Missing my Mother

Missing my Mother

13^th August

“Madam, please will you check my portfolio?”  The request came from a class 8 girl after I had put her off twice this week because I had a lot of my own maths marking to do and double checking their English portfolio writing takes second priority.  I still had 55 test papers to mark, but we had just been granted an unexpected 2 days holiday, so I was feeling a little more generous with my time!

It was another poem about the unreliability of the love of the opposite gender, ending with the observation that many may suicide as a result, to which my comment was that no boy is worth that.

Her friend, Tendi, then made the same request and presented me with a piece of writing that hit me from left field.  I have read several poems written by those who are missing their mothers – I have presumed from an early death, but Tendi’s piece described her attending the death bed of both parents – at the same time, from my understanding, and the ongoing impact on her emotions, including her wish to be reincarnated as a tree, which has greater permanence.  She was in class 4 at the time.

This left me wondering many things, including the reason for their death, but I was quite distressed by her experience and only elicited that her brother and his wife had subsequently cared for her.

I have already written about one student who writes indirectly about her dysfunctional family and was asked to correct a poem recently by another class 8 student who wrote of her desire for her father to cease his alcohol abuse. 

Discussions last weekend with a couple of class 7 boys who knocked on my door and announced “we have come to study with madam” revealed that one of them – one of my home group – is an orphan, his mother having died 2 years ago and his father when he was around 5 years old.  He lives with his grandfather when he is not at boarding school, and has a younger brother who has been sent to become a monk.

These stories remind me that I am living in a place that has a high mortality rate.  I believe that I am older than the average age.  The country has increasing access to health care, but still has many health problems; little wonder that I see quite a reaction to relatively minor health issues, yet hear stories that seem quite dismissive of what could be a real health problem.   I have one student in my home group who is accruing quite a few absences this term and I worry about his health. 

Many of the students have lost one or more parents, for what reason, I am unsure, but do I feel for them.  Others are impacted by divorce that separates them from one or both parents.  And then of course there are the boarders, and other students who are sent to live with relatives and attend school away from their home, who may not see their families for months at a time.

One of the boarder boys, almost 15 and a kidu student (the King pays for the education of poor students) tells me a little more about his family.  His father left them when he was 2 years old. His mother has remarried but his stepfather is not very nice to him (I suspect that this translates to his stepfather beats him more than is considered normal…) and he lives with his grandfather when not at school.  He has a younger brother aged about 12-13 and a stepbrother aged 8.  He is the only one who goes to school, as the family could not afford to send both to school, so have sent his younger brother to be a monk – somewhere in Nepal.  He has not seen the brother for about 5 years.  The stepbrother is unwell – from what I am told, I suspect leukemia, and has not been considered well enough to go to school yet.  Maybe next year.  He describes his family as very poor.  I have visited some of the houses out in the villages that do not have vehicular access, and life in these houses is fairly basic, so I can only start to imagine exactly what “very poor” means.  His stepfather does not work as he is deaf and the family has a small farm and produces sufficient for their needs and a little extra. 

We have a few small class pp boys who are boarders and have no older siblings at the school and while some of the older boys help them bathe and wash their clothes, they still have a somewhat forlorn look of neglect.  One, in particular, follows his older cousin around with puppy-dog eyes; he clearly hero-worships this older boy.  I noticed his torn school uniform gho the other day and offered to his cousin that I would mend it at the weekend; I think the offer was accepted but was later told that the older boy had mended it himself.  I shan’t inspect that too closely!  The mending that some of the girls do for themselves is interesting enough – I have offered to help them too!

I think yet again of the students’ words – cliché, admittedly – that as teachers we are their second parents and realize just how true this is for many.  I feel privileged to be allowed to share this role and it is these students who tempt me to apply for another year here with them.