NB: The interviewee asked to remain anonymous
“I know it’s a drug, but I use it responsibly and conventionally…anyway, there are no side effects.” First year is easy for some and tough for others. Mary Anne Khumalo, or just “Jay”, finds it tough, but uses a controversial yet effective remedy to solve all her problems – marijuana.
Jay’s room is an academic sanctuary, with eco’s and accounting books draped over her clothes that are loosely placed all over the floor, further layered by piles of magazines with missing pieces of the front page! I can’t help but wonder where these small pieces are. “Oh, don’t worry about the mags; I tear small pieces to use as filters…for when I smoke that is.” While her neighbour’s room smells of perfume and hair products, Jay’s room wreaks of burnt pinecones! Oddly, the smell grows on you and evaporates into the imagination as she wows you with her intelligence. She is studying Economics, Accounting, Management and Commercial Law building towards a BComm degree.
So what’s bothering her you wonder? “Rhodes is cool hey, but I hate feeling under pressure, I hate thinking about my parent’s issues and the girls in this place!” I could not help but notice her face furrow into ripples of distaste when she mentioned the “plastic faced cows” of Rhodes! Jay has no female friend’s despite her neighbour’s brave efforts to make friends.” Ever since I came here, all I ever hear and see are their sick little utterances and judging facials.” According to Jay, girls are too narrow minded and just need to stay out of her business when it comes to marijuana. Jay fidgets uncontrollably as she travels around the room attempting to sift through the layers of dense foliage that she once called her floor, for a magazine. These issues may seem small to any other girl but for Jay, these constant pressures on her are just too much. Instead of fighting, she locks her room, pulls out her stash, and gets rolling. “It’s like everything just disappears and I am in the best place on earth.” She grins.
Jay calls Welkom home, but has no sense of belonging to “the little pit”. Welkom is just too small for her ambition. This is where she first encountered marijuana. A friend brought some over to her house after she had a huge brawl with her parents about her university options, resulting in a rift between her and her parents. Jay recalls with a smile the first time she smoked. “I felt so alive, just like so happy and stuff.” She literary smoked the stress away. “I knew then, that this was how I was gonna deal with bullshit.” Jay pauses as she licks the rizzla (paper used to roll marijuana) to make it stick. She has an intense look on her face as she smoothes out the joint and taps the side of it to make the marijuana move down the joint. It’s all quite intriguing, well for me at least because I have never seen this being done before! It’s very hard to absorb all of this. She continues to talk casually as she lights the joint and twists it round to make sure it’s fully lighted.
The future is bright though as she is confident she will pass her first year and the following years. Mary Anne Khumalo hopes to start a communications and finance business. Laughing at herself, “maybe I will just become a politician or something so I can make blunt (marijuana) globally legal!” She plans to stop when she finds another way to diffuse her stress, but for now…”it’s too good to quit!”
Smooth operator
2 comments:
One would say that Mary Anne Khumalo is the anti-hero this profile. That is to say that the common opinion about using drugs to make oneself feel better, is that it is immoral and wrong. Yet according to Propp the Russian folklorist and Todorov, a hero is described as someone who reacts to the donor of the magical agent to balance the disruption and bring about a new state of equilibrium. Khumalo’s disruption in her story is the pressure she feels and her magical agent is obviously the weed and the donor is the seller or her friend who first introduced her to it. Khumalo is her own hero, in that she has found a way in which to return her pressurized world back into a new state of equilibrium.
Evening Bloggettes! Considering HONESTY on all levels it my best policy. I was quite impressed with this with this profile, particularly with the picture. Biggest joint I’ve ever seen and from the looks of things, it must be amazing! Anyway back to work. This profile is relative to varied categories of first years. For eg) those who are homesick and turned to Marijuana as a form of comfort and those who are homesick but are dealing with it through other methods. The profile can will serve as a form of comfort to both categories knowing that they are not alone. However I’m finding it difficult to decide if this issue should be portrayed on such a positive light considering the fact that we are trying to reduce the “intoxication issue” in Grahamstown. Marijuana seems to be the hero in this story…Ironic! However I also see Jay as a hero, she consumes a damaging substance but is still able to cope academically and she seems to be doing well at this. I would have preferred if the writer added a bit of tone to this profile so we could judge in which direction this is going.
Faithfully
Homo-Sapien
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