Education Struggle Part 3 : Ingozi

Oshakati is home to the infamous; from Roubrem and Makondo to Bad town planning and the notorious Ingozi or Oshakati Junior primary school as it was officially known back then. In my early years I was subjected to three rather torturous years there. How did I end up in that cesspool of notoriety? I’m still asking myself the same question. Ingozi is the Zulu word for "danger", why anyone would send kids to a school named danger puzzled me. The name itself struck fear into learners from other schools; just a whisper of that name would make kids from Erundu Combined School piss in their pants. Personally I don’t blame them; if you had Mamba yaNkanda  roaming around in a school shirt then you would also piss your pants, if he could beat up teachers then what chance did us scrawny and puny pre-pubescent  kids have? (This dude was mean! He made Scarface look like a choir boy). Ingozi was like being stuck in one long episode of Yizo Yizo, which was a South African drama series famous for depicting violence in high school. My experience at Ingozi makes the movie gangsters paradise look like a kindergarten/Pre-school.

I met a lot of really cool kids at Ingozi; most of them are now professional accountants, teachers, scientists and engineers. It goes to show if you believe and work hard enough you can produce world class results, even better than those inconsiderate little whelps that went to private schools (It’s all a case of mind over matter).  Excuse the snide remarks, those are directed at some evil little Hitler’s who ridiculed me for going to a school like Ingozi. 

We shall start the hysterics in grade 5, which was by far my favourite year of the three I spent there. I sat Next to Neto, who was a couple of years older which meant with him as a friend I was untouchable, Neto was my friend and my Insurance Policy against the bullies, at that school even the walls could bully you. He had a physique that resembled an angry bouncer at a night club; I never thought muscle development like that was even possible. Neto and I sat at the back like mafia bosses, from there I had a perfect view of my first crush Anatjie, the girl had an unfair advantage over the rest, not only was she a yellow bone but she was a very pretty yellow bone. There were geniuses of girls in our class but they could never match Anatjie, I was smitten with her vulnerability, she had a worrying trend of fainting at school (which worried me sometimes). Unfortunately she disappeared in grade 6, haven’t seen her since. She was the first girl who gave me butterflies so bad that I felt them through my knees into my toes. That girl had a smile that would make Mona Lisa envious. I had my first bright spurt in grade 5, my grades were so good that the principal suggested that I just skip the grade altogether, the parentals declined, my aunt was like “Tshike, to nokithwa? atchele!”  Which loosely translated means “what? Skip a grade? Child please! Get serious”. Okay I will admit that my aunt didn’t say that, I just said that for dramatic effect.

 At the end of first Term we were playing tag when my energizer bunny antics cost me dearly again, Tag was my game because I was agile and slippery, to catch you had to be good and I also faked Injury once or twice to get out of a tight spot. I removed my shoes and ran into grass that was taller than I was, if you've seen what tall grass looks like in scary movies then you’d know what running around in it is like. You never know what you will bump into, and I found out the hard way. I made a sharp turn and something came out of the ground and caught me by the foot pulling me to the ground with a sickening thud. Little did I know that I actually step onto what was left of a tree stump, a protruding piece had gone through my sock past my flesh and  into my foot. This piece of wood looked small at first but when I came to my senses I realized that  it was large enough for a (braai) barbacue (okay, maybe I am exaggerating). I called out to my friends who were laughing under the pretence that I was faking injury again to tag them (told you I was smart). After five minutes Neto came to get me, he was horrified at the piece of wood sticking out of my foot through my sock (Big guy almost fainted), but at least we got out of school that day coz he offered to take me home. Lucky enough it was the second last day of school, so I recovered over the holidays after painfully getting bits of wood plucked out of my foot with a nail clipper (my aunt was playing doctor). I still have a hug scar on the side of my foot as a reminder.

Grade six came with a surprise; I sat by myself until I got partnered with Antonio Texeira who went by the stage name “To” (sounds like a mob hit man right?).  Antonio missed half the year because he hit another kid named chameleon who was in a different class with a Windhoek lager (Beer) bottle over the head, rumour had it that broken bottles were his weapon of choice. That spelled the end of my lunch box because “To” was always hungry, but yet again by being stuck with an older and more dangerous lunatic meant I had once again become untouchable. Our association ended however because “To” went to the slammer at the end of that year for his part in an incident involving a broken bottle.

Grade 7 was one of those years that I openly wished I could fast forward so I could change schools, I hated it that badly. School was depressing, I walked into the bathroom (place smelled like sewerage) to find some poor kid held being shaken down by two dudes smoking a blunt. I kept my mouth shut as I was told by the dudes and I looked the other way, there was no way I was going to try and be a hero (cowards live longer). In grade 7 I was not so untouchable, I hung out with Titus who was bigger and older of course but Titus was not as huge as Neto or Crazy like “To” so for the first time in my life I had to fend off the bully boys by myself. This particularly pesky kwanyama kid named Haitange (stupid name right?) and I had a few fist fights that year. Then there was this older Madam (can’t believe I forgot her name) who always asked why I never smiled, seriously if you saw what I saw at Ingozi you would not smile either. Then there was Mestela Imanu/Mr Immanuel, this dude walked around with a PVC pipe and had two sjamboks in his office, going to his office was terrifying, kids would be sent to his office on Monday and not come to school till Friday. He would find any excuse to use his weapons of choice, if you just looked at him wrong you would earn a one way ticket to an ass whooping. I don’t mean to bad mouth the school but it was perhaps a little more like hijack stories than a primary school.

I’m not going to say it was all gloom and doom, there were some silver linings. I made it onto National TV for the first time, we staged a play about an illiterate father who forces his children to go work the fields and take care of the goats instead of going to school. Little did he know that the mother and daughter conspired against him, the mother sent the daughter to school, in true african movie fashion the father dies of a heart attack. I played the role of the father and I definitely deserved on Oscar for my death scene, it was classic because my wife was crying her eyes out. Other than that, there’s not really much to write home about.

I was euphorically happy to draw a line under that particular chapter of my life, at the end of the year I wrote an entrance test at Gabriel Taapopi or just GT as its known. I wanted so badly to put Ingozi in the past that I murdered that test, my reward was five of the best years at one of Northern Namibia’s best high schools, full of adventures, friends and funny stories that will kill your lungs but that is a story for another day.