There was a school named Wizzy High, the students that attended there were from townships and big cities. The mentality of big city students was that, those who lived in townships suffered financially and didn’t pass well at school.

One day the department of education visited the school, announcing that there would be a camp for Grade 11’s top girl students. The students were so happy at hearing the news, but the township students did not entertain the news and for the big city students this was just the opportunity to prove that they were better than township students. The next day the principal announced the top 20.

There were two groups of friends, one of 15 and the other of 6 who always appeared at the top list that made the big competition. Both groups were from the big city. The next day, the principal told them that it’s no longer the top 20 but the top 10. This now made the competition tight, especially for the 15 friends trying to prove that they were the best.

There was a student from the township, who was so quiet in school – she was known as the ‘dumb learner’. She received a letter that confirmed that she was one of the top girl students who made the competition. She didn’t tell anyone about this. The next day she went to Mr Faku, the principal of Wizzy High, to ask if he knew which other learners were going to the camp. Mr Faku told her that the organiser was the one who brought the news to him. When Fiona went to the toilet, she found Thembi, Thoko, Zanele, Thandi, Faith and Sarah talking about how only four of them had received letters.

When she entered the classroom, she overheard the 15 classmates talking about the letters, saying, only four of them were fortunate to receive letters. Her friends were laughing, talking and playing, but she was thinking about the letters. They were eight and including her it made nine, so there was still an anonymous person. The bell rang at that moment and they went to the assembly where the principle told them that they chose 9 learners from their school, that they would be fetched by special cars and that the school would also allow their families and friends to come and support them.

After school, Fiona went straight home. She told her mother about the letter and how Mr Faku had embarrassed her, but, her mother encouraged her to keep her head in the game and not to allow anyone to discourage her. The next day Fiona woke up early thinking about the car that would be fetching her. She went to the tuck shop to buy bread and on her way back, she saw the big car parked outside of her yard. She looked at the car and as she was staring at it, the car window opened and there was a woman inside. The lady inside the car asked, “Are you Fiona Cossa?”

“Yes, I am Fiona,” Fiona replied and she went straight to the house.

All the student arrived at the camp. Each and every one was in their private rooms and was not allowed to walk around and explore the place. The students were given tasks to do and they added their overall score. Ten learners managed to get high scores. The next day friends, family and school waited in the hall to see their peers as they called them to come to the stage – there were 92 learners from 10 different schools.

They were told that the learners were given tasks to do and now they were left with 10 learners. When they called out the name of Wizzy High, Fiona was the learner with the highest score. The principal nearly stopped all proceedings, but told himself, his school was going to be a joke. Out of the 10 learners only two of them got high scores so they had to compete together. Fiona was the one with the highest score and the best from 92 learners.