A TRUE STORY FROM MY PRIMARY SCHOOL, CLASS SEVEN: 1983- BY NKWETATANG S. NGUEKIE

This is a true story which dates as far back as 1983. I was in Class Seven, the last class of our primary school at that time. It is a sad story. 

Our School Headmaster was eyeing a certain girl in our class to take her for his second wife. She was a dark hairy girl with untouched beauty. 

Our Class Seven teacher was aware of this love affair, and did not want it to succeed because he did not like young girls getting married 

at their teenages. He was bent on encouraging all of us to continue to secondary school.

Our School Headmaster knew that our Class Seven teacher was against his intention of getting married to the girl. This created hatred and rivalry between the two of them. 

Once in a while, our Class Seven teacher would punish the whole class unnecessarily in order to subject the girl to hard work, so that our School Headmaster should know that he was the one in control of the girl's destiny. 

On his part, our School Headmaster would summon unnecessary teachers' meetings in order to free the girl from our Class Seven teacher's iron fist. This struggle for dominance put us into the mouth of hell.

After our graduation, the girl got married to our School Headmaster. Years later, the marriage met a tragic end. Our Class Seven teacher wept bitterly.

There was another very intelligent girl in our class whom our Class Seven teacher nicknamed "Brain Lost". The girl was a promising Mathematical genius. 

Our Class Seven teacher contacted the girl's father in our village market and asked him whether he was making preparations to send her to secondary school. Her father said that he did not have money to further her education. Few years later, her end in life was so tragic. Our Class Seven teacher wept bitterly.

I was quite confident that I would not go to secondary school, because I would not have anybody to sponsor me. After our graduation, my father took me to one of our cousins who lived in town. 

He enrolled me into a government secondary school. I lived with him for some time, moved over to his junior brother and later to his elder brother. 

I am tempted to believe that the hand of destiny is never absent from our lives. A certain friend of mine (now of late) once said to me that there is positive destiny and negative destiny. We may claim to be the ones in control of our lives, but this is just an illusion. A certain supreme power is the one in control of our lives. That's why Prince Nico asked, "Who knows tomorrow?"

...END...

© Nkwetatang Sampson Nguekie, President of the United States of Africa Writers Association (USAWA)