Extract from an Insane Anonymous Meeting.

As I close off the year of amazing student work, a fiction piece by an AS Language student - a talented writer whose in class free-writes took us all to new perspectives (usually insects'!). She usually had us all laughing after a couple sentences. This piece is something quite different but equally emotive.

If you’d asked me what I learnt last term when I was a senior in high school, I would have told you that I’d learnt that time in lessons went by much faster if you talked to a friend. Perhaps I would have told you that  I learnt that the best place to sit in class is right at the back, to the left of the classroom and as close to a window as possible. There was always something more interesting outside than in a trigonometry lesson. I definitely would have told you that I’d learnt to spend as much time at school as possible because home meant parents and parents weren’t as much fun as the boys at school. No. No they weren’t. Parents meant forced homework and forced family dinners and forced chores and forced talks and forced everything else. No. I preferred to be at school with Bobby.

Hello everyone. My name’s Emma Gloss and I’m insane. I had a baby at the age of nineteen, exactly a year and a half ago today. We named her Sky. I had just started university then and I was doing an accounting course that I quite enjoyed. Sky’s father travelled frequently and sometimes my parents couldn’t take her so I often took her to school with me. I would make sure she was sufficiently fed, that she had on a fresh diaper and that the window was slightly open to allow for some fresh air so I could leave her in the backseat of my car. I mean, we’ve all had to at some point, haven’t we? Lessons were only thirty minutes long so I’d always found her just as happy as I’d left her. The year went on, the material got more and more complicated, lessons had go on longer and longer and I continued to leave my daughter in the car. I mean what would a few more minutes hurt?

August the twenty-first, just after midday, I left for school as usual. I was running a little late on the day but I made sure that Sky had everything she needed before I left. What mother wouldn’t? That time, however, just that one time, I didn’t open the window. The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital listening to a doctor explain how my daughter had got heat stroke and died.

The words “crazy” and “insane” started flying around a few months after Sky’s funeral. It had started with the windows. All of a sudden I felt the need, almost like a craving to close every window in range of my gaze. I wouldn’t let it be open. I wouldn’t let Sky die. Not again. Not my baby.

My obsession with windows quickly expanded to car doors and then fridge doors and then church doors and then any door at all. I began to run around the neighbourhood every morning at 5:45 am to open all the neighbours’ doors. It was the same time every morning, like clockwork. A few weeks after that habit began, I couldn’t sleep at all knowing somebody’s door or window was shut, so I’d run. I’d leave my home and run to wherever I thought a door or a window would be closed. I started to think I could hear Sky crying from behind the closed doors. At first, Sky only called from around the neighbourhood, and then more and more each day, I found myself running further and further until my body gave out and I had to be admitted to hospital .After a careful psychiatric evaluation I found myself in Kupenga Mental Institution.

So a quick fast forward to the present and a repeat of the question about what I learnt last term at the Mental Institutions School for The Insane.

Last term I learnt not to look at my roommate because every time I did, she drew secret government codes on the wall and then licked them off. Doctors didn’t like having to pump crayon from a sixty year olds stomach. Last term I also learnt that it wasn’t alright to miss my daughter the way I did, that it wasn’t alright to feel guilty or killing her the way I did, that it wasn’t alright to love Sky the way I had. Last term I learnt that there were accepted methods of grief and acceptable ways to handle loss. I learnt we don’t always have the freedom to choose. Last term I learnt to leave people’s doors and windows closed, even when I  heard my baby die behind them.

Zvipo Chisango

(Lower Six, 2014)

My Name is...

Another spoken word piece that left me with goosebumps when I heard it first; again, I wish you could hear it spoken. Some hard-hitting truth that needs to be heard: please can we pay attention, administrators, teachers and others in power; we need to change our values and the systems that communicate them. With wise poets like this speaking up and out, there is hope for that change.

7.35 A girl arrives at the gate

Sees a prefect waiting to put her name under ‘late’

She looks like Uncertainty

Walks like Shame with

Socks unfolded, hair uncombed

Strap hanging from her bag and no name badge

“Your name please?!”

“My name? My name is... Failure”

The prefect is taken aback and asks her again,

“What is your name?!”

“My name is FAILURE!

F-A-I-L-U-R-E, failure

The seven wonders of disappointment

That I’ve only ever known

And what my life has ever shown”

Every time she tried out for something

She was left with a cut heart left bleeding

Because everyone told her she was not good enough

Not even one had a thread of hope for her future being bright

So she let herself be blindfolded from seeing that light.

She got into form1, she went for tennis trials

Hockey trials, even walking club trials she contemplated.

But she didn’t even make team C but team Ungraded.

In form2 she was sent straight to set 5

And let the school guide the direction of her academic life

Then in form3, there’s no choir audition that she missed

But her name never appeared on the final lists.

In form4 she couldn’t get those history essays right

And cramming that chemical analysis was always a fight.

L6, she could only watch others gleam in their cream

And the way Elite Societies shut their doors in her face.

Not even in U6 was she made a captain for any club

A captain for any sport, not even made part of the captains of the school.

She had a teacher look into her eyes

Told her she couldn’t do it if she tries.

But despite all that, she cracks her head to remember a quote quite old

“our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are,

we are...we are incompetent beyond measure!”

But that can’t be right, yet that’s all she’s been told

That’s what her soul has resided to hold

Because she let people put a label on her forehead:

666 the mark of the devil, the father of lies

Lies that pin her to the ground so she can’t rise

That drill into her soul that she’s not worth it

Not even a dime if we put a price tag on it.

So please don’t judge her if she says her name is Failure.

Because the thought of it makes her chest so tight

Feels like even breathing is a fight

And-and-and-

and can someone please pass her the asthma pump of the truth!

That if she channels her mind into the right thinking,

Success will become a habit and not a seasonal blessing.

If she can just shut her ears from the world’s discord

And listens to the harmony of her heart beating

Because there lies a fiery passion

That will not let any title limit her capabilities

But catapults her into endless possibilities

Only then did she realise that:

Not making it into any trials

Won’t stop her from doing what she loves.

She will not let the set that she’s in determine her o’level destiny

'cause she too can be Tendai Makani, bowling with that trophy.

Not making it into any choir won’t stop her voice from being heard

And if she just doesn’t give up, then her physics will stop being blurred.

That not being part of the cream team

Doesn’t mean that she can no longer dream.

Not having a cream blazer here

Will not stop her from being part of the cream out there.

Because success is not about the reward received at first

But about the feeling of satisfaction of having done the very best.

That when she gets to U6, she doesn’t need a title to be a leader.

It’s not about getting the tie with the flame

But getting that flame from within to burn down all kinds of ties.

Ties that are tied tight to break you

Tyres that will leave a mark once they run over you.

This aint a tongue twister, not a brain teaser

But a simple maths lesson that

Determination x Hard Work (despite the addition of restrictions)

=BREAK THROUGH 

So next time, she’ll come to school late again

So that she’s asked for her name.

Looking like Certainty

Walking like ‘Gwas’

Socks folded, hair combed

With a new name badge

And say, “My name is Grace”

“G-R-A-C-E, Grace

G standing for grace itself,

R for the richness of faith I have in myself

A for the awesomeness that bursts through my veins

C for the courage to move on and stand in what I now believe in.

E for excellence ‘cause me too is on that RICE tip!

G-R-A-C-E, my name is GRACE”

Rumzy Rue

(Upper 6, 2014)

To My Father... And those learning to live through trying circumstances...

I first read this piece two years ago when Lindi wrote it as her personal statement for university. She is a talented writer who bravely reveals depths of herself in her writing. Also a growing playwright, who has produced, directed, and acted in her own plays, and a poet, her writing is an important and powerful part of her and I’m grateful she shares it with the world. You can read more of her work on her own blog here: http://lindiwedhlakama.blogspot.com

That car had been in the family ever since I could remember. Its shock absorbers were close to non-existent, and the engine made a loud noise, but the noise lent me a familiar comfort as I sat quietly in the passenger seat as my father drove me home from boarding school.

“So did you write any tests this week?” my father asked for the third time in ten minutes.

I felt irritated as I replied, “You’ve just asked me that question!”

“And what did you just reply?” he earnestly inquired.

I glanced at him. He was no longer the sturdy family man I vaguely remembered from my childhood. He reminded me of an infant, and that angered me. He was supposed to take care of me, not the other way round.

“I said no,” I said. It was the easiest way to end the conversation. The image of a photograph of one of our family holidays in the past came into my mind. It was one of, a younger, radiant version of my father. He had a lovely smile. It was the smile of a man who had worked so hard that he had left his home in the rural areas of Zimbabwe having earned himself scholarships to study abroad. He had been humbled by many experiences in his life. He had fought for his country Zimbabwe in its liberation struggle; thereafter he had been imprisoned for fifteen years. The light in his eyes in the photo said that it was alright to go through such challenges in life, as they made an individual stronger.

Mr L.G Dhlakama

These thoughts of the past soothed my sour emotions. I smiled and looked at my father in the driver’s seat. He looked over at me and smiled, and then he said, “So my daughter, did you write any tests this week?” I decided that I would ignore him this time. Feeling slightly annoyed at my insolence, he began on one of his long lectures. I zoomed out.

 The world could never give me the reason why a strong and hard working family man like my father was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Ashamed of my rash behavior towards my father I brushed away my tears. I imagined how hard it was for him to wake up every day having forgotten a little more of his wonderful past. How hard it must be for the head of the family to sit all day at the table and reread old newspapers.

As the car came to a stop by an intersection my eyes caught those of a little girl. The little girl had no shoes on, yet the radiance in her eyes did not reflect the anguish her little feet must have been experiencing walking on the scorching pavement. The girl in the passenger seat waved at the girl with no shoes.  The little girl waved back.

As the car noisily continued on its journey, I thought how, perhaps life was not so bad. I noticed that my father’s lecture had ended unusually early.

“I got eighty percent for my literature essay, Dad” I quietly said.

The world was not too much of an evil place, but only for those who had the courage to dream past their present circumstances.

Lindiwe Dhlakama

(Upper 6, 2012)

Society

This poem was performed in March at Arundel’s first Spoken Word evening. I wish it were possible for you to hear and see it performed, because it gave me chills. One of the most honest students I have had the privilege of knowing, this poet speaks some powerful, brutally honest truth. Sit up and listen, society.

She was thirteen going on fourteen,

When it seemed that everything that had ever been in her life up until this point

Was nothing but a fading dream.

What used to matter was now just a matter of a blissful set of memories.

The kind of scenes you see when you reminisce back-to-who-you-used to be.

It was no longer about fun, friends and cartoons

Gone were the junior days, I mean, this was high school.

Suddenly it mattered what you looked like, it mattered who your friends were

It mattered what your size was, it mattered what you wore.

She became withdrawn.

The world didn’t make sense to her anymore.

Then there was this thing called a “chope”;

A simple slip of the tongue but she watched her pronunciation every time she spoke,

Because she didn’t want to be labelled as “gwash” or get laughed at

But the sad thing is…that wouldn’t be considered as bullying

I mean, it’s a society thing.

She was fourteen going on fifteen

When people were really mean.

They accused her of being gay and that too was okay because everyone had a nickname at the end of the day.

So she was Miss Homo because she was not one for dresses, heels and pleated skirts.

She liked sneakers and baggy t-shirts.

So she was confused about who she was and who she was meant to be…well

According to society.

She was fifteen going on sixteen,

When insecurities trickled up her spleen.

She felt that she needed a boyfriend

but not because she wanted the homo rumours to end

but because being in love meant that you were lovable

Having a significant other meant that you were beautiful.

She never saw him but just that click from single to in a relationship on Facebook, made her feel special.

I mean, hey, it was cool to not be a single lady…

Said who?.. well, based on society.

She was sixteen going on seventeen,

When she stepped onto the social scene.

She got her ID and society said she was an adult, right?

Done with exams so she could party, go crazy and go out at night.

It was okay to jail break, I mean- it was o break!

She would make decisions without takin a second to ingest, process and digest what they meant.

Obviously, it led to a lot of mistakes and regrets.

The truth is she wasn’t ready yet but she…

She listened to what society said.

She was seventeen going on eighteen,

When it wasn’t cool to be “clean”

She started sipping on alcohol, underage drinking and her parents didn’t know

Then again it was socially acceptable because everyone was doing it

It wasn’t right but it felt alright

Because there is safety in numbers and security with friends

It was the start of something new and in the beginning no-one thinks about the end.

I mean, forget about liver cirrhosis and cancer.

Society said, “You’re young, you only have to think about health in your future.”

She was eighteen going on nineteen,

When she realised something about society

People made it seem like it was some abstract inanimate being

That eventually, indirectly and unfortunately controlled your destiny.

Because we base our every decision on other people’s opinions

It’s like you don’t have an option…

She felt like she was part of a lost generation.

It seems like every generation blames the one before but we can’t keep playing this blame game anymore.

It’s so easy to pin it on the celebrities,

“Everyone’s twerking cause of Miley.”

For one second, forget about the illuminati

Rihanna, Weezy, Jay-Z

They only have as much power as you give em’

So take the initiative and just don’t listen to them.

It’s not about what Miley does; she’s lost, just like us

We’re all just trying to grow up

“Children are going wild because rappers sing and endorse songs on parties and weed.”

But are they the problem? Or is it us for buying their CD’s.

Real eyes recognise real lies, and it took her 6 years to see it;

In a way, everyone’s a hypocrite

We’re all so quick to say, “I want my man to be a Christian.”

But we don’t want ‘church boys’ so you go look for him, at a rugby game.

And I’m not saying rugby players don’t pray

But you want him to be a Christian based on the condition that he’s- on the team.

But love is unconditional, that’s not looking for love

So, what are you looking for?

Cyber bullying? Don’t blame the media, Facebook, Twitter

Behind that mean comment on your screen is just another human being.

She was tired of people sticking their noses into her business when it wasn’t their business to begin with.

No one had the right to judge her, except God who created her and well…

Maybe her parents for producing her.

And if it hasn’t occurred to you…

That girl in the baggy jeans at the peak of her teens is me

And I realised that we are society

Not Facebook, Justin Bieber, Oprah Winfrey

And there are 3 kinds of people in this world;

Those that watch things happen those that make things happen and those that wonder what happened.

So can we be the generation to accept the blame, make the change and make something happen.

At the end of the day, it boils down to you and me

Because we are society.

Paida Pooty-G Gambe

(Upper 6, 2014)