Memories Of A Young Man As A Teacher (34)

In case you missed the previous episode. Read here

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I got two queries on my desk the day after the Christmas Party. The first one was aiding and abetting a demonic dance move. The second one was for holding jollof rice hostage (I still have this one on my desk as I write this and it never ceased to crack my ribs into many pieces).

Everyone was sympathetic to me for query number one because there was no how, they believed, I could tell how bad the dance would be executed/received – a dance whose idea I didn’t conceive, a dance which rehearsals I didn’t coach.

But for holding jollof rice hostage, everyone was asking for my head. Even Mrs. Anozie wasn’t by my side. I would grapple with this alone.

So I sat at my desk, weighing my options. I did what I did for my class, boys and girls I loved and cared for, all of whom paid the 1000 naira for the party, the only class with 100% payment. The least you could do was give them jollof rice whether or not they brought cooler or not.

I had the mind to just stand up and leave and never return.

I was a hero and heroes don’t quit. If I quit, what would be my excuse, that I left because of jollof rice? Not for the benefit of my belly, I can quickly add but what good would it do? Even Bismarck will not understand.

If I had headbutted MC Somebody who was actually a Nobody and broken his insipid nose, or if I had floored him on the dust pressing his potbelly on the sand and filling his lungs with dust, or if I had removed his leg and beat him on the head with his shinbone, then I leave afterward, it would be worth it. Bismarck would have been proud of me.

Something told me to take this battle to the kids and like Mark Anthony stir them to revolt. But I dismissed that immediately. I wouldn’t ask kids to fight for me. I wouldn’t bring bazookas to a knife fight.

An actor leaves the stage, they say, when the ovation is loudest. Not when the ovation is about jollof – who got and who didn’t, who brought cooler and who didn’t. I was the actor, better than the proverbial actor even. I was a legend. And a legend is not a food nutritionist.

I am a man of letters. I would never run at the sight of words. That would be my Literature degree in the mud. Moreso, I was no rebellious staffer. I would lose my right to demand obedience if I made nonsense of any form of authority. The kids may never know but I would know and it would diminish me.

I decided to answer the queries. For the girls dancing a “demonic dance” that “embarrassed” the school (although I can count and exhaust all the fingers in my hands and all the toes in my feet, parents and guests who were genuinely entertained and were sorry that it ended, shut down by an outraged proprietress who screamed her gullet out at the DJ), I took responsibility.

I am an artist, a poet, and a man of aesthetics. I was wrong in giving art a chance, I was wrong in allowing the musical expression of the next generation to manifest.

For the jollof query, I wrote the following:

Dear sir,

Some teachers are born great, some teachers attain greatness in the classroom, and some give a leg, an arm, and a tooth for greatness. Today, I am thrust with an unwinnable task. I have to dig the tooth, the arm, and the leg. This is not preposterous, this is not ludicrous, this is not horrid, but this is not an over joyous act: It is antithetical to the spirit of candor, of duty, of sacrifice.

Not the leader of the Jewish Exodus, not the Nazarene, not the beloved, not the apostle from Tarsus, not Cranmer, nor any of the beatified of Christendom, nor of Classical persuasion have been put on a lever where they have to expound with words an art that which was inscribed in blood while still dripping with crimson oil.

Not since the Wollof founded Jollof has one man been put on Abacha’s highway, chained in the manacles of Fela for standing up for kids in a messy world made so by adults. Authority belies consequence and there is justice for only those who seek and seek and seek, but not for those who dig and dig and dig. For an arm given is taken, a tooth buried is gone, and a leg forwent is only to be spoken in past verbs.

Nothing can be unburied, nothing can be ungiven, nothing can forth come that forwent. Martin Luther Jr shall not be shamed, not Lincoln, not Sartre, not Gandhi. But today, there is a noose for every one of them from Socrates to Saro Wiwa, for better for gore, nay, for gore, gorer – for the gored.

The chopping board gives a worthy fight. It is not a win-win combat.  

Accept my apologia.

Yours sincerely,

M.K.O, B.A (Hons), Litt., Eng., Thap, etc.

To be continued…