BY:LUCKY SEKWAKWA
Veronica Madalana (19 years old) is a resident of Calambus section in Tembisa, she is also a student of Ekurhuleni West College Kempton park campus studying Tourism. She enjoy helping out on the family business that has been existing for more than 22 years at Oarkmore Station, more on weekends when there is no school.
She grew up under the business that was started by her late father 22 years ago, though the father passed away 5 years ago and left the business with the family. The business is been standing ever since the establishment and now they own 4 other vegetable stalls in Tembisa apart from this one. Their Mother who is now the head of the family has been taking care of Veronica and her siblings, they survive very well with the business. Although Veronica explains that “to come here every day and pack your things and wait for people to come and buy its risky, because you’ll never know if people are actually going to pitch up and buy. This is the risk that my family has been going through for 22 years, it doesn’t scare me anymore because it taught me that life on its own it’s a risk”.
No one in their family has ever had to go look for a job, they only work at home is to sell vegetables. The family consist of 5 members, which is the mother, elder sister who is the first born, the brother who is the only boy from the siblings, then Veronica the third born, and lastly Veronica’s little sister who is still in high school. The mother and son’s duty is to ensure that all stalls have stock and they never run out of stock.They are the ones that goes to stock in bulks, while Veronica and 4 other employees in other stalls make sure they sell fresh vegetables to the consumers. “people like to buy from us because our vegetables are always fresh, affordable, we are friendly,always engage with customers and never give them attitude regardless of how they approach us, we are the ever smiling family, which is the habit we adopted from my late father, may his soul rest in peace” says Veronica.
Veronica doesn’t get bored of coming here to sell vegetables every day because she enjoy being around crowds, as there’s always hundreds of people each and every day that passes here, it’s exactly the kind of environment she wants to see herself around, she added,I’m familiar with a crowd ,because I grew up coming here with my mother while i was still a child. The business was started by her parents after they had moved to South African long before she was born, they moved from Mozambique to South Africa to look for better work and to also improve their lives. When they got here it was a different story because they couldn’t secure the kinds of jobs they were hoping to find, and like every living human being survival is what matters most, the mother and the father decided to start selling vegetable and they have been surviving better than in Mozambique ever since.
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