The Scholarch that changed my life
For world Teachers’ day
As I sit in front of my work desk, sipping this “beauty’’ tea I bought from the pharmacy and hoping it would truly make me more beautiful, my colleague Ansi, the youngest of us all and the most social, walks up to my desk as his regular practice. Ansi is fascinated with my use of words and learning new words in English. I had asked him to signup for dictionary.com to learn new words. And well, I should have expected he would bombard me with new words every day but this time, he decided to take me down memory lane. He had asked “Miss Tee, who was your favourite scholarch”
“Scholarch?”
“Who’s that?” I queried.
“I just learnt it means the head of a school” Ansi responded
Ah! I see. “Teajay, be prepared to get more of these questions”. I had whispered to myself
“Ugh, well, I don’t remember any head of a school that changed my life but I once had a deputy head of school who made me see life in colour.”
Ansi pulls the nearest chair to me in anticipation of a story he knew was coming.
Mr Abraham. He was the husband to a soldier, a pastor on weekends and a friend and father to his students every day of the week.
I still remember our first meeting ever. He knew me in passing as he was a pretty busy deputy. It was at an open day, and my mom for the first and last time in my educational life came to check on my grades. She was accompanied by a junior colleague of hers who came as her assistant.
Mesmerised by my mother’s dexterity, diction and blindness, Mr Abraham was in awe of my mother. It seemed it was his first time meeting an educated blind woman.
The time I dreaded the most came. The moment my parents had to check my school work, seat in with my teacher to get lads on my academic and social performance. Unfortunately, none came back good. My grades were poor, I got into a lot of trouble that term and well… my teacher had nothing good to say about me. Between tears of shame, fear of receiving premium beating at home, and the disappointment I caused my mother, Mr Abraham came to my rescue. He asked why I was not acting right, All I could mutter while swallowing phlegm which ran down my nostrils was “I don’t know sir”.
As if he could see through me, Mr Abraham promised my mother that he was going to take care of me and make sure I was better the next time she came.
Next time? There was never going to be the next time. I was in primary 6 and the following term was crunch time for final exams.
But
Mr Abraham kept to his word. He would ask about home and what it was like at home, I would tell him of how my older cousins were always fighting and I was always in the middle of the fight. I told him of how they always forgot me in school and I had to stay in some other soldier’s house until they remembered to come for me. I told him everything.
Mr Abraham had done his investigation and realised I was a pretty smart kid whose interests were not properly channelled. Mr Abraham knew I loved watching tv and reading books. So he always told me to report to his office daily with a summary of the 8’0clock news or the summary of the comprehension in my textbook either written or verbalised.
It worked.
I was less troublesome, i had a sense of purpose. When my guardians forgot me in school, I stayed at Mr Abraham’s house until they came back. Mr Abraham pushed my resilience. I told him I wanted to learn to go home on my own and he let me. He had attached me to people who went my way- that way, I didn’t find it hard to take public transport myself. Mr Abraham was my hero.
So yea, I owe a part of my development to Mr Abraham.
Aww! Where is he now? Ansi asked with a grin.
Err… Now that you asked, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since I left primary school but I can never forget him. Never!
