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End 2011 Report:
My second year at Camps Bay High School is almost finished and I am going to write about the second half of my year. This year has been a particularly hard year but I think I am going to pass it. In the third term I pulled up my socks and started to really work because of my last two terms. I am really confident this term as all of my teachers told me that I could make it because I am a bright boy.
My marks are definitely going up this term as there were a few projects that we had and I did them and tried my best at them. I was really happy this term when I got 90% for a pre-exam open book test.
We are in the middle of our exams and we have written two English papers and a Technology paper, one of the subjects I found difficulty in. I am very confident that I have passed those three exams because I studied really hard for them. The next papers we are writing are Social Sciences, one of the subjects I found difficulty in but my teachers have now made me understand the two subjects ;History and Geography, then we write EMS, my favourite subject and then we write Physical Sciences, a subject I still find difficult but I pass it now. Then we write the 2 Xhosa papers that I desperately need to pass then we write Arts & Culture, Life Orientation and Biology, a subject I now understand. I hope to do well in these exams and pass the year.
I would like to thank the Richard Mason, the Kay Mason Foundation and the donors for giving me a chance to come to such a school and be a student and learn from the experienced teachers of Camps Bay High School.
Mid-2011 Report:
I don’t even know where to start; it has been a great and successful six months and there is so much to write about. My name is Siseko Nama and I am a grade 9 scholar at Camps Bay High School.
First of all; I expected the start of this year to be the toughest in my school career but it has actually been a nice year so far, with good academics where I have done a lot of school projects and the exams which just ended recently where the subjects that I thought would be hard like Biology and Physical Sciences were actually easy, even though I really dislike science related subjects. My favourite subject Mathematics was really hard for the whole of grade 9 and I know I did not do my best because there were things I could not do because I have never seen it before. It has also been a wonderful six months socially and in soccer. I was in Port Elizabeth with the school soccer teams and I am going to reflect on that as part of this report.
On Wednesday the 30th of March 2011, three soccer teams from Camps Bay High School left for Port Elizabeth to go on a Soccer Tour. I was part of the Camps Bay High under 16 boys soccer team. While making our way to Port Elizabeth the bus we were travelling on had to stop because it overheated so we stopped for about two hours and somebody had the idea of playing street soccer. My team played against two of the under 19 5-a-side teams and beat one and almost won the other one but I got kicked by the other teams defender after I outskilled him and he was on the ground. But luckily two small buses came and I was put in the girls’ bus with all the girls and some under 16 boys and it was a wonderful bus ride full of funny moments and no sleeping. We got to the hotel we were going to be staying at for the tour at about 1 am and we settled in.
On the same day we started playing at 9 am and we lost our first game embarrassingly. We began to regroup but also lost the other games because of people being played out of position. While representing my school at these events I got two injuries on by the shin and the other by the knee. There were a lot of problems on the soccer tour such as age cheating and bad refereeing that went against us because we did not have a coach on that day. Decisions like me being given a yellow card for asking the referee what happened and my teammates also being cautioned and sent off because of “arguing” with the referee, which the referees there described if you asked them a question. Some of the teams we were playing against looked as old as our under 19 boys’ team but we were told to stop complaining and play soccer. Another problem with the referees was they always talked IsiXhosa to people even if you did not understand it and one linesman wanted to hit our captain because he told him to open his eyes because it was an offside but you would find players from the other team swearing at the referees in IsiXhosa and the referees would not do anything about it because they were scared of the teams from the Port Elizabeth area.
The tour was a good pre-season training for the team but when we got back to school they split us into under 15 and under 17 and I am vice captain of the team. I narrowly missed out on being captain he is grade 8 but knows all the grade 8 and 9 soccer players because he was in grade 8 as well last year. It is nice being vice captain because a lot of my team mates say I have greater authority than the captain because I choose the starting eleven and always tell them which warm ups to do.
These past six months I have learnt a lot about life and I had gotten to a certain stage in life where I have learnt new things by talking with my peers and my mother. I now focus more on the academic side because I used to not concentrate in class due to distractions and my state of mind and I have stopped being moody as I was earlier this year where if I felt something wrong I would not talk to anyone that day. But luckily I have passed that stage and am now an independent person and don’t rely on people to do things I can do without them. The soccer tour was also a factor which affected my attitude towards life because I had some of my friends there and I listened to their takes on mine and their lives and I took the things they said about me and tried my best to change the bad.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my mother for all the support she has been providing me, the KMF for believing in me and supporting me to obtain the necessary qualification and lastly the donor that provides me the opportunity to study at such a great school.
Siseko Nama
Grade 9
CBHS
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