Sepedi leleme la geso

I remember being somewhat forced to take Sepedi as a first language when I was in grade 10 when a new law or strong suggestion came to our school encouraging everyone to take their home language as a first language. Change would scare the socks off me, but I know now that it was also my deep desire to keep excelling, maintain the Top10 status, so I was as the front line of the people strongly disagreeing with this. I mean were they crazy?? We were in grade 10, they were planning on shoving grade 1 to grade 9 knowledge  into our heads and I had heard my cousins who did Sepedi complain about how difficult the thing is. 

For me it meant also that I wasn't gonna be a "snob" that all my cousins had labelled me as, I mean over the years I had come to like it. Now me being fluent in my home language in my mind was gonna make me like them, a Sepedi speaking normal black girl in a white school. I tried to fight it at home and my parents were not having it, I was gonna do it. 

Needless to say I had attitude going to that first class, met the teacher who was obviously new to the school, she was such a strong character, scary too but Sepedi was just rolling off her tongue, she made it so desirable but I fought it, I fought the thought that I might possibly like the subject. However being in the competitive state that is high school I desired to be the best in the class even with things I didn't particularly like.

I realise now that I had actually loved Sepedi, I love speaking it now, especially with people who are fluent re bolele le ka diema, direto and the works. It's such a beautiful language and I wanna teach it to my children.