Chapte.
READ AND REACT
An autobiography is the story of a person's Own life, The passage below cor
omes
his
from Es'kia Mphahlele's autobiography Down Second Avenue, and describes
childhood.
-my brother, sister and I- were taken to the cottnd.
ntry
Iwhen I was five. We went to live with our paternal grandmother. My father and
Thave never known why
we
mother remained in Pretoria where they both worked, my father a shon
op
messenger in an outfitters firm; Mother as a domestic servant,
I remember feeling quite lost during the first weeks in that little village
ofMaupaneng, seventy-five miles out of Pietersburg. My grandmother
sat there under a small lemon tree next to the hut, as big as fate, as
forbidding as a mountain, stern as a mimosa tree.
She was not the smiling type. When she tried, she succeeded in
leering muddily. But then she was not the crying type either; she
gave her orders sharp and clear. Like the sound she made when
she pounded on the millstone with a lump of iron to make
it rough enough for
grinding on. I do not remember
ever being called gently by her.
Things stand out clearly in my mind from those years:
my granny, the mountain on the foot of which
the
village clung like a leech, and the
mountain darkness, so solid and
dense. And my
granny seemed to
conspire with the mountain and the
dark to frighten us.
The first
day
I went to school was
not
one. I was
particularly pleasant
a
bewildered most of the time.
There
large
of us
we
were,
mighty
a
crowd in
hall, and the old teacher in front
an
gentleman.
The
elderly, tired-looking
teacher bellowed out:
F-O-X, fokos; B-O-X, bokos;
F-1-X,
which we echoed
while
we
marvelled at the look of the
fikis
the board and the
of them.
words on
miraculous sound
Yes, I hated school,
swore to
myself I would loathe itand
to
the end of
my life.
So I rather
enjoyed it
went with
my
paternal uncle to the fields
school and
whenever
grandmother
ploughing
birds
away
or
or
spent
hoeing
a
or
harvesting.
I
and
beyond the
few days
keeping the
a
Writing from a personal perspective
Looking back to those first thirteen years of my life - as much of it as I
can remember
I cannot help
thinking that it was time wasted.
But all in all
I
a
led
life shared by all other country boys.
perhaps
Boys
-
who
1.
2.
of
are aware
Why
only
one
purpose of
do you think the author
Mphahlele
compares his
are they?
3.
was
living:
to be.
sent away from
grandmother
Pretoria?
with three different
things.
What
How does the author feel about his
grandmother? Read the passage
carefully and then write down the sentence that describes this feeling most
clearly.
4.
5.
6
7.
Write down all the
why
the author hated school.
In your own words, explain how the grandmother's voice sounded.
reasons
Read the last two paragraphs. The author does not have
very positive
memories of his childhood. Write down the words that tell you this.
What does the author
mean
when he says that the
one purpose of living: to be?
boys were
aware of
only
LOOK IT UP
Dictionary work
Use your dictionary to help you discover the meanings of the words in the box
below:
forbidding
stern
leech
dense
indicating
bellowed
conspire
loathe
paternal
leering
bewildered
aware
PUT IT IN WORDS
Writing about feelings
If you read the passage from Down Second Avenue carefully, you will notice that
the writer concentrates on two main ideas: his feelings about his grandmother
and his first experience of school.
What is your earliest clear memory of an important event from your childhood?
Perhaps something happened to you that was particularly exciting or that
upset you. Write about it in the same way as Es'kia Mphahlele, by concen
trating on your feelings about this event.
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