It wasn’t long before our luxurious life in the city started dwindling.

It started with our driver. They said he had attitude. Or perhaps our parents couldn’t afford keeping him any longer. What does it matter? The dog wasn’t liked. Did it matter what bad name he was given or what river he going to be drowned in?

So we no longer had a driver. And we were no longer given money for school. Mom cooked and we took some in bowls to school. And took some water bottles along.

We now joined queues in the morning to board the overcrowded rickety buse that took students to our school.

At school I heard many new terms that were not common where we came from.

Like “cluster of schools”, “pre-technical skills”, “pre-vocational skills”, “hermit crab” and many others that made me feel privileged to school in the city.

There were subjects I never heard of. Like “Life skills” and “Akuapem Twi.”

I never liked to participate in sports. I felt funny running in sportswear, though I like sports outside school.

The truth was that I was shy. Of the girls. Did I feel awkward when I did sports? Definitely!

The mind of an adolescent is weired in how it perceives and processes reality.

For instance, I used to hide in my room and shave off hair growing on my legs and arms. Growing up freaked me out. I thought I was aging! It sounded like a death penalty and I fought hard to hide every trace of physical growth, though I soon felt tired and can’t remember when I gave up.

Could it be that we were meant to live forever? Why do we try to mask our growth?

To be honest, some very old people look funny. And perhaps we fear that one day we might end up like that. And something within us believe our story will be different.

Little by little I was getting used to my environment. At the end of the first term, my exam results were exceptionally good, except in two subjects: Agric science and Akuapem Twi.

Before the next term began, I sat down and wrote my new strategies to improve my grades in those two subjects while maintaining the good performance in the others.

Term after term the results got better thanks to the past questions that I consistently revised.

A few months to our final examinations that served as gateway to high school, there was a problem.

My parents were relocating to another part of the city and I had to stay with someone to complete the exams before joining them. It would my first time living with someone, away from my family for months.

How was the experience going to be?
I had no answers but to wait and see.