PRIVATE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL


I am a teacher. I teach children between the ages of twelve to fourteen. They are about in their second years of their secondary education. The school is like a private government school. Let me explain.


Here, we run on a middle-class budget. This means that the fees are low; so, of course most of our students have parents who cannot really afford huge money for their fees. In the fourth week of every term, after the morning assembly, we send students who haven't paid their fees back home. This task is really awkward to me, because I have to look at their gloomy faces as they walk out of the class, with me beside the door.


Yesterday, we started third term exams and we had to send the debtors home, because yes, their fees hadn't been paid. I held the door again while the class prefect, Victoria, walked out: gloomy.


I would want to pay for her. And for her assistant, Mark; and for the twins who sit in front.The salary is around enough to pay for three students and buy them lunch for one day. Maybe I can pay for them. Maybe I can pay for them just this once.

..

THE SPECIAL THING EVERYONE SAID CIGARETTES HAD

I never touched a cigarette until I was ten or eleven. I still wonder why it took that long; because, right outside my home at Ikwerre Road, women sold cigarettes and dry gin in small dirty glasses to old men and conductors.

So, I never touched a cigar until Brother Nathaniel sent me to buy "three Rothmans and one baba blue". My mother had called him to take care of me, since she and Daddy were travelling; so, we had the whole house. I didn't see him smoke them, I remember I fell asleep and woke up to find three stubs on the sitting room table, sucked so hard only the filter (I didn't know what it was called then) remained.

I took the brown things into the kitchen and lit one up, almost burning my fingers. It wasn't working. So, I sneaked outside and bought another stick. With my heart threatening to burst and with shaky hands, I lit it. I dragged and puffed. I didn't feel anything. Where was the fun? I dragged harder. I still didn't cough. Why do people always cough in books and movies on their first smoke?

Maybe I need to try another brand, I thought. Let me see if it can give me the feeling everyone spoke about. So I bought two sticks. Finished it. Bought five. Finished it. Same day.
I am twenty-seven now and I still drag and puff, hoping to find the special thing everyone said cigarettes had.

THIS IS WHY

I want to get married.
Yeah, I know. Age, cash, maturity, err what else, sexual stamina?

I like babies, I like family, I like to live in a home with all the noise and the yells and the laughter. I like the smell of plantain frying from a kitchen, of a kid breaking a plate she's trying to wash, of the younger one crying that the elder one has taken his share of the meat.
Although I don't like the smell of diapers being changed (Lord, don't even wanna think about it), I like how the baby would smell after a bath and he's all powdery and giggly.

I also like the bedroom, where I would hold her to myself and press her naked body against mine, skin to skin. And although at a certain time of the month she will act all weird and strange, I'd understand that that's in her nature.

But then the thrills, laughter, yelling (from her), clattering and yeah, food: these are the reasons why.
This is why.