I'LL DECIDE if there's a vegetable garden here !

" I'm leaving....I cant take this anymore. You gonna get my resignation today !"

It was  Monday morning.

" Also,my husband says I must leave."

"What happened Mpho?"..   a deliberate open ended question.
Maybe if the story is told; just maybe in the telling, the hurt experienced again, will bring  new insights.... maybe enough to save a valuable staff member.

"It's that family Madondo, see.".......... and out it all pours.

Madondo is a mother- headed household. Mom is ill, no real income - at least not substantial enough for survival. There are four children ranging in age from 6 - 13. An "uncle" , a sort of "boyfriend" gives some little support when he visits about once a month for a weekend. His relationship with Mom is tenuous at most, clearly largely sexually based, certainly hardly familial, He takes no real, noticeable responsibility for the children.

" See" says Mpho  ," Madondo they need food." They are hungry."

So, Mpho encouraged and helped the children to make a vegetable garden. It took a week but in the end they had three long vegetable patches in the yard and seedlings all neatly standing in rows.  Over three weeks the vegetable garden started to look quite promising.

Sunday, late afternoon, Mpho got a phone-call. It was the Modondo "uncle" "It was HIM" she said. "shouting and screaming into the phone"

"I  didn't understand what he was trying to tell me. I only knew he was angry about something, so I went to the house."

Mpho knew that what she would walk into wasn't going to be easy, maybe not pleasant, but she got more than she expected.

All 4 children were stiffly lined up in front of the house door, arms to their sides and arranged from the tallest to the shortest ; dead quiet, looking down. Uncle stood in front of them facing her as she walked in the gate. To the left was the vegetable garden, or rather what was left of it.It was like a war zone over there. Like a bomb had struck the village and landed right on the Madondo vegetable patch. Soil was spread  everywhere. It seemed to Mpho that the soil had been kicked with a booted feet from its very centre outward into the yard. Seedlings, already bedraggled, strewn over the hard swept sand of the yard.

Uncle advanced. He was shouting abusively .

"You get out!"

You don't ever come back here."

Mpho was deliberately leaving out the swear words, so it sounded softer than his threat really was at the time.

"What this?" - pointing to what was left of the vegetable garden.

" You have NO RIGHT to do this. This is my place, my girlfriend, my children. I'LL decide if there's going to be a vegetable garden here."

" Now get out!"

"Don't you ever come back"

"You leave these children alone _ I'LL sort out these children. We don't need you here."

"Now get out. GO !!"



Very quietly. " I've had enough". said Mpho " I'M leaving Mr B. .I resign"