SINCE this is my first blog, I thought I’d just introduce myself and make sure that we start this writer-reader relationship off on a good note.
My name is Fezeka Nzama and I’m a 16-year-old from Margate. I go to school on the coast and I love everything about coastal living, you know the usual, beach, school, sleep, repeat lifestyle.
I especially loved growing up in Margate. For about twelve years there wasn’t a safer neighborhood in my eyes. You could be five years-old, tiny, too shy to talk and even get lost in the streets, yet there wasn’t ever an inkling of doubt that you would at some point retrace your steps, and find your way back home.
Nowadays I don’t feel as safe.
I love fireworks about as much the next person, but when they seem to go off every other day, you find yourself doubting that they are fireworks at all.
The fact that I woke up one morning to find that my first team hockey jersey was gone with the wind, or rather the thief was, doesn’t make me feel any safer either.
The world I spent my childhood in is gone, which makes me feel for the children that live next door.
Maybe that’s why I decided I want to write this column. We young people have this naïve notion that we are going to live forever.
Hearing gunshots go off every other evening shoots bullet holes through that belief. I’ve decided that if I die tomorrow, I don’t want people saying she could’ve done so much.
I want them to say she did it, she lived her dreams.
So, I’m going to provide social commentary, stories of domestic woe and more.
With a mom like mine there will be an abundance of that, plus stories on the ins an outs of being young in a world that forces you to grow up way too fast.
These may be the ridiculous ramblings of a teenage girl, but even so this is me. I’m sixteen going on thirty-six, and here I will be imparting some of the best lessons that sixteen years of life have given me.
I look forward to many more. See you next month.
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