Education logo

Through The Eyes of N'jaYAH

Little Black Book Contest

By Yaram YahuPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
1

Mianzini, Tanzania

I was four. Or five. Or six. Wait. Moja, Mbili. No. Moja, Mbili, Tisa. No. I did not learn my age until I found out in school one day.

"Say numba five, N’jaYAH," Teacha Mary would say.

"Five," I would say.

"Numba five."

"Five."

"FIVE."

"Five."

~

"Do you have your schoolbag?"

It is another day of school. The rains have long passed. Mother made sure I was ready for nursery school. With no hair on my head, and no scarf to protect me, I always worried if the other boys would laugh at me. Mother told me not to worry. She was our caretaker. Early in the mornings Father had to walk to the buses where the main road was—our only road. He left well before the sun rose.

"I have right here," I would say, placing the bag over my shoulders.

"Hahah, N’jaYAH," Brother Bariki would say. He would say that whenever he acknowledged me. He is the eldest child. Mother stayed at home to care for my two younger brothers, Mykie and Mykael, who could barely speak yet. She kept her hair in a bun, and a scarf on top of it. Whenever she needed to make a long walk to the market near the fruit stands or talk to the local women selling socks and clothes with buckets on their heads, the local hairdresser woman would take care of my young brothers. We always called her the "local hairdresser woman." She was the only woman there who had hair down to her back. "Mother, N’jaYAH does not think well," Brother Bariki said, "Her brains are fried mandazi." I hated when Mother would laugh at this.

"Toka," I would scowl.

"Do not speak those words to your brother." Mother had already been busy scrubbing the dishes with a rag she found in the ditch. She washed every dish in the big blue buckets. When we needed more water, she would fill the water from a water pump in our village, but only with enough to last the week. Then she would scrub her face with the same rag. Then it was our turn. And then we were off to school in our new sandals. "Pray you are well." Mother would always say with a faint wave as we started down the same path—no matter the seasons, it was always filled with dirt and mud and cracks and old bumpy rocks.

~

The little boys would herd cows and goats and sheeps and chickens with sticks taller than they were. I always feared for them. If they upset the cow, the cow could stomp and crush them on their way to the fields. If they angered the goat, the goat could kick them into the ground. The sheeps could stampede them. The chickens could carry them away with their wings. And their mothers would know nothing about it. The walk was long, and I worried my skirt would get dirty. Brother Bariki told me not to worry. There were better things to worry about.

Brother Bariki would drop me off at my school where the big black gates stood. N-U-R-S-E-R-Y-S-C-H-O-O-L. I had to read the letters out loud every day. In Swahili.

"Nursery school," he would say in English. "Your brain is empty."

"Toka," I would whisper.

~

I learned English at nursery school. They instructed us that we only speak English there. No Swahili. And if we uttered even a Swahili word out of our mouths, we could expect a few licks (six or seven or twenty if Teacha Elisa were here). There were many of us there. It was always loud, always noisy. We had four classrooms and a little kitchen where Mama would cook our foods, make our chai and wash our dishes. Our classroom was the biggest. I sat between two boys, Ombeni and Omdiyo, and we sat on a wooden bench that now reminds me of a plank. The desks were long, wooden, hardly enough room for our workbooks. And with ten of us sitting in the same row, I could never write anything. Even the number and letter and human body posters taped around the room never helped me. I could not see over the other kids. They were bigger, and they towered over me when they shouted screams and beat each other with their fists and pulled each other's fingers. It was difficult to learn in a classroom with fifty others.

Teacha Mary was my teacher. She wrote numbas down on the chalkboard. I could never see them.

~

"You do not know what a lorry is," Teacha Mary scowled.

"Laura," I kept saying. "Laura."

"Laura is mzungu. She left our school a month ago. Acha kulala! Wake up, child. Say lorry."

I did not know what a month was. "Uko Laura wapi?" I asked where mzungu Teacha Laura was in Swahili. Teacha Mary slapped my desk with the ruler. She then grabbed my wrist and flicked the ruler at it. I remember that well because that was the first time she startled me.

"You do not pay attention, N’jaYAH," she said in English. "You must learn or else you will never learn success. You must first learn your words." I remember all of that because that was the first time I heard the word success. "Now say lorry."

~

"You cannot go back to school." Mother abruptly spoke those six words out of her mouth (I know it was six because I always thought it was five). I also did not know another six months passed, and that was how old I was. When I heard them, I did not cry. I did not move. I did not say anything. She folded our clothes on the long, stringed clothesline outside. A rooster crowed after I heard those words. "Father is working overtime to support our family. You must work too." The rooster crowed a second time. "You will be herding the other animals with the other boys around the village. You must help bring food to our tables." The rooster crowed a third time.

"But what about Brother Bariki?" I finally said.

"He will be preparing for exams. He will be entering University soon, and he needs to be ready. You know the rules, N’jaYAH." Yes, Mother, I know… Boys go to University and not girls… He was only ten years older than me. Or maybe nine. Or maybe eight.

~

I obeyed Mother's wishes. I herded with two boys near my home: IsaYAH and EliYAH. They would leave their homes and herd at 07:00 every morning. They are younger than me. When they left, I went with them. Every morning we passed the nursery school gates on our way to the open fields where we let the cows and goats feast. We would pass the nursery school gates again on our way back when the sun was right in front of us.

I never knew how long the walk would take. It was the same walk, there and back, every day. Herding was never fun, and I knew my brains were wasting knowledge. I needed to return to school.

~

"Mother, Brother is sicki." I stayed up through the night that day. I heard the stray dogs howl and the tropical birds screech outside. I was up before the sun was. "He cannot go to school today."

Mother was hardly awake. She blinked once and then again. "Why is he sicki?"

"Malaria," I said.

"Go back to sleep, N’jaYAH."

"No, I am telling the truth. Brother was bit by a bug and he cannot move. He wanted me to go to his school and collect his books."

"Which bug bit him?"

I thought of the only one I could. I did not know how to pronounce mosquito back then. I knew what malaria was because a mzungu told me what it was. "Ant."

Maybe it was a good thing I did not have hair. Mother would have pulled it all off of my head. But she was too tired, so she walked back to her covers. "Go back to sleep, N’jaYAH."

~

"Mother, Teacha is teaching Arabic," I said one day. "I want to learn too."

“Acha!” she said. "You are speaking nonsense. Help your neighbors cook mayai."

~

"Mother, I cannot go herding today. I do not feel well." So much time passed. My hair never grew, my brains never grew, and I still could not return to school. I needed to do something.

Mother patted my brains. "You are fine, N’jaYAH."

"I am not fine."

Mother stood. "You are fine."

"I am not fine."

Mother started walking away. She turned again and said: "You are fine."

"I AM NOT FINE." I needed to get to school somehow. Today was my only chance. I knew Mother would go to the market today because the "local hairdresser woman" said it was Winn-is-day and I did not know when it would be Winn-is-day again. I did not know when I would get the chance again.

~

That next week the "local hairdresser woman" came over early and shouted the words "Have a good Winn-is-day." She would be taking care of Mykie and Mykael. I knew that was my only chance.

I ditched the herd and talked with my friend Melynda. I told her I wanted to go to school without Mother knowing. Melynda was tired of school. She learned her alphabet and numbers and addition and subtraction ages ago. She did not mind herding. Melynda agreed to herd for me while I went to school. In the mornings I would herd with IsaYAH and EliYAH until we reached the schoolyard. Melynda would wait for me outside, and then we would switch places; she would herd, and I would go to school.

Sometimes it worked out perfectly: the three of them returned when school was over. Other times I waited for the sun to reach over my eyes, and the three of them would return sooner. Melynda would come to the doors to let me know it was time to bring the animals home. We switched turns sneaking the animals inside the home when Mother was out at the market picking potatoes and corns and star fruits and any foods without flies or mosquitoes on them.

~

One day I heard about this essay contest from Teacha Mary… First prize wins $20,000 and a paid-for sponsorship to boarding school until University. It was a 100-word essay contest about why school was important, and any child in the village could submit. But the essay had to be written in English. I needed to win, so I got help from Teacha Mary and practiced my writing in a little black journal I purchased from the market. With her help, I submitted my essay and eventually won.

~

I do not remember how long I kept this going. It must have been a long time, because Mother was not happy when she found out I had been lying this entire time. One of the neighborhood boys must finally have told Melynda's mama, and Melynda's mama must have told the Obonos who then told my father's friend, who then told my father, who then told my mother.

"Child, I cannot believe you have been sneaking behind my back just to go to school. And you have been getting Melynda to do your work for you for over six months!" Mother screamed.

But she was elated to know I would be going to boarding school and had funding all the way for University.

~

“You are a bright young girl," Mother told me, the day before I started boarding school.

From that point on, my life flashed forward. I went to boarding school for apparently eleven years. Fully funded. Time flew by very quickly. I had been accepted to University six months later.

Now as I stand, I only wonder one thing—how far I will be going.

student
1

About the Creator

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.