“What do you do when you are at school?” my father suddenly asked me one evening.

“Nothing,” I lied.

Convinced, he changed the subject.

At home, I was a good boy. At school, I was a little mean sometimes. I don’t know why, but maybe because children always see serious things as funny. I wasn’t a little child, I was a teenager, fourteen years of age. That was reason enough to be responsible for everything.

Of course, some children take rights for granted, forgetting rights go with responsibilities. They tend to be obsessed with rights without responsibilities. I was like one of them with no doubt. Maybe it just happened that one day it would be a story worth telling, though not inspiring, for it cannot make anyone proud. Neither am I proud for what I did. At least it can prove that it’s not funny troubling a person who has a heavy burden. It is not a cheerful taunt.

One day my mother spoke to me. I guess it was the day before my father asked me about my behaviour at the school. She said she had met with my English and social studies teacher, Mrs Chibwana, at the famous Wednesday market of Mtunthama, Gwada Ubwandire.

Mrs Chibwana asked my mother if I was mentally competent. My mother was surprised: I was mentally stable I did not show any psychiatric traits at home. My teacher asked her how she managed staying with me at home. My mother told her I was a nice boy and I never gave her a headache. Mrs Chibwana did not tell her about my misbehaviour at school. Maybe she thought my mother would not believe her. Thank God, my father would have whipped me if he had heard. He did not tolerate any no-sense. He wanted his children to grow morally upright.

I was in standard eight at Mtunthama Primary School, a historical primary school built around 1975 at Mtunthama in Kasungu, by his excellency late Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the first president of the Republic of Malawi. There was a big Kachere tree that had chain round about it. It was said that Ngwazi learnt under that tree. I had learnt under that tree too, when I was in standard four. I swept roundabout that tree on other occasions. It is a rare experience every student at Mtunthama could boast about.

In 2008, the stools were few, so they had to be auctioned. It was done to encourage us, the standard eight pupils, to work hard in the spirit of competition. There were only seven stools that were in good condition. We were given a test each week, and the top seven pupils always made it onto the chairs. I was among the seven pupils. I was not intelligent though, only hard working. I could not score high marks without studying hard. For instance, I could read my standard six social studies notes in two hours, only to get lost at the end. I could read again for another two hours, I never got tired, only darkness was too jealous of me.

Another time came; it was no longer chairs that were auctioned. Front places took chairs’ place, for the chairs were no longer usable. So I was always seated in front.

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