THE FIRST CLASS

The morning of a new day is the sign that God isn't done with you yet and so he has given you another chance to progress towards his plan for you. It was simply God's way of saying:

"I am not done with you yet, so here's another chance for you to get up and try to make this right."

However, in my case, I felt as though, I was finished.

Imagine being woken up by a scream that rocks the entire cabin and causes yourself, your brother and everybody in all nearby cabins to be rudely awakened from sleep.

So, you hear this scream and you instantly enter high alert. This forces you and your brother to rush out of your rooms in high alert because you fear there is an attacker or that harm has come to someone in the cabin. All of that, just because someone couldn't get a signal on her phone.

I literally walked into the living room to see her marching to and fro, just screaming and fuming at her phone.

I don't know why, but for some reason I had to ask why she was throwing a tantrum.

"Hey what's going on? Why are you screaming?"

"I have been up since 4 in the morning….." she started after what seemed to be a false attempt to calm down.

"..I pick up my phone, and I head outside to the living room and turn it on to start my morning yoga…."

"Okay" I said trying to make sense of what she was saying.

"…yh, then I realized that I had no signal and I was like so frustrated and angry at the same time!" she said as she let out another low key scream.

I paused for a moment to take a look at my brother and see his reaction. He was really pissed to say the least.

I guess he was just as frustrated as I was, because why would she be looking for a signal in the Plains of Africa? And in fact, shouldn't you have expect this the moment you got here?

it's not like you expected Simba to have an iPhone x and an Instagram handle, so the animals would have to build a network tower just for the king of the jungle. So why the heck would you be disturbing the peace of those in the surrounding area just because of a signal?

"OMG, how is this even possible?" she asked as she continued pacing to and fro.

My brother who had a belt in his hand as though we were in danger, rested it against the wall and turned back to the room.

"I can't live like this" he grumbled as he dragged his heavy feet and eyes to the room to finish his slumber.

I agreed with him though. I couldn't continue like that either and I wouldn't like Jay-Jay to be sharing living space with Eva if she was going to throw a tantrum at any moment.

She was basically a ticking time bomb.

"hey, beauty queen" Danny called out to her as he reached the door.

"What?" she barked back at him with a kind of transferred aggression of her frustration.

"go to bed, even if the signal wanted to come.....it would have run off scared out of its mind with the way you are acting up."

He finished his statement and he shut the door behind him with force to send the message. She looked at the phone before looking at me.

"What?" she asked with her shoulders raised before marching into her room.

Once again, I was now very sure that this would be a trip that I wouldn't forget...….though not in the best of ways.

The mini village came to life as Mr Moore drove through in a safari jeep that had speakers on them. He used the speakers to act as a kind of wake-up call to everyone in their cottages.

"Rise and shine knuckleheads and geniuses, today is your first day of class so get out of bed!" he shouted as Curry continued to press the horn of the jeep as he drove

All of this was just 12 minutes after the whole Eva issue and my eyes were killing me.

I sat up on my bed and looked at the ceiling for a bit, calibrating and prepping my mind.

"hey....boy" I called out to my brother who was on the lower bunk bed.

"what's up" he answered with a voice that sounded like he was in slow motion.

"Are you awake?" I asked with a little giggle in my voice.

"do you want me to answer the way people want to hear it or do want me to answer honestly?"

"honestly please!"

"Well….." he started without even getting off his back or changing position.

"physically.... yeah...but you see mentally?....that's a story for another day," he said before slowly sitting up.

"knock knock," said Jay Jay as she knocked on the door of our quarters.

"how was your night?" she asked

"a long story," Danny said as he got off the bed to start his routine stretches.

"Wow, sounds rough, what happened?" she asked.

Was she kidding me right now? There is no way that she couldn't have heard the scream of Eva the banshee when she was throwing her fit.

I could tell from his facial expression that Danny was even more surprised about this question than I was, or perhaps he only looked more confused but wasn't.

"do you mean to tell me that you didn't hear Eva screaming at the top of her lungs just because she couldn't get a signal?" Danny asked as he stopped halfway in a stretch.

"wait....Eva was screaming because of a signal?" Jay Jay asked with utter disbelief while I was utterly shocked that she didn't know about it.

'we should talk about this when you guys are done" she said as she seemed to turn around and leave the door.

"I'll go cook us something to eat," she said from a distance.

Knowing that food was on the way, I and my brother took a bath and began our regular cleaning and workout routine.

Now, I am going, to be honest with you, I do not look like a nerd at all when I take my shirt off. I even look more ripped than a good number of people on the football team.

The only cause for doubt is that I don't like to show it off and I have very bad taste in fashion and I am not energetic when it comes to sports and stuff like that. That's the only actual reason why I fit more into the nerd category than the average guy category but I and my brother know the truth.

"alright let's just stay casually dressed till when we have to move out" Danny suggested

I was excited out of my mind to try on the clothes and equipment that we had gotten from the store. It almost felt like we should just head out at once into the Savannah so we can make use of all the stuff we had gotten ourselves.

However, based on the smell that was emanating from the kitchen this wasn't the time for that yet. It was time to eat.

"come and get it while it is hot" Jay-Jay shouted as she came out of the kitchen with the steaming plates of vanilla-flavored custard with evaporated milk.

"yum yum yum," Danny said as he jumped over the seat to get the bowls from Jay Jay. He then passed one to me and we all sat at the table to have our breakfast.

"I didn't take you for a cook, nicely done jasmine!" I said after taking a spoon.

"Mercí" she replied with a low bow.

"I learnt from the best I guess"

"I didn't teach you nothin so who's this best you are talking about learning from?" Danny said as he looked up from his bowl of custard.

"My mum silly" she said as she laughed.

"hold up," Danny said

"Where is Eva?" he asked.

"Trust me....you don't want to know?" Jay Jay said as she looked towards the female quarters and turn her gaze back to her meal.

It was only after this that we suddenly started to notice that there was music playing in the female quarters. Danny stood up from his seat and approached the door carefully.

He was more or less crab walking towards the door, like a soldier from call of duty ghost. It took a while, but he eventually reached the door and reached out for the handle of the door.

He paused a bit to look at us for some kind of reassurance or maybe it was just a weird way of saying "this is it guys, wish me luck".

He opened the door, all at once and saw Eva in her yoga pants dancing to Dua lipa's "don't start now". He seemed to be a bit mesmerized by it though so I had to come to take a look for myself, Jay Jay didn't move an inch.

The sight was astonishing...….and not in a good way. This girl was a terrible dancer. Her movement was out of sync and she was so offbeat, but I guess the worst part was that she looked confident about it and didn't even know we were at the door.

"go...go, go, go," my bro said as softly as he could as he tapped my chest to get me out of my entranced state and we both backed up from the door and closed it quickly.

We got back to the table and had our custard with evaporated milk.... QUIETLY without saying a word.

The silence was pretty awkward and funny enough Jay wasn't surprised. I guess she decided to fake a curiosity that was absent at first when we had gone to have a peek. I guess she wanted to spite us.

"so…. what did you see?" Jay Jay asked with the fake curiosity all over her face.

"What we saw can not be put into actual words," my brother said as he grabbed and gathered the bowls. We reached the kitchen and began washing the dishes once we were done eating.

Eva came out while we were eating looking like she just got back from a date with the sun, she was very sweaty to say the least.

By the time Jasmine exercised courtesy and asked her if she would care for, what we were having and saw the custard, she just turned back to her normally disgusted face and said she wouldn't be having any of it before leaving.

"but you know…." my brother started as he was seemingly admiring a fork that he saw on the sink.

"she looks like she could learn how to dance if she is properly trained"

"I agree with you," I said taking the fork from him and keeping it.

'but the question is who would be brave enough to teach her and who will she be willing to listen to?"

" a million-dollar question," Danny remarked as we all laughed over it and headed back for the living room to get our bags.

Mr Moore had asked us to have our breakfast and to come out to meet him at exactly 10 o clock so that we could have our first class.

It's funny to think that the thrill of leaving the continent to come to my source made me forget that the main thing was to have a practical geography class and not for tourism or relaxation though I didn't doubt that Mr. Moore would make it a fun experience nonetheless.

We got out of the cabin to see the others who were already with Mr Moore in prep for the class, this consisted mainly of the nerds in the school.

We joined them and awaited the arrival of the rest of the students. At exactly 10 o clock, Mr Moore turned on the speakers.

"for those of you who are still in the cabins...." he started

"good luck finding us in the Savannah," he said and turned off the speakers.

We had a few safari buses parked in front of us but they had no drivers. I assumed that they were probably according to the cabins just like the last time.

However, I started to think this wasn't the case when Mr Moore laced his shoes and brought out his bag from the trunk to put it on. If we were taking the buses shouldn't he leave them there.

"wait for us, you guys," shouted some feminine voices.

As you may have guessed, it belonged to the HOTTIES. Seeing them I finally understood the reason why Eva stayed back even though I was sure that she was ready for the class.

She probably just wanted to be sure that they all came at the same time.

As always.

"pissiara," Danny said with a kind of visible disgust.

"can someone tell me why the heck Wendy and the girls are wearing purple into the Savannah?" he asked

"or why they are even on heeled boots when we are going to the plains of Africa?"

These guys are nothing but confused and based on the new movements that I saw Mr Moore carry out, as well as the somewhat sinister smile that he had on his face when he saw the girls in full makeup and heels. I just knew that this man had something in mind for them.

"wow Wendy and friends are looking so pretty today," Mason said in fake admiration. His remark was met with laughter and jest from his crew.

Wendy, of course being Wendy paused with the rest of her entourage, lowered her shades to take a long look at them and gave off what seemed to be a chuckle.

"why thanks" Wendy answered as she completely soaked it in before walking past him as though he wasn't there.

"Though you should work on that breath of yours" she commented as she continued with her entourage laughing at her back.

As expected, that didn't sit well with Mason at all. The lad looked like he was forced to take a poop sandwich.

He was literally boiling with anger which was actually kind of expected based on the history that they once had together.

I'm going to guess that you want to know the history that that I am talking about. You probably want to know the reason why they don't seem to see eye to eye. Don't worry, I am going to explain it to you in a bit.

Firstly, who is Wendy miller? She is the daughter of some rich family that I have zero interest in knowing or meeting either. However, because of the family that she comes from she feels above the world. I am told that her parents were involved in a car crash and so they left all their fortune to her while putting her under the care of her uncle and aunt.

Side bonus, she is also the leader of the HOTTIES.

I'm not going to lie though, she is actually pretty, but only physically. She is horrid in any other aspect of life. She is a very bad person when it comes to making and maintaining friends and being smart, but who am I to judge?

Now that you have the background knowledge of Wendy Miller, let's connect that to Mason.

Mason is also the son of a rich footballer, hence his love and pursuit of football as a career. His way of life was to oppress those who happen to be less fortunate and his dad's wealth is something that he has always loved to brag about. I guess it was all good until when he tried to use this money to win over Wendy as his girlfriend last summer after he had won the college soccer league cup.

The simple fact is that you can't have a long-lasting relationship employing money flirting .....also, Wendy's family is way richer than Mason could picture and Wendy knew it and didn't miss the opportunity to make the point clear to him.

That's it.

"Welcome students, I am your able tour guide, teacher, instructor and principal, Mr Moore and today we will start with our practical classes," he said as he took a bow during the introduction.

"so let's get this class started," he said as he turned around to start in the direction of our unknown destination through an even more unfamiliar landscape.