The thing about kids is...
August 14, 2008
Ms. Harflette was a teacher at an all grades international school in Tamale, a little town in West Africa. The parched heat and thin dust was already settling on the little brick school, even this early in the morning. School would begin in a few minutes, and children of various colors and sizes were trickling in through the front door and gravitating towards similarly varying desks. Ms. Harflette busied herself shuffling through papers and laying out the day in her head. The smaller children took their first class together in this room. It was a medium sized room with some twenty desks in it. The floor was cement, shiny smooth. Most the walls were solid cement bricks crowded around a few windows, save the wall in the back which was the bricks with the geometric holes in them. The children were talking and laughing, mostly in English, and settling into their desks. Ms. Harflett, at the front of the room in front of a dim green blackboard, had decided on a stack of papers. Holding them in a slim stack, she rapped them on the table until the edges were flush. She gazed through one of the broad windows. Red dust spotted with dirt roads and mud huts stretched in all directions. The occasional glass window or tin roof twinkled back at the sun; this town was changing, slowly. Electricity, running water, and education were creeping in from the south. It was people like her bringing it to these people from the rest of the world. Her gaze broke. She cleared her throat and looked expectantly across the children.
"Good Morning." She said loud to the back of the room. She spoke in an English accent that Africa hadn't muddled much yet. The sun shone in on her black wiry hair, standing straight on top of her head. The greeting sputtered back, spotty.
"Good Morning," She tried again, "how is everyone doing this morning?"
There were some "Goods" and "Fines" now, still pretty quiet. She looked on in mock disappointment.
"Great!" Said a black boy loudly sitting near the front smiling.
He was smiling big and white, enthusiastic. His forehead wrinkled and his nose squinted in his sarcasm. Ms. Harflette smiled and ticked her head a bit towards him. He turned to his shy friend sitting next to him, still with his goofy grin, feeding his confidence. His friend smiled sheepish and nodded, his red hair and freckles, big ears, shark teeth and mousey face nodding with him. A few other children looked at the boy and shared in his mood.
"Well then," continued Ms. Harflette, "lets get started." She paced a bit, papers still in hand. "As you all know, we've been talking about -" The door behind her opened a little, and a mans thin black face leaned in. It was the principal. The room was quiet for a moment as he nodded at her.
"Excuse me children, back in a flash." The teacher said. She set her papers down on the big desk in front of the blackboard, and plodded out of the door. Some of the students began talking quietly. The confident boy, still smiling but now with his face unwrinkled, was making a paper plane. The freckled one lifted the hinged hood of his desk and rustled the contents. Not all the desks had hoods.
Ms. Harflette was only gone a half of a minute, and when she returned her smile had dimmed and her plain body, sagging in places, moved slowly and intentionally. She was closing the door behind her.
"OK children. Your attention please. Your attention." The boy making the plane stopped and looked up blank faced. "Your attention please."
There was girl next to the freckled boy, and one behind him. The girl behind him was talking quietly to the girl next to him. The brown girl to the side of him, her frazzled hair in two balloon sized pigtails, was staring attentively ahead, nervously and silently urging her friend to stop talking, to pay attention to the teacher. The talking girl got the message soon enough, lowered to a whisper, and realizing she was the only one talking at all, stopped altogether. Ms. Harflette nodded slightly at her.
"Thank you. I have an announcement to make. Everyone please stay calm, I need you all to stay in your seats. I've just been told by Mr. Mensa that we have a bit of a problem with the furniture. I need you all to stay in your seats please."
Everyone was paying attention.
"I've just been told that the desks in this classroom have been infected with wood worms."
"Worms!?" A white girl in the back of the room, round faced with blushing cheeks and little blonde pigtails, gasped.
Ms. Harflette spoke loudly. "Please everyone, they cannot hurt you, please stay in your seats. Wood worms are very small worms, and they do not hurt people at all. If we do not get rid of them, they will destroy the furniture in a matter of hours. Mr. Mensa has called a man with the wood treatment, and he will be here soon."
The children had begun to get nervous.
"Please everyone. The worms do not hurt you, but they can get on you, and if you touch other furniture they will get in that wood and eat it up. We musn't let them spread, so we need you to please stay in your seats."
"Worms!?" Repeated the girl with the pigtails.
The brown skinned girl near the front looked taught with nerves. The freckled boy was looking ahead blank and listening. The only student still smiling was the confident black boy in the front. He turned to his freckled friend and scrunched his face again, baring his teeth.
"Worms!" He growled happily, "Worms!"
Ms. Harflette spoke over the children. "The man with the treatment will be here very soon. Until he gets here, we need your help. We need you to please look very closely at your desks, and see if you can find any of the wood worms. They are very tiny and difficult to see. Often, you cannot see them at all except that they move a little. Please everyone, they cannot hurt you, don't be scared. They are tiny."
There was a quiet white boy with black hair at one of the desks in the middle of the room. He was already intensely inspecting his desk. He looked up innocently.
"Ms. Harflette, I don't see any on my desk." He said.
"There may not be any on your desk David," She looked at him from the front of the room, "they are very very tiny and difficult to see. The man with the treatment will be hear shortly. If anyone sees any wood worms, please put your finger on the spot that you see them, to help the man with the treatment when he gets here."
The brown skinned girl was studying her desk inch by inch.
"You want us to touch them?" The blonde girl with the round face was taken back. She'd had her mouth open for a solid minute. Gasping first at her desk, then at Ms. Harflette.
"Worms!" Growled the confident boy again happily. He turned to his friend, his smiling teeth shining white through a face grinning in mock evil. "Touch the worms!"
The freckled boy chuckled, looking at his desk somewhat casually. He thought he saw something and studied it closer.
The brown girl slammed a finger on her desk and immediately looked up at Ms. Harflett.
"Found One! Ms. Harflette, I think I found one!"
"Good girl," Ms. Harflette smiled, "everyone please keep looking and help as much as you can. The man with the treatment will be here in just a few minutes."
"Another one!" The brown girl had two fingers from the same hand pressed onto the wood of her desk.
The black haired boy in the middle of the class room was still looking closely at his desk.
"I still don't see any, I don't think." He said.
"Oh my gosh! I think I saw one, but I lost it." said the blonde girl.
The freckled boy was studying a spot on his desk intently. He put his finger on the spot and kept looking.
Many of the children were flagging wood worms with their fingers, and poring over their desks obediently. The brown skinned girl was running out of fingers, her nose almost touching the desk, her eyes squinted and focused. The black boy leaned close to his friend and whispered something that they both laughed at. It was an inside joke. He wanted the man with the treatment to get there so they could go on with their day. He had lived in Tamale his whole life, there was nothing shocking about bugs. The freckled boy had one finger on his desk, and alternated between joking and searching.
Mr. Mensa, the principal, leaned into the room again and nodded at Ms. Harflette. Her smile spread quick from pleasant to amused. Her face seemed to crack at the seems from the weight of her huge English smile, teeth bared like they were escaping. She guffawed loud and doubled over laughing out all of her air. The freckled boy took his finger bashfully off his desk. He blushed and looked at the floor. Mr. Mensa was smiling a broad white African smile, and still leaning into the room through the door. Ms. Harflette had gotten some of her air back, her laughing eyes and teeth crowded her face as she gasped.
"April fools!" She hollered, doubling over again, holding onto her desk for support. Mr. Mensa was chuckling.
"Have a good morning, children." He said, ducking out of the room. Fingers were coming off of desks.
"April Fools! There are no wood worms!" Ms. Harflette was gasping for air and grinning hugely and proudly.
"April fools! I'm sorry children, it's all a joke. Happy April first!" She was laughing, but breathing steady now. "Sorry children, it was all in fun."
"Ohhh." Said the boy with black hair.
"Thank God," Said the blond girl.
The other children sighed and laughed and said things. The black boy was laughing hard and rolling from side to side in his chair. The brown skinned girl's fingers were still firmly on her desk. She removed one, and then another. She looked at Ms. Harflette with her big brown eyes, dejected, and took her hands off the desk. Ms. Harflette looked down at her kindly, trying to stifle the laugh still in her face.
"I'm sorry sweetheart, it was all in fun," She looked up at everyone. "I tell you what, everyone take a fifteen minute recess, OK? Everybody outside! Happy April first!"
All the children got up and made for the door. The black boy grabbed his paper plane and his freckled friend. Outside, he was chanting things in his jesting growl and throwing his plane. The brown skinned girl was standing next to the freckled boy, she looked serious and dead ahead, eyes open, skin taught from let down. The boy looked at her softly.
"It was just a game," he said, "I thought I had one, too. I guess it was kind of mean, but it was just a game. For fun."
"I know it was a game," she snapped. Then, softening, "but there were some real bugs on my desk. I saw them. They need to treat those desks 'cause I saw some real bugs. I know it was just a game." She was not looking at him, but straight ahead.
Tags for this piece: story nonfiction africa