Informal settlements

I woke up this morning, it was cold , dirty and damp . I saw my school clothes lying on top of an old rusty metal box , the house was really small inside , it only had 3 rooms in it , but anyways I got dressed and said goodbye to my mom and Coco , Coco is our dog , well he isn’t really ours , he just visits us sometimes .  So I went on my way and started walking to school , I didn’t have any school shoes so it was very cold on my feet , the school was 6 kilometers away from my house , so I had to leave early , and my parents didn’t have a car or a bike for me to ride , so I just had to walk . When I got to school the other children were busy learning already , so I snuck inside the classroom . The teacher noticed me , but because there were so many other children she needed to help , she didn’t really care.

The teacher then gave some of us a worksheet , and told the other children to share worksheets with the children that already had , there were 55 children in my class , and about 22 of them didn’t have pencils , so the teacher told them to borrow from someone else . I didn’t have a pencil , so I asked my best friend Cally if I could use one of hers . Unfortunately Cally only had one pencil so she said we could share . Break time came , but hardly any one of us had any food , so Cally , Jax and I just played a game .

The teachers called us inside , it was very hard to concentrate because we were so hungry . It started to rain and the water leaked through the roof of the classroom and wet us all and also wet our worksheets . After it had stopped raining school ended . Our school started at 7:00 and ended at 1:00 . It ended so early because the teachers knew that we lived far from the school and it took us a long time to walk home . I got home round about 4:30 , mom was busy cooking some rice and tiny pieces of chicken on the paraffin stove . Coco came running up to me and jumped up on me . If I could change one thing about my life , I would ask for enough money to buy a nice house in a clean area , and enough money for food for Coco , also for hot water and nice beds for my parents and me , if only it were like that . My family had dinner and went to bed . I woke up the next morning and it was all like this again.