Of courage, kindness, freedom, of tolerance and love... Senior School part 1
“Hey dudes, this is our school and we love it with all our heeeaaarrtts, remember you’re gonna get where we are and we hope that you love it as much as we do” Sang to the tune of hey Jude. This was one of the lines in our valedictory pool song.. Around about this time 36 years ago, our time of being the big kids in the small school was up and now we were set to be the small kids in the big school. Standard 6…High School. Even though the whole school from Sub A (grade R?) to Matric (Grade 12) was called Umtata High School at the time, we were finally starting high school and boy was I petrified! You see back in the day, being initiated was a rite of passage. This initiation took many forms ranging from physical abuse to the even worse emotional abuse and embarrassment or a combination of both. When you entered senior school or any sports or other team as a newbie, you expected some form of humiliation, public flogging, deep heat somewhere. I had heard of many o...