The storie is all about Joseph’s family. Joseph is a young boy whose family was working op ‘n plaas. Joseph’s growing up was very poor and his family had to work op ‘n plaas in order to take Joseph to school. Joseph’s parents did manage to get Joseph to school and he was learning there with white children. He was the only black guy at school and he never had a friend.
His first day at school was a disaster. He even wished he had never been born. When he went home, he told his parents that he didn’t want to go to school again. His parents loved Joseph and they always encouraged Joseph to go to school so that he may have a better future.
As he was learning at a school of white kids and they were learning Afrikaans as their home language, Joseph did not pass Afrikaans and that made him fail the first term. The other kids told Joseph to leave the school as he had failed the home language of the school. He thought it was a good idea because he was not white black.
He sat down for an hour and thought about not being white. Then he said ‘I am not white, but I can pass at the end of the year’. Once Joseph knew who he was and what he wanted, he started to work hard and put more effort into Afrikaans. He passed the second term and everyone was shocked by Joseph being in the top 10 in Afrikaans. Most of the kids at school even bet on their lives that Joseph would fail before he left school. He managed to pass all of the grades from one to seven and most of the grades he passed with higher marks. After all those years, Joseph was still trying to fit into the world of whites and the judgements he used to get. Joseph and his parents went back to the village where the black people lived.
Joseph met his old black friends and he started telling them about life op ‘n plaas and he also told them about school and that he had no friends because of being black. Every friend of Joseph’s said that the white guys were right. You were not supposed to go to school; you should work on the farms.
Joseph answered by saying that being black does not mean you must work op ‘n plaas. And he also said ‘Don’t let the adults tell you that! You must be what you want to be!’