Remembering Mrs Peter, My Teacher (A Memoir)

It’s recently I got to know Mma Efa was a no-nonsense senior policewoman whom drivers in the South-east dreaded because of the ‘discipline’ she meted out to recalcitrant drivers. They tagged her a ‘witch’. Of course, that’s understandable because back then in the late 1970’s when the policewoman sent shivers down the spines of men, it was inconceivable for women to be considered equal to men. So any woman who seemed to lord it over the men was seen as extraordinary. So, my class mistress who beat pupils with a short wiry bamboo was aptly referred to as ‘Mma Efa’.

It was a Saturday morning. I and Okon were at the veranda of the front building in my grandmother’s place, chatting. I can’t remember the plans at the age of eleven that we were hatching but it could’ve been about throwing cards, setting traps for birds, flying kites or going to the stream to fish and bathe. Those were the things I and Okon often did together. Then, my eyes strayed to the street and I saw Mrs Peter, my Primary Five class teacher. I actually repeated the class because I so played the year before, becoming a fish virtually living in the streams that my school work suffered and I failed my exams.

I whispered to Okon that the elegant woman clutching a basket going to market was the ‘Mma Efa’ in our school. Surprisingly, Okon hollered the name.

She turned. We ducked below the parapet. Minutes later we resurfaced seeing she’d passed. Gripped with fear, I told Okon she’d heard but he argued she didn’t.

We soon forgot about Mrs Peter and went on chatting. Not long, my eyes roved again to the street. A woman’s stern eyes locked into mine and she nodded long. When she passed, I told Okon what had just happened.

The Monday after was the most frightful day I had going to school. But Mrs Peter didn’t show up; also on Tuesday. We learnt she was ill. (Was Okon’s little prank responsible?) On Wednesday she came and took me, along with a male teacher (who happened to be a distant relative) to a vacant classroom. She explained to him what transpired that fateful Saturday morning.

I told them I didn’t call her the name but that Okon did. I was asked to produce Okon. I told them he attended a different school. When I was asked how he got to know that was the name the pupils tagged her, I became dumb.

When the other teacher left, Mrs Peter thudded my head with her cane so much that at a point my head became numb. I went home that day and fell sick. How would I explain to my parents I dared to call my class teacher such a horrendous name? My father, a strict disciplinarian, would’ve continued from where Mrs Peter had stopped. That day too I ended up thinking Mrs Peter actually was a witch!

Days after my brief illness, I returned to school. From the midst of the other pupils which I used to hide, she brought me out to sit just beside her table. She started every lesson with me. Delay to pronounce a word or work the sums would bring her bamboo landing on my head. The fear of Mrs Peter’s cane made me beg others to teach me how to read and work the sums. When I finally could do the things she demanded, she left me alone. I became one of her brightest pupils. But that accident of forced learning (definitely an abuse in modern teaching standards) watered the plant of my love for books which eventually led to my writing today.

POSTSCRIPT: As a student teacher, I happened to work with two female teachers – one competent and one was not. The competent one taught children well and applied the cane only in extreme cases. The other depended on her cane to do all her work, even when she was at fault. The two teachers had two registers for the pupils though all were taught in one class – it was a public school and most children in the area attended private schools. Interacting closely with the children (the incompetent teacher virtually abandoned the class when she realized I could teach the pupils while the competent teacher was glad I could cope but was constantly on my back to see I carry out every task correctly), I realized her constant beating had sent majority of the pupils away and a large percentage of those attending school, even the highly intelligent ones, were timid. The short period I stayed there and with my relaxed way of teaching made the pupils break out of their shells. Pupils were eager to voluntarily stand up and read, knowing where they made mistakes they would be corrected - not have the cane landing on any part of them. Beating a child in the name of teaching is child abuse and has forced so many pupils who cannot cope to drop out of schools. My experience with Mrs Peter happened way back when corporal punishment was condoned but these days there are better ways to get the best out of any child. 

THE END.