THE EVIL IN LIFE

I have seen this evil thing on earth. One who doesn’t like school, has all the means to go to school. They have fees, role models and good schools around them. On the other hand, the one who wants to be educated does not have the means.

I was in a certain village one day and I saw a boy of school-going age and it was school time. I asked the mother why the boy was not in school since schools were free. She simply pointed at him and said, “clothes!”. I felt ashamed to have asked such a cruel question. The boy just put on a dirty tattered pair of shorts and literally had no shirt on – bare tammy. He would be a laughing object in the midst of peers.

I went to secondary school with two people who were brothers. One was my classmate. The elder brother had to give way to the younger and went back home because their widowed mother could not afford to pay fees for both of them. A small amount, but to her was insurmountable. Not fiction – real life. This is evil.

You, the Academy students, are lucky – you have both. You like school and have the means, the majority of you at least. You are not short of role models. Some of you have your very parents as role models. You are in a good school, a school which some of your teachers, during their time, could only dream of. Many of your age mates, cannot afford to attend the education you are availed to. It costs some of them tremendous effort to even just come and visit and see the school called Kamuzu Academy.

To have the means is a blessing. And you are here. So, go for it. And go all the way.

DR H.C.T. GONDWE

Deputy Headmaster (Pastoral)