It was a valuable wake-up call!

Have you ever gone into a meeting ill-prepared? If yes, you would probably pre-empt what I about to say. It was on a chilly Tuesday morning. My research group was scheduled to meet at 9am. I had had an eventful Monday, with my visit to Alexandra, the most demanding task of the day.

I spent two hours at Setswetla township, the poorest section of Alex. There, I was able to interact with community members who were very much welcoming. "We get happy when we see media people in our area. We just hope that they will expose our situation to the general public.

 We just want the government to know that we are still living in abject poverty," said unemployed man who asked to remain anonymous. The man whose shack is just on the edge of the river bank was sitting by the fireplace outside of his shack awaiting his  beans to cook. He said they always hoped that it did not rain for fear of having their "houses" eroded.

While chatting with him, I see his neighbour downing a 10 litred bucket of urine. "It's a way of life around here. It doesn't shock us anymore," the man told me when he detected shock from my stare at his neighbour who was further polluting the river with human waste.  A few metres from where we were sitting, there were a couple of Kayalami Waste Management workers who were picking up litre on the banks of the river.

 When asked whether they felt the Setswetla community was conscious about environmental issues, a visibly unhappy worker from Tembisa said,"they just don't care about the environment. We give them refuse bags to put their litter in, but they don't use them accordingly."


These workers blamed the situation in Alex on the government. They believe the government does not prioritise service delivery. "Our politicians are enriching themselves at the expense of service delivery. I wouldn't cost a million to relocate these people to a more habitable area," one worker said.


Ok, enough with Alex for now. Back at home, my group was expecting a feedback on the progress I had made with my stories. I had made progress, but it was not significant, so to speak. I stayed until 4am preparing for some other work which was due by 10am on Tuesday. This preparation, totally unrelated to the research, robbed me of too much sleeping time. Therefore, I was not fully energetic in the meeting.

Firstly, I got to the meeting fifteen minutes late. Secondly, my presentation was not up to scratch. On noticing that I was not on the par with the rest of the team members, my research supervisor called me to an intense one-on-one session where she lectured on the importance of preparation.

 "You are just lazy, you haven't done anything. Are you aware that we don't really have much time left? I told you that you can always come to me if you are grappling with anything," the generous supervisor told me.

 Her words are still echoing in my mind even at this point. "The truth hurts," there goes an old adage. I did not take offence in her statements because I knew she was telling the truth. The problem with researches, at least a student perspective, is that a student tends to feel too comfortable when left unmonitored. A student would wait until the eleventh hour to conduct interviews for the research. Indeed, the earlier the better.

 To be honest, it never before the Tuesday meeting crossed my mind that I was not left with much time before the deadline of my research work. Hence, I would like to extend my gratitude to my supervisor who really cares about the success of the entire project, and most importantly, the success of my part of the project.  I learned a valuable lesson today. What did you learn from this piece?

Feel free to drop me a comment.