Grade 8, Ikageng
Nkosinathi is a young boy: clever, smart, handsome and a good soccer player in his community. He lives with his parents, two sisters and four cousins. He is the first-born child, followed by two girls, Aneesa and Ntokozo. He lives in Soweto, Orlando West with his family, in a three-roomed house with three rooms outside. His mother doesn’t work and his father is a manager at a restaurant.
Nkosinathi is doing Grade 8 at Orlando West High School. He is the clever boy in his class and he likes his school books so much.
One day the principal of the school said they must give him their parents’ contact numbers because he wants to create a group chat. Nkosinathi gave the principal his mother’s number. One day, Mr Hlameni, the class teacher, posted a picture that said the children of the school had burnt the school. That post came as a shock to Nkosinathi’s family. Mr Hlameni said the kids must learn online until the school is fixed. The class teacher said they must give them two months to fix the school.
After two months all the kids were still at home. The principal of the school said to the group chat, “Please parents, give us more days to fix the school.”
Nkosinathi was very angry about not going to school. During the two months at home, Nkosinathi tried to study but he could not because his little sisters always made a noise in the house. His sisters always ran around the house and they couldn’t stop running because they didn’t have anything to do, just sitting at home doing nothing because in order to learn online they needed data. Their father couldn’t buy data for them because he hadn’t gotten paid. His mother got a job at Shoprite as a cleaner. After the following week Nkosinathi’s mother was paid and she bought data for all the children in the house to learn.
The principal said it would take one month for the school to reopen. Nkosinathi stopped learning online because he was not happy that the schools were still closed. He was starting to lose interest in school week by week and day by day. He started to lose interest in football because the coach said that they must stay at home.
Then he started playing with the bad kids from the school, who smoked, drank and always stole. He didn’t care about what people said about him. His parents didn’t know what was happening.
One day Nkosinathi and his friends were chilling on the street and the school teacher saw Nkosinathi smoking. He headed straight to Nkosinathi’s parents to tell them what happened. When the teacher arrived at Nkosinathi’s house, he told them about everything that he saw Nkosinathi and his bad friends doing.
Nkosinathi had a phone on him, and his mother called him and said, “Come home, right away.” He said, “Okay.” When he arrived at home his father had a belt in his hands and Nkosinathi asked, “What is happening?” His father said, “This,” and he beat him hard. Nkosinathi cried and cried. They sat down and talked about what happened on the street on that day. Nkosinathi was sad and didn’t know what to say to his parents because he saw his teacher at the table. Nkosinathi told them the truth about what happened in his life when the school closed and he explained everything. Nkosinathi’s parents forgave him for everything.
Nkosinathi was happy again because the school was going to reopen. The principal posted a photo of the school and said that the school would open the following week. All the kids were happy about it, but there were a few kids who were not happy about going to school.
But Nkosinathi made them realise that school is important in life and in their future.