Children of the Flats

While living in South Africa, I taught at a High School in Mitchell's Plain, known to be one of the poorest, most violent parts of South Africa. Situated on the Cape Flats, close to Cape Town, it is supposed to be a beautiful, picturesque part of one of the most beautiful countries in the world. But do not let the beauty of the Atlantic Ocean and Table Mountain fool you. If the land could tell its story, it would be of blood, violence, drugs, gang wars and utter poverty.But among all of this, live a people who have known hardship and have had their humanity formed by it. They are known as the Colored Community of South Africa and have always been the race left behind. During the years of Apartheid, they were not seen as white enough to have the privileges bestowed on white South Africans. Once Apartheid came to a fall, they were too light-skinned to share in the privileges of Black Empowerment.Hardship like this gives you one of two choices in life: you either grow to be a good, strong human being who can survive whatever life throws at you, or you become rotten to the core. Whichever side of this fence you end up on, is up to you. You can decide to take the hand that you have been dealt and make life a game of retribution or you can choose to take it and use them as life lessons to become the best you can be and change the history of those who come after you. The characters in these stories all had to make this choice at one point or another. It is left to the reader to decide whether they choice they made was the right one.Although I wrote is mainly as a work of fiction, every one of the short stories in this book was inspired by and based on a true event. I changed some of the detail to protect the identities of those involved. However, I did not want to sugarcoat it, so the main events, I wrote exactly the way it happened. Since I was a teacher in Mitchell's Plain, the main characters in most of these stories are children. However, some of my colleagues also played a big role in my life during my time as a teacher, so in a few cases I also tried to relate their experiences, as well as my own, as well as I could.