Congratulations on a great pass, well done on your study choice, you have finally made it to university and you are now only four years closer to your dreams.
So welcome to life! Welcome to the freedom, welcome to the cool friends, and if you are new in Windhoek, then welcome to the city of bright lights. Perhaps it would help to note that we have many different lifestyles here in Windhoek, a few good ones but I only want to warn you about the “dis Windhoek hierso lifestyle” (DWH), which is one of the lifestyles that have claimed not only many young lives, but it has destroyed dreams and destinies too.
Please allow me to describe to you exactly what the “dis Windhoek hierso” life is about. It is the life where you throw away your morals and adopt a moral-less lifestyle and- I don’t –care- attitude – towards anything and everyone including your elders. It is a life where strangers become family and family becomes strangers. In this lifestyle a young man will do everything for his girlfriend, buy her hair, pay for her nails and eyelashes, pay her flat and buy food and allow his mother to struggle for bread at home/in the village. This lifestyle will also have young girls sleep with their auntie’s husbands for the lavish lifestyle, just to be able to post a clean picture on instagram. My dear, the women are sleeping alone in the beautiful mansions because the girls you look up to on facebook flew out of the country with their husbands. Also, the DWH lifestyle is such that men have walked away from their nursing babies to be able to afford a bottle of whiskey in night clubs. Ask them how many children they have and by how many women? Ask them! Here people work very hard, they take risks and then win tenders, buy Jeeps and intimidate others. Innovation is zero, everyone is selling, no one is banking but the banks are giving out loans every day.
If you meet a serious guy, who makes his intensions about wanting a serious relationship with you clear at first, then you are very lucky, ladies are crying everyday about being led on, taken for a ride, used and lied to by men who told them they were single/had problems with their girlfriend/wife and wanted to leave her for them. Some ladies even end up spending their entire loan refund decorating his flat, just for another woman to come and enjoy the cool air and clean sheets while they were back home for the holidays, ask them what they did with their refund?. But how is this possible you ask? “dis Windhoek hierso” my dear. People don’t “catch feelings”, don’t be that guy/girl in 2016, please do better!
You have now entered into the test zone, here you will be tested by fire whether you like it or not. I always referred to University as the devil’s playground, and this I say because university is like a city not town, city!, this is where you will meet all of the devil’s advocates disguised in angels at first and they will teach you everything that they know for free, you will throw away all that your parents/guardians taught you because unfortunately, moms and dads are not allowed to babysit us in the city of life and for some reason, asking them for advise is just impossible because according to you, they won’t/don’t understand life like your experienced friends do. Big mistake!
| Sesilia Nekwaya is a young economist at the Bank of Namibia but writes in her personal and private capacity striving to inspire and motive fellow young people. |