Blessing

Chapter 21

215 21 t was the beginning of another academic year. Blessing’s most treasured possession was her Primary School Leaving Certificate. Mozart had arrived from the village and was now part of the Tepo household. That was not the composition of Joseph’s ideal home, but if having Mozart under his roof guaranteed his wife’s protection when she went after knowledge, then he was ready to accommodate him. It was the beginning of another academic year and unlike those years in the village when she had watched ‘Mosa’ and Totso set out for school, she now was preparing to set out for school with Mozart. ‘I know you are a bundle of nerves. Carrying a first school bag at nineteen, who would not be? But just trust me when I say that the tension knotted inside you will loosen the moment you walk into the school compound,’ Winifred reassured her. ‘Look at it this way: Just who do you think goes knowledge-hunting at an hour when nocturnal creatures start to invade the streets?’ She smiled queerly. ‘Trust me, Blessing. At 5.00 p.m., your school compound will be filled with students only as young as teenagers and as old as most of my clients.’ ‘Wini, this is a serious matter.’ ‘Just go. You will come back and tell me. Go before your husband returns and finds you in my house.’ Though it took some time for the sights that greeted her eyes to be transformed into credible signals in her brain, Blessing knew from the minute she walked into the school compound that she had her place among the knowledge-seekers. Her newly established birth certificate in her hand, she completed the registration formalities. The classroom beckoned. She walked into it feeling very much at home. However, victory in the first battle was a prerequisite to face the second: How was she going to speak in front of so many strangers? To diminish the risk of becoming a stooge, she chose to keep her eyes and mouth hidden from the teacher by sitting as far as possible from his or her front-room kingdom. Distance did not solve her I 216 problem, for the English language teacher walked in, introduced himself, and asked the fifteen students to do likewise starting with, ‘the girl at the back.’ Blessing looked behind her. The wall looked back. She looked at Mozart sitting four benches away. He nodded his encouragement. ‘I ... ’ she muttered and then fell silent as though all other words had suddenly sprinted from her brain. She shyly cleared her throat and made another attempt: ‘I ... I am Blessing, Blessing Tepo.’ The first thing she did the following morning after Joseph took off for work was to run to Winifred’s door. She knocked several times but got no answer. She walked to the widow and peeped but found nothing that would make the door open. With a heavy face, she walked back to her house. How right Winifred had been about her finding her place. That aside, adult learning was difficult – having people insist on what she should do, when and how she should do it; having her opinion openly defied by a younger one; having her best plainly run down. It made her feel like a child learning to walk. At the end of that first day at school, she had realised it was either one of two things: give up and remain ignorant and poor or take down her ego and take up her abilities. Company in the ordeal was encouragement in her quest for the latter. Soon Blessing was a one-week-old student. As her days of intellectual pursuit advanced to months, she began taking preferences for particular subjects. History was one of her favourites. At that point, November 1969, East Cameroon had been independent for nine years and West Cameroon for eight years. But what was Cameroon’s history? She learned about the arrival, to Cameroon, of Alfred Saker and other London Baptist Missionaries in 1845. The American Presbyterians had followed in 1879, while Roman Catholic missionaries, led by the German Bishop Vieter, had docked in 1884. By 1913, the Catholics had brought in nineteen missionaries and enrolled twelve thousand pupils in their schools. Though she loved them, these topics caused an uncomfortable stir in her for she had become too busy for church. Sunday had become her day of rest from school and chores. [3.15.221.67] Project MUSE (2024-04...