When the month ended, Joe didn’t send anything again. He gave some new excuses again. This time, Joe had already found a new girlfriend at the university. He had already started drinking and partying with new friends who were at the same level as him. Deep in his heart, he stilled loved Angela and cared much about her. But the peer pressure had gotten too much for him and could not allow him to do what was right.
And although he knew what was right, he always did the exact opposite and regretted it when it was done. Gradually, Joe drifted away from Angela and they completely lost contact. Even when he came back home, Angela would only hear it from people on the street that Joe was home and he had left.
Life became tougher for Angela and her younger sister, Jane. The very same year, Jane had to quit school because Angela couldn’t afford to buy her school uniform and feed her. Angela didn’t give up on her schooling, and although sometimes she would have to study with a hungry stomach – she did not stop. At the end of the very same year, she was the top student in the whole of the Mpumalanga Province.
She had managed to score all seven distinctions, and now universities competed for her attention. They were offering her different bursaries with a lot of unlimited allowances. The premier and the provincial government authorities arranged to visit her home to see where the star came from as part of honouring her hard work. When they arrived, they were greeted by a two roomed mud house filled with old broken furniture. Everything inside had already been fixed at average of twice per item.
Seeing the situation, the government delegation promised to build Angela and Jane a five-roomed house and fill it with modern furniture. They promised to start with the project within the next two weeks.
About her studies, Angela decided to take an offer to the University of Cape Town to study nuclear medicine. She left a week before the housing project could begin but she was sure that her younger sister Jane would be in good hands. All the arrangements had already been made for her.
As Angela arrived in Cape Town, she was informed that there was a University’s exchange programme with the Harvard University in the United States of America, where the most excelling first year students from University of Cape Town were given an opportunity to go and do their second to final year of their studies in America as part of the skills empowerment programme by the South African government. That made Angie work hard in her first semester. And with her first time results, she managed to form part of the ten students from the university who were taken into the programme.
Angie is going to continue her studies in America starting from next year.
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