I AM A TEACHER, PROTECT ME!

On January 16, 2020, a math teacher is mercilessly butchered by his own student in a government high school in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The murder weapon is a pair of compasses that the fifteen-year-old student uses to put an end to his teacher's life. The remorseless student is now held in the gaols of the country's capital city's penitentiary. Teachers in the country are underpaid, lack assistance in the exercise of their duties and are prey to all sorts of threats coming from students, worse still their parents. This poem is both a dirge and an ode to the deceased teacher and to all the other teachers who put their lives at stake to educate these students who now seem to loathe them. May the soul of the late teacher, great chalk lord, rest in perfect peace.