Second Chance- A novella

Abstract

Kasudi re-lives the most damning pronouncement she ever heard from her father: "You missed the university by one point of the cut off mark to the public universities. You will never see the inside of one." She had known what he meant. She was the first born in a large family that was hard on resources and therefore being taken to the university under the expensive Privately Sponsored Student Program, was out of the question for her. She had to contend with joining a Teacher's Training College. Her father had had the highest hope for her and she knew he was greatly aggrieved. He did not stop to think of what she had gone through in her acquisition of basic knowledge. Nobody asked her and so according to her, nobody cared. That was years ago. She sits in her office as she plans a lesson. She has had the chance to go to the university again, and again, amid challenges of her search for identity, poverty, myths and misconceptions, financial constraints, rape, anger, obsession and disease among other issues. Her best friend, Chemtai, has been there to help her every step of the way. She listened to her, visited her in hospital, took notes for her when she was sitting two academic year examinations for she had been denied them when they were offered because she had not cleared fees, and encouraged her when her father had suddenly fallen ill in their final year in undergraduate and his subsequent demise two weeks to her graduation. It is a story of a girl who views society as one that waits to pounce on her at every given opportunity. That society has undergone a great metamorphosis from the time she was growing up.