Short story: The turning point
It was a Friday afternoon after break time, and on our timetable, we had library.
Instead of reading their Literature books, most of the students rather used the period to engage in unnecessary making of noise and teasing one another.
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On this particular day, the teasing was too much and as usual, the person on the table for all these was Abeiku, the student who everybody thought was the ‘blockhead’ of the class.
Abeiku always needed help in order to do class exercises. During class lessons, when teachers asked him whether he understood the lesson or not, he always answered in the affirmative yet, when they asked him a question, he would be unable to answer.
During such occasions, he would fumble with his shirt buttons, murmur some inaudible words.
It was as a result of this that his mates always used the least opportunity they got to tease him. They had ascribed him, all sorts of names too - 'tewui," rotten case, 'oboine,' among others. Anytime his mates started teasing him, he found solace in putting his head on the table and within minutes would fall asleep.
Akwasi was a student of this class who always jumped to Abeiku’s defence. Even though they often yelled and screamed at him for being a killjoy when he came to Abeiku’s rescue, he was not bothered. The most important thing for Akwasi was to stop the abuse and once he achieved that, nothing was of concern to him.
On that particular Friday, however, one of the students went overboard with the teasing when he yelled into the ears of Abeiku that even if a goat joined the class, it would perform better than him.
For the first time, Abeiku reacted in an angry manner - he held that student by the shirt and forcefully pushed him hard onto the floor and then left the classroom.
This student stood up and had wanted to attack Abeiku from behind but Akwasi, who was a witness to the whole incident reacted very fast. He rushed to the student and with a clenched fist raised, had wanted to punch him hard in the face but he was stopped quickly.
He also rushed out of the class in anger and went to sit under the big tree close to his class to cool down his temper.
That was when Kweku, another class mate joined him there and asked why he was so much offended anytime the class was teasing Abeiku who was no relative of his. At this point, Akwasi opened up to share his personal story with Kweku. "You know Kweku, I wasn't as brilliant as you see me now in secondary school.
"I was so bad that I ended up in the same class as my younger sister and still I performed badly. My parents gave up hope on me in ever going beyond junior high school. This was because they had done all in their power to help me to better my grades but there was no significant improvement.
My parents and sister thought I was just being lazy with school work and for them, that was an embarrassment to the family as they were professionals such as lawyers, doctors and journalists in the family.
But this was all not my fault. In all the schools that I attended, because of my height, I was made to sit at the back of the class. I couldn't see anything on the board from where I sat but when I complained, my teachers thought I was just making excuses so they ignored me, after all, I was a nut case .
One day, we were in school when we were informed that a non governmental organisation (NGO) was organising an eye screening exercise for all the junior high school students. I was one of the students who voluntarily went for my eyes to be screened and that was when it was detected that I was short-sighted and needed to wear a lens.
My parents were quickly informed of the development and acted on it immediately. Further tests were done and it confirmed same. I started putting on the lens and with regular specialist care, I started performing well in class and that marked the beginning of my academic successes. I put in more efforts too and that was how I surprised my parents with a distinction in my BECE.
For excelling in the BECE with distinction, my parents awarded me with a visit to Disneyland. It was fun. The rest is history, Kweku. So do you now understand why I rise to the defense of Abeiku?' For me, I believe there might be something responsible for his poor performance academically just as was in my case, because Abeiku is always reading a book. Why then is it not reflecting in his work? Until we are able to solve that puzzle, I won't allow this kind of teasing of him to go on.'
Kweku saw the sense in Akwasi' story and also decided to protect Abeiku.
Judith, Kumasi.
