All God’s children

After trying to find a suitable job for one year, this was my salvation. I replied in the affirmative and started my teaching career on Wednesday February 1 1950. Coincidentally, that calendar is the same for 2006 as it was for ’95 and four other in-between years.

On the hill, I spent six unforgettable years before I was selected for Government Teachers’ Training College. For five years, my assignment was the first standard class which was roughly 50 children ranging in age from seven to nine. There were no repeaters. By that time, the Board of Education had ruled that children must not remain in a class for more than a year.

Lots of indelible memories crowd my mind. Once in a composition, a pupil wrote, "My techer is a wite boy." In that one sentence, two words were wrongly spelt. My bone of contention was classifying me — a brown skinned man — as a "white boy". Interlocking my fingers with his, I asked him what colour was his hand. He replied, ‘Black." But he still stuck to his description of me because that was what his mother had said.

"Sir, I let one of them take a bite from my pomsettay and she eat out the whole thing." That was a complaint I received from a girl who could not tell which of the twins had done her that. When told to bring the culprit, the child returned with one who denied vehemently ever having anything to do with the matter. Those identical twins — Eileen and Irene — confused everyone.

"How am I to know who is Eileen and who is Irene?" I asked them when they were both standing in front of me. They laughed and I noticed the formation of their teeth was slightly different. Those adorable little girls used to compete for my attention by bringing me mangoes — each trying to give me a bigger one.

Another unforgettable student, was a deformed boy who reminded me of "Quasimodo" — the hunchback in the novel "Notre Dame de Paris" by Victor Hugo. Both his arm and leg on one side of his body were mis-shapened and shorter than the other side. His face on that side was squashed down and he dribbled continuously. He was always clean and his books were nicely covered by his parents.

He used to come to school early and wait by the grotto. As soon as he saw me, he would run awkwardly towards me, smiling all the time. He liked to hold my hand and walk to the class.

"I had to come to see you, Mr Kissoon, because Selwyn talks about you all the time. He likes coming to school now," his mother told me. She went on to relate that he was her only child. He should have had a twin brother but that baby was born dead after resting on Selwyn’s side in her womb which resulted in Selwyn’s deformity. She had such high praise for me for not scorning her child. Believe me, it was a great effort on my part to overcome my initial squeamishness.

I recalled Fr Greene telling me, "You are going to meet all types in the classes you teach. Some will make you feel to resign forthwith. On the other hand, some are angels and you’ll want to teach them for free. Anyhow you look at it, they are all God’s children and try to love them."

Once a little boy asked his mother where his baby sister was before she came to their home. The mother replied, "She was an angel in heaven." The boy suggested, "But Mommy, she is always bawling and screaming down the place. She is not happy here. Better send her back to heaven."