Legend of the famous cyclist , The magical girdle

My mother sent a gift in December – a pink bicycle. I was seven and the only owner of a bicycle in the village . Hosts of people came from surrounding villages came to witness the miracle . I have been famous I tell you . I usually charged 5 bob for rides and had sentimental rules that decided who rode or not. If you sat like children usually sat on donkeys – in a disrespectful , harsh manner , you would have to get off. I had the notion that my bicycle lived and must be respected . The front had a basket for storing dolls . Boys started peeing on that basket. I would fight and lose more teeth . I lost track of the bike by the time I turned 8.

Real school was hectic . I always lost my books and pencils and classrooms were a source of massive anxiety . I was tired of reporting lost books to my aunt so I resorted to stealing school supplies to replace mine – there is no way my aunt would go broke , selling her mud huts and goats because of little thieves . This other time I stole a mathematics workbook that already had marked work . I just erased the name and placed mine , when I showed my aunt and uncle , they were proud of how good I was at math. I wasn’t . I couldn’t even read .

Most of us were really dumb kids . I went to class with kids who were said to be doing “big grade one number 2” .. that is , they were doing grade 1 for the third time . We were mostly just hungry children who could not learn a thing .

I failed grade 3 and everyone at home was bewildered . I wasn’t . My aunt rushed to the school to enquire and the teacher told her my school marks had been swapped with an older girl and seeing she was older , having repeated the grade two times , I had to let it be – let her go to grade 4 . A few months earlier , I had lent this girl who was dumber my girdle- a cute sash we wore around the waist that made us look immaculate in school uniform . Dumber’s family was rumoured to be in the prestigious sport of witchcraft. My family believed her family had done some black magic to “attract” my marks . I was skeptical . I was dumb. I struggled to add 2 plus 2 , read very slowly and developed headaches when basic division was introduced .

On the brighter side of things , my mother heard about my failure and had a talk with another aunt of mine who lived in the east rand. It was agreed I would now move to gauteng. The magical girdle had done its job- getting me out of the village!