The Headmaster

The headmaster at Pitsane Photlokwe Primary School died. She just died. One week she was here, the next she was in the hospital and that Monday I got word that she died. Of what, I don't know. At first I wanted to though. I feared a heart attack because she was quite overweight and so I asked. Someone said lung cancer. Someone else said she had asthma. Another guy said it was such a pity. But at her memorial service they said her cause of death was pneumonia. I don’t doubt it. Her cause of death is like an equation that ends at 2X=2. It’s what left her weak enough to die of pneumonia that makes me stop solving for X. The incomplete answer is false but has a smoky halo of truth.

I remember telling her that in America husbands and wives just about always live together and that I was shocked when I first got to Botswana and saw that here they often didn't. "That is why," I said "HIV/AIDS is such a big problem." I wonder what it made her feel like to hear me spout out my facts and figures like an nerdy statistician locked in an ivory tower. I would imagine that it probably made her feel something similar to what I feel when people spout out facts and figures about inner city youth growing up in dangerous ghettos with single mothers who sigh and hope that no checks bounce this month. It feels like a train flattening your reality into a plain piece of paper offering black and white numbers instead of an holistic picture of reality with its fine strokes of color and texture that reflect the same reality. A statistic. I don't know how it made her feel. The fact remains that she's dead now and I was dumb with shock. I called her cell phone and when no one answered, I texted other teachers to make sure it was true--because I'd just seen her the week before last. Meanwhile, everyone around me carried on. Ashes to ashes, another one bites the dust quietly and life goes on.
However she died the fact still remains that I lost a good colleague and a friend. At her school, the ground is red and tidy: there are trees and flowers; the kids play unselfconsciously and their clothes are old but they're all tidy and smiling; the teachers halfheartedly complain that the children are naughty, but the teachers are amused by it. The children are naughty, but in a way we'd describe in America as "inquisitive." Her school mirrored her countenance and dress. I'd come every Tuesday to read to the kids. After the hour walk to get there, I was always dusty and bedraggled. Mma Nyadza always dressed smartly. Always. I can't say I'd ever seen her wear anything twice. When my group first arrived to Botswana in training we were told that we're judged by how we dressed. As scruffy Americans we all thought it was stupid, shallow, and that there were bigger things to think of. A year later, I realize that one of the big reasons I admired Mma Nyadza was that she ran her school like no other headmaster I've seen AND because she was always impeccably dressed. Its the latter that didn't just make me admire her, but made me want to be like her. But now she's gone, and I'm afraid that its her husband who'll be next.