Zainab Boladale is a journalist, television presenter and public speaker. Born in Nigeria and raised in Ireland, in 2017 she made her TV debut on RTÉ's children’s programme, news2day, as the first Afro-Irish woman on Irish TV news, presenting stories from around the world to the young people of Ireland.
Zainab now travels around the country as a presenter and reporter for Ireland's long-running factual feature programme, Nationwide.
Read on for an extract from Zainab Boladale's debut YA novel, Braids Take A Day.
Farewell, St. Enda's
The pages in front of me were covered in all the history notes I had crammed into my brain over the past few weeks. This was my final exam, and in these last two hours I’d been gripping my pen so tightly that my fingers felt stiff, and my wrist ached. I stretched both hands over my table to give them a sense of relief.
This classroom, which our sixth-year teachers normally used to gather us for attendance and uniform checks, was far emptier than it had been in our English Paper One exam, last Wednesday. I quietly did a head count; there were thirteen of us in total. Eight students were still writing.
The Callaghan brothers were both bent over their desks, scribbling away like their lives depended on answering each question. Just that morning they’d been boasting about how little they needed to study since they had gotten H1s in their mock exams months before, but now from the redness and sweat on their faces, I wondered if they might have underestimated how different the 'real’ exam questions could be.
The whole room felt tense, you could almost touch the stress in the air. Marie-Clare, the girl I shared the most classes with, had also finished with her exam paper. She had her pages neatly piled on top of each other and her pens and pencils lined up across the table.
Marie-Clare was one of those people who soaked every bit of information in like she was a sponge. I liked that she was always so excited to help others; it didn’t come as a surprise when she told me during Maths class one day that she wanted to be a teacher. She was the class prefect, and had won a ‘Best Student’ award last year, so it seemed fitting.
The two students beside her, Dara and Josephine, looked anxious, as though they weren’t sure if anything they had written was correct. Their eyes kept darting from the wall clock at the top of the room to the pages they were flipping through.
I could see the back of Sinéad’s head, her straight black hair in a low bun. She was sitting sideways, her elbow on the table and her face pressed into the palm of her hand. She seemed tired and fed up, and honestly, I wasn’t far off feeling the same.
The woman in charge of supervising our exam looked just as tired as I felt. I wondered how much she would get paid for making sure we didn’t cheat. To me, her job seemed simple enough. I glanced up at the clock behind her, our eyes met and as if she could read my mind, she too turned around to look.
‘You can now stop writing,’ she announced. ‘Organise your answer sheets and remain in your seats until I’ve collected them all!’
This was the moment I had been waiting for.
A collective sigh of relief filled the room. I sank back into my chair, finally able to let go of the mountain of tension that had been building up all week. There is only so much studying and preparation a girl can do, but finally, this was it. The end of my last exam and hopefully nothing would stress me out this much for the rest of the summer.
It felt strange that my time at secondary school was finally over. I didn’t hate St Enda’s, but the thought of no longer rushing down these locker-lined corridors to reach my 9am classes filled me with joy.
With around a hundred and eighty students in total, it’s a small school: you’ve got the farm kids, the townies and the blow-ins. Even if we don’t all talk to each other, we all know – or at least recognise – each other. While that sometimes has its perks, it also means there’s no escaping the watchful eye of the teachers and the daily rumour mills.
‘Are you well!’ Sinéad screamed as soon as she spotted me amongst the crowd of maroon uniformed students walking out of our red-brick school building.
Sixth-year students were now pouring out of the school’s heavy wooden doors and forming their friend circles. Some had come from history, like me. Others had sat their French exam earlier in the day. I tried to read their faces; some were happy and others looked worried about what they’d just left behind on those once blank pages.
I was finished! Others, like Marie-Clare and the Callaghan brothers, still had to sit Technology and Religious Education next week. They were heading in the direction of the school library, a separate building just beside the main one. Unfortunately for them, their misery wasn’t over yet. I waved at Marie-Clare as though I was sending some comfort her way and she waved back.
The school car park was just as busy with many anxious parents waiting. I skipped toward my best friend, holding my arms out to give her a big hug. ‘Sinéad, I can’t believe we’re really done,’ I said, smiling, ‘we’re actually free.’
I started to tell her about the history questions I found easy and the ones that surprised me.
‘Abi, the LAST thing I want to talk about is this nightmare we’ve had to go through,’ Sinéad said scoldingly mid-embrace. She hated that I cared so much about these exams and in turn, I wished she cared more. I knew it didn’t determine our entire lives, but I still wanted to look back and be proud of how I did in school, even if no one ever asks about it.
‘Let’s focus on the important things,’ said Sinéad, shaking me as though it would help her words sink in better. ‘We’re about to have the very BEST summer of our lives!’
Braids Take a Day by Zainab Boladale is published by OBrien Press on 26 August 2024.
