Everybody is focused on the Government workers now being laid off, but they should realise that quite a few people were sent home continually from stores, hotels and other businesses for the last three years. I guess no one noticed it much because you only got two or three being sent home at one time from someplace. But those little numbers add up.
I know quite a few of those people who were sent home in the last three years, got paid out, then received their unemployment benefits, and now are barely surviving.
The next thing people are focused on is entrepreneurship and self-employment. They are putting this forward as the way to go for many of those who lose their jobs to make a living.
I know about both of these things because I live them and I want to tell how they are affecting my life so that some people would understand that nothing is what it usually is made out to be. I worked hard at a hotel and saved my money. So did my husband. We were renting a place together and decided we should to do a little business to make a better life for ourselves and our children. So five years ago we took the plunge. I left my job, and he his, and we began working hard.
At first, things were going well and we felt we had made the right choice. Then the economy began to falter, and slowly sales disappeared while we accumulated big debts. At that time we felt one of us should go back to regular employment while the other would stay and try to make a hand of the business. But when we began looking, there was nothing to be had for a long time.
So we cut our losses and closed the business. At the same time, we could no longer afford the house we were living in, so we had to give it up. We managed to get a Government house, but the condition of it was so bad, with rats in the yard and around the place, that we could not raise our young children there.
We wanted to stay together by moving in with a relative who had the room, but that didn’t work out. So I ended up going back to live at my mother with the children, and he returned to his family home as well.
Since then I have only occasionally been able to get work cleaning people’s houses. It has not really been financially rewarding, but it was all I could get. My husband managed to get a job with a Government entity.
The few dollars we make between us have been used to pay the mountain of debt we have, feed our children and pay our way at our respective residences. With few dollars flowing in, we have not been able to save anything. Now we have another big worry. My husband was one of those recently told that he would more than likely be sent home when the lay-offs hit his place of work.
So both of us are just scared of what our lives will be like in the future. We don’t know how our children are going to survive this development because some days they have very little to eat, given our financial situation.
Where am I going with this?
My reality is that I have nothing to look forward to in life but debt and poverty. What am I supposed to do with myself? I am 41 years old; I don’t have a bank account anymore and still owe thousands of dollars from the collapse of my business. My credit rating is shot and for me to rebuild my life I need steady work, which seems to be an impossibility for the forseeable future.
I am not a woman to knock ’bout myself so I would never think of going with men for money. I feel as a mother I have to set the right example for my children so I would never do that. But what am I supposed to do now that everything has gone wrong in this country?
I am not interested in politics or politicians. I don’t care about them as they are all cut from the same cloth. As a little person in this country, I just want to know how I’m going to survive when fewer people are working and the cost of everything keeps going up.
I know a lot of people are asking this same question and would like to get an answer to it. That is what I am concerned about. This is my confession.
