The Teacher Got a Lesson

How many of you had Ghanaian ( i don't even think i know how to spell that...chei) lesson teachers as kids? I did, we had far too many and i thought my parents were just being wicked. While other kids played outside, we were on the balcony with our teachers learning and relearning and yearning to go play outside with out mates. Once the lesson was over, we made up for it by over playing. Mind you, it's not like my parents forbade us to play, they just made sure we studied first.

My parents were really into education and now i'm really grateful for that, when i was a kid, it definitely felt like punishment. My mum is a teacher and my dad used to work in the Ministry of Education, dad is one of the few civil servants who did the jobs to the letter. Anyway, so you can imagine the burden of being saddled with two educationists as parents. Arrrggghhh...lol. I remember once i was very ill and it was close to exam periods, i was in JS1 i think, my mum sat beside me going through my school notebooks with me and reading them to me and making sure i understood what she read. Please, i was ill, could i not be exempted from reading...lol

When i was about 6 or 7 years i think, we had this teacher who was really really mean. Or was he? I don't remember but we didn't like him. The guy just wasn't plain nice and to our kid minds, he just plain hated us. So we decided he deserved to be punished. There was me, my sister, my youngest sister who was too young to be part of the classes, we seriously envied her and then there were our two friends, they're sisters and we were neighbours; L and B. So we kids got together and plotted a coup for our lesson teacher. We didn't consider the consequence i think. We were too young to consider the consequences of our actions.

It was a typical evening ,we were being taught but we weren't concentrating. We were waiting for it to happen. We kept staring at each other and waiting for our moments of glory, would it ever come? Then just as we were going to give up, it happened. Our wicked teacher fell inside the chair he was sitting on and it was a very bad fall. He screamed! We laughed! Silly children, he turned his wrath on us, he didn't beat us but he resigned his position. My mum wasn't sure why he had to resign because he fell. If only she knew.

The day before, we had gotten together, us kids, wondering how we could deal with our teacher and then it came to us. I can't remember who has the credit for such a brilliant idea but between us kids, we decided on the punishment. We initially thought of putting pins in his seat but we knew that would be too easy. He'd know they were planted. Then we remembered our almost abandoned dining chair which always fell in. Remember what dining chairs used to look like in the 80s? Well the cushion of this particular chair had been attached from the wood that held it but it could be placed properly and you'd hardly know. For us kids, it was easy to not fall into it but and adult weight would definitely not hold for too long. We decided to give him this chair and humiliate him.

He comfortably sat in the chair wagging his finger at us if he asked a question and we didn't know the answer. Then our moment of glory came, he fell! We had punished him. We laughed, we couldn't contain our joy and i'm sure he could tell from our faces that we planned it. I'm sure guilt and pure joy were written all over our little faces.

The teacher resigned and we were free to do as we pleased, only for a short while though. I'm not saying we were right but i guess this was part of what being a child was about.Our joy was short lived though, my mum found us a new Ghanaian lesson teacher!

Lesson from an ATM Machine- Just One More Push!

I slotted my card into the ATM machine, and heard 'please enter your secret number', i did this and punched in the amount i wanted. I waited, and all of a sudden it flashed, 'financial institution not available'. I removed my card, pissed at my bank, 'damn! that always happens when you need money desperately'. I had been through this same road so many times, it was like dejavu, this always happens! There was a particular day i tried my card in several machines throughout the whole day and i got no cash, i mean ZILCH.

I turned back and was going to leave the bank, then it occured to me to try the card again, it was immediately, i argued with myself that the financial institution would still be unavailable but decided to give it the benfit of doubt, i slotted it in, and repeated the procedure i knew too well, i heard the sound of the macine bringing out money and almost couldn't believe it. It gave me CASH! Thank God, i whispered as i retrieved my cash and card.

I walked out of the bank feeling good and then i heard within me, 'hope you learnt a lesson there' and i thought what lesson. It then occured to me there have been several times i've given up too soon on things i should have done because they were not working out the way i thought they should. I would try and once i thought whatever it was i was doing wasn't working, subconsciously i dropped it.

I had memories of times i had tried to do things and it looked like i failed and i had allowed such memories to hinder me sometimes in persevering in other things till i got what i wanted. As i saw the message 'financial institution not available', i remembered the so many times i had inserted my atm card and got that message over and over all day and that almost stopped me from trying one more time. Sometimes, it's just the one more time that's needed to get us to our desire or goal but we give up too soon.

It occured to me i had to wipe out of my brain or choose not to remember the different times things have not worked out. I have to be willing to persevere for whatever i want and always try the one more push which sometimes makes a difference between a woman giving birth through CS and a woman doing natural birth. Sometimes, it's just the willingness to push one more time that makes the difference!