Part-time Human

This week, Melisa joins Part Time Human for a conversation about family therapy, identity, culture, and the systems that quietly shape us. A family psychotherapist, entrepreneur,, and someone whose life has stretched across different countries , she brings both professional insight and personal experience into the room.We talk about family dynamics across cultures, poverty, access to therapy, religion, power structures, African family systems, and the realities therapists witness behind closed doors. We also explore what happens when the lessons you learn professionally begin to challenge the beliefs you grew up with.Melisa opens up about what she has had to unlearn, what she is still processing, and how her experiences across different countries continue to shape the way she sees healing, people, and herself. And we talked about the meaning of 'home'A conversation about family, perspective, identity, and the human side of helping others heal.

What happens when a boy becomes the man of the house before becoming himself? This week, Zimbabwean hip hop artist Brintz joins Part Time Human for a conversation about pressure, responsibility, masculinity, and the hidden weight many first born sons carry in silence. We talk about growing up too early, becoming the "strong one," emotional suppression in African homes, family expectations, survival, and the parts of yourself you lose while trying to hold everyone else together. A raw conversation about duty, identity, sacrifice, and the cost of being needed all the time. If you've ever felt responsible for everyone before learning how to take care of yourself, this episode is for you.

Sondlane 'Sox the Poet' Dube on expressing emotion in spaces designed to suppress it. We talk about what it costs men to stay silent, why building support systems matters, and the strange economics of ambition, accumulating everything except a sense of self. Plus why men are disappearing from the conversation entirely.

In this episode of Part Time Human, I talk to Musawenkosi, a pastor's son who grew up under a heavy weight of expectation. As the first male guest on the podcast, he shares how he balanced faith, family pressure, and the search for his own identity. He talks about leaving church life early, the challenges of defining manhood on his own terms, and the friendships that helped him find his voice. This episode is about stepping out from the shadows of others' expectations and building a life on his own terms.

The grief ritual. The family role. The cultural practice. Nobody tells you why. You just do it. Until you stop. And realise you never understood it in the first place.Nokufeza 'Vuyo Brown' Ngwenya is someone who stopped early. Identity, for her, is not inherited by default. It is examined, tested, and chosen. She does not practise what she cannot explain. She does not perform culture for the sake of belonging to it. She questions the ritual before she enters it.That kind of clarity gets built somewhere. Through being the smart one and being punished for it. Through building yourself around someone else's approval. Then being disappointed by them so completely that you finally turn inward. She was 16. That was the moment something truly hers began.We go into what travels between generations beneath the customs. Familiar spirits. Inherited identity. The things nobody names but everyone carries.She is exactly who she appears to be. You are just not seeing all of it.And avocados.Topics: African identity · identity and belonging · cultural inheritance · familiar spirits · intentionality · self-discovery · examined life · African philosophy · Zimbabwe · Bulawayo · African podcast · personal growth · becoming · African creatives

Culture. Family history. Expectation. The people who shaped you before you had words for any of it.Chioniso 'Chichi Celeste' Tsikisayi is a Zimbabwean poet, writer, filmmaker and playwright. In this conversation, we trace what she's carried through her art, through her grandparents' steady presence, through seven cycles of life and what she chose to keep.We talk about names, food as living memory, and why most of us often don't recognize their own cuisine as culture, even when it is. Travel and how it reshapes perspective. Play as the foundation of serious art. And the life scripts that come with being a firstborn daughter — the ones inherited without consent, and the ones she chose to rewrite. And siblings as your first social system.We close on joy. Not as a feeling that arrives, but as a choice especially in the hard seasons.Topics: Zimbabwean identity · African poetry · African theatre · cultural identity · food as culture · Zimbabwean cuisine · firstborn experience · sibling dynamics · life cycles · grief and family · African creatives · personal growth · joy and resilience · identity and belonging · Bulawayo · Zimbabwe · Part-Time Human · Season One Threshold

In this episode of Part Time Human, Yolanda and I trace the versions of herself she's had to leave behind ; the one shaped by an academic home, the one formed abroad in the United States and Berlin, the one that had to reconcile African identity with Christian faith. We talk about what studying abroad does to your sense of home, how culture shock works both ways, and why fashion became her language for telling African stories without apology.Then midway through, Yolanda turns the interview around. She starts asking the questions and the conversation opens into something more honest about relationships, family dynamics, and what African homes don't say out loud.A conversation about identity, becoming, and what you carry when you leave.Topics: African culture, fashion storytelling, studying abroad, Berlin culture, United States travel, Christianity and culture, African identity, relationships, family dynamics.CHAPTERS00:00:00 - Intro00:04:19 - NAMA Nomination and Impostor syndrome ?00:06:12 - Version of her that had to die00:14:47 -Culture Shock | Studying abroad00:26:14 - Family dynamics and inherited traits00:38:27 - Fate versus predestination00:46:50 - Stitched in Culture | Fashion as storytelling00:56:50 - The Most human parts01:00:14 - Bonus : Yolanda starts asking the questions

What kind of child were you and who did you become because of it?In this episode, Abigail Nyasha Hunda reflects on growing up as the middle child, learning to adapt, observe, and perform in different spaces. We explore how family roles shape identity, her personal transition from Christianity to Islam, and how art became a language for reclaiming self. A conversation about inherited roles, quiet rebellion, and becoming more human beneath expectation.CHAPTERS00:00:00 - Intro00:02:44 - Earliest Memories00:13:03 - Rebellious Streak00:29:12 - Becoming Muslim00:44:06 - Outro

Before the archive opens, there is a moment of stillness.In this prelude to PART-TIME HUMAN, we sit with Yolanda Ngwenya — Creative Director of Bakhar, a member of the Fashion Council of Zimbabwe and cultural thinker to trace the making of the self we show the world. We talk about public identity. Expectation. The quiet burden of becoming everything for everyone. The strange reversal of raising the parents who once raised you. And the brick walls that force us to soften.This not an episode. It is the threshold.A glimpse into the conversations that follow : where performance ends, and the human begins.CHAPTERS00:00:00 - Introduction00:04:19 - Carrying Expectations00:08:15 - Black Tax + Raising Parents00:16:20 - Outro

What happens in the hours people do not see?Part Time Human explores the lives behind the titles. Artists, creators, leaders, and cultural voices speak about the parts of life work rarely shows. Growth. Identity. Pressure. Change.These conversations focus on the human side of ambition. The doubts. The shifts. The moments that reshape a person.Jabulile Kyu ,sits with people across culture, media, and business. Each episode opens space for honest dialogue about life outside the spotlight.Follow the show and grow with the journey from the first episode.