Adversity Can Bring Out The Best In People

“I remember very well years ago when I was often bullied and often,the bullying became the norm. Throughout my childhood and adolescent life, because of my unusual height coupled with my timid and soft spoken personality, I would be teased and laughed  sat, and often challenged to fight by other boys in school”-Edgar Mangwende.

Adversity Can Bring Out The Best In People

This paragraph in the book; The Cage Mentality from the Mind to the Mountaintop by Edgar Mangwende made me reminisce to my  own youth and it was eerie the similarities between our lives.I was and born and brought up in the Seventh Day Adventist church, being the only boy from my village who attended this church meant that when I came back from church all my age-mates would have disappeared to God knows where. Eventually I did not even bother to go look for them , I would sit at home and either read comic books which my elder siblings always brought home or listen to the radio. In time I got so used to my own company at times  I would leave my mates to go home so that I could be on my own.This helped to save me from many a scrape remember once going to make sure the cattle were securely closed up in the kraal and rushing home in order to listen to one program  which used to air at six in the evening was surprised to learn the next morning that all the boys in the village had been called to the Village head to be grilled and punished for having burnt out one kraal with the cattle in it ,apparently they had been playing with lighted cow dung and one of this pieces had ended up in the kraal ,those of you who grew up in the rural areas or farms know that once cow dung is lit it does not go out unless someone pours copious amounts of water on it.Fortunately most parents knew that I was well behaved so I was exempted from those proceedings. But the roasting I got from my age mates after that as well as the ostracism really rankled.

When I then left the village to go start my secondary schooling , I was to meet one of the my most trying of times at the hands of one Yoman Thomas.I was very tall and gangly for my age ,the fact that most of my peers picked up that I was not from the hood because of my dialect resulted in a lot of teasing and ridicule at the hands of most of my classmates save for one fellow outcast like me ; a pupil who was born with albinism. Because of the fact that we were both ostracized ,we gravitated towards each other and formed such a strong bond that we were friends until my erstwhile passed away.When I later learnt about his passing, I really felt hurt.(I had migrated for over a decade in search of greener pastures.)Yoman would make it a habit of waiting at one of the gates we normally used when we came to school from lunch and he would either beat us up or poke fun at us.Little did we know that we could have reported this abuse to the form teacher and he could have been disciplined.

Somehow I was able to channel my inner strength and applied myself at my studies,  after the form two results came out and he discovered that I was the best student in the two classes the abuse mercifully stopped.

 When  I was elected as one of the prefects during my third year of secondary school ,he knew I had become untouchable.