A month or two ago I was in my sixth and seventh grade class when we started having a discussion about life. One of my seventh graders started talking about when he was younger and lived on the streets at the tender age of 8. It was one of the many harsh realizations I’ve had to face during my time in Cape Town. Unfortunately I had to cut the conversation off because we needed to move on in class, but the student asked me if I would buy a journal for him to write in for me. The next day I presented him with it and he spent his interval break writing me. To say the least I wasn’t prepared for what he had to say. He further divulged into a life I cannot imagine living, talking about a broken home and internal struggles. We went back and forth a couple times in the journal until one day he didn’t show up with it. He left it somewhere and it was gone. Much to my surprise, the first day of school back from a two week holiday he presented me with another journal, which he purchased with the little money he had, already written in. Once again we wrote back and forth, which gave me an idea. In school yesterday I asked him if he would write out the original story he told me of his earlier life so that I could share it with people back in the States. His response: “Sure, then people will understand what life is like.” So these are his words, exactly as he wrote them in our journal. I typed it exactly as it was written, though I’ve taken out some information, like his name and where he lives, and tried to clarify any of the spelling that I could. This isn’t some dramatized movie that is “based on a true story,” this is a true story. This is real life.
My name is [removed] and I yose [used] to stay in a play [place] colled [removed]and I stay with my mother and sister and a small brother but the problem was that my mother was adicted to drinking beer and sometime my brother’s father used to come to live with my mother. and somethimes he would get so drunk that he and mother would fight and mabey would fight over a beer and would Atack each other so from than I stated staying on the [s]treet and some times would sleep on people’s yarsd and would sleep on toilest, old places and my mother would evrythime when she was drunk she would hit me over old stuff that I did and condore [couldn’t, I think] remember me off [of] old stuff that I did [w]rong and after that my mother got tiyed [tired] of me and in 2008 sanded [sent] me to This place where I met new faces and made new freands and This Place was better then my original house It is colled [removed, but it is a shelter for young boys, many of whom are coming off living on the streets. Many of my younger students live there]. So now I live here for 5 years and from that day I niticed one thing in my life and that was I was growing very fast and Im still 12 but the Thing Thath makes me Happy in my hole life is that my mother is changing from bad to good. So ser Dan that’s my hole story. The End. From [sad/crying face] to [happy/smiling face].
He turns 13 this Thursday. Once again I am forced to think back as to what I was doing at that age. The answer? I was getting on a plane by myself bound for Ohio to spend two weeks at my aunt and uncle’s house, where I would ride horses and four wheelers and swim in their pond without a care in the world. How privileged I was, and I didn’t even know it. Later in his journal he went on to thank me essentially for being a positive influence on his life and not giving up on him (“I must thank you ser. becase there is now [no] one that would waste his time with a brat like me…your are the most coolest ser [teacher] Ive ever had in my hole intie [entire] life Thank you very much for diong this…you…has changed my hole life”). He told me to “remember The crazy boy who allwase [always] wanted your hiar (that’s a whole different story!) and never foget me and I never foget you.” As if I could forget someone like him…
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