One of the steps in Xatyiswa Maqashalala’s daily routine is calling her family.
The K-State leadership instructor, graduate teaching assistant, doctoral student and life coach highly values her family. She’s from rural South Africa. She’s the only member of her family living in the United States and one of only two people from her village working in North America.
“I do call my family in the morning because it’s their afternoon,” Maqashalala said. “I have a mother, a father and a younger sister. And in the African context, family isn’t just them, it’s my grandmother and her all of her children and all of that. So I will talk to somebody from home once a day.”
Maqashalala, 34, is a Mandela Washington fellow and is pursuing a doctoral degree in leadership communication at K-State, with a focus on the impact of colonialism on African leadership. She studied crops and horticulture as an undergrad and earned her master’s degree in sustainable agriculture. That research honed in on the challenges women in agriculture face.
Maqashalala was born with kyphoscoliosis, which is a curvature of the spine. She said her spine is in an “S” shape, which affects her ability to walk.
“I get tired from walking for too long, sitting too long, standing too long,” she said.
However, Maqashalala chooses to focus on the positives of life and credits her disability with forging her into the person she is today.
“I’m not saying I wanted the disability, but it has added so much to who I am,” she said.
Maqashalala said other children often teased her in school, which “created some kind of resilience within me.”
“This was a big, big weakness, but one that everybody could see,” she said. “So I was forced to then see my strength.”
The main reason Maqashalala said she does advocacy work is because she first had to advocate for herself, which opened her eyes to others’ struggles.
“I am accepting to people from all walks of life because I know what it’s like to not be easily accepted,” she said. “I respect people a lot, regardless of what they know or where they’re from, because I come from a world where people will often be respected based on their level in society, or what they look like. So I see the need to respect everyone, regardless of what they do, because that’s just what we do. It’s not who we are, and there’s so much more in people.”
Maqashalala said her passion for life coaching exists because “I know there’s more in life.”
“I know there’s more within us, and … as a life coach, I work with people to help them see them,” she said. “I design questions that help people get to them more. And, yeah, I just believe there’s more and that we should go for it.”
Maqashalala said she has been able to overcome the many challenges in her life and find happiness because of her faith.
“I love life,” she said. “I believe in Jesus, and I do not think that I would be where I am today if it was not for the Lord.”
While Maqashalala comes from a Christian family and predominantly Christian country, she said there came a time when she had to choose Christianity and believe there was a reason for the things she was going through.
“I had to believe that there was a reason, and God loved me,” she said. “There was a reason that I have a disability, and that he loves me. You know, regardless of the disability, he created me in his own likeness. I don’t know if ‘easy’ is the word … but it just makes it acceptable that I was not a mistake the way that I was made. I was made purposefully by a God who loves me and who designed me perfectly and it just carried me through it.”
Maqashalala feels her success in life can’t be explained without acknowledging God’s influence.
“In my village, there is not a single person with a master’s degree,” she said. “There is not, and then it had to be the disabled girl, right? And I mean, I’m sure non-believers can explain that very well, but it just does not make sense, since, you know, I was born to a teenage mother. My biological parents separated when I was a kid. But here I am doing a Ph.D in America. I have a physical disability. I’m here, and I am winning.”
Ubuntu, a common African philosophy about the interconnection of all things, is another significant influence in Maqashalala’s life.
“I’ve never had to explain it to anyone because where I was from, everybody knows that it’s who we are, right?” she said. “‘I am because you are.’ So what I do affects you, and what you do affects me and ultimately affects the environment.”
Despite how blessed she feels, Maqashalala said she still encounters hardships. Recently, her grandmother died, and she was unable to attend the funeral because of travel costs and the rapidly approaching fall semester.
However, in her time of mourning, she’s been surrounded by people eager to help.
“It hurts to be so far from my family, but I’ve had people taking care of me,” Maqashalala said. “I haven’t cooked or been responsible for my own food in the last week. I’m also writing exams, so my friends have been bringing me food. My boss has been bringing me food. My neighbor came and cleaned my apartment. I’m taken care of. Right now, I’ve got a lot of textbooks that I bring into the library and leave with, but I’m always finding somebody who’s going to help me move from the car to the library and from the library out back to my car. For some godly reason, there’s always somebody available.”
Maqashalala said focusing on these good moments and appreciating the people around her gets her through life’s struggles.
“And I think what I want to say is, there’ll always be a way, you know; we’ll always be taken care of somehow,” she said. “We just need to be willing to accept and let it happen — let the world take care of us as we take care of it.”
