Story By Cheelo Chrispine
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Cheelo Chrispine

bc
finding strength in vulnerability
Updated at Oct 13, 2024, 01:04
I was born in 2000 in a village called nkoloko kapiri districtIn a family of nine on my mother's side and five on my father's side on both sides I am the last bornWe used to keep cattle and survived on on small scale farmingDad used to drink a lotMom would go out to sell cooked chicken to buy maize meal in small package locally called Pamela so that we can eatI was just a younger I was not even 7 when I witnessed all this Yeah.. but we never slept hungry but at some point it got rough were we survived on caregiver food.After some years we moved from nkoloko village to mutinta villageWhere my two brother Mazuba and busily started school at ndili basic school I wonder how they were coping coz dad was spend most of his time and money in beer lolThen we moved to another village called muzyamba where I started my school together with my other two brother who were in high grades than me at a community school called lusumpukoNo serious teachers the community would just get anyone who can read and make them teacher.My dad was Literate and was involved in a lot of community activities in villages besides him being a drunkard one day he even got out neighbour arrested for sleeping with his niece.After some time in muzyamba village we were chased by the leaders of that village due to some issues I don't remember obviously it was my dad with his drinks and intelligence in the villageWe moved to mutinta village here again we continued with school all I remember is I used to go to school at ndili basic school with no shoes foot sometimes but and my dad didn't even know what grade I was in he would ask time to time Ah so what grade are you now but he will still forget..We continued time time he got me shoes, Another story I forgot to tell while we were stay in muzyamba I almost diedWe used to sleep on mattress made out of suck and grass, so one day due to mosquitoes I got a suck for joa saka and light it then put it under my best it was believed that its smoke would stop mosquitoesSo as the night went it kept burning untill it got to my grass mattress and then fire startedLuckily I don't know who heard first if it's mom or dad they got me out and started keeping our the fire that's how I survivedBack to mutinta village now at this point I was not serious with school in a week I would go once lol dad never noticed because he was usually out drinking kachasuAs time went by in the year 2009 the big man dies in road accident along great north road at corner which was famous known for accidents in our villageHe was bashed by a white hiece when he was coming back from buying fertilizer at place called green leaf. When he died we moved on with mom, still in mutinta village age and at ndili primary school, after his death the owner of the farm reduced rentals for us although when dad was killed in an accident he was with the bike for our landlordSo after dad's death the landlord would come to ask my family to pay him back Yeah.. we kept on growing this time j was still not serious with school we never even owned a watch at home so I used to use the shade of a big tree which we had at our home to see if it's time to go to school.My other two brothers were serious Mazuba who was the oldest brother among the 3 of us and smartest and liked by teachers used to play football and do athletics at school very talented so he never missed an event at school for this reason he was very femaous at school.Busily always quiet like my dad and minding his business, no one would know what the guy is Thinking kkk.. him being my immediate brother we used to fight a lot and I always list these fights.I continued missing classes untill in grade four they gave us a new class teacher who used to beat any one that makes noise or miss classes Mr mpasela.. he was best friends with my big brother Mazuba due to football at school so due to fear of being beaten I started pulling up my socks and minimises missing classesNext year I was in grade 5 and still didn't know how to read, but Mr mpasela used his efforts and teaching us the vows in Bemba laters now started making sense before this I kept wondering how people manage to make words out of letters.In grade 7 they gave us a more vicious teacher Mr mbolo who would beat you for any simple issue all pupils were scared of him. Mbola became my teacher and I tried to miss a class or two that landed me in some embarrassing beating in front of the class.From that day I stopped missing classes with no proper reasons I was dull at this point I used to pass number 26But after mbola came and continued teaching us vows I finally knew how to read and started understanding things then I drastically moved from passing number 26 to 3 that's how I started computing with the smartest boys of our class.year 2012 we moved from mutinta village to ndili village at least it was near school, here we never used to pay rent we would only go work for the landlord this was called muzaleka whatever
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