The Amazwi Villager

Written by Linky Matsie

Five buildings stand at the center of a fenced-in yard. More than five cars are parked to the side. Wheels painted in different colours line both sides of the gate entrance. The students run up and down outside their classrooms on a dusty grassy spot. They yell as they play with each other. It is just after 10 a.m. at Lumukisa Primary School and time for lunch break. Like other government primary schools, Lumukisa is supplied with free lunches for its students. Many girls run around, wearing the school uniform: a blue skirt, blue checkered shirt, blue socks with white stripes at the top, and black shoes. The boys, also in their uniforms, wrestle and chase each other. The children clearly know each other, since they touch hands when they pass. Behind the tables under the school porch, three women in green aprons stand waiting to serve the next group of children their food.

“Do not to push,” they tell the children. “You are brothers and sisters, and there is enough to feed the whole school.” Students hold their plates and run to the tables where they will get their lunch of stump, mealies cut into small pieces and mixed with beans and soup. Groups of boys and girls, who have already got their lunch, sit under a tree together. Their conversations are a mixture of soft and loud voices. While eating, some share food from the same plate like a family eating dinner together in the evening.

Students who have already eaten run to the water tap with their 5-liter containers, and then they run towards the garden, where they have planted different kinds of vegetables: cabbage, spinach, carrots, beetroot, tomato and onions. Every day the students compete to be the first to water the vegetables. Two boys run to the tap holding two containers each, yelling at the others, “we will be watering more than five portions of vegetable plants!” Two other boys are running too, as they try to do the same. Their teacher stands at the gate holding her waist and smiling while the students tell her jokes.

In the olden days, before the end of apartheid, parents forced their children to go to school. Parents even followed them to school with wooden stakes so they wouldn’t skip class. Some children hid in the bushes until school was out, letting their parents think that they were in school for the day.

Now children enjoy learning. Maybe the feeding scheme makes the children love school, or maybe it is because of other changes. The whole education system and the syllabus has changed. Today students have rights; corporal punishment is not allowed. A teacher is not permitted to beat a student, unlike before when teachers beat children, sometimes until blood appeared.

Outside Lumukisa the terrible siren rings, telling all that lunchtime is over. The sound flows all over the school and the neighborhood, louder than a baby crying. All the students have finished eating and they put their plates into their school bags. They smile and laugh, as they run through different doors. Everybody wants to be the first one inside the classroom. All the students crinkle their faces into wide smiles, showing their white teeth as they wait to enjoy their lessons.