Radiance of Tomorrow (8 page)

“My name is Mr. Fofanah,” he introduced himself to Kula, holding a black briefcase, constantly standing on his toes as though reaching for something or perhaps to look taller. “May I speak with your husband, Bockarie?” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief.

When Bockarie came outside, Mr. Fofanah wasted no time in offering him a teaching position. He had been told that Bockarie had attended the school and had also been a teacher. He wanted him to teach the subjects he had taught before: English, geography, and history.

After Mr. Fofanah left, Kula hugged her husband and he gave that half smile and hum that only she knew meant he was extremely happy. He wasn’t one who showed emotion as others did.

“Will you help me prepare for lessons, my dear?”

“I miss when we used to do that. Sit, I will get a pen and some papers.” She smiled.

“Yes, my lady. I miss that stronger commanding personality of yours whenever we start intellectual things.” He sat and she laughed as she ran into the house.

While he waited, a tall man with a medium beard came onto the veranda and said his name was Benjamin.

“Mr. Fofanah told me to come and introduce myself.” He spoke fast and his eyes opened wide whenever he did.

“Welcome to my homeland. Where are you from?” Bockarie spoke slowly.

“I am from Kono, the diamond area, but don’t ask me why I am here. I got a job offer, man, so here I am with my family. The rest isn’t interesting. Okay, man, I will see you in school or on the way there. I must go prepare for my lessons.” Benjamin tapped Bockarie on the shoulder and walked away. He jogged a bit with one hand in his pocket, dribbling an invisible ball, then resumed walking.

“Were you talking to someone?” Kula returned with some wrinkled pages and several pens, as she always had to go through a bunch before one of them worked.

“Yes, the Benjamin fellow that Mr. Fofanah spoke of. He went back home to prepare for his lessons as well.” Bockarie made room on the bench for Kula to sit next to him. They began from memory, from their school days, laughing and giggling as they teased one another with questions.

The following morning, Benjamin and Bockarie encountered each other on their three-mile walk to school. They strode quietly at first, the morning dew soaking their faces.

“You know, all of my life I have had to walk in the morning. At first it was to the farm, then to school, to work…” Benjamin started, and before Bockarie responded that he, too, had had the same experience, Benjamin spoke again. “The good thing about it is that I have always made a good friend on each of those walks. Okay, teacher Bockarie, let us walk like young men with life in them.” Benjamin started pulling Bockarie along as he hastened his steps and they laughed, walking as fast as they could. When they arrived at school, Mr. Fofanah, the principal, gathered all the teachers and gave them the first month’s salary followed by a talk about how wonderful it was that they were all there. Things looked promising.

“Don’t worry about the lack of school materials. The board of education has promised to send things right away. For now we have the basics, chalk and a blackboard and some desks and benches to start with. And here come the students.” The principal was distracted by a large group of young people walking toward campus. He guessed there were more than fifty, and that would suffice. More came as the day unfolded.

That same morning, Kula had gone to the river to wash some clothes and saw a woman she hadn’t laid eyes on in town. She was humming a tune while rinsing her laundry away from the other women. She was very tall and thin, with big brown eyes that brightened her narrow face.

“You must be the wife of the new teacher in town. What is his name, by the way?” Kula placed her hand on her forehead as she often did to remember something.

She stopped humming and responded with a smile. “Benjamin. That is his name and yes I am. My name is Fatu.”

“I am Kula. Please come by my home anytime if you need any help knowing the area. You have two young ones?” She washed her bucket.

“Thank you. I will, and yes, we have a girl and a boy, Rugiatu and Bundu. We just got here and don’t really know anyone, so it will be good for them to have friends and me, too. My husband was looking for something different and wanted to leave his hometown, Koidu, you know, in Kono, the diamond area. You must be the wife of Bockarie. My husband spoke of him.” She held the cloth between her knees so that the river wouldn’t take it away and extended her hand to Kula. They, too, just as their husbands, went on to become friends.

*   *   *

It had been many months since Mr. Fofanah came to Bockarie’s house and hired him and on that same day he had met Benjamin. Their teaching jobs and lives hadn’t unfolded as they had hoped. They continued walking to school every morning, now along with Bockarie’s three older children, Manawah, Miata, and Abu, and most of their students and colleagues. The three miles of dusty road with patches of tar here and there had become unbearable for them. To start with, though there were few vehicles on the road, when one was heard in the distance, teachers and students ran into the bushes, holding their noses. They hid themselves from the dust that looked for clean bodies, clothes, and hair to settle on. The leaves were already cloaked with enough dust that their colors couldn’t be seen. So running into the bushes was only to lessen the amount of dust that could find them. During the rainy season, they still ran, though not into the bushes but away from the many puddles to avoid being splashed on. There were too many puddles, so one had to zigzag strategically to this and that side of the vehicle or find a spot near the deeper holes where it almost came to a halt, the driver worried about getting stuck. If you had an umbrella, you could hold it against your side. But not many could afford umbrellas.

During the year of teaching, the materials that the principal had promised on the first day of school still did not arrive. Therefore, with barely any materials, the teachers continued preparing lessons from memory, from their own school days, and tried to write on the blackboard as much as possible whenever there was chalk. Otherwise, they dictated lessons and students wrote in their books, interrupting with a raised hand to ask for the spellings of certain words. For eleven months now, the department of education in Lion Mountain had sent only lengthy letters that the principal would read out loud to his teachers, his facial expression showing his disbelief in the message. “We have engaged on a remarkable revamping of our educational system,” the letters would start, and they’d end the following way: “Educational Ministry of Lion Mountain, working for the people, always.” One day while the principal was reading the letter, he couldn’t contain himself. “They manage to send me these useless letters every week but not school materials, not even a box of chalk,” he said and stopped before more words slipped out. It was clear that things were worse now than in the past. The neglect of this part of the country had increased. Before the war, they at least sent some school materials even if a month or sometimes a semester late. Salaries, too, unprecedentedly lagged behind. In nine months of teaching, the teachers had received only three months of salary that came every three months. As a result, Bockarie had started selling cigarettes, chewing gum, batteries, mosquito coils, and other small items at night on his veranda. He laid the items out in a small wooden box with a lamp that cast a dim light on the goods. This was also where he corrected students’ papers and prepared for lessons, sometimes using a flashlight when he had no money to buy kerosene. It was difficult to provide for his family, and he continued teaching only because as a teacher he received a reduction in school fees for his three older children. His pay was 150,000 leones, which could barely buy a bag of rice. Kula helped by selling food items such as salt, pepper, and maggi cubes at the market, but they still struggled to make ends meet. They were, however, better off than Benjamin, who, with the same salary, had to pay rent and feed his wife, Fatu, and two little children, Bundu and Rugiatu. Since he wasn’t from Imperi, he had no family house as Bockarie did.

“Sometimes, I think I should have stayed in my home, Koidu. I thought I could do something different with good pay, something less dangerous than mining diamonds … I also thought my wife could find work as an apprentice for her nursing career,” Benjamin had said once to Bockarie when he came by to keep him company on his veranda.

At school, everyone functioned as best they could. The excitement of the school’s reopening had lasted only for a semester, until they realized that this time around they would not receive the necessary support from the government. Nowadays, by the time teachers and students reached the school grounds, whatever happiness had been on their faces had disappeared with the long walk, the dust, the heat, the thirst and hunger. Looking around you couldn’t tell who was hungrier, the teachers or the students, but all of their demeanors announced that most of them wanted school to end earlier; in fact, the moment they arrived they couldn’t wait to return home. Coming to school for teachers and students had become a routine just to nurture whatever possibility of hope was left. Sitting at home all day, one is likely to fall in the way of the heavy wind of bad luck.

The only constantly lively person in the school was the principal, who had a brand-new motorcycle, and no one could figure out where he got the money to buy such an expensive thing that could pay for more than ten teachers’ yearly salaries. Every morning, in his annoyingly exuberant mood, he would gather the teachers and lecture them on the need to “inspire the students, to rekindle their fire for learning and show them the importance of education.

“I believe in you and I’m only here to guide all of you to achieve your best,” the principal would go on, walking on his toes, buttoning and opening his jacket and adjusting his tie, while sweating.

“Any questions that I may answer? No. I guess I made things very clear. Okay, let us go and inspire those youngsters.” He would end with a big smile, which no one in his audience of teachers returned. Under his breath he would sigh and then raise his head again with that jovialness painted on his face. The teachers could do little with his inspirational messages. They were missing all the ingredients: salaries, school materials, and faith in the educational system itself.

Bockarie had tried talking about the importance of education in his class, and one of the students had asked, “Sir, you are educated, but I do not see any significant changes that education has made in your life. So why should we waste our time and money that we could use to enjoy our lives now as opposed to investing it only to be miserable later?”

“You have made a good point, but think of it as planting a mango tree. It takes years before you can begin to see the fruit. You can also plant something that grows quicker, like cassava or potato, but you want mangoes, too. I hope you get my point, since you are also studying agriculture.” Bockarie walked slowly up and down the classroom, making sure that he made eye contact with every student regarding his last point.

“I understand, sir, but you still see my point that what we see of those educated isn’t encouraging,” the young boy persisted.

“It is indeed not an easy question, but it is worth thinking about.” Bockarie wanted to flog the boy for his tone, but he respected the intelligence in his thinking and also knew the importance of his question. It was difficult to convince anyone to invest in education if those educated were worse off and couldn’t find better jobs for themselves. So his response was, “Times are difficult for many people these days. There used to be a time when an educated person lived better. But that is not the only purpose of education. Its purpose is far greater than just improving your economic condition. In your case, you all need education so that you can be in a position to take advantage of opportunities that will come along. You cannot wait for the opportunity and then get an education when it arrives. You’ll be too late.” The students were quiet, even the young man who had asked the questions.

Bockarie was not sure whether he believed what he had told his students, but he felt that it would do for that moment. At home that evening he spoke to his father, Pa Kainesi, and his friends Pa Moiwa and Mama Kadie about what had happened in school. He remembered how exciting school was when he was a boy and the children had a thirst for learning. All the elders could offer him now was a popular maxim that “no condition is permanent” and that what he was doing was noble. He wanted to respond that although he believed in the maxim, in this part of the country, the condition of their lives and the despair were bringing about changes in people that would become permanent even after the conditions that had brought them about had changed. But one must have faith in the words of the elders and sometimes allow hope breathing room. He resorted to that thought instead.

He went for a stroll, keeping his frame within the darkest body of the night to avoid greetings and conversations. He soon forgot his thoughts and started to observe how some closed their day. At the edge of town he stopped, and his eyes caught the bottom of the veranda where Colonel and his group were tying up bundles of wood for sale. He walked closer to the nearest mango tree, carefully minding the sounds of his feet so that his footsteps didn’t give him away. He leaned on the tree, watching this energetic group of youngsters. They were calculating the amount of money to be made from selling wood.

“Five bundles and one for free so that she will continue buying from us,” Salimatu told Amadu, who jokingly saluted her and started tying the extra bundle. She laughed and continued instructing Victor, Ernest, and Miller how to pack the bundles so that it was clear which was to go to what house.

“That makes it six supplies,” Victor called out to Colonel, who wrote something in a small notebook while standing on a bench over everybody. They all moved quickly. Colonel sat on the ground and started counting their income for that day, which he pulled out of a small bag, looking around to make sure no envious eyes from the outside were on him. Bockarie hid himself some more in the darkness. Colonel separated the money into two piles, one for saving and the other for food and whatever else they needed.