SCHOOL MEMORIES: Loving and losing Mr Beingana

It was nice to see a handsome young single man standing in front of us for a change. Sure, he wasn’t great at giving explanations and he seemed displeased with his profession but we were glad to see him. He gave us the much-needed break from the wrinkled faces of our male teachers. I swear, some of them were so old that they might have been present at Jesus’ crucifixion. We were standing outside when we saw him approaching our classroom block. We held our breath as he walked past the first classroom, the second, the third and we screamed when he finally entered ours. “Good morning, class?” He said, “We are going to learn about the chemical periodic table.” “But teacher, you didn’t tell us your name,” said Elaine Arinda, the class clown. He wrote on the blackboard. Mr. Christopher Beingana. But the end of the day, he was ‘de hunk’ to us on account of his handsomeness. We loved him the best way we could. We knew that if we didn’t treat him right, he would be taken to S.3.C. We detested those stuck-up girls of S.3.C. If we had a nickel for every time the school administration said to us, “Why can’t you be like S.3.C?” We would be rich. So we loved Mr Beingana with a pathetic, unrequited kind of love. Some offered to rub the blackboard and others carried his books to, and from the staffroom. Some pretended to be academically challenged and sought his attention after class, and others pretended to be inattentive in class just so he could mention their names. All we got in return was an occasional smile. And yet because we were cursed with an incurable disease that made our bones ache with need to cause trouble, it wasn’t long before we threw in the towel on good behaviour. On April Fools’ Day, we stuffed his desk with grasshoppers and we had a hearty laugh watching him jump up and down as they flew toward him. He packed up his books and like all teachers we had offended in the past, we watched him entering S.3.C the next day, followed by thunderous clapping and hysterical screams. It took three days before we stopped licking our wounds. We finally stopped jeering every time we saw Mr Beingana entering S.3.C. We all moved on with our lives…well, except for Elaine. Because we had all been busy, trying win the hunky man over, none of us noticed that Elaine wasn’t the same anymore. She was no longer our class clown and neither was she the girl who wore skirts with torn zippers. Furthermore, she now combed her hair and glossed her lips. She was infatuated with him. It was unsurprising; in an all girls’ school, a handsome young teacher was always an easy target for misguided feelings. One night, a week following the loss of Mr Beingana (that’s what we called it), Elaine suddenly started screaming. We all woke up and rushed to her bedside. Tears were flowing down her face and she was breathing fast. “Chris, I miss Chris!” she kept saying. It only made sense the next day when upon seeing Mr Beingana, she ran towards him and threw her arms around him as we watched, cringed and dropped our jaws.

Education

SCHOOL MEMORIES: Loving and losing Mr Beingana