By
Obododimma Oha
It started sometime ago when I looked at the lives of teachers in our hometown and saw decency, straightforwardness, truthfulness, and liked these qualities. I longed to be like they were. Many of them were genuinely interested in the affairs of their pupils. It was as if these pupils would be their direct successors (which was true in a way). These teachers liked their jobs with great passion, just as they passionately loved their pupils and took these pupils' future as theirs, too. One, in fact, would be caning a pupil and the latter would be laughing. The whole punishment turned out to be an entertainment! Another teacher would wield a cane and follow a player of football round the soccer pitch. Let the pupil play the ball anyhow and the teacher’s cane would turn his back to a soccer pitch! It was, therefore, not a mistake when I made up my mind to become a teacher in order to have decency, organized living, seriousness in tasks, etc.
That I even attained higher education itself was the doing of one of my teachers. It was not just that he taught the class well and with every commitment, but he had to confront me publicly one day with the need to climb higher in life and not be satisfied with the “small measure “ that he gave as “education,” or the idea of dressing smartly in washed and well ironed clothes! I went home and wept over my foolishness and resolved to move up as a teacher.
It was his modelling that caused me to become sad anytime that any of my classmates took first and I came second, for he would query inside my “coconut” head, “Does that person have seven heads and you have only one?” It was his “aggressive” orientation to the performance of tasks educational that taught me specially so that I would complete my education at a secondary school and start teaching right away at a secondary school, a highly rated secondary school for that matter! I was not very brilliant; just following the path my teacher in the elementary school showed me.
My teachers are in me, wielding their canes, caring, loving, urging, directing, teaching, directing….And I have been following. Maybe I have been lucky to have them in me. Maybe I have been particularly blessed to have their presence, and, in fact, do pity those not lucky enough to have their teachers' presence and affection!
Were my teachers also not teaching me how to teach and the need to love own students as my successors? Were they not getting me ready to get my students ready? Were they not happy that I was happy to continue the love and pursuit of learning and decency?
Today, when one comes across people who became “teachers” by mistake, one should pity them. Today, when one comes across “learned” people who see white and call it black, one should pity them! Forgive them, God, for they know not themselves, and know not their left from their right! As for me, white is not black, for that was not what my wonderful and dedicated teachers taught me. Choosing rightly and commitment and working hard and decency were their lives. And their lives should be my life.
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