I hope you will understand my tale.
Because you must have to.
Nobody before me in my clan has been a teacher. But I love to be one and that has been my ambition from that day I first set my foot in a classroom. I loved my first teacher. She was like my mother. She was more.
No, not every teacher was cute and loving like her but she was my first contact and a good face of that profession. What didn’t she do for me? What couldn’t she do? She once helped to clean my bum after I spilled in class. She was class act.
Very painstakingly, she had coached me through Arithmetic and English. My primary school was home from home. Everyone of them in that school was like that. Oh, I would love to be a teacher.
Fast forward…
Mrs. Victoria James was my class teacher in JSS 1. We were so close she was first to discover I was menstrating. She gave me my first pack of sanitary pads. I was more of her first daughter than her student.
O, I cannot dream beyond becoming a teacher.
I wanted to be able to love, influence and mentor my future students. I wanted to help create a generation that was well trained. I wanted to be like my teachers.
I am so desperate to be a teacher.
How would my siblings not behave well. No, not when I am the one training them. I am a teacher kua!
I had carried this dream for two decades of my short life. I have carried it everywhere. Everyday.
So, on that blessed day when I was given my letter of admission as a bonafide student of the great Shehu Shagari College of Education my joy knew no bounds. Finally, I was on the path to achieve my lifelong ambition! Aren’t I lucky?
My classmates became my friends and family. We were bound together with the love of our chosen profession. Noble profession.
The profession that shapes, moulds and creates.
Soon enough, the Nigeria society will depend on us to produce it’s next generation of doctors, lawyers, academics, politicians and even future teachers. I can’t wait!
What responsibility. What calling!
Everyday on campus brought me closer to my destiny…Or to destiny?
……………………………….
And now today…
I couldn’t ever have imagined Usman can slap me! No, this is not happening.
Yes, I had protested on our class platform yesterday that they should stop posting ‘rubbish religious stuffs’. But I had meant both Christians and Moslems.
I had not insulted anybody. I couldn’t possibly have spoken a word against the person of the Holy Prophet Muhammad SAW.
No, I was not trained like that.
I am sure this is just a misunderstanding. Friends disagree. Don’t they?
Wait. Is Usman calling a mob on me. Impossible! Is it me they are attacking with stones and sticks. My friends? No, this is not happening!
How would my friends and colleagues set me ablaze. As in kill me. No, not teachers. My fellow teachers!
What would they tell future Nigerians whose future are entrusted to them?
No! Teachers are no killers!
What would they tell my mum happened to me? My mum, their ‘friend’.
Could that be Idris coming with disused vehicle tires. Someone is fetching petrol. To burn my already wrecked body?!
Now, I am getting tired.
Or am I dying? Is this how people die? Are my friends killing me. My colleagues. My classmates?
Future teachers of Nigeria?
I laugh.
See my smile.
I just stopped crying. I stopped fretting. I stopped feeling the pains. The agony. The disappointment.
It is happening for real. My colleague teachers are killing me!
Now the angels are beckoning. My time here is over.
So very painful I will not be a teacher after all.
Oh, how I wish.
(Dedicated to a martyr. Deborah).
*Kayode Adejumo-Bello,*
Professional Biographer and Creative Writer.
Member, Biographers International Organisation
