The night was so cold the blanket that l was covering myself with felt like nothing and looking the other side l could see my brothers going through the same predicament.That was a normal spectacle in our family and we were used to almost every form of suffering but unfortunately for us at that age all that mattered was the food, mama was a good cook every morning we would have rice porridge with ground nuts powder, man that was so tasty we ended up licking out spoons after eating.

After bathing we embarked on our journey to school which was almost 25 km away from our house, singing and running off we went to school.Our school was known as kabwabwa primary school, even though we walked that much our school had no chairs and we sat on the bare ground under a big mango tree,this was our classroom marked with bricks to show the boundaries.

Our headmaster was a no nonsense man that did let us sweep around the classroom if we came late so we made sure to come early to avoid punishments.grade 8 was the toughest of my life because not only was l coming from afar to school but l had to pass.after school l would go home and find that there was no food either and most of the times we would eat twice a day ,hunger was the order of the day and we ended up eating at our neighbors house and that resulted in a beating from my dad.

Kennedy! Kennedy! my friend William kept calling he was a tall dark fella who was one of our neighbors, he always came to take me to the movie showrooms but since we had no money we had to peep through the cracks of the showroom. Rambo movies and deadly prey movies got me smacked at home most of the times because I ended coming home late in the night .my father would let you choose to be smacked or to go to bed hungry, man it was the hardest choice ever but no matter what choice you choose my father would smack you either way.

My father and my mother did not show any signs that they were falling out of each other but sometimes at night l would hear them shouting at each other and this would go on and being repeated during the day while we were there and this spectacle was not a good one for us kids and we failed miserably at school. as the trouble between my parents brew on my mother would accompany me on my way to school explaining to me that she was planning on leaving my dad. the pain that l got by just listening to those comments was huge and in 2000 they finally divorced.

The predicament was where do l go, do l go with mum or do l stay with dad.