Turning 9, circa 2006

Age 9 era. circa 2006.

I was born and raised in Witbank, Mpumpalanga (or now as it's known as Emalahleni) in South Africa. When I turned four, I ended up moving to another province, lived there for another 4 years and then moved back to Witbank, when I was on the cusp of turning 9 years old.

Age 9 started with lots of moving, started puberty (keep reading), and fantasizing about dancing on stage.

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I remember moving into a single story house, gated with 3 other houses down the street from us. I am pretty sure, oppposite from us was a mansion that we wished was ours. In fact, there were several other mansions and higher-end houses in our neighbourhood but we were just renting, unsure of how long we were going to play house.

I don’t remember too much of the move, but I remember starting a new school, and what would be a pattern of starting new schools for the remainder of my adolescent years.

We were starting grade 4, my twin sister and I, embarking on this journey together. I would get easily, easily irritated with her. I would try my hardest to be different from her, or from the way she did things. Im not sure why. We had school uniforms, a checkered red and white dress, with a red sweater over it. In the winter time, it was a navy blue and red tracksuit, a collared shirt and the sweater inside.

It was new and it was scary as a 9 year old. The boys had the eyes for us, as my mom would say, never hesitating to reflect on similar experiences in her day. We were too shy to engage, but only smile back and feel recognized and somewhat wanted. Our teacher was an Afrikaans speaking white teacher or was it Ms. Bezuinhoot, I can’t remember now. We constantly had a substitution of teachers regularly that year, for reasons, I don’t know.

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Getting used to new classes and new friends, I remember feeling left out. (As I got older, I never fit in anywhere, and standing out, I learned had become something I needed to own and embrace)

2006, was also the year I started puberty. Oh yes, at age 9. Extremely early, as I was told. None of the other females in the family had started that early. The girls in my class were somewhat envious of my suddenly enlarged chest and curvature. They were envious in a good way, like that’s what they wanted. Where they were envious of my body, I felt highly insecure. No one looked like me, and body positivity wasn’t a thing in 2006, at least not to my knowledge.

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What I also now recall is my sister spraining her leg. To this day, I am not sure how it happened. It is her story to tell. I feel like she has a lot of trauma still around it.

Anyway, what I do remember is what happened before the incident. It was just a regular school day morning. We dropped off our bags on the corridors (or hallways) before our morning class and had about 20 minutes or so to hangout on the playground with our friends. She and I had seperate friend groups at the time and on different ends of the playground.

So, one of her friends suddenly came up to me, jokingly, being like, “Ohhh your sister wants you…”, and I was like, “Okay…”. So I went to my sister and her friends and asked her if she needed or wanted anything. And of course, to my surprise, she was like, “No, they’re just messing with you”.

So her friend did that at least 2 or 3 times, and then eventually, the same friend came up to me and she was like, “Your sister is hurt and she needs you and she’s crying…you have to come now…I'm not joking!”….Of course, I was reluctant to believe her, because of how many times she cried wolf. Eventually, I gave in and I went with the friend. Much to her truth, my sister was on the ground, crying, what looked like she was in a lot of pain. I asked what had happened, and one of the friends told me that she tripped over the tennis ball and fell. One of the grade 7 prefects (supervisors) was called to the scene, and she was trying to help her up. The bell rang and we all had to go to assembly. I was worried about her all day.

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We only lived in an area called Die Hewel for about 3 months it seemed and then moved to another house, in a housing complex called River Close, which has since been demolished. It was a little further from town, but still drivable to school.

In Die Hewel, I remember my childhood best friend T lived right next door to us, which was literally a dream come true. I had dreamt that T and her family had lived next to us, and much to my amazement, her family was unpacking boxes and settling in to become our neighbours. My sister and I would go over to T's house or she would come over to our house and play. Our games involved singing & dancing games, pretending we were on stage, and performing to our heart's content to our favourite songs at the time. It was usually Beyonce, Mariah, Ciara - the R&B queens of the mid-2000’s. It was fun. It was our form of escape, I guess from all the chaos. It was a reminder of our friendship and memories from our previous residence in Hotazel.

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I remember my grandfather too, whenever he would come visit. How engaging he was with me and my sister when we played our made up waitress and restaurant games. We would pretend to be waitresses and servers and he would be the customer. Outside, through the backsliding glass door, we had a large empty pool (which we pretended was the kitchen) I think it was then a hot tub under a gazebo. We could also see into T's back kitchen door and her patio. I remember calling for her one day after school, and her ‘aunt’ came out and she said T was not home.

So I remember him playing with us. I don’t know if he judged or not, but either way, he was there outside, live and in the flesh of our made up waitress and restaurant game.

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3 months later I remember moving to River Close. It was mid way through the year, and we ended up moving and renting again.

This time it was a mining complex. There were several houses and a good amount of them. It faced the main road, seperated by a solid cemented gate and that amped up my fear that someone was going to break in. It had was a solid gate and we had good neighbours, but that fear never left me until very later in my life. Of course nothing to that degree happened, as vividly as I imagined it would, because looking back on it now, we were always protected and watched over, always.

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It was a bigger house than the one in Die Hewel. Bigger yard front and back. There was a park with a play structure right across from our house, which was awesome. I would cycle around the park or walk. I enjoyed it. 


I remember either my grandmother came to visit us. I remember going for a walk with her to the park, I think it was the one across from our house. It was just me and her. She pulled out a cigerrette and lit one in front of me, asking innocently, ‘You know, I smoke, right?’. I knew she did.

I experienced a lot of things when I was aged 9, and I think being 26 now, I am still processing it. The move, the school, the experience. But I also learned a lot by watching and observing.

To quote Taylor Swift, "When you are young, they assume you know nothing".