THE TEACHER`S SOILED REGISTER

I was then in Class Six primary at St. Francis School, Bambili, popularly called “Ntsewi” and was taught by a newly arrived teacher called John Njende. The teacher immediately stood out above the rest by his handsomeness, his great love for volleyball and his general erudition. However, I am not unduly comparing him with the other teachers because obviously, he was the one I knew best, being my daily mentor. I was in Class 6B, the decision to partition the class, having been made more arbitrarily than by academic judgment. The teacher of Class 6A was Mr. Tanteh whose first name I do not remember now. My cousin Beatrice Fri Mbaku (today officially Mrs. Fri Bime and popularly ‘Ma Fri’) was in Class 6A. It would appear that one day Mr. Tanteh needed a red pen to do some work in his register. My sister knowing that I had both red and blue, came to our classroom to ask me for it. Unfortunately for her, I was out. Since she knew my school bag very well, she opened it and took out the red pen (or what she thought was the red pen) and gave it to Mr. Tanteh. Lo and behold, when the teacher wrote in his register with the “red” pen, it came out blue. He screamed at my sister and accused her of “spoiling” her register. Fortunately the problem was not traced back to me, perhaps because my sister did not want to expose her brother. The truth of the matter is that I had interchanged the covers of the two pens so that the red one was on the blue pen and the blue was on the red. This was to wrong foot those unceremonious classmates of mine who were fond of intruding in people`s bag and taking things out without permission and when not found out they eventually owned them. But today, that draconian measure backfired on my own poor sister. After school, when she told me what had happened, I felt so sorry for her! I apologized and from that day I reverted the pen covers to their original receptors.