Do you want to pass your exams easily? There are many ways to do so apparently but nothing beats studying hard as the alternative means could land you in hot soup, says CLARA KINTAMBWE.

THIS IS a story of what happened to me not so long ago. In my final grade 12 exams I did not do well in one subject-mathematics, but I knew why I failed. I was very poor at the subject. I was ashamed to rewrite as I did not want people to think I was a failure.
But when I completed my college, I saw that wherever I applied for employment a pass in mathematics is always a must for one to be considered. A time came when I wanted to upgrade my qualifications, so I decided to rewrite maths and this time I was determined to make it.
So I enquired from people who had passed how they managed; I was told it was only through hard work. But then I did not want to hear that I was lazy and did not just like math because this had not always been the case. I was not this poor in previous grades, but just getting into grade 10 I lost interest.
There had to be another way I thought, in my search for a solution. Then I met people who told me what I wanted to hear, ‘’you can use leakage,’’ (leaked exam papers before the exam). This advice sounded like the panacea to my problem which I thought hopeless at the time. “Just prepare enough money’’ they advised and, since I was working, this was not a problem.
Even though I started going for tuitions as this was mandatory from the GCE Center I registered to write my exam from, I never paid much attention to studying as I knew that I would just prepare money and success would be mine.
In all my educational life I had never used leakage before, this was to be my first time, so I did not know much about how to go about it, but there are some people I knew who knew “suppliers”(reliable ones so they told me).
A few days to the exam my friend who knew the supplier contacted me to inform me that the supplier said things did not look good meaning they were finding it hard to get the exam papers but was told not to worry. Everything would be okay and I took their word for it since they reportedly had the “good” reputation of being “very reliable” in the eyes of the people they had helped before.
A day before the exam there was nothing still, but I was told not to sleep as leakages usually come out around midnight, but midnight came and went but there was no sign of the “leakage.”  Morning came but still without any progress.
So I decided to go and write the exam without the illegal aid and, as you might expect, I failed again, the second time. The first was when I was in grade 12. My laziness and dependence on the illusive leakage hurt more than the first time I failed. Anyone one who has tasted failure before knows what am talking about.
A few years later I decided to enter for GCE again and this time I promised to give it my all as I knew where my problem was. I started going for tuitions and going through past papers and solving at least one sum a day, I developed an interest in maths.
In class where I was not clear I would ask some of my friends; even after this change they still viewed me as the same person (helpless at math, leakage was the only solution). One day the “leakage” friend came to me again and promised to find me real suppliers this time around. But as the saying goes once bitten twice shy, I did not bank on this leakage. What if this year I accessed the original leakage and I failed again?
Exams came and I got a few days off from work and went to my aunt’s place who was also writing. She told me that in her neighbourhood lived one of the suppliers and this one, according to those who knew him, always supplied no matter how impossible it seemed. He always had the original exam paper.
I had promised myself not to look for a leakage and did my best to study. I was surprised by how much progress I had made and I felt ready to write, so when my aunt told me to go and see this supplier a day before the exam, I was not too keen to go. The thought of me getting a distinction, however, if he indeed had the original, motivated me to follow. We left home around 16:00 hours.
When we reached the suppliers’ house, we were told by those we found outside that he was not around. He was a well-known and reliable supplier, going by the number of people we found milling around waiting for him.
But there was a twist to this scene. Not all had come for leakages. Some had travelled long distances I later learnt, to demand for refunds as the leakage he had supplied them in previous subjects were fake and they had paid him a lot of money!
The supplier was called to find out where he was and he said he was on his way coming back from Lusaka where he had gone to collect the papers. After waiting for some hours he was called again and this time he said he was in town and on his way home. But he was nowhere to be seen for another long spell. Those who had paid huge sums of money grew impatient and demanded that he comes at once and, fortunately, he emerged and addressed us. He told us to wait until midnight when the papers would be leaked.
As we were waiting people started contacting other sources they knew and the leakage started flowing in. For my part, not to be outdone, I made some contacts and we started comparing as the leakage came in, in no time we had six different leakages!
I was confused and by now it was about midnight, only a few hours to the next day-the exam day. Which one among the six papers do I copy? While I was debating this, we received a call that we needed to go back to the suppliers’ house as we had left briefly.
When we reached the house the group had grown from what we left. The supplier brought a paper written in hand and said that, that was the original leakage and he claimed that he had gone through a lot of trouble to get it.
We copied and started off for home about 01:00 hours and now I had seven leakages. Which one do I pick? We arrived back home around 02:00 hours and I had the mammoth task of memorizing seven leaked papers as one of those papers was the one we were going to write but which one was it? Around 03:00 hours my body gave up and I dosed off, against my will as having tasted failure before I did not want to repeat it.
I woke up at 06:00 hours, much to my disappointment as I had only two hours to go in which to cram all the papers into my head. We were in the exam room now and when given the question papers, I couldn’t wait to see which paper had turned up!
To my greatest horror, none of the seven papers came and history was about to repeat itself in my life! Due the many movements I made the previous day, even the little knowledge I memorized had disappeared!
Anyway, this was just paper one, I told myself, I have the chance to redeem myself in paper two. Turning to my fellow accomplices in crime, I could tell by the look on their faces that they were not faring any better.
When the exam finished, I went straight home and used the little time I had left to revise even when the temptation was high to go and search for a leakage again.  I did not go and so in the evening I even had enough time to rest.
When the results were out, I managed to redeem myself although my pass mark was below my expectation, but it was enough to upgrade myself in my career. If I had not disturbed myself in search of a leakage I would have done better.
I have shared this story during this time when GCE exams are near to help someone out there who thinks they can pass using leakages or someone writing for them. Nowadays, teachers are scared as they know the consequences of leakages and they cannot risk their jobs.
Those greedy teachers who love money will cheat you and because you are also desperate you will just lose your money. and you cannot take them anywhere. Success in education as elsewhere requires hard work. The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary.
God gave us all brains its just a matter of putting in effort. Those who knew me could not believe that I had passed without using any leakage but when they saw how I was solving sums all they could say is that miracles still happen.
Please do not depend on leakages; just study hard nothing and you will find that nothing impossible we are all intelligent it’s just the speed at how we grasp things that differs. For some it takes one explanation and no practice, others twice and so on and so forth. but we can all do it.

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