I’ve had enough of these lazy big-city Christmas cousins

I have just discovered why I am really not fond of the festive season at home, especially in the traditional family home. In the villages and the townships, we have a group we call “The ones from the cities”. During the festive season, almost everyone is home and we are all merry.

Nevertheless, the ones from the cities (particularly Joburg and Pretoria), would make you dislike every minute of being around them. You spend literally the whole year without seeing them, and you get to enjoy the first and second day after arrival. After that, you realise how they deliberately or ignorantly act like they are at a hotel with room service.

For the past three days, I have been slaving away at home. This is from helping with preparations for all the meals to doing the dishes and then cleaning the house.

These ones from the cities are not team players. They are couch potatoes and they make a round to the fridge to grab a fruit or drink every 20 minutes. They just want to bath or shower, eat, drink and sleep every single day.

They are incredibly shocking to say the least. Mind you, none of us here is a child or a toddler. We are actually all above 20. To my surprise, when served with food, they don’t reject it. Yet they still don’t consider doing the dishes after.

We are mainly boys, and it is a blessing in disguise that we are predominantly male grandchildren. It speaks so much to our dependence on women. Even the basic responsibility of nurturing our own bodies and feeding ourselves, we believe, is someone else’s duty.

I think if we are not going to work together and share chores during the festive, everybody should spend Christmas where they spend the rest of the year. We cannot be united when we feast and be so divided when we have to clean up.

I went as far as preparing a meal for everyone, because I believe that, in a home, only one meal should be prepared for everyone and we all eat at the same time. It is either the cities change people or people show their true colours after spending some reasonable time in the cities.

What I do know for sure is this: being considerate is a big part of the ubuntu we are raised with.

I am definitely not spending another Christmas or New Year’s Day with cousins who are not going to pull their weight when we are gathered together as a family. Nobody should ever be left to take care of everyone as people laze around and do absolutely nothing to benefit others.

This kind of behaviour is precisely why I don’t subscribe to the proverb that “blood is thicker than water”. Family relationships and loyalties cannot be classified as the most important ones if they are parasitic.

I cannot wait for the ones from the cities to go back to the city and have my sense of peace restored. Family should look out for each other, even where basic chores are concerned, especially during this renowned family time.

Kabelo Chabalala is the founder and chairperson of the Young Men Movement (YMM), an organisation that focuses on the reconstruction of the socialisation of boys to create a new cohort of men. Email, kabelo03chabalala@gmail.com ; Twitter, @KabeloJay; Facebook, Kabelo Chabalala

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