On graduating in absentia

It was in early February this year when I received the invitation to my graduation ceremony from the Student Records office. The first thing I checked was the date of the ceremony and it was 6 May 2017, a Saturday. As a Seventh Day Adventist Christian, I did not have to think long and hard about whether I would attend the ceremony. It is going to be on the Sabbath of the Lord and there is no way I was going to choose to attend a secular event over honouring the Lord's day of rest, so I told myself. This means that I did not even have to tell my mom about the invitation, in fact I had been struggling to make her understand what my graduation meant since December, when my degree was officially conferred. Here is the thing, in TshiVenda(and I guess in other African languages too), graduation is interpreted as meaning to wear the gown and to finish school. In December when my Bcom degree was conferred, I had not worn the gown and neither had I finished school since I still had to come back to UCT for the my postgraduate Accounting studies. So to my mom, no matter how hard I tried to explain to her, my graduation was just like me passing(as usual) and progressing to the next grade, she did not understand what the big deal was when I was celebrating my results then. Enough about my beloved mama for now.

Since I was still coming back for my Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting(PGDA), missing my first graduation ceremony did not seem to be a big deal. So I easily made peace with my decision. The school re-opened later in that month(February) and it is back to business, I'm working on getting the second invitation to the graduation ceremony, which I pray would not be on a Saturday. I was not the only Adventist in my final Bcom and BBusc class of 2016 and both Bcom and BBusc graduation ceremonies were scheduled for the same day. My fellow Adventist mates managed to ask the Student Records office if a provision can be made for them to graduate on a different day and the office agreed, subject to space availability in the ceremonies at a different date. They told me about that and I told them that I have made peace with my decision of not attending. I told them that the atmosphere would just not be the same if I am not graduating with my Bcom class but with a bunch of strangers. They understood and went on to graduate with a random class at a different ceremony.

So far one can see that the reason I graduated in absentia is not because the ceremony was on a Saturday, as I could have easily chosen to graduate at a different date. I have to say, I appreciate UCT's respect for the right to religious liberty. Neither is the reason that a ceremony on a different date would not have provided the same atmosphere as the Bcom one. If anything, graduation is more of a family affair than meeting and cheering up with friends. Most of my Bcom 2016 classmates are still my PGDA classmates so it is not like graduating with them would have been some sort of a reunion. I had made up my mind  and was going to defend my decision against anyone who would try to convince me otherwise. In fact, if I make up my mind about something, it is very hard for anyone else to change that.

The graduation week arrived and I had to run errands for a graduating friend who is now working and could only arrive here a few days before his ceremony. I can safely say that I had the same experience as someone who was actually graduating, in terms of going up and down in preparations. Standing on the queues and seeing how the graduands were as they waited to collect the gowns, hoods, tickets and all the needed for the graduation day was amazing. It was the first time that I felt I was missing out, big time, by not attending the ceremony. His people arrived on the date of the ceremony and words would fail me if I try to describe how happy they were to have been on an airplane, to be in Cape Town and finally to be in UCT to celebrate the achievements of the boy. It was then that I realised that it  is not only me who was missing out, it was also my mom and the rest of my family that are missing out on this wonderful opportunity to celebrate me. I went to campus to take pictures of the the boy and his people, and it was an emotional moment for me. Seeing the graduands with their big African families was what I was not ready for, it was just too beautiful, an experience one should never deny his loved ones. I came home, reflected on it and convinced myself that it was too late to change anything.

As the graduation week coincided with the study week, I managed to ignore much of the noise on campus and focused on my studies. Remember I have a second graduation to work towards. Now and then I would go on social media to like and comment on graduation photos and still go back and convince myself that now attending my ceremony does not make me less of a graduate. But surely this was bigger than me and what the degree meant to me. It was supposed to be a family affair, as I have pointed out earlier. I managed to convince myself that I was okay with everything and that I would be able to celebrate others without having those 'that could be me' thoughts. This was to last only until 6 May, the day of the Bcom and BBusc graduation ceremony. I managed to watch part of my classmates' ceremony on the UCT website before I went to church. The reality of seeing my friends graduating and me not being there despite my deserving really hit home. It was happening, I was hurting but what I am so grateful for is that it did not hinder me from celebrating my friends. When Lwandile tweeted the photos of him, his mom and younger brother, that was when I had my 'that could me' moment and shed a tear. I hate to admit it but I missed out by not attending my graduation.

What I did not tell my fellow Adventist classmates then was the graduating on different date was not going to change anything regarding my non-attendance decision, because bigger than the Sabbath issue was the money issue. It did not matter much on which day the ceremony would be, because either my family was going to afford to come down to Cape Town to celebrate this milestone with me. Using the Saturday date as an excuse just seemed more convenient than pleading poverty. In this world we live in, being deserving is not enough when you are poor. This is the dark side of studying so away from home. I remember almost missing out on attending my sister's funeral last due to lack of transport money, until my good friends came to my rescue. Despite this dark side, I do not regret choosing UCT or studying far away from home. I so much love what this journey has exposed to me and I would not trade it for anything. It is thorny but it is promising that it will all be worth it at the end.

I am grateful I still have the PGDA graduation ceremony coming. My prayer is that it comes up around this time of the year in 2018 and not on a Saturday. This will allow me to save up enough money to bring my mom and at least one other family down here to celebrate this milestone with me. I now have a first priority for my next year's salary for the first few months of working. For now, the focus is on obtaining the PGDA. Mistakes are not to be repeated and the last big one I did, drove me to tears. As He led me to getting the Bcom, I have no doubt He will lead to the PGDA and whatever comes after that.

...And Money Matters

With just over a week before I was due to return to Cape Town, I sent a Facebook message to the guy who used to be my benefactor telling him how I planned to get to Cape Town and how much that would cost. He would always pay for all transport costs to and fro Cape Town and before this, I had only used flights to get to Cape Town. This time around I had planned to use a bus from Pretoria to Cape Town with a good friend of mine. When I did not get any reply to my initial Facebook inbox(despite Facebook informing me that my message was 'seen'), I sent another one. I did not get any replies from the Facebook messages I sent. We all know what insanity is so I decided to rather write an SMS informing him of the messages I sent him on Facebook. No response. I sent another one, this time telling me how frustrating his lack of response is. I was not getting anywhere with these message and remember I only had a week before I leave home. That was when I decided to call him.

The first thing I asked him was about the Facebook messages and the SMS's. He said that in my SMS's I was making an assumption that he saw my Facebook messages but the truth is I was not making an assumption, Facebook actually 'told' me that he had seen my messages. He did not deny having seen my messages, he went on to ask me why I was sending messages on Facebook since I am not his friend(friend as in friend, not Facebook friend). I really did not know how to answer that. I was not his friend and never considered myself as one but I had interacted with him on Facebook even on inbox. In fact, the last time he gave me transport money it was after I asked for it via Facebook. The question about friendship was an irrelevant one so I did not answer. From that point, I knew the conversation was not going in the direction I wished but I stayed on.

He then asked him how much money I had, and I told him I did not have any. He had asked me if I did anything to make my own money during the school holidays, and I told him I did not. Then he told me about how his mom is always looking for people to do work at her farm and that I could have gone and worked for her. I did not tell him why I would not want to work for his mom and I also will not do that in this blog. By this time, I could tell that this was not about my failure to make my own money during the holidays because if I had worked for his mom, I would not have made enough money to take myself to Cape Town. The other option for me to make money would have been what is termed 'vac work' maybe with an Accounting firm which was not really an available option since I was in  Venda and was not signed with any audit/accounting firm. There are no jobs and the audit firms give preference to the students who are signed with them when it comes to offering 'vac jobs'. Students who do 'vac work' in their fields of study usually have an obligation to do so as per their bursary contracts. I remembered in my Final year of Bcom I wanted real work experience badly and one of the big 4 audit firms allowed me to come work for them for a week, on condition that I will not be compensated for my services. I was in Cape Town during that holiday and I accepted the offer just to get exposure to the real world of work. My point is that my failure to make my own money was not because I did not want to make my own money, the thing is there is only so much you can do when you are in Venda.

The call was cut short because my airtime got finished. He then made the call to me. Clearly he had a lot to say. The first thing he said in the that call was that he was not interested in what I had to say and he did not want to debate with it. So I let him do the talking. He told me that I was ungrateful and feel entitled to his money, and that I think he gets the money he gives me from somewhere. I do not know where this talk of entitlement and ingratitude was coming from and when I raised that point, he reminded me that he is not debating me('Okay?'). He said now that I have a degree, I can take care of myself and this gives him an opportunity to help other people in need. I raised the point that having a Bcom degree does not mean I can go and work since I am on the CA route, something he knows. That's when he asked me if I expected him to support me until I do my PhD. I found that question very unfair, since I have no intention to do PhD or anything beyond what is required for my articles, which is Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting(PGDA, hereafter). From then I realised that I was not going to get the money so I did not say anything after that and neither was I interested in what he had to say. One thing I remembered is him telling me to never contact him again. I was shattered.

This is the person who has paid for all my bus and plane tickets, who has given me monthly allowances since first year of university, who has helped build my family a shelter, who has paid for my church youth camps and directly bought him clothes once, who has accommodated me at his house. Generally, this is the person who has helped me financially more than anyone else and we are not related. About how he got helping me and my family out, that is a story for another day. I could not believe that this was the same person I was with on the phone earlier. The thing is, there was no warning signs. He told me that I should have known that he will not help me beyond my first degree. The fact that he knew that I could not just go to work and still pursue my CA career with just a first degree(Bcom) did not matter to him. He was done with me and had other kids to take care of. He has done so much for me and for that, I will forever be grateful but right now I cannot see him beyond that phone call and ignored messages. It's like those phone calls erased everything he and his family has ever done for me. I guess it is true what Maya Angelou said, that people may forget what you have done for them but they will never forget what you have made them feel. For the first time, I felt like I was a burden to him all this time when he was helping me.

 I was mad at him at this point but not because he refused to give me money(It was his money and I do not feel entitled to it as he claimed). I was mad because he did not make it clear for how long he was going to support me. Had he made that clear enough, I would have not written those Facebook messages, SMS's and would have saved myself from the embarrassment I suffered from the phone calls. I should have known, so he said. My hope is that with the other people that he is helping, he does not expect them to just know when he will stop supporting them, that he actually tells them when he will withdraw his support. I would not want to see anyone left hanging like I was. I knew his support would come to an end some day but just did not know that it would be before I actually finish my studies. I was on NSFAS for my undergraduate studies and from the word go, the Financial Aid Office told me that NSFAS would only fund me until I obtain my first degree. When I was doing my final year, I knew I would lose NSFAS at the end of the year and I made alternative plans for mt postgraduate studies, I got a partial bursary with a Big 4 Accounting firm. So my point is, his failure to tell me when he would stop his support made it impossible for me to make alternative plans about where and how I would get the money to fill the void his withdrawal of support would make.

At this point it is clear that he will not give me the money for transport and I have to get to Cape Town for a week. I found myself crying sitting outside, luckily it was at night. I decided not to tell my mom about this. Luckily, I had money. The thing is, the new bursary I had with a Big 4 firm gave me the book allowance and meal allowance when I was still at home. Universities normally open in late January and early February so when the firm was making payments to students in other universities that had opened by then, they even made the payment to me despite the fact that I was not yet back at school(The beauty of long holidays, lol). I decided that I would use some of that allowance to pay my bus trips, from Venda to Pretoria and from Pretoria to Cape Town. My friend booked the bus tickets to Cape Town. Luckily she stays in Pretoria so I arrived there the day before my trip to Cape Town. She has always wanted me to come to her house, so this was a win-win situation for us. Normally I would stay at the guy's house for the night before heading to Cape Town but now that he told me not to contact him again, I cannot. I managed to get to Cape Town and that was the goal then.

I was just just glad to make it here safely and so ready to hit the ground running with my books after a three-month school holiday. Back to the grind. Schools will re-open and I will need the books and food. The fact that I used the book allowance to get to Cape Town means that I might not have enough money for books. Everyone knows how expensive Accounting handbooks and textbooks(ignore the differences between the two '-books' for now) are and the editions usually change every year. I was going to be doing four courses for my PGDA namely Financial Reporting IV, Taxation III, Corporate Governance III and Managerial Accounting & Finance. They are significant changes to the Reporting and Governance handbooks but I only decided to buy ones for Reporting and would hustle my way around the changes to the Governance ones. Luckily for Tax, there were no major amendments to the Income Tax Act so I did not need to buy a new one. For Managerial Accounting, there was no handbooks and the recommended textbooks were the ones used in the pre-requisite course, which I had bought the previous year. The fact that I did not have to change my handbooks for some courses really saved from a potential financial and academic crisis. I would like to believe that I have sufficient resources to make success of my studies.

After buying the required books, I only have the meal allowance. It was really a meal allowance, because it is so little that I can only buy food with. This means that I can barely afford any non-food expenditures. This is a far cry from what I had a year earlier, when I still had a monthly living allowance from NSFAS and another allowance from this guy. It was not much even then but I could at least afford some basic non-food expenditures. NSFAS had a living allowance, now this bursary has a meal allowance. With a living allowance, I can afford a basic student life but the best a meal allowance can do is ensure that I do not go to bed with an empty stomach. With the resources that I have and a full stomach, I see nothing coming between and my academic success.

I was very much worried about not affording my non-food expenses until I received an e-mail from my scholarship(remember the bursary is partial, so the scholarship covers the balance) telling me that they would give us class of 2016 graduates some cash as a gift for finishing our degrees. That was a prayer answered. I guess the scholarship guys will never realise how much of a relief that e-mail provided. That money is a gift, meaning I can use it however I want but from the timing, I can tell they want people to use it to cover expenses required to the graduation ceremony. I am glad the graduation ceremony will be on a Saturday, meaning I will not attend as a Adventist so I will use the money for my other needs. Like any student, I have always looked forward to my graduation day but by now I have made peace with my not attending. I have a financial incentive not to do so anyway and have also convinced myself that there would be many more graduation ceremonies to come

I had been used to getting help from the guy that I thought he was the only person who could help me. The good Lord has shown me otherwise, that He has numerous ways to take care of His own. It is so refreshing to know my success or lack thereof does not depend on any earthly being. As I continue with this journey, my prayer is that I never go to bed hungry, and I am able to use my resources to the best of my abilities. Even more importantly, that I never live my life trying to prove to the guy or anyone else that I can be fine on my own, because I cannot. May money not ever be a stumbling block and may other benefactors avail themselves should a need arise.

I have learnt to go back to the basics, of counting my blessings and be grateful for much that the Lord has given me. I have a Bachelor's degree, have been accepted into a graduate programme, have someone to pay for my tuition, books, meal and accommodation. And what I do not have time for, is self-pity!