THE POEM I WROTE ON MY PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER

WHY I WROTE A POEM ON MY PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER

Surely, school is a place where we meet all kinds of teachers. Some of them, we love, yet others we hate for one reason or another. Although I was marked by a couple of teachers in primary school, if I was asked at anytime to name the one I remember most, it would be Miss Theresa Foleng (later on Mrs. Mrs. Theresa Ngu). Miss Foleng happened to have been the junior sister of our school’s choir master, Mr. Nicholas Foleng, whose singing was so good that it was the main reason why I went to mass on Sundays. However, that is a different story for a different day.

The school was St. Francis, Bambili, popularly known as “Ntsewi”, named after a stream that runs along the length of the school, even to this day. I was then in Class 1. The school had more pupils than classrooms, so the church was on school days temporarily partitioned with cardboard paper so that some of us could be taught. I think I was in Class 1C or so. Miss Foleng was very young and beautiful.

She made it a point that once a week - I think Wednesdays - she took her class to the stream for pupils to have a bath. What struck me was that once she lined us up for the walk, she would remove me from the line and give me her handbag to carry. Then I would walk alongside her - sometimes she holding my hand – like the typical pupil with a chip on his shoulder. When we arrived at the stream and the other children were bathing, the teacher would bathe me. I loved such moments. For that reason, I always greatly looked forward to Wednesdays, especially as on those days I ended up by having two baths, the first of which was from my mother before I left for school.

I do not know what drew me apart in the eyes of the teacher but I remember that I was one of the youngest and smallest in the class. Furthermore, I must have looked frail and exhausted because I was in a group of children around that age that age – five years – who had to cover the distance of at least two miles to walk to school from Baforkum and the Agric Farm in Bambui. The journey was not made easy when our feet became infested with either rain water cuts or jiggers.

Fortunately for us, at the end of the year, the Parish Priest at the Bambui Catholic Mission took pity on us and opened a new school along what is today called “CCAST Street”. For those who know the street, we were located in the first old stone building on the right as you enter the street from Three Corners. So the following year, those of us who were in Class One at St. Francis from Baforkum, the Agric Farm and Three Corners, now attended Class 2 in the new school, St. Michael’s. When it became bigger, it was moved to the present site of Government School, Musongmabu until the Government took it over years later.

Recently, I went back to the church building where Miss Foleng taught me. It has been converted into a hall for church-related social events and a new, grandiose and commanding church building constructed alongside it. I attended mass in the new building and believe it or not, two of the songs that were rendered by the choir on that day were among the favourite ones I used to love hearing Mr. Nicholas Foleng intone in church when I was in Class 1.

Below is the poem I did for Miss Foleng. It is published on page 19 of my book (collection of poems), “Sighs and Whispers from Within”, published by Patron Publishing House, Bamenda in 2004.  The book was among those selected by the Education Ministry for use in Secondary Schools in Cameroon from 2006-2009.

THE PLANT

(For Mrs. Theresa Ngu, née Foleng)

I plant here and now

And this, just for you

This mustard seed come from Ebwa

Its tree will blossom with a bow.

Sometime and soon too

I will write your name and mine

On its back flowing with wine

Then will there be a waltz for two.

Long after you and I are gone

This mother of trees well blessed

Will still be here not at all pressed

Blowing our name in the wind, like the Missouri corn.