LIFE OUT HERE

Life Out Here

PART 1

As I had imagined, this place was big, bright and vibrant. The city was very much different from the village that I came from, it was too big to be true. It had good looking people all over, handsome men and boys. I have never really had time for boys, but I found myself wanting the touch of a man.

Where I’m from, men do not look like this, they don’t drive nice cars. They don’t even work nice jobs like the ones here. The finest man in the village had to be the village councilor, he was considered rich and educated by most girls. He would, of course, marry the woman he found to be the finest. All the younger girls would all admire him and some even seduced the poor man, he wasn’t really poor because he would use them in exchange for money. I never really got to understand the hype behind the village councilor, he was not as fine. He was rather fair considering the fact that he was twice my age, had a full gray beard and a Toyota Hilux.

Other than him, everyone else had the same job; either a construction worker or a herd man. They would typically date and eventually marry the girls that dropped out of school, or the ones that fell pregnant at an early age. The ones that the villages finest men considered ‘damaged’. The pretty girls that waited to finish school first before engaging in sexual relationships would marry the ‘outsiders’. People that came from different villages or places to work in our village, especially ones with government jobs like nurses at village clinic and teachers at the village primary school.

I never really wanted to be a typical village girl, never wanted to fit into any specific bracket. I wanted to start my own bracket. I wanted to marry a rich Indian man with multiple car dealerships or a member of parliament or even marry outside the country. Even the men in the village knew that I was destined for greatness because they would never make sexual advances at me, they thought of me as a child. I guess that was because of how I always handled myself around men.

I don’t know what to refer to it as but I had a fear of men, my heart always beat differently around men. Not in a good way. I always thought it was because I never had men in my life, just my mom and my grandmother. My dad was never in the picture, my uncle died when I was very young, I didn’t know how to behave around men. They always made me nervous. So I would keep to myself to avoid men, never had friends because as we grew older they wanted to always talk about men.

 When I passed my form 5, my mom was so happy. She wanted me to keep it a secret since not everyone in the village would be happy for me. She got a job working at the councilor’s house as a maid so she save up money for me to use once I came to the city for university. She would constantly remind me why she was giving me money; “so that you would stay away from men and learn”. She didn’t want me to resort to men for money, she also gave me her phone so that I can call her in my grandmother’s phone when I need help with something.

When I got here everyone was so pretty and rich, my roommate was so nice and pretty too but she ended up changing rooms. I don’t know why but I think she felt like I would steal her stuff since she had so many designer clothes and shoes. She also has the latest iPhone, but I was content with my button phone and my clothes from PEP. I had a new roommate; Priscilla. She on the other hand was not as rich but she always had money. I figured she was not rich because she would always get called from back home, they would ask for money for food, electricity, gas and so on. “Ee mma, just give me a day ke tlaa le tsenyetsa madi.” Then she would do as she would miss a night at the dorm then comeback with money.

I never thought anything of it, just that maybe she had a job at a night club or maybe she gambled or something. She was so nice to me, she became my new best friend, she would buy stuff for me when I ran out, things like soaps, lotion and toilet paper. Our living allowance was never enough and I never wanted to call home and ask for money because I knew my mom was struggling with my grandmother, she was so sick. She had to get a taxi special every after two weeks for her hospital check ups in the nearest town (it was 3 hours away).

Instead, she would call me to ask if I need something and the answer was always no. Of course I needed some stuff but I couldn’t put here through all that trouble just because I wanted new shoes. Priscilla always found a way for us, she would pay me to do her assignments and reports. She wasn’t the best student but she had me. One night, there was some event in UB, one of those useless events where students drink alcohol and fight, some end up asleep on the floor, next thing there are videos of them trending the next morning. I never attended these, I believed they were a distraction, a strategy the government uses to reduce the number of students on sponsorships. But I had to attend this specific one since for some unexplained reason Priscilla wanted me to go. She said I was sad and lonely (I’m not sad or lonely).

Drunk students are the worst people to be around, they don’t care about anything. For some reason there were people there that were not students, they were visibly older. Their eyes wondering like those of a lion looking for prey, they emitted dark energy. As I tried to tell Priscilla about these people I found her swallowing some guy by the toilets. Disappointed, I turned and headed for the exit. Outside felt amazing, it was less humid than it was inside.