ThE sTaRt AnD pRe-ScHoOl

The Start

I have no memory of being one or two years old and very few between the ages of three and six. The only memory that I truly have is of moving, of change, from one city to another, one life to another. Shuttling back and forth, losing friends before even making them.

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Pre-School

When I was about three, maybe four, I went to a pre-school where almost everyone spoke Afrikaans and I spoke English. Yet somehow I could make friends with these kids, never mind that we couldn’t even say hello to each other, and even back then it wasn’t like I wouldn’t play with boys or girls, I just liked everyone. And everyone liked me…until they found out I was a girl. Yes, it was somehow possible for people to realise that I wasn’t a boy but when they did, they stopped liking me that much.

I don’t remember much but I do remember sulking, hiding from all those kids, not understanding a word of what they said. I think I moved between at least 3 classes that week but maybe the two things were unrelated. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

Somewhere along the line my parents decided to draft me into a modelling course, I have no idea what they hoped to achieve but maybe it wasn’t them, maybe it had been me who had wanted it. Either way, it was around then that I met two really great kids, I don’t remember their names or where they live, and only vaguely what they look like but I do remember a few things about them. When I was there, Apartheid had only jus ended and I had been too young to understand it, after all my pre-school was mixed. It’s really scary to think that back then I didn’t understand anything about race, it didn’t matter.

The only taste I had of apartheid was that one of those kids I found so great, her parents were forced to get divorced because they belonged to different race groups. No one out of the three of us ever talked about it and my parents only vaguely mentioned it but I wish they had. I wish that they had sat down and explain everything to me then before I left.

When I moved again, I left behind two friends and many other really great people who had gotten over the fact that I was a female, but my five-year-old brain didn’t really get it. I always thought that we’d be friends. Of course we never saw each other again. If they passed me on the street today, I wouldn’t even give them a second glance. That’s the only sad thing about change, moving on.