The salad generation
June 16th, 2011
“Salad people…the salad generation…, salad children…masalala….amasalala.”
Am I the only person who finds this weird that so many Zimbabwean elders are referring to young Zimbabweans as some kind of “vegetables”?
Whenever I hear old people referring to us as ‘salads’ I wonder what this really means. Does it mean the uncooked generation, uncooked cabbages? Is this a joke or we are really lacking something? Is this their way of expressing anger over the fact that our generation is no longer devoted to our old traditional culture?
I think it is time we look into our past and start correcting the bad parts of our culture that are causing us problems and keeping us apart. Maybe this means that I am extremely raw.
Take one example: our culture is so men-centred that women seem to have been taught that the earth is flat, and if they venture out they will fall over the edge. Our tradition teaches us that women belong in the house; they do the cleaning, the cooking, and caring for the whole family, making sure everyone is bathed, starting from the father to the last born. In the rural areas they walk kilometres carrying heavy buckets of water, as if they were beasts of burden. Maybe if we treated each other with more respect, regardless of gender, there would be fewer obstacles keeping us apart.
I have never been pregnant or felt the pain of giving birth but I imagine how humiliating and hurtful it feels to be disinherited and considered as nothing in the distribution of your own husband’s durable assets, such as the estates, houses and business plants. To be unable to get your child a birth certificate on your own without your husband’s confirmation even if you are divorced.
If accepting this sort of discrimination is part of what it means to be called the Cooked Generation, then let me die as a salad.
Today is the International Day of the African Child
