THE EVENING TRAFFIC: A METAPHOR

THE EVENING TRAFFIC: A METAPHOR - Motshidisi Inalengwe Ramoshebi
When I knocked off from work this evening, traffic was unusually heavy. As I drove in the opposite direction, I found myself looking less at the road and more at the faces in the cars trailing past me.

What I saw unsettled me, face after face of Batswana carrying what seemed like a quiet weight, exhaustion, worry, sadness. Not much anger, but more like a collective weariness…at least, that’s how it felt to me.

 You see, traffic has a way of stripping away performance. In those slow, suspended moments, people are no longer acting happy or resilient, they are simply existing, all trying to reach home. I often notice that it is then, when I am caught in the jam, that our true emotional state surfaces. We are neither parked nor moving forward, much like the evening traffic itself.

We often talk about national wellbeing in abstract terms. We quote rankings and reports, debating whether they are fair or exaggerated. Botswana now sits among the unhappiest nations in Africa, according to recent reports. Today, that statistic felt painfully real. It was not data, it was human. What troubles me most is not the sadness itself, but how normal it has become.

We carry it silently, in traffic, at work, in relationships, convincing ourselves this is simply how life is now.

Sadness born from unmet expectations cuts deeply. How can we not feel it? Mjolo (relationships) has us by the throat, it has become hard to maintain, sometimes you get burnt before it even begins, most times it lets you believe everything is working out until it drops you suddenly. Our loved ones die, some too young, some not from natural causes, but from a health system that cannot cope.

Parents continue to support children who did everything right, graduated, hoped, only to sit at home unemployed. Qualified youth, once the promise of their families, remain stagnant. Business ideas struggle to come off the ground, and jobs remain scarce. Violence takes the lives of our brothers and sisters, while some perpetrators remain free. The promise that things will get better is wearing thin.

“Re imetswe,” a line we constantly find ourselves saying under the scorching heat of the Botswana sun. I always say, a country is its people and their happiness is its very essence. When hope falters, the cracks appear in every street, every home, every quiet moment. We are sad, but still, we carry on, held by the calm persistence of those who simply keep going.

Motshidisi Inalengwe Ramoshebi