Ardo Zubairu
09-15-2005, 04:34 PM
I WRAPPED MY ARMS around a flimsy card board box that held the files, memos, post -it notes. Framed photos and lesson plans that were building blocks of four -years teaching tenure at government secondary life camp at the outskirts of Abuja and ran toward the waiting car.
As I learned down to open the car, a fellow teacher asked me how it felt to be on one man protest against big establishment. I sputtered a vague reply, experiencing confidence that my one man protest work stoppage would be resolved successful and soon. It’s funny how optimistic I felt that bright summer morning. That morning November 19, 2003, the beginning of bitter, divisive-I became a striker; I was protesting what I considered unwillingness by school management to bargain in good faith with me. My decision was reasoned and appropriate: I was fighting placement to teach the senior classes instead of the junior class allocated to me. It was a worthy battle.
But Even worthy battles can end with casualties of the heart: weeks later I unpacked that cardboard box and found a card that had come with flowers my student once sent me. It was signed “from your great student”. Reading it, I shed my first-separation related tears. But as much as it hurt to separate from my “students”, I carried a picket sign that summer.
I picked up side jobs: selling recharge cards and working as a sale representive in a paint company humbled me and heightened my sensitivity to everyday realities I’d escaped by landing my Teaching job right out of college. My monthly salary pay was 19, 425 naira, far less than my teaching’s salary, and as the week dragged on I began to learn what it was like to be young, gifted and abjectly broke.
Six months into the labour market, I got a fellowship to study in Johannesburg, South Africa. During my ten months there, I file stories about South Africa’s political transformation in my social diary.
In May 2005 I was offered to go back to work but I have not returned. I have never again seen the inside of my old office. Nor have I see my students who see me as their hero for four years.
I still think of how my students responded to my strike pledge. Two of them wrote personal letters thank me for what I have done to their lives… one proposed to marry me.
I resist the temptation to change my mind but my mother was a teacher. Could I reject that legacy?
More important, my decision to walk the picket line was shaped by my personal ideas about integrity.
I have since moved on another job in another part of Abuja city. I keep that yellowing card from my “student” in my wallet as reminder that in human nature no condition is permanent-one the many lessons I learned from my protest.
I also learned that I can’t define myself by my career. Today I treasure time with my girlfriend just as much as or more than scoring a professional coup.
Most of all, when I look in the mirror I see a different man-wiser, stronger, build to handle life’s bumps and dips. And I trust myself more than ever before.
The protest left me changed but not damaged. Can those frustrated me and gave insulting remarks say the same.
As I learned down to open the car, a fellow teacher asked me how it felt to be on one man protest against big establishment. I sputtered a vague reply, experiencing confidence that my one man protest work stoppage would be resolved successful and soon. It’s funny how optimistic I felt that bright summer morning. That morning November 19, 2003, the beginning of bitter, divisive-I became a striker; I was protesting what I considered unwillingness by school management to bargain in good faith with me. My decision was reasoned and appropriate: I was fighting placement to teach the senior classes instead of the junior class allocated to me. It was a worthy battle.
But Even worthy battles can end with casualties of the heart: weeks later I unpacked that cardboard box and found a card that had come with flowers my student once sent me. It was signed “from your great student”. Reading it, I shed my first-separation related tears. But as much as it hurt to separate from my “students”, I carried a picket sign that summer.
I picked up side jobs: selling recharge cards and working as a sale representive in a paint company humbled me and heightened my sensitivity to everyday realities I’d escaped by landing my Teaching job right out of college. My monthly salary pay was 19, 425 naira, far less than my teaching’s salary, and as the week dragged on I began to learn what it was like to be young, gifted and abjectly broke.
Six months into the labour market, I got a fellowship to study in Johannesburg, South Africa. During my ten months there, I file stories about South Africa’s political transformation in my social diary.
In May 2005 I was offered to go back to work but I have not returned. I have never again seen the inside of my old office. Nor have I see my students who see me as their hero for four years.
I still think of how my students responded to my strike pledge. Two of them wrote personal letters thank me for what I have done to their lives… one proposed to marry me.
I resist the temptation to change my mind but my mother was a teacher. Could I reject that legacy?
More important, my decision to walk the picket line was shaped by my personal ideas about integrity.
I have since moved on another job in another part of Abuja city. I keep that yellowing card from my “student” in my wallet as reminder that in human nature no condition is permanent-one the many lessons I learned from my protest.
I also learned that I can’t define myself by my career. Today I treasure time with my girlfriend just as much as or more than scoring a professional coup.
Most of all, when I look in the mirror I see a different man-wiser, stronger, build to handle life’s bumps and dips. And I trust myself more than ever before.
The protest left me changed but not damaged. Can those frustrated me and gave insulting remarks say the same.