So here is what I should have started with. My school is called Lesedi Primary School, LPS for short. It’s one of the schools built by the former President Mandela. It’s big and beautiful. It is so beautiful it looks lost among the village houses. In this village, many children born that year were named Lesedi, just like my sister. I will not say much about our school. Mistress Maluleke will be able to tell you much more about it than I can. She will also tell you about how well I perform in class. She can give you all my reports if you need them. I am now in Grade Seven, my last year in primary school.

Before I go any further I want to apologise for calling you “you”, as I tell our story. In our culture it’s rude to call an adult “you”, but Mistress Maluleke said I must call you like that as she thinks it’s acceptable in your culture. Also, she does not know your name. She said she would write covering letters once she has found out all your names and made copies of this, our story, to send to as many businessmen as possible. That is the only chance we have of getting money to make our prayers and dreams come true. Everyone at LPS says it was Mistress Maluleke who wrote many letters to Papa Mandela asking him to build a school for us. She even travelled to Johannesburg to talk to Papa Mandela. When I asked her if that was true, she just smiled and said, “I just did my bit, child”. The children want her to become the principal.

Now let me tell you about what Lesedi and I do each day. I wake up at 5am. I cook soft porridge for the two of us on the primus stove. I always make enough for breakfast and lunch if we have enough mieliemeal. While the porridge is cooking I go to clean our toilet. We still use pit toilets in our village, but ours is one of those nicer ones. Papa built a wooden seat so that we don’t have to squat. It even has a lid that Papa made with his own hands many a Christmas holiday ago. Mme trained me to clean the toilet in the morning before it becomes too hot. The problem with too much heat is the flies and the smell. I don’t mind the flies because I am used to them. It’s the smell I can’t stand. Now that we don’t use wood for cooking, we don’t have ash to throw down the toilet. The ash acts as airfreshener and it’s just one of those things you cannot ask the neybars for because they use all theirs. It takes a lot of ash to take the smell away. Unlike salt that you only need to use a little at a time. The complicating thing is that I also cannot use a lot of soap. You see, soap also helps to deal with the smell, but even soap is becoming scarce. I save it. Here is one area where Mistress Maluleke and I disagree. I will tell you about the others later. She said I must feel free to tell you my opinions as part of this story. She seems to think that I am not “as frugal as your mother was”. I swear to you, my very name is frugal.

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Tell us: Who do you think should be helping Refiloe and her family? How?