When the new teacher came, Mr. Kafaiko, he saw me a naughty boy. On his first Science lesson, he kept asking me so many questions that I nearly disliked the subject.
"Mteule, how many planets do we have?", he asked while throwing a small piece of chalk at me.
"We have three planets", I told him as I stood.
"And you are just playing,” he said making me think I had got it right.
I waited for the usual "clap for him" but it didn’t occur. It wasn’t to happen.
As usual, even before I sat, my desk mate, young Susan was finishing naming them. All I heard was Fluto and of course, I could not miss the home of the bad one; Satan (Saturn)
Well, it was hard for me to repeat their names in all but we had remedies. The remedy was to receive a stroke of the cane for the ones forgotten. I got six of them!
When the bell rang, by all justices, the teacher was supposed to leave but he extended his stay against my wish.
"Mteule, between 1kg of stones and 1 kg of wool..." he started as all the eyes turned on my side.
I noticed Jothefu’s cornea enlarging, obviously because if I got it wrong, he was the next culprit.
My whole body shook as I thought of what to answer. As I jogged my mind, he actually took the specimen from the table at the back of the class. We had a kind of a shop there. Maybe they wanted us to be entrepreneurs. It was a good idea only that the edible things didn’t last long. We ate them. We had to.
"One kilogram of stone is heavier than one kilogram of wool", I answered without blinking.
He told the other pupils to shame on me.
And they sang for me.
"Shame on you Mteeuuuule"
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As soon as he left, I took the wool and threw it at Maiko. He didn’t cry. I become furious when Jothefu told me that I was not serious with my life. I took the stone and hit him really hard at the knee cap. He ran to the staffroom and when the same teacher came to arbitrate the potential World War III, I had to try my luck.
"I was just proving to him; that fifty grams of stones can do more harm that one thousand kilograms of wool" I defended my case...
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