Education

I’ve heard this phrase in different contexts, languages and wordings: ‘Your education is a privilege, don’t waste it’ I never understood it, until now. You see, growing up, all the other kids I knew were either in the same school, or in a school that’s just as good. For us, education is a given. Our parents are educated, therefore we are too. We’re educated to take the legacy forward, to grow into our own people and make our own names in this world. We’re given the best, the most expensive type of education because, in simple terms, we can afford it.

It was our right.

Or so I thought.

Because when I was younger, I did not see those other kids who went to government schools, received subpar educations and were not given the opportunities I had. I never saw them, until I turned 11.

At 13, I became involved with a programme that my school had undertaken at the time. It was a programme which allowed students of a nearby government school to come to ours so they could learn more english, math and science than they were at their own. I remember assisting the teaching with parent volunteers. I remember playing sports with some of them. I remember serving them snacks when they would run in, through the large, looming gates of my ‘rich’ school.

Still, I didn’t realise that my education was a privilege. Those words were still words. Though the process of their deep impact had begun, I was yet to realise just how lucky I was.

A second, rather rude awakening came in the form of my former maid. She has a few daughters, this maid. One of them is my age, give or take a few months. I’m nearly 20 now. Back then, I must’ve been around fourteen or fifteen.

She was my age.

And she would come home and work.

Mum would tell her mother numerous times not to send her young daughters, but the maid would always say that they had no other way to feed themselves.

I remember sometimes she’d come cry to my mum, about how she still wanted to study after finishing grade 10. I remember my mum telling me that this girl was fighting for every day that she was allowed to study. I think I was sixteen, or seventeen when she stopped coming home. I’m not quite sure what happened. I never asked, my mum never told. But a part of me knows that she was married off. She barely would’ve been scraping by eighteen at the time. She never got the education she desired. Rather, she never got the educated she deserved.

Time and time again, when she came home and cleaned, her and I would exchange smiles at each other. Except, I was smiling at her from my desk or my bed with a textbook or a phone in front of me. And she was smiling at me with a broom or a mop in her hands.

She didn’t deserve it.

I’d keep thinking, maybe I should teach her. I’d tell myself: Maybe I can sit with her, teach her how to write long english sentences and solve complex math equations.

But, I never did.

I don’t know why. Maybe I was afraid, ashamed or underconfident.

I just never did it.

I wish I had. Maybe her life would’ve turned out a little different if I had.

I didn’t even know her name.

Despite this, I still didn’t treat my education as the privilege it was.

But today, years later, I see it. I understand what I’ve been told all my life. I can feel it in my soul.

While I’m here prepping for an exam that’ll allow me to study in virtually any country in this world, while I browse scholarships hoping I qualify for one and while I bust my ass trying to relearn mathematics so I can attend the best universities; there’s a maid’s girl out there who fights her family everyday just so she can live more than a life of menial labour, there’s a maid’s girl out there who has big dreams, bigger than mine but she can’t touch them because she’s forced to bend at her hips, cleaning our houses; and there is a maid’s girl out there who’s married off too early, before she’s even grown into adulthood because her family can no longer support her.

She deserved her education just as much as I do.

My education is not a right. It’s not. If it was, she’d have it too. My education was, is and will always be a privilege. A privilege that I’ll do justice to, both for myself and for her.

I’ll do justice to my privilege for her, the maid’s girl. And I’ll do justice to it for all the hers, hims and thems who had that opportunity stolen from them.