When I was 8 years old my mother enrolled me in an English-medium school in town… a school where everything was taught in English, including English itself.
I was coming from a village school five minutes from home where we even learned English in IsiXhosa.
This new place was a different world. You were even reported for speaking your home language, as if it were a crime.
Before I started, my mother made a decision that made me cry for days. Despite having already passed Grade 3, she asked me to repeat it. She believed moving straight to Grade 4 – new subjects, new language and new environment – would set me back rather than push me forward.
I reluctantly agreed. I didn’t have a choice.
What’s strange is that I couldn’t speak English but I could read it. My mother had always brought books home and made us not only read them but explain what we understood. I didn’t know it then but that habit was slilently building something in me.
In my first week at the new school I got a star on the wall for being able to pronounce the word “often.” No other child in my class could. My teacher was visibly surprised – a kid from a village school?
It wasn’t a leap of genius really. I had come across the word in a book at home and asked my mother how to say it.
But reading and speaking are different things. And that difference would catch up with me on my birthday.
For context, my birthday is in February. Meaning by the time it came, I hadn’t yet found the confidence to express myself in English.
Like any other birthday in that class, my mother brought cake and drinks to school. The teacher called each classmate up by name to get a slice. When everyone had been served she said, excited:
“It’s now time for the birthday boy – Phumzile, come take your cake! Let’s sing for him class.”
The chant started. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!!!
I sat at the back of the class and didn’t move.
Zinathi, a very sweet girl who was my desk mate, urged me to get up. I stood slowly, walking forward as if I had shackles on my feet… and then a stream of urine ran from my thighs down to my white socks and sports shoes.
There was a mix of giggles and Yohs.
It was Wednesday, sports day. We wore white golf t-shirts, white shorts, white socks, white shoes.
One by one the voices dropped away until the classroom fell silent. The teacher saw what was happening.
I broke down in tears and told her I had been too embarrassed to ask to go to the toilet. I didn’t know how to say it in English.
She asked if I still wanted to go and finish.
I said no. After all, the job was already done.
I went back to my seat as the class went quiet. I had turned the best day of my year into one of the worst.
That was 2004.
I still think about it. And not just because of how embarrassing it was, but because of how contradictory it is. I was arguably the best reader in that class, thanks to my mother’s books. And yet I didn’t know how to ask to use the toilet.
Exposure had given me one thing and withheld another, and on that Wednesday, the thing it withheld cost me everything.
Years later in my first year of university, I failed a Computer Skills module.
It was a basic subject teaching you things like Microsoft Word, Excel… foundational stuff. It was designed to bridge the gap for students who hadn’t grown up with computers.
Most of my classmates were white kids who had used computers their whole lives. Many of them couldn’t understand why the module even existed.
I failed it.
In marine biology lectures, a classmate would casually mention seeing a particular shark species in Australia with their family. Meanwhile, I was still learning how to spell it.
And somehow the world expected me – a boy from a small village – to compete with that person for the same opportunity as if we had started from the same place.
Wanting to close some of that gap, I tried joining the debate club to improve my confidence and communication. I lasted three sessions. The other students had been debating since primary school, speaking English like they went to Woolies High. I was stuttering at every question and my confidence just didn’t survive it.
It genuinely frustrates you hey… living in a world where your peers were exposed to things you simply weren’t, through no fault of your own.
It feels like running a race where everyone else started a kilometre ahead.
This is probably why some parents send their kids to high schools that cost more than most universities.
I used to shake my head at that – ‘How can any parent pay over R100k a year for high school?‘ But then I’d catch myself and think: akuthethi wena, kutheth’ipoverty. A funny internet line that translates roughly to: those aren’t really your words, that’s your poverty talking.
Because for those parents the investment makes sense.
They’ve seen how the world receives someone who was exposed early; the confidence, the ease and the way doors open without having to force anything.
And that gap – between those who were shown and those who weren’t – shows up everywhere, not just in my own story.
My cousins used to visit during school holidays and were terrified of tackling the sheep when we vaccinated them, something I cannot even remember learning to do. It was just always part of life.
I also used to help friends with grant letters in varsity. I’d read what they’d written and immediately knew it couldn’t be sent. Why was it easier for me to spot the flaws in these motivational letters? Because I had been shown words earlier.
I understood the rhythm of words – when to use brute force to make a point, and when to thread them gently until they became a lullaby in the reader’s ear.
I also see this with people starting to exercise in their late 20s and 30s. I’ve been active since I was quite young and I genuinely struggle to relate to needing motivation just to show up and move your body.
I’m not judging… it’s just the gap that exposure creates. Someone who debated from age 10 also cannot fully relate to where I am with public speaking.
We’re all carrying something the other person wasn’t given.
Maybe what we all need is grace – for ourselves and for each other.
But if there’s one thing you’ll thank yourself for regardless of age, it’s this: go towards the thing you were never shown.
And don’t go with the intention of trying to catch up with someone else… you probably won’t, and that’s not the point. But do it to prove to yourself that the gap doesn’t have the last word.
The exposure you didn’t get is not your fault. What you do about it now is.
© Phumzile