If you’ve ever been told you ‘can’t do’ something you’re passionate about because society deems you ‘too old’, then you might want to take a little inspiration from a South African mother who saved her money as a domestic worker to return to high school and redo her matric certificate in strides toward her dream of becoming a nurse.
Many people informed Slindile Cele that she couldn’t do it, or shouldn’t. According to Slindile, some of her own family didn’t exactly jump on the bandwagon of going back to high school. She was in her 30s after all, how could she possibly put on a school uniform and attend classes where some of the teachers were younger than she was?
That was when she decided to leave her uncle’s home, and laid the brave bricks of a determined dream, starting humbly by enrolling in grade 11 in 2020, her last passed grade back in the early 2000s.
She paid for her own fees, uniform and rent. Despite falling pregnant, Slindile knew that she had to keep going.
“I decided to hide my pregnancy because there was no turning back,” she said to Daily Sun. In late 2020, she had two futures at stake as the father was not supportive.
Supporting her child and herself meant that sometimes Slindile would go to sleep without food. The school later stepped in to get her meals to take home.
When her matric year started in 2021, she took her little one to creche before she herself would spend a day with young people.
Life at school wasn’t always easy. She knew the kids at Mzingezwi High in KwaZulu-Natal laughed at her as she sat wearing a uniform at almost double their age. Despite being older than some of her teachers, she told herself:
“I must respect them and focus on my goal.”
And so she did, completing with a bachelor’s pass at the age of 31, making the younger version of her, who failed matric in 2006, proud.
South Africans who caught word of her story on Twitter have praised her resilience, with one person expressing the powerful words of their former principal:
“One can never be late for education.”
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Picture: Twitter