Locked in the harsh conundrum of life
Posted by Wesley | Filed under Creative Writing, Life
Intense faces stared at each other from across the courtyard of the playground. The air was so tight with tension that you could almost cut it with a knife. From an outsiders view one could see how separated the boys were at that moment. They spat across insults at each other, which seemed only to heighten the agitation that was a clear feeling amongst the whole crowd of boys. Any minute now they would start fighting and everyone knew it. It was just a case of who would back down first. And of course both sides had two much pride to do so. When you are a young boy you hold onto your pride, because no one wants to be seen as weak. Some of my classmates had called me a coward for not wanting to be apart of it all. They had sneered and jeered me, because I didn’t see the reason why I should fight. I tried asking them why we were fighting with them and was laughed at in return.
“We have to stick with our own kind Sundow,” Adam Robson replied to me. I hated it when he called me by my surname. After all, my name was Jeffery not Sundow. Every time he called me Sundow it raised a bad taste in my mouth like I had just eaten something bitter.
“After all they’re just Kaffirs,” Garth Scultz said in a matter of fact tone, “and a Kaffir needs to know his place in our school.”
“But doesn’t the whole school belong to everyone?” was my timid reply. To this they issued roars of laughter and this made me feel like I was shrinking in their presence.
“Sundow you just don’t get it do you?” Adam said as if their point was the simplest thing in the world to understand. “If we back down now and let them win then what’s next? A black prefect? A black head boy? No this is a case of who is superior and we need to show them this by any means necessary.” And so he continued his brainwashed speech, which his father had undoubtedly pumped into his head from an early age. But I didn’t feel angry towards him. I felt pity. Pity, because he didn’t understand that the world was moving on and change was inevitable and in order for us to build a new and stronger country that we all needed to work together and not against one another.
I was mocked for being a Kaffir lover and for being a yella-belly-chicken-shit-piece-of-dog-turd. I had never liked being called a yella-belly-chicken-shit-piece-of-dog-turd, but I wouldn’t let name-calling influence me into making a decision that I clearly knew was wrong. How long had it been since they had abolished apartheid? I thought back to the day that Nelson Mandela had been released from prison and tired to calculate. It must have been about five or six years since that, but here we were still locked deep in the monotonous battle of racism. Each screaming for equality, but everyone still placing such a huge emphasis on what color you were. I mean if they were truly striving for equality then why should people be referred to as black, white, colored, Indian, etc. Surely people realized that by stressing what color you were that that was going to cause people to still feel alienated from one ano…..
“SUNDOW!” Adam shouted. “ Are you in or out pussy, because if you’re not with us then you’re against us.”
“ I can’t fight,” I replied, “ because some of those guys, that you refer to as kaffirs, are my friends too and I don’t want to become enemies with any of them.”
“If you’re too much of a pussy to fight then just say so,” Garth said.
And so the insults had continued until I eventually felt as thought I was going to burst and I got up and left the room with threats following me that if I left then I’d be out of the group and no one would be my friend. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t about whether I had friends or not. It was about what made me who I was. This was about what was right and what was wrong and wasn’t about doing something because you were being pressured to do it. Why should we fight just because someone else tells us to?
“ If your friend told you to stick your head in the fire would you?” my mother had said to me once when I had tried to give her a weak excuse as to why I had done something I was not supposed to and that saying had stuck with me ever since. This was one of those times that I could clearly see what she meant by saying that and I understood how right she was.
As I stood to one side, of the soon to be war zone, I was overwhelmed with sorrow. I wanted to jump in the middle of the two groups and scream at them. I wanted to tell them that what they were about to do wouldn’t solve anything. That in fact it would just cause more problem and push us back instead of forward. I wanted to tell them that we are supposed to be pushing towards a brighter future, not always looking back at how things were. Surely they realized that if we were always looking back over our shoulders at the past that we would never see what was in front of us and miss all the possibilities for a better future for the younger generation. Why didn’t they see it?!
But I just stood there and said nothing. My palms were sweaty and every few seconds I had an involuntary shudder. I felt powerless. Everyone was feeding off of one another’s negative energy. They were hyping each other up and all someone had to do was to throw the first punch or brick and then the battle would begin. I just prayed that no one would die. “Please dear God don’t let anyone die today,” I thought hopelessly.
(I wrote this when I was studying in Taiwan. Many of the facts are true and most of this did indeed happen where I went to school. I had really hoped that when I returned to South Africa that things would have changed a lot, but was saddened to see that many of the people who weren’t racist were big racists upon my return. I’d hoped that South Africa had grown, but it had only become more greedy and locked into a frame of thought that was best left alone. For the past two and a half years I tried to fit back in to the society after being gone for such a long time and eventually I decided that I didn’t want to be a part of it any more.
For those of you who read this and are from South Africa, don’t hate me. Despise the system. Despise the powers that have made it so. We are making a mockery of everything that was fought for so we could have these freedoms and NONE of us want to claim responsibility anymore. We are all pointing fingers. We are all haters. Not against colours even, but against one another in the worst kind of way.
I love our land, but I pity our people. Even so, I still love you all.)
Peace, Love & Respect
- Wesley
Tags: Birth, Death, Good Old Fashioned Life Afterbirth, Life, Reigndear, South Africa, Wesley Jay, Writing
Stepping up
Posted by Wesley | Filed under Creative Writing, Life
Use the power of your mind to overcome everything,
Your spirit needs to be fearless to overcome anything that tries to hold you down,
Free yourself from idol insignificant things and move to a place that will elevate you above the normal way of thinking,
Be someone that no one else wants ever change,
Love everything about your life and get rid of everything that doesn’t make you happy,
Feel certain about you decisions and even if you aren’t, be happy that at least you made a choice,
That you are a free person and had the right to do it,
Don’t let rules and restrictions stop you from being the person you always wanted to be,
Live your life doing what you feel is the right choice for you,
Not what everyone else wants you to do, or else you won’t live your life as your own,
Love irrationally and feel unselfishly,
Don’t be follower, be an individual.
Peace, Love & Respect
– Wesley
