Ngozichukwuka

Foundation

    The six of them laughed and chattered their way to school. Uka's hand was intertwined with little Ngo. Shielding her away from broken bottles and other harmful sharp objects on the ground.

   They always took a shortcut to school. Now they were walking in a narrow part with trees and bushes situated on their left and right side. It was lonely but they weren't scared or anything like that. No. They had each other.

   ''Tortoise! Tortoise!'' Emeka yelled. He was the fifth child. Very hard headed plus lazy. He'd rather sit at home to play with his friends and then nap the whole day away than go to school to learn. ''See tortoise!''
He was pretty sure of himself.
      ''Na true o''. Uka confirmed when she saw it. Pidgin English or vernacular is a very common language and especially in Nigeria.
   
In Foundation Nursery/ Primary School, where the kids attended, the pupils there get fined when they mistakingly or knowingly utter Pidgin. So they or most of them tried their hardest to only always speak proper English, because it would be a shame to throw away their snack money for something they knew could've been prevented.

They stood there, playing with the tortoise which was hiding in the bush or so it thought it was till Emeka found it. It gladly slid its head into its shell as they poked its hard shell with a stick they each found and held.
   
Ngo was filled with giggles and chuckles as she poked it from afar. Emeka was all so aggressive and excited, because afterall he'd found it.

''Oya o lets go'' Uka broke the fun as she whisked Ngo closer to her. ''We'll be late, now!'' She had to yell because that was only when they heard her.

    As they walked a little faster, they complained of how very late to school they would be by the time they would finally get there and how many strokes of the cane they would each collect on their buttocks but excluding Ngo, who was still in the Nursery. The teachers wouldn't dare to cane her as
  Nursery pupils were not caned.

Edu, a boy and the second child, was furious about their situation, he was in the Primary six. The same class with Uka. They made him skip one class so he could be in the same class with his sister who was only a year older than him.
  
They were both seniors in school and would soon write the Common Entrance final Exams which was almost at hand.
  
Edu never shed a teardrop or showed remorse whenever he was caned in school for being a late comer or whatnot and would always put on an
I don't-care-how-many-strokes-of-the-cane-I -get- you'd-get-tired-it-doesn't-hurt' face and a 'screw you' attitude he would wear. It all would provoke or encourage the teacher to cane him even more till the cane would break. They would cane him on his buttocks and then on the palm of his hands.
  
No female teacher dared to cane Edu. They would walk pass him or push him over to a male teacher.
 
The population of late comers in Foundation Nursery/ Primary School was a lot. At least eleven of the teachers were assigned to cane them all.

Most of the pupils would claim they were sick in other to be let in without being caned but some wouldn't be let in so easily without enough proof  that they are or were actually sick and now a convalescent.
A convalescent wouldn't be caned either.

It was exactly 8:25am when they arrived school and Assembly had ended about twenty minutes ago.
    They were in great doodle.

Thank you sooo much for reading. I will try to update at least three times a week, *winks*

Joy❤️❤️❤️