Youths’ laziness amounts to poor economic growth and lack of jobs in South Sudan
8 min readBy Ariik Atekdit, Tonj, South Sudan
- President Kiir honors Gen Kuol Manyang Juuk, Gen Dr James Wani Igga, Gen Daniel Awet Akot and Gen John Koang Nyuon with the highest SPLA military honor for their longest service in the army, SPLA Headquarters at Bilpam, Juba, South Sudan, 24 January 2019
Thursday, January 24, 2019 (PW) — You must hunt hard for your good luck, in order to aspire your dreams. Sitting under that tea-maker’s Rakuba (shelter) with your thousand dreams in the mind won’t bear fruits. Claiming that you are a graduate won’t help you out, I swear. 2019 won’t make any change in your lives unless you choose to change some of the attitudes that you and I know they cannot allow any progress in our personal lives.
It is now many years down your graduation and you can’t get a job to afford your life or get married either at least to begin the progress of renaming your ancestors as African culture requires of you. Without lying, most of our youths are graduated directly to poverty and hopelessness because we so much depend on the nation and the government for employment.
Today I have chosen to talk directly to youths not to the government. I am attacking youths of which I am a member and I carry some blames too for having not done enough to establish my life. If you have been viewing posts on the new year eve on social media, you should have seen a lot of littering congratulatory messages for having arrived to the new year.
With most of us hoping for better changes in life. I think there was no reason to celebrate so much as such, the coming of new year if we are not ready to rediscover our abilities to be independent for employment and living.Because I know we are badly handcuffed by our laziness, the fact that we stay in one place for long time without doing a single job.
Sitting under that idle Rakuba can’t change your life and that shisha smoke you always take can’t mitigate you forever from your everyday difficulties. God can’t send you success while under a shade of idleness, just because you hold a degree from that particular prestigious college. I can’t wish you a happy new year when you pretend to be a king under the coat of slothfulness, ya Junubii
God loves those who suffer most, and so you and I must move out to suffer like others. Those who try always hope for either of the two: “Success or Failure.” what is keeping you away from trying to fail, instead of trying to enjoy laziness that doesn’t have any positive payback? When we incubate apathy result of such will be always zero. Unless we move out from that Kingdom of slothfulness we will remain and continue to be a shame of the nation and the generation.
Finishing your degree in the college with that high grading class is not the suffering or the success you & I can always register and sing to the whole world now and again, and continue to blame the world around us for not availing a job for our survival. Job-seeking is not any struggle one can stick to be only doing. In fact your professors did not advise you to be a job-seeker at all, they rather taught you to be a job-creator.
In fact most of the jobseekers you see today at the streets are your potential employees, you are just held back from having a booming business or firm by your refusal to quickly start to work on your precious and extraordinary ideas.
A South Sudanese can equally be an innovator or an entrepreneur. You must continue to struggle until you are able to change your life to be better than now. You can change the life of your whole nation, leave alone your family members. Your results are coming and so don’t lose patience and quickly blame God for keeping you in this kind of life this long, I know, He loves you. So don’t curse!
Many more have already died at the gun point of an known gunmen or killed at the front lines may be protecting the current regime or in a trial to remove it. Is that not more than a blessing?
If you feel so much subjected to difficulties, know from now that God always puts the people He loves on tough temptations. He tested the Biblical Abraham and Jacob, you are not an exceptional. And again Jesus Christ, himself had suffered so much before he died. Many of the apostles and disciples of Jesus went through a handful of sufferings and anguishes, therefore you are not alone. This means that your pain is historical and Biblical. Continue Struggling and you will achieved the result. But unless you set out from laziness!
I thought creating jobs should be our task, especially when the current government has stated it clearly years ago that “there are no jobs for graduates in South Sudan” with the president adding it in one of his speeches that, there is no way to reverse the economic crisis and for years now you and I are witnesses that the public servants can’t get their salaries across the nation.
I thought it was enough the knowledge you have gained from the college. It is now another year and you are counting down your years without success. I urge you to make 2019 your year of success! However, success can’t happen overnight without planning for it. It must be a hard achieved one. You must change your everything. You must be ready to lose your friends at the tea places. Be ready to lose those you meet at the clubs or at Shisha centres and even along the streets.
You have thought so many colourful ideas but you became too indolent to start on even one. Ideas can achieved a result unless they are worked upon. Sometimes you blame poverty of being the reason your many ideas can’t work, yet the reason could be you who is an enemy of your own-self. You have refused to act wasting most of the time discussing cheap politics leaving your own life at the poor low standard that cannot improve. God is watching your mistakes ya young Junubi!
Your fear of unknown factors is your enemy number one and it is lagging you at the far rear. Your unchanged spirit of pessimism is doing you harm, yet for that reason you continue to think that you are wiser than others. Your ongoing hesitation in you must be blamed for your current situation and is indeed doing you more damage than your enemies. I am sorry that you have made poverty your choice and that you will continue to worship it. You think you are be witched but you are not! You have no just live your ideas and life.
If Ugandans have come from their country without any capital to start business with yet they have now many successful stories here in South Sudan then why not you? If Darfurians have managed to control our local markets across the country without any government funds, then what a hell is going wrong with you and I? Is tea-making and running a boda boda the only business a Junubi can afford in his/her own country? Are we not harming our nation by only making Shisha our primary business everywhere a Junubi tries on selling?
It was Christmas and New Year Festival few weeks ago, yet again you could not afford a new clothe, a cake, or a drink to mark the celebrations. For quite sometimes now you had never been celebrating with a new clothe on. Your second-hand clothes have worn-out completely, the shoes are gone and you have reduced low and even lower than the days we were in the then united Old Sudan.
If South Sudan was still part of Khartoum you would blame it on Arabs and Muslims, today you will without doubt blame it on either Kiir or Riek, your most recent primary excuses. But Until when shall we soberly realize our own failures in our individual lives? Until when shall we wisely separate our individuals failure from the public ones?
If Ugandans, Somalians, Eritreans, Sudanese and Ethiopians choose our country for their multiple businesses then, I think we too need to try on that for 2019’s projects. It is only unless we work out something shall we be save. The blessings of this nation are missed by our generation while waiting for uncles’ appointments that won’t arrive, now with many Christmases passing without buying new clothes or paying a visit to relatives in the villages, just because we can’t afford anything.
As 2019 begins let’s realize our mistakes to allow us to succeed . Denying our mistakes has been the reason keeping us behind since then! Let’s coat out the spirit of laziness or we may fail forever. Let’s accept to pick any available street jobs before waiting or claiming the unseen restricted white-collar jobs! Many of your friends have sent you best wishes for the new year. But how can you achieve such hopes and expectations if you can’t change some of your negative attitudes that have led you down last year?
If you think that I am wrong just assume that I am talking to myself not to you!
Ariik Atekdit holds a bachelor degree of Bio/chemistry from Upper Nile University. He has been a journalist and a Freelance writer for several years. He is the writer of an unpublished book: “Feeling the Pain of Having No Dad.”Atekdit can be reached via email: ariqdudic@gmail.com
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