It has been an interesting few weeks. Kwezi and I were on holiday for three weeks and not only did we move into our new home, we also had enough time to deepen our bond even more. As you may know of this mother-daughter relationship by now, ‘deepening of the bond’ was not short of some tears and drama but I am happy to report that it was also mostly fun. However, like they say, ‘the honeymoon is over’. Kwezi is back at school and I am back at work. One thing that we can both agree on is that we were ready to go back to our daily routines. While mine is the usual; wake up, shower, go to office and return in the evening to go to bed, only to repeat the same for five days every week, Kwezi’s routine has changed. She is in her second term and school is still, not surprisingly, exciting for her. I sometimes wonder if it’s because school is still an all so fresh adventure or whether it’s because when everything has been said and done, nursery school can be summed up as an expensive interaction and play venture. Well, there is also another aspect. Kwezi has always been fascinated by buses. I think it can all be attributed to the fact there seems to be a bus in practically almost every cartoon movie I have seen. Since we moved to a busier neighbourhood, where our house is next to a very busy road, the love for buses has even become more pronounced because she can, to my surprise, now tell that a bus just passed just from hearing the sound it makes. So how does the bus story tie all in? Well, the whole of last term, Kwezi was going to and from school in the comfort of a privately owned car. Before you ask, no, it wasn’t mine and no, it wasn’t hired. My former housemate was generously dropping both his daughter and mine to and from school. This term, I had to introduce her to the bus and it was like a dream come true. She comes home singing on top of her voice because I heard that that’s what happens on the bus. All the stories are bus-related. Soon, I will even hear how the beans that we are eating look like a bus. The downside is that for a girl who was starting to prepare for school at about 6.30am, she has to wake up an hour earlier. She also used to get home at 1.00pm but since there is no bus during the lunch hour, she spends the whole day at school and comes home at hours as ungodly as sometimes 6pm. Interestingly, none of this seems to matter to her. In an hour, she has eaten and in another she is asleep. Waking her up is not hard because the mention of the word ‘bus’ has her all excited and ready to start her day. If I was worried that this would be hard, I was wrong. The school bus has saved me the headache and my girl is flowing with the flow. What a relief!
