Joy as poor kids get uniforms, shoes

YESTERDAY was a day like no other for pupils at two impoverished schools near Dutywa as they were showered with brand new school uniforms – something they had never had before.

Some of the pupils are forced to go to school wearing only their shirts in freezing temperatures because their parents cannot afford to buy jerseys, while others have never owned a pair of proper shoes for years and go to school barefoot.

Lundodolo village, above the Mbashe River adjacent to former president Nelson Mandela’s birth village of Mvezo, is regarded as one of the most impoverished in the area. Most parents rely on state social grants.

On either side of a paved road leading to Mvezo, are two schools – Ludondolo Junior Secondary and Thamsanqa Senior Primary.

Many pupils at the school are so poor they wear torn shirts and patched trousers to school. Others have to walk barefoot to school.

But yesterday a group of 20 children from both schools beamed with excitement as they wore new school uniforms for the first time in their young lives.

This was after two former Ludondolo pupils – Sipeto Gada, a manager at Amathole district municipality, and Dr Zolekile Pafa, a district director for the transport department in the O R Tambo area – decided to come to the aid of the struggling pupils.

Although they both left the school in the early 1970s, the pair were touched after learning about the plight of the children from Ludondolo principal Mxolisi Maboza during funerals of two Ludondolo pupils who had drowned while trying to cross the Mbashe River.

The duo decided to club together and buy new uniforms and shoes for needy pupils in the two schools.

Pafa said two things drove him to show his compassionate side. First, the death of his son in 2007 and four years later, his own mother, who before her death had declined money he sent her and instead asked him to use it to help someone needy.

Pafa, himself, only wore school shoes for the first time around 1981 when he reached high school. “My upbringing was like theirs. [But] I felt so dignified when I laced my first pair of school shoes,” he said adding that they [he and Gada] had committed to help poor pupils from the two schools every year.

He said the fact the donation was handed over to the schools yesterday also had personal significance to him.

It was the day his own son, who became permanently disabled as a result of complications during birth, died in 2007.

Gada meanwhile, joked that his own mother had patched his long school trousers countless times which made him uncomfortable as a young pupil.

“No parent would want to take a child to school wearing a torn shirt but their circumstances leave them with very little option. We did this out of our love for our village,” he added. — co.za