26 Mar 2020

Eighty-one-year old Mr Gaalatlhwe Odirile of Matopi says present-day youth do not grow up as healthy as they should due to alcohol and drug abuse.

  He added that alcohol and drug abuse makes them age quicker and look much older than they were.

   Mr Odirile also said a lot of youth in the Matopi area spent a lot of time at beer holes, often from sunrise to sunset, saying it lead to poor work ethic.

He said most of them would work for a month and quit because of the desire to indulge in bad habits.

The practice, he said, was in stark constrast to his youth years in the North East District village.

He said young people were engaged in farming at the time which kept them busy and away from vices that might destroy their lives.

As a solution to social-ills that came due to alcohol and substance abuse, Mr Odirile encouraged young people to stick to the traditional way of doing things if they wanted to live long and fruitful lives.

Citing his experience, he recounted how he also used to indulge in alcohol and cigarette smoking, and how an illness that struck him helped him to leave the bad habits and start to frequent church which helped him to reach his age.

Mr Odirile, however, acknowledged that life was no longer the same. He said the rains were now scarce and that bumper harvests were a thing of the past. He added that the little crops they grew were often destroyed by animals such as elephants.

He said it was because of the tough conditions that people had resorted to poverty eradication programes set up by government such as Ipelegeng.

Mr Odirile also added that cattle farming in the Matopi area was a difficult undertaking due to the long distance one needed to travel to reach a lucrative market in the City of Francistown.

“We often have to rely on selling to local butcheries which offer very little returns to our investment,” he said. ENDs