Our first and last encounter with Ms Barbara Kiconco was less like one between a teacher and her students and more like one between a boy and a girl. When she entered our classroom, we clapped and showered her with compliments; we told her that her yellow blouse and red skirt were good for her dark skin complexion. It was a lie but all the same, she blushed and replied, “You’re the most beautiful girls I have ever seen.” We asked her to tell us about herself and she bit her nails and rolled her eyes as she talked about her love-life. He was an engineer in a prominent firm and although he hadn’t asked for her hand in marriage, she could bet her left arm that they would be together forever. He later left her for someone with fair skin and a large behind but that’s a story for another day. Ms Kiconco was truly the most unprofessional teacher we had ever met. We thanked our lucky stars for giving us a good punching bag. She knew it, we knew it and every student teacher knew it that if they ever hoped to pass their practical examinations, they would have to treat us like small gods. They knew they had to appease us and bribe us…basically kiss our behinds. It had been a while since we had been taught by a student teacher. The last one, Mr Tumuheirwe, had walked out of our classroom, out of the school gate and out of the teaching profession. This happened because one day as he taught us, he received a phone call and he excused himself, leaving his coat behind. At the end of the lesson when he picked it up to go, a rat jumped out of the inner breast pocket and into his shirt, forcing him to undress. Months later, we heard that he had started a general merchandise shop. I’m therefore sure, and I would bet my life on the fact that by the time Ms Kiconco walked into our classroom, she had been cautioned about us. Over the years, we had come to be known as the worst behaved, least cooperative; most disrespectful...you get the picture; the list of our wrongdoings was long. The list of teachers who dreaded the thought of teaching us or refused to set foot in S.3D was long too. She was making stale jokes but those jokes were even made staler by lack of confidence in her delivery. But how could she possibly be confident and yet she was a fearful mess? Her forehead was producing gallons of sweat and her legs were struggling to hold her wait up because they were shaking. For all the forty minutes that she taught us, she was standing close to the door and we could see that she was ready to jump out and run any minute. As you can imagine, she didn’t come back again. We heard that she couldn’t handle the pressure of not knowing when we going to do something terrible. They didn’t have another class to offer her and so she left for another school and there, she found love and got married. When we heard of it, we patted ourselves on the shoulder. At least for once in our lives, our terribleness had begotten something good.
