A tailor is like a mother and father at home who are naturally obliged to provide food for children. Though tailoring is not a natural obligation but a profession, its nature of service is mother-like. A mother never eats, even a portion, when she sees children competing around their dish. She never wears good clothes because, with scarcity of resources we have, the little she has is taken by the children.
I know little about fathers. When a woman visits her friend from far and she is prepared food to eat, she never eats well, thinking that if her children were here to get satisfied together and most often, mothers carry food for their children.
I began likening tailors in 2009 when I felt I should be wearing odd clothes. Every tailor I went to wore torn clothes and they are the designers and makers of clothes. This agitated me to an extent I asked a professional tailor of mine in Wau, and he answered me satisfactorily, saying we feel pleased when we see non-tailors in good clothes we sew. He added that we feel like we have worn them when you wear them. I was amazed by the answers.
It was from there I understood that any tailor could answer me the same way as all of them wear ugly clothes and they do not share the same house to brief themselves daily to dress like that. I, therefore, concluded that it is a sympathetic profession. Any servicer, be it the head of the institution, minister, president, governor, commissioner or any other position, responsible for the subordinates should act like a tailor and mother who feel like what they have, the other people should have too.
It is undeniable that some officials do struggle with us in public transport so terribly that we almost tear their suits while climbing in buses, but their bosses have more than 5 vehicles and one day, their bosses never think of drawing these folks nearer to them by giving them even second-hand cars to drive when going to their offices.
Exaggeratedly, these vehicles are immobile, staying at homes covered with whatever they cover them so that they are not recognized. If it is the reason that they will be confiscated from them, then the tricky way they can use them for their own benefits can be the same tricky way they can be used when they are given to these people.
It is a matter that they do not want to give them. Some officials have well-furnished offices, but their deputies wish the night to continue so that the day never comes for them to go to their smelly offices, full of stored files of more than 10 years ago. Some officials have companies, full of vacancies but they never employ youth to get something from their own sweat because they feel honoured when they are begged with sorrowful words by youth.
Some officials refuse to link other people with their bosses for fear that they will lobby and overtake them in service. A lot more is done to suppress other people from becoming the same as other people. So, the strong message to take is, human life is like the life of a yam. A yam never grows and produces when it is not planted under a strong erected tree so that it entangles itself around that tree for it to fix itself and produce.
Human life is like that, you never become successful without support from another person. We really love ourselves, but we feel suspicious about one becoming stronger than others. If I may ask, when are we going to be the same always in strength? It has been there that one must be stronger than another, according to his/her decisions and approaches. Let us all learn to be like tailors and mothers whose sympathies favour no side.
The author is a medical student, University of Juba.