A walking talking contradiction

I ate lunch with my headmaster and his nephew Yves. Yves is now a friend of mine who is also a very good friend of Claire (girl before me). Apparently, another nephew of the Headmaster is a student in my 6PCM class  which I found out only the night before lunch. Ooops…. the 6PCm class is the one that I gave zeros to for talking during their quiz.  During lunch, Jean (my headmaster) went on and on how he had “heard from someone"” that I was tougher than Claire and I allowed no monkey business. He thought it was funny, and went on to say that it’s good and if all teachers were like me that they wouldn’t need the discipline master!

Fast forward to today. I ran home during a break in teaching to get something (diet coke from ER supply, I have no power so I treated myself). On my way out, Alieze comes and grabs my hand. I knew instantly that he wanted to come to school with me but I lied to myself and said that wasn’t the case. I could have said “No” but I could not make the words come out of my mouth. And children here are not particularly sensitive, they are used to be yelled at or told things harshly. So, we walked to school together, me telling myself the whole time that when we got to the gate I would tell him to run home and he would.

Of course, that didn't happen. He came and sat in the staff room with me until I had to teach. Then I put him the corner and gave him chalk to draw with.  Thankfully, people thought it was pretty funny and i explained it was my “inshuti” (friend) not my baby.  The kids were quite calm about it too, they smiled but we were able to have quite a productive class.

So here I am, a walking and talking contradiction. The teacher that will fail an entire class but can’t tell a 5 year old no to coming to school. Maybe its my over- indulgent Auntie just screaming to get out. I miss my boys in the USA so much that I allow Alieze to walk all over me? I am glad I will soon be able to properly indulge my true boys (for a short time at least) but I have a feeling it won’t help. There are just some kids who worm their ways into my heart and the tough teacher becomes putty in their hands.