Sikeji Every person has that dark, cold, lonely place in them... Sikeji is a christian boarding school located in the Kalene Hill, in the remote Ikelenge district of northwest Zambia. It was built to cater the affluent Zambian children and those of the many expats'.It was where I was from preschool to 2nd grade. It was the late 1980s when, after 7 years of being a municipal health officer, my Dad, without the security of a specialty training, and with five very young children approaching school age, decided to join the UN Peace Corps as a doctor. It was 18 long hours of plane Hi OLXer! Your ad was removed for being a duplicate ad or an ad for something not allowed on OLX. Learn more: https://olx.ph/l/MIvP6j. Thanks!travel and 2 lay overs before we finally arrived in Lusaca airport where my Dad was waiting for us. It was the middle of June and it was cold and wet in Zambia, which is a landlocked republic in Southern Africa. We stayed in a hotel for 2 weeks before we took the long and straight drive to Mwinilunga where my Dad was stationed along with 5 Indian doctors and 3 British delegates. This was the time when AIDS was wiping out an entire village of Zambians, and the country was struggling in deep mire in terms of economics and healthcare after years of being besieged by civil war. In a child's eyes, being in a place where there were more forests than houses, where there were more people than food, where the nights were long and dark, where snakes get inside the pipes and get lost inside the house, where families grow their own garden because the market only comes to town once a week, is like being in a twilight zone. My parents decided to put my brother and I in the safest niche this place can offer, and so we were enrolled in Sikeji school came August, where the unfamiliar surroundings did not only continue to alienate us, but actually gave birth to the nightmares we still have until today. Parents make the wrong decisions with the best intentions. It was an expensive school, and it's the best there is even in British standards. Most of my classmates were white, coming from as far as Johannesburg and Pretoria. Children of the affluent British families who have established companies in South Africa. Most of them have been in Sikeji for years. For them to still be alive and lucid is beyond my comprehension at that time. To be in that place for longer than a few years is surreal. The short time I was there, I have already lost most of my light. A bit more time longer and I would have drowned myself in the nearby Zambian River. I was towelled dry and soothed to sleep the first two nights I tried to run away from school. I did not get far. I tried to follow the car tracts on the muddy road presuming all the tracts were made by our car. But then a truck load of africans passed by ( farm workers from the school), they were chanting with drums and I got scared. I barged in the dining hall dirty and screaming, and late for dinner. My next attempts were punished with spanking (with a ping pong paddle). I was also denied my candy ration came Sunday. The nights in Sikeji were particularly difficult. There were no one to comfort us when we have nightmares, and we have a lot. Bed wetting was severely punished with a ping pong paddle on the glutt. Mornings where chaotic. We were young, and most were barely weaned from diapers. I'd often get into inappropriate clothes for the weather and my socks were often mismatched. My brother who was younger would forget his socks altogether, or his shoes for that matter. After months, we learned to push back. I particularly learned to grow as fast as I could because it's what the circumstances called for. My brother regressed, and I grew overnight. Bullies were everywhere. Kids steal from one another and the small number of faculties and orderlies managing all the pupils were often overwhelmed. And so when I am pushed, I shoved. When someone kick my brother on the playground, I drew blood. Fear is often the most viable motivator for violence and I embraced both. I was easy to mutate. While I was a child outside, I had grown beyond my years in the inside. I never blamed my parents for putting us in a boarding school. I blamed circumstances. I blamed the inherent madness of the world and #life itself. Loneliness fuel deep seated anger that often grows beyond the bearer if not extinguished. My experience however made me clingy and independent at the same time. It made me both broken and strong. The best fighters of this world had known defeat a hundred folds. And the bravest ones have all once been afraid of their own dreams. I bear a calloused heart, and my soul had been stitched together many times over. I am made up of memories that consume and overwhelm. But I have never once known surrender. I fought until my battles were over, and I braved the unknown with the marks of yesterday written on my skin, on my heart, and on my soul. But I’ve moved on, a step forward at a time. And every distance I made from my brokenness is a conquest all on its own.

Don't Look Down When you spent the night crying, when you’ve spent your #life trying, to know where you are to figure out where you’re going, don't look down… when your heart is stricken And you ache all over again, When it’s confusing to figure out What your #life is all about, Don’t look down… When you feel like you are about to drown, When you’ve lost everything but your crown When the pages of your stories bleed And your monsters are freed, don't look down… When the world you built come crashing down and you begin to laugh Like a crazy clown, don't look down… When the music had lost its magic and the emptiness echoes in silent surrender when your heart continues to beat Like a foolish pretender don't look down.. Many had fallen ‘cause their wings were broken.

To Wonder Sometimes I wonder If the world outside is tamer Than the world I came to know If the noise outside is louder Than the whispers of long ago Sometimes I wonder If the heart remembers Longer than the mind forgets Like the flickers of dying embers Like the scar a wound begets Sometimes I wonder If daybreak chases the shadows While dreaming about the coming night A bright curtain hides immense sorrows A veil of blackness against a blinding light

Let's Remember Who We Are People cut because they can’t deal with the pain the world inflicts on them.. They inflict pain they can handle, the kind of pain they are able to understand, so they can comfort themselves. Sometimes, #life is a raging ocean that drowns everything that we are, everything that we can ever be. And so we create ponds we can swim in. Big enough to contain us, but not big enough we get lost in. We fill up with emotions we can’t understand. We are imploding. And so we cut for release. Not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to bleed, and to scar. We need to create something we can remember, while we try so hard to forget. We cut to punish ourselves, for being who we are, for who we can’t ever be; for the many broken pieces that once were our dreams; for all the wrong turns and miscalculations; for the haywire #life we can’t seem to control. We cut so we can feel; For the assurance that we are still alive and not yet ghosts. Because sometimes, we can no longer feel anything, not even our own heartbeats. We cut to make ourselves smaller, because we ran out of space, and we ran out of places to hide. We cut so that we can fit the pieces into a nook when the world blows up again. We cut to tell our stories, when we can’t master the courage to say it out loud.We cut for release, when the pressure builds up inside and we are in the verge of imploding. We cut because, ironically, we are exhausted and everything have grown bigger than who we are. We struggle to survive, as we are consumed alive by our very own fire. Let’s remember who we are. Let’s say our names out loud and know how precious it sounds. We are worthy no matter how scarred we’ve been. Let’s give healing a chance, not because we have to, but because we can.

Our Infinity This is us now after embarking In a journey towards the unknown, Both hearts marred by scars Disillusioned with scattered stars. But we made it to here and now A momentous feat, our victory We still hold each other’s hearts We still figure in each other’s story. We almost lost the fight We were beyond battered and cracked We’ve gone through the darkest night. Travelled through hell and back And we’ve almost forgotten That we both jumped blindfolded Into each other’s lives Faith was all we ever needed. We suffocate on each other’s nearness And yet we felt cold when we set out alone. We’ve alway been irony and satire Our names engraved on each other’s bone Forever is every moment when We create memories that surpass our brokenness As we learn to accept our own homelessness. It is our presence in each other’s identity, Our marks in each others’ haunted story In our broken pieces, in the puzzle we are yet to put back in place Is what makes US each other’s infinity.