by Tyler Majaga
LEARNING JMS HIGH
The following day was a Wednesday and we had our first lessons. One part of school that makes it what it is has got to be the classroom itself. We all know the different people who just make it the fun that it always is. The corner clown, the stationary dealers, the sassy girls, your seductive girl, the perverted guy and the list just goes on. Not forgetting, of course, the teacher’s lapdog. With time, I would come to learn that my classes would be no different.
Geography was due that day and I was in the same class as Masego. As we got in to class I could see that most of my female classmates were interesting. They were mostly attractive. There were a few ugly Betties there and there but most were pretty little birds. But none could match my Winona. If the good feeling of love was what junior school brought with it, I loved it just as much as wanted her. I saw that the only seat available was the one next to this one pretty dove who was busy covering her notebook and I had no choice but to sit next to her. She looked familiar but I didn’t know from where. Masego was sitting next to some dude who was busy trying to charm her but she just kept giving him the “I’m not interested” look and he wasn’t giving up.
‘Hi, do you mind if I sit here?’
‘No, absolutely not’ and I sat down before taking out a notebook which I had designated for Geography. She smiled when I did and I shyly smiled back before she continued with the covering. On the front cover there was a picture of Chris Brown, a famous American R&B singer who was mostly popular amongst teenage girls. I decided to use that as a way of creating a conversation. Starting a conversation is by far one of the hardest issues shy guys like I was have to deal with. But as I went on to learn, getting to know someone can begin with a simple question.
‘So you’re a fan of CB?’
‘Well, yes I am; I mean which girl isn’t?’
‘Yeah, I know. I wonder what you guys like in him’. I was asking this question intentionally, knowing the answer to it. She looked at me like I was this imprudent fool and responded, ‘Isn’t it obvious Brandon? The guy is hot, like really hot and he’s got the magic voice every guy would die to have’
Brandon? The girl had called me by my name. Who would have thought I was that famous?
‘Wait, how did you know my name?’ I asked with a flabbergasted look. She looked at me and chortled.
‘You were quite a hit amongst my friends back in primary school and you still are. Just recently and as a matter of fact, yesterday, you tried to hit on a friend of mine’
‘And who would that friend be?’ She rolled her eyes and gave out the magic name, ‘Winona, the girl who happens to like you just as much; well, it seems like you like her too so…’ and she stopped.
‘So you must be Sethunya, Masego’s cousin’
‘Yep, I am. I’m friends with Winona and we advise each other on what kind of guys we date and you are a favorite with the girls’. My mouth almost dropped open when she said this but she continued before I could say anything, ‘Fairly said, you are not so bad for her; you guys would suit each other’.
I chuckled and turned my chair to face her at an appropriate angle. High school was already starting to get really exciting for me. I had not said a word to any of the girls about my sudden crush for this Winona and already, they had decided I was the one for her? Good grace!
‘Is that what you think, like honestly?’
‘Yes Brandon, that’s what we all think; me, her and all our friends. You are cute, look decent and generally, you are cool’
‘Oh…okay; cool is such a word exceptionally too big for my description’
‘That’s what you think but take it from us: you are cool…and a bit of the shy dose does it to charm any girl, Winona included’
‘Are you like for real right now?’
‘Sternly sweetie but be warned: in case you do date, Winona is the type of girl who needs a lot of love, care and respect because she’s just got out of a relationship with Mark Merritt and he never gave her any of that’
‘Mark Merritt, the Grade nine dude? The same dude who plays rugby for the school team?’
‘Yes, that’s the one’.
I looked away in what seemed to be a combo of fear and surprise when she confirmed my guess. Mark Merritt was a white guy I had known since primary school for his skills in rugby. He was rather a muscular, strong-looking character you wouldn’t want to mess with. His gang, calling themselves The Marrittians, consisted of three black guys and two white guys and it was famous for its vengeance tactics and just recently, break-dancing. I had never imagined Winona to have any history with the guy and now that I knew, my second thoughts about her were starting to surface. Besides that, Winona was classy and it suited her. As for me, I was just a regular Joe type of guy and I doubted it that I would be able to meet her standard.
‘Anyway Brandon, I welcome you in advance to the Ego Girls family’ and she shook my hand.
‘Nice to meet you Sethunya’ I said with a fear-filled smile, questions filling my head about Mark and who the Ego Girls were.
During lunch time, I never saw Bagomotsi so I was all alone in the school’s lunch spot, which was known as Union Square amongst students. It was a paved square piece of space, which was where it had got its name. Historically, it was said to have been the old meeting place of the school’s governing body before the existing administration blocks were built. Students took it over in the late 1990s before the school decided to pave it and name it.
I ate my lunch whilst listening to some music on my player. It was kind of lame sitting there all alone while students from different grades were sitting around me and chatting the time away so I decided to get to class. Just then, however, Neo came over and joined me. She appeared to have been let down by something or someone.
‘Hey, how are you doing?’
‘I’m good, except for the fact that I’m all bored and doing nothing on my second day in junior high’
‘Oh, kind of sucks hey? I also had my “we-time” with Botho and he didn’t stay for long. Told me he had to be somewhere’
‘Yeah, I guess sometimes the people you care about let you down hey? So how are you guys going?’
‘Well, we are kind of good but of late, we barely see each other. Every time I see him he’s either with a girl flirting and this really hurts me, like a lot. Or he’s with Tyler and TreShawn, his friends from Gaborone. When I confront him about the flirting, he tells me “how innocent and meaningless it is” even though I know he is lying. When we meet in town sometimes, our time together ends up being cut short by his dancing friends from Setlalekgosi and I hate those guys. They are like…you know what, I hate them; I just hate them’
‘Okay, I get what your point is. Would you mind telling me what’s with them and why you really hate the friendship he has with them, those dance guys. I mean with the flirting part I totally understand because every guy or girl would be hurt to see their partner flirting with someone else, no matter how innocent the flirting may be.’
‘It is totally wrong to flirt outside a relationship altogether but anyway, let me tell you about the guys. They are manyora Brandon and I hate manyora. I’d do anything to stop the friendship’
‘Well, I don’t see the problem in this friendship you know. I mean, what’s wrong with them?’
‘I hate his friends. The guys are total tsotsis. You look at them and all you see is death, purse snatching and all things bad. They’ve got something about them that’s weird. Sooner or later he’ll be just like them’
‘Come on Neo, they are not that bad you know. They are very good and unique dancers and every girl in Francistown literally likes them’
‘Every girl but me Brandon; I put all the blame on them for Botho’s change in faithfulness and the lack of attention he has for me. They’ve probably hooked him up with some girl or girls’
The guys she was referring to were the same as Gothic punks, only they had a different style of dressing, walk and lingo. Honestly speaking, the majority o
f girls in the city liked this type of guys, who were labeled as manyora in the local dialect. There was one thing about them that girls loved: dancing. They had a unique type of dancing that only the talented could do. The dance’s history was deeply rooted in South Africa, having surfaced in the culture-rich nation in the early 1990s at the fall of the apartheid government. People usually called it the ‘African Break Dance’ and I could not agree more because truly speaking, it was original-African. I also loved the dance myself. It was like the pride of modern southern Africa’s culture.
‘Maybe but you are not sure they are the reason. As a friend I would like to reveal a little secret we boys have. Every time a guy moves to a new school and meets a new female community, he slowly starts to lose interest in his current girlfriend. According to a survey I have personally carried out, one in three guys is hit by this ‘syndrome’ in today’s boy teenager community. Not that I mean to be offensive or anything but I think the same is happening to Botho. The guy might have found a much more interesting girl out there and sees you as what guys like to refer to as ‘damaged good’. His friends might have nothing to do with it’
She gave me this affirmative, worried look and nodded. For a long while, we sat in silence as she appeared so deep in thought. Somehow I regretted why I had said all that to her but it was for the good. The girl was sure she had a loving boyfriend but the possibility was that he didn’t feel that way about her and I had to make her realize it. The bell rang just then and it was time for study.
‘Anyway Brandon, I’ll see you at swimming practice later on and maybe we could have this talk again because it seems you have a lot of information I need’
‘Ok then, see you later’ and I also stood up to go. She smiled and walked away. I walked to class feeling bad as to why Botho had to treat bad a girl as beautiful and loving as Neo.
Guys at times can really be something else; save for me though. Girls out there, the things I had told Neo were very true. As a guy, I know what most guys feel once they’ve been in a relationship for some time. They don’t do it intentionally though; it’s a mental feat that just comes. We usually see girls as flowers and as you know, flowers fade away after some time. As they do and a guy notices another beautiful flower in a garden, he takes it and has to either replace the old one resting in that vase – dumps you – or he finds another vase and puts the new flower in it thus loving them both – which means cheating you both.
It’s just the way it is and it is quite inevitable. Some guys try to avoid it and succeed but as for others, they just can’t and everything brews to a heart break for the poor girl. The poor souls do try to revive their lost love by giving up sex to the boys but usually, this erroneous solution turns things even worse and people have died.