Oh God I'm Sorry!!

By NATHI

Life is a humbling experience, it has to be learned looking backwards
from our past mistakes but to be lived looking forward!! Through it all I
have learned to be grateful to be alive and acknowledged my errors.
My life began in Durban, KwaMashu township. I was born in a very
large family of twelve. That is unthinkable by today’s standards and
I’m still wondering how our parents managed to feed all of us, to
clothe and generally to take care of all of us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984585752

NATHI

NKOSINATHI INNOCENT NXUMALO now lives in his vibrant hometown of KwaMashu township in Durban. He is the sole surviving son of Mr Philemon Nxumalo and is blessed with 4 grownup children, 3 grandkids and a lot of nephews and nieces. Upon his release from incarceration, he had acquired 36 certificates(including 2 diplomas), and is now applying all that information as a Motivational Speaker, a Prison Minister, a Facilitator, an Assistant Chef and an Evangelist.

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Oh God I’m Sorry!!

NATHI

Copyright © 2020 by Nathi.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 06/24/2020

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Life is a h

umbling experience. It has to be learned looking backward from our past mistakes but to be lived looking forward! Through it, I have learned to be grateful to be alive and acknowledged my errors.

My life began in Durban, KwaMashu Township. I was born in a very large family of twelve. That is unthinkable by today’s standards, and I’m still wondering how our parents managed to feed all of us, clothe us, and generally take care of all of us.

In such a large family, there is bound to be fierce competition and squabbles. I was number eight (8), which meant seven (7) older siblings to look up to, brothers and sisters of course. One of my older brothers, Sipho Nxumalo (second in the family), was my mentor and role model. He took care of me in many ways and protected me in the volatile township until his untimely death in 1986.

I also had another brother, Thulani Sixtus Nxumalo, who was number six (6). He set the bar for all who followed him. He was brilliant, excelled at school, and was the first in the family to go past the standard six on to matriculation and into tertiary institution and graduate. It seemed like Distinctions was his middle name! From the beginning, there was that mistake to automatically compare ourselves with Mr. Distinction, which led to a lot of unnecessary pressure, expectations, and large disappointments.

My parents were God-fearing Christians, and they instilled in us the importance of reading the Bible and praying together as a family, which amazingly materialized years later now in my Christian lifestyle.

I started school at four (4) years old. In those days, it was unheard of, but my mother managed to set that up! By law, children were to begin schooling at seven (7) or eight (8), so you can imagine a four-year old going on to pass as number 1 during tests and later at the end of the year!

My late schoolteacher used to hide me by just taking me out through the window and wait there whenever the school inspectors were visiting! This situation went on until standard 3 (grade 5) when I had to start at higher primary school. There I was caught, and it became a very big issue because the law had been broken. The authorities were lenient and stuck by the fact that they could not make me start all over again as my age dictated, so I was allowed to continue but at a heavy price! I continued to excel at school, trying to emulate my brother Thulani, and ended up attracting older classmates of both sex as my friends because they realized that I could help them with homework while they protected and gave me prestige in return. So from as early as I could remember, my friends were always older than me, which robbed me of enjoying normal childhood because I was way ahead of other children my age in almost everything!

On the other hand, our mother, Mrs. Maria Nxumalo, was a self-styled entrepreneur. She was knitting mechanically and selling jerseys and could also purchase and sell a lot of other stuff on the market. That led me to familiarize myself with these knitting machines at an early age. By the time I was eight years old. I could teach any grown-up person how to operate an Empisal or Passap machines manually. I did all this because brother number six (6) was doing it, so I craved that appreciation as well.

Every day after school, if I was not with my friends, I went straight home to knit jerseys, so that way, I became very close to my mother. I never had a time for childhood games like other children my age when they were experimenting with everything teenagers do like alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and sex. I was eleven (11) years old when I tasted failure for the first time in my life. I failed dismally, and I had to repeat the class because I was busy with the wrong stuff. It was also the time I had a girlfriend, a serious one by those childhood standards.

My father, Mr. Philemon Nxumalo, a preacher, a very dignified man of God, and a disciplinarian, did his best to beat the delinquency out of me, but it was too late because as they say, Once you’ve tasted it, there is no persuasion under the sun that can stop you if you want to learn more. I was now into the movies, sex, and alcohol.

Both my parents had taught me very early in my life that I had to earn my way. So in the neighborhood, there were fashion trends. If I asked for jeans, a pair of sneakers or shoes, or even some spare change, there was an unwritten agreement that I should work for it or contribute with my quota of jerseys or hats, depending on what was on demand at that particular time. My mother also taught me how to sell anything to anyone at any time. She was also an expert in collecting secondhand or throwaway clothes from the white affluent suburbs, which some supplemented to our welfare and even helped neighbors.

At the age of fifteen, I was in standard 8 (grade 10), and I was completely under the bad influences. One day, I was almost killed by taxi owners because we had stolen a car radio at a taxi rank. My friend was caught, and he was severely beaten up, so much that my mother decided there and then to send me away from KwaMashu to live with Mr. Distinction to complete my secondary education at Pietermaritzburg. That was the last time I was under parental guardianship at the age of fifteen.

Now living in Pietermaritzburg was quite a revelation. I had a brother who was studying medical technology and doing practicals at Edendale Hospital. That gave me a great influence in mature perceptions and heavy drinking as well as my appreciation for jazz, blues, and fusion music. Whenever he was to meet his friends for a jazz session, I used to tag along and pretended as if I were older, employed, and very wise as well.

This went on for a year while I was doing standard 9 (grade 11) where I passed and asked my mother to let me stay at the boarding school so as to fully concentrate on my matriculation. Although it was hard financially, she concurred.

Prior to my admission at Georgetown High School as a boarding student, I had a nasty but blessed experience. My brother Thulani met a new girlfriend, who later turned into his wife and later divorced. That woman turned things around. She instilled discipline to both of us. She was a teacher by profession. Anyway, she or both of them started not to give me food. I would come back from school and smell cooked meat at the flat but nothing inside the washed pots. Eventually, I learned to fend for myself by collecting cold drink and empty beer bottles to sell at the bottle store so I could buy a twenty-cent buttered quarter loaf of white bread for myself. Even now, I have bad memories of how helpless and powerless I was at that time.

As a boarder, I met all kinds of students with various personalities. Some were sent there because their parents were busy in business and needed a place to take care of their kids, while others went there because they were uncontrollable and so on. So one really learned all kinds of naughty and sometimes dangerous stuff there.

At the boarding school, I