The Story of the African Classroom

August, Monday the 23rd, 2003


Everything in my world was molting, like a rattlesnake in late summer. My life from the wild savannahs was being caught in a steel-barred cage called Life, and soon I was being held hostage in the secret life of Kindergarten in Alaska.

It was sickening. I was born in Texas, as a soon-to-be small town girl, but my parents had taken jobs as professional zoologists in Kenya, Africa. So, as a baby, I was taken care of golden monkeys and even played with a tamed cheetah cub in a reserved area where we lived. It was life, now destroyed.

“Honey, you’re going to be late, get in the sled,” my mother retorted as I slipped and slid down the narrow snow track to my father’s dog sledge. He had just gotten the hang of driving one, and owned four malamutes about the size of my fourteen-year-old brother, Mike.

I whined, “But I don’t want to go to school!”

As every Kindergartner would do, I cried helplessly. My tears fell like rocks to the crunching snow below, as white as the foggy sky above. It was almost below 15°F, and immediate tears would freeze like mine.

“Stop whining!”

I surrendered. Eventually I would have to step into the un-warmed school, like everyone else in this deserted world of Alaska. Everything was molting, like a rattlesnake in late summer.

***

Stepping into Room 1A was the hardest thing in the universe. People stared at my snow-seal furs and inter-lined mittens, like I was an alien from planet Neptune. I had jammed my few belongings into the half-locker and carried my Crayola box and single folder with a leopard on it into the busy classroom.

As I did I realized how to make life easier. What if I imagined everyone as an animal back in Africa? It’d be the best thing, seeing life as it was but even better than before.

Ms. Joe, or so the Golden Monkey, propped herself onto a stool to reach the top of a milk wood podium. She was merely as tall as us, short and fancy like she was born in New York City.

There were four watering pools, or “tables”, that each student or creature would sit around, minding their own thoughts. As a leopard, I stumbled over to an open seat next to a cougar. She was hunched over the table, coloring in a picture of a person in roller blades.

The cougar stared at me at once as I pushed in my seat with a screech. With her beady eyes she asked softly but sternly, “Who are you?”

Like from everyone else’s view, I was the alien. No, I told myself, I am Ellen, a leopard in my own imagination.

The idea of thinking of everyone as an animal was working. Slowly I calmed down and replied, “Ellen. My name is Ellen.”

She just coughed and leaned back in her chair. The cougar said, “Olivia.”

From that day, I knew we were friends, and from that day, I imagined everyone as an animal back in Kenya.

***

June, Friday the 5th, 2004

It’s been one year of greatness.

One year of embarrassment.

Now it was one year of waiting for Graduation.

I had still carried on my ways of anticipating everyone as an animal from the Wilds, and it worked. They call me “psycho,” or “freak,” but I didn’t listen. I was born half-way across the world; over the Big Ocean and the lands where none may every see. Like its tall grass and lively waterholes, my method was unique.

But today was different.

It was the end of my first year at school, and yet that I never wanted to leave home back in August; I never wanted to set foot out of the sweltering hallways for three months. It was my third home after the Alaskan hut and my shelter back in Kenya.

Snapping back from my mistreated daydreaming, I looked over at the cougar’s work. Olivia was yet coloring in a picture of an elephant, and I remembered when I used to ride one called Ben.

She started talking to me as she grabbed another broken crayon. “So, Ellen, do you think you’re going to graduate to First Grade?”

I had never thought about it. What was it like? Was it as easy as collecting the ‘Clean Plate Club’ sticker and simple math problems like one plus one?

I basically responded, “Yeah. I am smart and good in school. My grades are high and everything is working out. I’m not an alien anymore, so does that make it okay for me to graduate?”

When I said alien, the cougar just giggled hysterically. Did she believe that I was kidding? No. It was true. I am no alien anymore. From Kenya to the icy wastelands of Alaska, I have become a new person. It was time for her ideas to molt like the summer rattlesnake, just like my life did.

“You really think that, huh, Ellen?”

I stared back at her as she dipped over the waterholes bank and lapped up water. “Yes, I do.”

She chuckled.

“We’ll see about that.”

It was truly the last day of Kindergarten, and I was now devastated. What if I didn’t make the stubby list of kids that are moving up in their educational careers? No, Ellen, don’t think that, I spoke back against my negativity.

The Golden Monkey stepped up onto her stool and tapped the milk wood podium with a straight-edged ruler. She cleared her throat and ruffled her coat of shining yellow and orange hues.

She began to speak, “Now, now children. I am going to read off the list of First Graders. Hush, hush.”

Classroom 1A had never been so quiet. Even the chirping jays had stopped fidgeting and landed highly on their fruit-bearing perches. The lion cub, Jackson, had stopped roaring and intimidating a young zebra foal, and looked up at Ms. Joe on the stool.

She tapped the ruler again, but louder.

Olivia inched closer to me as the Golden Monkey was almost down to my name, or what I hoped to be my name on that coffee-stained list of new First Graders…

“…Ellen Joule…”

I cheered. I had graduated to the next stage in my life! Dealing with fresh possibilities and homework, other people in different classes, and even my secret jungle with expand to the outside world of the Cafeteria Room.

When Ms. Joe finished, I looked over at the cougar beside me. I saw her as a human, not what was inside my head, but as a little red-head with emerald glasses and amber eyes that glowed. Her face was flushed and darkened rose, and I could tell something was wrong.
I put a hand on her shoulder, making myself human instead of thinking I was a leopard. Actually, everything changed that moment in a blink of an eye; everyone was human, not sitting by a watering hole but chattering excitedly about the next year to come.
Except only Olivia was distressed.
She looked at me with a shocked expression.
“You made it? But how?”
She scrolled down a list of words in her thoughts and mindful ideas, and I could tell by her motions of anger that she was depressed about the results of Ms. Joe’s list.

“Why didn’t I graduate?” she asked herself, raising her hand high up into the air. I swear if Ms. Joe wasn’t on the stool still, the teacher would walk right passed without a word.

The teacher replied gently but firmly, “Your scores weren’t high enough, Olivia. You failed to complete multiple assignments, and you didn’t even pass on various levels of simple life lessons we talked about.” The room was silent again, all looking back at Olivia or watching Ms. Joe stare at her troubled student. She went on, “I’m sorry, Olivia. But you’re just going to have to repeat another year.”

My mind clicked to the jungle again; people at waterholes and Ms. Joe as a Golden Monkey. But when I looked over at Olivia again before the final bell, I gradually watched her alter into a meerkat, one that scurried into her burrow as scared like a dog with his tail between his legs.

I gazed out at the sun melting the seventh layer of snow on the ground. She was smiling on the new day, watching over us as if she were the protector of all things. Like me and the animals of Africa I so dearly missed.

But now I know what to do when I want things to be different for me to fit in. Just think of Africa, Ellen; just imagine them as the animals by the waterhole, right out your old Kenya house door…

It made things stay the same, and it stopped from my life molting like a rattlesnake in late summer.