Читать книгу After Tears - Niq Mhlongo - Страница 12

The next day I finished trimming the lawn just before midday. On the grass I put four two-litre plastic bottles, all filled with water. My uncle had suggested that if I did that the township dogs, including Verwoerd, would be too afraid to come and shit on our lawn at night. This was not some township myth, he insisted, it really worked. And I believed him.

As I was busy doing this I saw the postman arrive on his bicycle. He stopped at our gateless driveway and handed me five letters. All of them looked like account letters – I could tell from their cellophane-windowed envelopes even before I opened them. Two of the letters were addressed to me and I immediately opened the one with the UCT stamp on it. Inside the envelope were my official results, which were confirmation of my provisional results. I had failed. The other letter was from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, and it reminded me that I owed the government R56 000. They had been sponsoring my university studies for four years and now they wanted me to start repaying them. Together with the loan statement was a form that I had to fill in to let them know how much I was going to pay them and the addresses of where I was working and staying.