The Untold Story - Who is Nelsiwe?

When I was a little girl

When I was a little girl, I was unkempt and like most, very naive. I grew up in the rural areas up north in an area where a car was a luxury to spot once a month (no, I lie, we did have an old looking Cressida – a class act at that time) but that was just about it around the area. Electricity was a privilege you only got to hear of and never had an idea of what it meant to get in a house on a cold winter night and turn on a heater, boil a cup of tea and relax. Our idea of warmth was a wild fire outside that would only be lit for the hour we were preparing a meal of pap and ligusha. After which, it had to go off because we needed to preserve whatever little firewood we had managed to pick on foot some 5kms away.

These were the longest winter nights of my life.

Any yet I am smiling as I write this, for they were also the most perfect demonstration of love from my family.

Our welcome to summer was a wakeup call from my father to direct us to vast fields that needed tendering and preparation for the planting season. As soon as we heard his voice in the wee hours of the morning roaring loud and telling us “get up, there is a lot of work to be done before you can get ready for school; time is of the essence”; right then we knew that was the beginning of the change of season.

It wasn’t until we had spent at least an hour in the fields that we were scampering to get water from the 25L buckets we kept to try and get ready for school.

School wasn’t any easier, after all we needed travel some 25kms by bus everyday to get there. Once there the obvious truth was hard to ignore, I was not the cleanest child. How could I be, having started work at 4am and because the water we could have on a daily basis was to be used sparingly, one couldn’t even afford to truly take a proper bath. Somehow though I grew up to be…….. Here I am today for you to decide!

 

Enter my Teenage years

As time is set to be a clock that ticks continuously irrespective of what we experience, it wasn’t too long before I was ready to start high school. I was luckier than most, I was – no I am blessed. I have a mother who even today inspires me. Hard as it was for all of us to make ends meet, she taught me the idea of hard work. She made me understand that I may not be the most beautiful, the most wealthy (close to the opposite actually), but I could work towards being the most driven human being, I could achieve just about anything that is deposited in my heart as a truth.

My dearest mother (I love her with all that I am) would risk her life in public transport month in and month out going to JHB and other South African cities looking for items to sell (she was a hawker), just so her children would get to enjoy a better life than she knew. She managed to scrap the last cents she could in order to send me to a better school.

There I was, a teenager with my broken English from the rural areas (who knew the true value of learning to be articulate back then) coming into an all-girls school in the suburbs of Manzini. If up till then I hadn’t realized just how hard life can be, there I truly got to Experience Life at Best. The girls there were beautiful, rich and articulate and made sure to make a girl like me (a Betty comes to town), know just how irrelevant they were. Some took pains to make me (and others like me, mind you we were a very select few then as St Michael’s specialized in only accepting certain grades and backgrounds) feel unattractive, stupid and most of all, POOR.

Don’t feel sad for me just yet. It wasn’t all doom and gloom. I was accepted by some loving ladies, who even today I have the privilege to call friends, though few. Point here though is

I WAS ACCEPTED INTO A GOOD SCHOOL and that was enough to make me push against any tide.

Till today I am grateful for Gods miracle for being accepted against all odds. Even though in the beginning, I was desperate to return home, desperate to experience anything but the cruelty that our young can instill on other less privileged children, I remained standing and grew a very thick skin thanks again to my mother. I clearly remember the first phone call I made to my mother sobbing and begging her to come pick me up. My mother was smart. She stood firm in her resolve and told me I needed to be stronger, needed to learn to be harder and survive any circumstance. She taught the value in never giving up.

Every time my mind wanders to my Form 1 experience, I first shudder to realize just how any child is expected to survive such horrid experiences and grow to become the best that they can be, but then I smile.. for to learn survive skills early on in life is not just a privilege, it is a GIFT. Those are exactly what will work to distinguish the winners from the rest. So survive we must, for I learn that life, even as we become adults, can just be just as hard for those who fail to learn survival skills early on. I toughened up. I developed a harsh resolve and yes – as I think of those senior girls (I still remember their names of course) I for a second falter but then I smile.

 

To be continued…………