My New Home

Chapter Nineteen

Monday morning arrived later than I expected. The weekend to me, was too long due to my anticipation and I spent my weekend selecting and unselecting clothes, looking for the ideal shoes or sandals, with hijab and a bag to complement. I wanted to match the colours and make my presentation as perfect as possible.

At first I went for cream colored and coffee brown combination which entailed a coffee brown skirt, shoe, bag and hijab pin to be complemented with a cream coloured short sleeved shirt with an unattached sleeve and cream coloured wrap hijab.

The following day, I decided that the colors were too cool and I needed to look a little brighter on a Monday morning most especially since I'll be teaching in a primary school. Then I went for a baby pink shirt and hijab with royal blue hijab pin, skirt, bag and striped sandals.

On Sunday evening I decided to swap the royal blue for black and decided that was what I would be wearing. Before sleeping that night, I've successfully ironed half dozen of skirts, shirts and Hijabs. Jamal didn't interfere and just watched quietly unless I asked for his input. The last time he tried to give me fashion advice, it almost ended in a disaster, so, he left me to my fate.

Finally, I dressed in a black skirt, black short heeled sandals with matching bag complemented with lemon green long sleeved shirt with matching wrap hijab and hijab pins. I checked the mirror over and over and took like a million compliments and reassurance from Jamal before I was convinced I looked like a perfect primary school teacher and set out for the job.

I thought I'll be taking the public transport to school but when I got down stairs, Alhaji was waiting for me in his car with Iya ewe, Faria and Qooriah and we left together. Alhaji dropped Faria and Qooriah along the way while the rest of us left together for school. Iya ewe is the head mistress of the school while Alhaji owned no specific formal title in the school. He has an office but with no label. His job is to oversee all the activities in the school while he employed a principal for the school, so he doesn't get too involved in the school affairs.

On our arrival in the school, he directed me to the headmistress' office and asked if I came along with my documents which I replied in the affirmative. I thought he would be the the one to attend to me being the school owner but they surely have a protocol that they follow and my subconscious promised me a long enjoyable work period.

I moved swiftly towards the headmistress, Iya ewe's, office. On getting there, I was directed to a seat at the waiting area. After settling down for some minutes, I was ushered into the office to meet her. I submitted my documents which she roughly rifled through, then, returned the original back to me and documented the duplicate copy. She then called her secretary to give me a copy of lesson plan and lesson note, the scheme of work and a small rectangular box that contained some essentials such as different post-it-notes, lead and coloured pencils, rulers, correction pens, tissue papers and lots more. Some of the items, I don't even know how to use it but will gradually get there.

Iya ewe remained busy afterwards and didn't have time to chat with me not that we chat much anyway.While I waited a second time at the reception, a teacher came around to show me the ropes on how to teach and every other things that were expected of a teacher and when I gazed up to give the lady my attention, I sighted a familiar face from afar, it was my new friend, Hadeeza. This keep getting better and better, I thought. Although I felt giddy on the inside, i tried to contain my excitement and acted professional but Hadeeza must have seen me the same time I did because she headed straight towards the office and paused at the entrance before interrupting our conversation by asking what I was there for. I told her that I was a new recruit. She smiled wildly and gave me a side hug while congratulating me that she was glad to have me as her colleague. The secretary laughed at our interaction and dismissed us by facing her computer system to resume her work.