The Social Worker cum Builder

It was a lazy afternoon in the office in late 2009 when my colleague and I struck up a conversation about our individual career plans, as we sat lazily in what was then our open-plan office. After sharing with me his plans which I thought were great hopes and aspirations for a young quantity surveyor in the mining industry, my colleague asked me what my career plans were, what I wanted to do with my life. He also casually asked me if I would consider going into private practice with him once we were established quantity surveyors in the industry. I don’t think he was quite expecting to hear my response.

Without as much as a blink, I spoke heartily about my dreams for the future. I spoke, ever so passionately, about my long-held dream of dedicating my life for the rehabilitation of our sick society. I tried to show that the bulk of the social ills we have in our communities today were and are a result of a society that has lost strong, responsible father figures, in what has come to be commonly referred to as the “fatherless generation”. I spoke of how my burden to help men see the importance of responsible, active fatherhood and also building meaningful relationships with our children, has been nudging me for years.

After an elaborative few minutes of speaking about this, my heartfelt desire and passion, he looked at me and said very wryly (and I think with a tinge of disappointment), “so, you want to be a social worker?”. I too, must admit, that I didn’t see that one coming. I had never, up to that point, thought of it as “social work”. To me, it was not even about what it’s called, what its label is. No, to me it was what it was – a crisis that needed to be addressed and I felt very deeply about it. It didn’t have a name, not in my books.

But we live in a society of labels, and names. We want things to have names, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The only draw-back, for me, with the exercise of naming things is the part about who gets to name. Who am I to ascribe a name to this, or to ascribe a name to that? Do I have the right standing to name? Who gave me that right? Am I convinced that that is the appropriate name? A topic for another day.

Back to the story. “So, you want to be a social worker?” my colleague asked. I looked up to the ceiling, thought about it for a moment, and finally responded. Yes, I suppose you are right. Maybe I do want to be a “social worker”.

And I suppose that’s how I would like to introduce myself, and this blog. In me, lies the heart of a social worker who seeks to see social healing, especially in this nation of ours – South Africa. But there are a lot of things that I also want to share, about my journey, and how I see society. We will most probably not solve society’s problems by blogging about them. But somehow I believe, blogging, as a form of communication with each other and ourselves, may help us identify what these problems are and as a result we might perhaps find the solutions to these problems.

But, no, I’m not all about “social work”, as it were. Well in fact, I’m not even sure that “social work” will form the bedrock of my posts. And you might even be asking how “social work” jibes with “building” (my by-line, Chronicles of a Builder).

It’s simple, really. I was trained as a building scientist. I spent a few years at university, studying the intricacies and science of buildings. From the theory of the laying of foundations to the commercial side of the trade, I learned valuable lessons about what it takes to erect a high rise building. And it was only after I came into the corporate world that I got to appreciate how the science of erecting a building, bears and carries remarkable lessons about building relationships, families and (you’ve guessed it) societies. And I will try to share these lessons on these pages.

So, I invite you dear friend, to come and build with me….