At least I’m better than you!

At least I’m better than you!



<Pic sourced://www.socialstudiesextensions.wikispaces.com

These words reminded me of the days in which I used to be in primary school. Don’t let my youthful looks deceive you, that was quite a long time ago-The mid-nineties to be exact. Anyway, our school bus comprised of school children from as much as four different schools. You see, we lived in a quasi-urban coastal setting in Northern KZN, in a place that was more of a rural area than a township, Khula Village it was called-even the name said it all. Right, back to the bus.

Of the four schools represented in the bus, three of them were located in town and one was in a military suburb located half way to town. Now back in 1996 people still had the tendency of adding a racial description at the end of the name of a school (I’m not sure what this was about so I’ll pull the blame it on Apartheid card). I attended Umfolozi primary school (coloured school), a minority of the passengers went to Engweni primary school (It didn’t have an added description which meant it was a so called ‘black’ school), then there was the puny minority which attended the Christian school (A white school, but unlike Mtuba primary, it had a considerable number of black learners and was English medium) and lastly you had the even tinier minority from Mtuba Primary school (White school: Afrikaans medium).

<Pic sourced:www.jsonline.com>

Now, to say there was friction in the bus would be a stretch, but the pre-pubescent passengers had an inclination to group themselves according to the schools they attended. An unspoken of hierarchy existed in this bus. The crop of learners from my school- who were in the majority, always had a negative attitude towards learners from Engweni primary. No one ever said anything rude or demeaning but you could feel it in the air. We sometimes had sessions to discuss how dirty or shabbily dressed these kids were. Even speaking to them was a no, no, I tell you. The only other kids we’d speak to-other than those from our school (Umfolozi), were those from Christian school. Omtakabani (A Zulu term for privileged people) from Mtuba primary would seat silently and unbothered-Tamagochi or Gameboy in hand (what? I told you this was long ago. There weren’t any PSP’s or Smartphones back then) and with their cooler boxes and hockey sticks sitting conspicuously right next to them.



Pic Sourced: www.shiwalibeingsocial.blogspot.com>

Everyone knew that the kids from Mtuba primary were the Motsepe’s of the bus. The Christian school crew were more like the Maphonya’s. We on the other hand could be likened to a working class family from Brixton. But, however bad this made us feel, we always (YES, I said WE. I was part of it. I know, I know, shame on me), felt that we were better than the Ebola suffering, hunger-aid-needing Africans of the bus- the Engweni primary crop.

What’s the point of this rant you may ask yourself, well, I realised something a while ago. I realised that no matter how low, average, poor, unintelligent, etc, people are, they will always find people they think they’re better than. On the contrary, even if you make it to Harvard or Oxford universities, they’ll always be people there who will still think they’re better than you because whatever you’re studying falls under the humanities faculty and they on the other hand are doing something called Aero dynamical and nuclear Astro physics- majoring in the statistical atoms of the universe or some crap like that. For others it would simply be because they’re mommies and daddies pay for their expensive education and you came there by Scholarship. So here it is, don’t worry yourself about why people behave the way they do towards you. Nine out of ten times you’ll find out that they’re insecure about something and hating on you makes them feel better.