WILL WE MAKE IT????

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Eswatini had always been my home ever since I could remember, although I knew that it wasn't really my home. I came from the Pearl of Africa, Uganda. I had always known that I wasn't Swazi and a lot of things in Eswatini made that clear to me. I was more like a stranger to my Swazi peers. I didn't have any friends. They'd all, well, gone. I had been best friends with Senzelwe back in grade 8. She betrayed me by ditching me for this other girl who'd betrayed me as well. Secondly I was best friends with Natasha in grade 9 but she was too emotional and kinda bossy, so I just cut off the friendship. It had lasted only three months. Thirdly, I was besties with Sinenhlanhla whom was really fun at first. But then we had a moderate misunderstanding and just stopped talking to each other. Since then, I never really tried to make friends with Swazis. I knew that I'd eventually get hurt and be left all alone so I decided to save myself the eventual hurt and stick by myself. The longest and truest friendship I'd ever had was with Shaine. She was a foreigner just like me but from Zimbabwe. We had been besties for three years but got separated when we went to different high schools. Unfortunately, she lived faraway from my place and my parents weren't comfortable with letting me visit other people's houses. Honestly speaking, I missed her so much. We had talked online after we parted ways but long distance relationships don't really work so slowly but surely, the spark in our friendship died out. It was sad but that was life. I'd never really managed to replace our friendship. No Swazi could ever replace her. As for a boyfriend? I didn't have one. I couldn't even speak to my crush. I just shunned him every time he tried to speak to me because I thought all Swazi boys were the same in the sense that they were all players.

Back in my neighborhood, my parents never let me go outside our barbed wire fence in order to mingle with the Swazis. They thought that they had bad manners of which wasn't far from the truth because we lived in a ghetto place. And so, I was all alone. I'd gotten used to it though. Back when I was young, I would often play by myself because my parents worked all day and my eldest brother thought that he was too mature to play with me. His name was Dawude and he was just five years older than me. As for my second older brother, Aggrey, him and I were on bad terms. He was only three years older than me. We used to be best of friends and he was my role model. I'm not really sure what had caused our bad terms but it had started years ago. He'd first begun by not wanting to play with me and then it grew to being unfriendly and rude towards me. He'd later graduated to not talking to me at all. Currently, he just acted like I didn't exist. I loved him but no longer considered him as a brother I could count on. Unfortunately, I didn't have any other siblings much less sisters. I often wished I had at least one sister, and we were best friends. However, the truth was, it would forever be just me and my indifferent two brothers.