There is a continuing
attitude that previously disadvantaged people should just get over what
happened in the past and begin to move on.
But along with this tendency we find that people that propose such are
at the sweet end of the stick, choosing to overlook the struggles that the
African child has to go through because of this sore “past”. It is also said
that “your parents were the ones who endured the struggle so why should you
pretend as if you were there?” quite frankly I might have not been the but there’s a ripple down effect of the pain
and sadly it still exists even after eighteen years of freedom .
These effects should never be undermined. The African child
had to endure horrible conditions to make it the academic arena. Firstly pressure by parents to archive higher
than they did during their school years which were cut short as most had to go
and work. Secondly the pressure to cope with the work, mind you this is done
with little assistance from parents, worst of all in the cases where one is the
only child and both parents are working getting a little income due to their
state of education.
From primary
education I was given home works that I had to do on my own with the little
understanding that I had of English, because the little I had was far greater
than the one my parents had and yet I was still judged with the same standards
as the one who has had the advantage of a library at home, being taught in
their mother tongue and parents were also well educated relative to that of the African child.
Financial stress as one learned to always share the
little that the family had "noma kanjani" and as one starts to move up the costs of living becomes greater , from the school
Uniform to the other extra curricula activities . This reminds me of a time in
my multiracial High school where learners were supposed to go an
academically enlightening tour to the United States. Most of my African
brothers and sisters in fact all of us did not go on tour as it was also expected that for you to go you had to pay
close to R20 000 .This was too much for the African family struggling to
all read meet the finances involved with their child attending such a school in
the hope of getting a better education.
And well people did sponsor sadly none were black and we therefore had
no teacher for the term of the tour and the days it took the teacher to get
over jet leg. Again the African Black child was compromised yet we wrote the
same exam and some did well some not so well in fact some didn’t have much to
do.
And it’s also because of this financial stress that we have
so little black academics, because without financial aid it’s almost impossible
for you to study beyond a degree in education. But luckily we all made it to
Varsity , well some not as good as the others . Yet it still remains bolded in
our minds that a bachelors degree as the
key to employment and because we
want to plough back to our struggling families we say “ if only i can get a degree and start working “ so that I can pay
back the loan that got me through varsity , so that I can build the house that
we never had because I took away so much form the little that we had, so that I
can help my brothers and sisters, so that I can buy myself a car . And for me
to study further I must make sure I studied hard with this language that was not
my mother tongue , to understand it , I had to translate it in to a language my
mind would understand. Eish.... The
language of my dreams Sesotho.
Relative to the other
family which could afford me to buy their child a car as a present for passing
their drivers license at the age of eighteen, mind you this is while they were
high school. Never mind that let’s look
at the savings that they were able to put up for school from what they had “at
hand”. While the other African student will build a grey brick (Block stene) house for
their family the other will get a first
brick house as a bonus for completing their bachelors or more to study up to their PHD with no hustle. And
throughout creating an understanding of what I was taught was never a problem because
“Pa” is “Pa” in the language of my dreams.
Because we attend a
public school our chances of seeing the gates of the University were so little
i had only 7 subjects that I could do in
matric well my friend had more than that excluding the piano lessons and
dancing (N4 diploma in performing arts) .
But its however unfortunate that the bar we have to jump over remains
the same. Even when we had finally made it to the University and our tuitions were
not the only problem we were facing, we battled against competition for material
things. I still had the burden of buying more shoes which my financial aid
doesn’t cover because I had to walk in the rain , sun and the cold to get to campus, The campus around the corner is
about four kilos from where I stay .
And the rules changed, and a Father of mine sitting on the
other side of the table that I thought would understand my daily struggles,
wants to send me home? He strategically deals away with my reasons for the poor
performance in the previous term and says that he had much harsher conditions
when he was a student but he doesn’t go in detail to what were the conditions
during his time. The so learned figure chooses to ignore one of the principles
that our education is founded upon. The notion expressed by Bloom that “All
students can learn successfully just not the same way and at the same time”. He
the disregards the merits of my case and does his contribution to the Black
Continent adds on to the cycle of poverty by sending me home.
And well I am not complaining, I am just acknowledging the
status quo and highlighting the African child will remains the hardest worker.
Big ups to the African scholars performing well in the high schools,
Universities, both local and abroad cause the material conditions remain the
same.
We were knocked out but we rose and we shall keep on raising because Africa awaits.
T
