The sun burns hot against my skin as I head home from school. I’m amazed by how much nicer it feels to sit in the shade of a mango tree than to walk along the sun scorched paved road. At home, I drop my bag on the floor and grab the handle of my blue rubber bucket to head to the water pump.
Along the way, I pass some children dressed in the blue and white uniforms that students at Community Secondary School wear. Not that I have anything against students at Community, but I’m naturally biased towards my own students and Kankaylay.
“You’re going to get water?” One Community boy asks me in Mende.
“Yes,” I say, and they all laugh. I’m not sure if they think that my going to the pump to get water like every other person in the village is funny or if they’re laughing at my attempts to speak Mende. (My twelve year old Mende teacher would have been angry that I didn’t utilize the phrase he taught me for such occasions – ‘Why are you laughing at me?’) Either way, I’m not overly concerned by the fact that people find me amusing.
After I fill my bucket, a woman at the pump goes to help me lift it up onto my head. Before she can do so, a boy from my JSS II class comes running over. “No Miss Kenley, let me,” he says taking the bucket onto his own head.
“Okay,” I agree, knowing that no one is ever going to believe that I want to learn to carry water on my head.
“I passed those Community boys and they said they saw you with a bucket, so I came here right away to help,” my student explains in Krio. “Anytime you want water call me, okay?”
I can’t help but think for the most part I’m right to prefer my own students at Kankaylay to any others. After all, I didn’t see any Community students racing to tote water for me!
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