Life Of A Teenager

Chapter 1

"Why am I here again? Oh right, this school produces good grades and it's gonna help me get good results for my senior year so I can get into a good university. Ughhh."

So you may be wondering what's going on here. I happen to be walking back to my house from school alone at 20:00 in the evening because we had an after school class for Mathematics. Let me just shed some light on the situation.

Hi I'm Aerol Taylor. I live in an African country and in this country there's the cities and the rural areas, obviously. I just so happen to live in one of the rural areas. I used to live in one of the cities, City of Gold they call it, (lots of mines or whatever) with my mom but my grandmother thought it was time for me to 'detach' from my mother and learn to live independently.
According to her I couldn't do 'normal' stuff like going to the river to fetch water and that was 'not gonna get me a husband'. Well in the rural areas the people were very traditionally minded.

That led to me being sent to probably the most ruralest (if that's a word) place in the province, called Milerka to 'find myself'.
So off I went, a 16 year old 3 hours from home, 9 hours away from my mother and alone to a brand new place that is far from modernized.

When I got there fortunately they had just installed electricity. The previous year there wasn't any so they relied on candles for light and fire to cook. The residents of Milerka only used the electricity for lighting since they didn't want to let go of their 'ways'. Cooking with electric stoves was too modern for them.

We had buckets to store water. The were three sources of water; taps, rivers or water tanks. We would've been lucky if we got tap water as it wasn't often water came out from taps. Water tanks weren't filled very often and when they were filled the villagers would finish all the water within 30 minutes.
So that left one option; the river.
There were three rivers: the bad, the okay and the good river.

Fortunately for us we got the bad river as it was the nearest to us so we fetched our water there.
The water from the river was amazing. As you were scooping water from the river you could see little toads just swimming or frogs just chilling under the water and it was beautiful that you would be drinking that wonderful water. Oh and also as you were scooping up the water a person a few meters on the upper side of the river was either washing clothes, excreting or bathing in the water. How delightful.
Let's not forget the beautiful green algae that was floating on the water.
Oh and the taste, how could I forget the marvelous taste of the water. It tasted like cow feet. Cows would trample on the water as they crossed the river. Absolutely amazing.
Please do note the sarcasm because...wow *face palm*. It's honestly a wonder how we are not sick because the water we drink is quite...questionable and straight up disgusting.

So let me explain the living situation, where and how we stayed. Basically since it's a deeply rural area there weren't any fancy buildings or tar roads but there were gravel roads and homesteads. If you were attending the school you either rented in the homesteads or in the school student  residence but the residence is expensive. In the residence there are cooks who make breakfast, lunch and dinner and you also don't have to worry about water as the water tanks there are always full with fresh water and it's easier to study since it's inside the school so you can easily access the classrooms. A lot of students,like me, opted to live in the homesteads as it was cheaper. We weren't gonna pay a lot of money to live in the residence because the majority of the students who lived there had complaints about the food. Breakfast was served at 6:00 on the dot every morning and if you missed it then it was your loss and you were on your own for breakfast. The parents of these kids would have to pay for the residence and on top pay for breakfast food for when their child missed breakfast and also snacks. In the homesteads you only paid for rent and you bought your own food and you could consume it at anytime you wanted. Basically you were responsible for yourself, the landlords only wanted rent money.

Let me describe what I'm talking about when I say homesteads. So since it's a rural place, the chief of that region gives you a plot of land. On that plot of land you build houses like a rondavel and a few other houses. Us schoolkids who come from far come to the families that live in these homestead and request for an available house or room which we can live in. We then move in to these houses and live in groups of 4-10 people per house. In some homesteads they live in groups of 12 per house. Note that this 'house' is the the size of a bedroom. By this information you can tell that there is no privacy whatsoever. The homesteads are outside of the school so it's not easy to study at school at night as it's not really the safest time.

The toilet is outside and we bath in basins. We cook using either gas or paraffin stoves because the people in this place only use electricity for lighting so we also can't cook with it.

Considering that I used to live in the city it's not easy for me to adapt to the way of living but I don't have a choice now do I.