03 Mar 2020

Getting old can be frightening, debilitating, and a generally not-so-fun a time.

But apparently that is not the case for 100-year-old great-grandmother Seanokeng Gaborone.

Ms Gaborone is not just an ordinary grand  mother.

From her modest upbringing in Tlokweng where she was born in February 15, 1921, Ms Gaborone was raised in this socio-economic background, a time when communal subsistence farming or migrant labour to South African mines was the domain of most Batswana men.

However, she excelled at school, first at Tlokweng Mission School and then at Tiger Kloof in South Africa, granting her the initial path towards her career.

She returned home, helping teachers at Camp School serving as a relief teacher and also becoming a farmer of note.

In an interview recently, Ms Gaborone said, “I schooled with most of the prominent people in the likes of Lenyeletse Seretse, Seretse Khama and Moremi Tawana and my brother Monare Gaborone.

By that time there were only few women at school and most of the children that went to Tiger Kloof were ‘bana ba dikgosi’.

I was surrounded by royal blood from different walks of the Africa”, she said.

They were my friends, even when they ventured into politics we were still friends, during Seretse Khama’s last days in Marina I would visit him at the hospital.

There were restriction, but he always let me in, she attested.

Ms Gaborone further said in 1937 following ‘my graduation from Tiger Kloof, I started volunteer work at Camp School, where i provided support to a lead teacher and reinforced lessons by tutoring pupils in small groups’.

Ms Gaborone, who is a centenarian, is still healthy of ideas, hardworking, and she is an avid reader, well informed on current affairs issues.

Giving a word of advice looking at the current unemployment rate among the youth, the former teacher said the government should take into consideration the youth as much is spent on them to study and even internationally only to come back and wonder around without jobs.

There is also a need to encourage the spirit of self-reliance.

“When I grew up, I was always taught that being self-reliant is the ideal way to make ends meet.

As such I have always clung to the spirit and I never allowed anything to stand on my way, not even my old age,” she said.

She lamented that most youth despised handy jobs, but instead preferred to be spoon-fed; hence they failed to take charge of their lives.

The mother of six said she embarked on farming even before she retired to fend for herself. She even passed it to her children, who ventured into farming because they found her doing the same.

“There is a lot of things to be done in this country, and sometimes I wish I was young to take advantage of these ideas that children take for granted,” she said.

Ms Gaborone said through hard work and passion, she managed to soldier on.

She produced so much that she managed to supply workers who built Jwaneng Hospital with her harvest.

The old woman also revealed that she had always had passion for handy jobs, as such even today she does not sit idle.

She still wakes up before her children and clean the yard despite having people around the home who can perform that chore.

In addition, Ms Gaborone encouraged fellow Batswana to stop over-reliance on the state because it was not a sustainable path for the future. ENDS