Primary School teachers rock!

Move aside Mr Bean. Mr. Kokauru, our primary school teacher takes the cake hands down. The man had the unmatched ability to interpret things completely different to most people. Mr Kokauru was the kind of person that would have an answer - and a solution - for every crisis or situation.

Mr Kokauru’s ingenious scribbling on a piece of cardboard, warned learners at the school hostel premises not to “… play in this pond when this sign is submerged in water”.

Poor Mr Kokauru could not fanthom how learners could not understand the sign. He was also a firm believer in doing things right the first time. He believed that counting should start from the ‘number’ zero. He also believed the first day of the week was Monday and not Sunday, but that is a conversation best left for another day.

One day, some students in the hostel complained of not having received their share of dinner, after standing in the queue.“How many of you did not receive their dinner. Let me see a show of hands,” Mr Kokauru said.

Four learners put their hand in the air.

Mr Kokauru moved closer to the learners and started counting “…zero, one, two, three… give me three plates there please,” he shouted to the kitchen staff.

After the plates arrived, one learner was still short of his dinner

“Hey you boy,” Mr Kokauru protested, “Did I not count you here? Stop playing games with me - you got the plate already because you were counted.”

That was Mr Kokauru for you. By the way, we never dared call him by his full surname, which meant ‘small, funny-shaped head’ (which he unfortunately had). We abbreviated it to Mr K.

When Mr K saw a learner carrying water in a glass to his room one day, he stopped her and summoned her to his office.

“Don’t you know that it is prohibited to take tea and foodstuff into the rooms?” he asked the learner.

“I know sir, but this is just water,” she said.

“I knew that is what you would say. Pour it out. You kids of nowadays are too smart. I am sure you have taken the tea and hid it under that water in your glass,” was his response.

My friend Tjeripo once tricked him into letting him leave his classroom. Once he was outside, I called him to the class widow and asked how he managed to do that.

“Ag, you know that Mr Kokauru is not that literate. Just throw him any line in English and he will believe you. You have to make it sound like an emergency though,” he told me.

“Really? So, what line did you use?” I asked Tjeripo.

“I told him I needed to go, as I need to go and help my dad to carry the Geography back to school. Of course, he had no idea what Geography was.”

I decided to follow Tjeripo’s lead. I approached Mr K’s table and a few minutes later, I was out of the class after using the very same line.

After the fifth learner used the same line on him to be excused from class, the teacher got suspicious and yelled at the last learner: “You boys think I am stupid. How on earth will you all carry the Geography back to school? You think I do not know that Geography is merely the size of a matchbox?”

I left it at that. I never really knew what Mr K understood by the term ‘Geography’, but it surely did provide for much-needed comic relief.

Oh, how time flies. All I am left with now of Mr Kokauru, who has since retired from teaching and returned to Kaokoland, is a picture of him with the rest of the teachers of class 1986.

True to his image as a gentleman, Mr K is pictured with his white shirt tucked neatly in his formal pants, a dark blue tie and flip-flop sandals! He was indeed a man of style and knew just how to do it!

Let’s raise our glasses, of water and a hidden tea bag, to the amazing Mr Kokauru.

Until then…

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