible as not remembering what led to the quarrel in the first place. All you might remember is just that moment when someone said: “I am going to moer you!”
Still, there are those who have a lid for every pot? They don’t need to touch you physically, but they will leave so many emotional scars with a few painful words that you wish you had never met them in your life. They are called the “lid experts”.
It’s those people that no matter how right you are you can never win a verbal fight with them. Don’t try to argue with them because they will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
While you are trying to be polite with your learned expensive N$5 000 words from the office, they will be krapping in your closet to find dirt. Just pray that you never once confessed to them in an un-sober state of chomieskap which kamboroto or kambeskiti you once squeezed that you never want the world to know about.
Please remember to respect everyone’s professional career and do not think you can become an expert in someone else’s territory. No one tries to mingle in yours, why must you all of a sudden become the expert in theirs? Stay in your baan. Sorry Ngo!