Rings & Knots

Teachers fall from the sky

"O wu Ijiri Ji" Nnedimma's voice came from behind as her son Chetanna stooped low to touch the droplets of water on the grass. Cheta as she fondly called him was her only son out of the three children she had. There had been no rainfall the night before but the grasses were almost as wet as though there had been one.

She had lost her husband a few years after the birth of their youngest, Chinazom during a gas explosion that occurred at the plant where he worked. Nnedimma never fully recovered from the incident and only held on to life because of her children.

The death of her husband Nnanna came with untold hardship, they had no one but each other and the lands that he had left behind. Her husband had been a dreamer and it was one of the things that she liked about him. He would always narrate tales about the rich man that owned the gas plant and how he was certain that their children would be just as wealthy. But even the rich man he deeply admired had done nothing for his family after he died, instead, he found a way to blame the workers at his plant who had no one to stand up for them. Her husband believed education was the only way he could place his children on the path to success and he never relented in putting most of his income into training his children. Nnanna was never deterred by anything; he worked harder to ensure that his children would have a better future than he did.

Not even Chetanna's reoccurring failing at school discouraged her husband. He would always tell her each time he came back with his bad results that the teachers were the ones who had not yet discovered how best to teach his son.

"He is a brilliant boy" Nnanna would say but she feared that Cheta was the only one of her children who did not have a knack for education.

"O nweghi isi akwukwo" She would tell her husband but he wouldn't listen.

"All of them are smart! Chetanna is very smart. Even if he doesn't have the brains for it, they will make it for him. That is why I am paying all that money"

"And what if things don't change? What if his teachers do not discover how to teach our son, what do we do then?"

"We'll wait for the right teacher to come" Nnanna answered with a smile leaving his wife exasperated.

"And how many teachers have come to this village? New teachers do not fall from the sky. Sooner or later you will realize that he has better chances of learning a craft in the city"

"Nne...None of my children will live as I did as an apprentice. I will die first before that happens. And yes new teachers do not fall from the sky, they come by road"

While Nnedimma still maintained that it was better for Chetanna to learn a craft in a close town since he never performed well at school, her husband vehemently opposed that. It was what most parents who could not afford their children's education did. Neither of them received a formal education but they had skills that fetched them little money to survive, they could barely write their names and relied on what their eldest child Amarachi taught them. However, she understood her husband's fears as well since he had to endure untold hardship serving a man who never settled him. Despite all her husband's experiences Nnedimma believed that there were still good masters out there, she had seen boys who attested to that.

Nnedimma often wished her husband had gotten the life he always dreamt of, she would watch and smile whenever he beckoned on his children to teach him what they learnt from school. He would pay keen attention and make attempts to practice all their exercises with them.

He also kept on believing in his son till his death and now she could not fail to carry on as he did. The only sad truth was that time went by but it seemed the teachers had still not discovered how to teach her son as her husband claimed.