first day of school

I cringed away from the spectacle at the flagpole. Seated ten feet, one language and an ocean of culture away, there was little I could say to deter Muhammed or the enthralled spectators from the impending disaster.

Instead, I watched in silent nasraniye horror as the Mauritanian primary school teacher hoisted a slight moor boy up the flagpole. His slender arms wrapped around the teetering pole; his sweaty feet gripped and slid as he inched up. The student’s elevation above sea level correlated linearly with the bowing and tilting of the pole, first a modest eighty five degrees, then eighty, seventy three, and counting… The boy reached up with tiny fingers to lace the flag string through the eye at the height of the pole, and then, victory nearly seized, dropped the string.

The green fabric with yellow crescent moon fluttered tragically to the sand and the small boy, exhausted, shimmied down after it. For now, Muhammed would allow classes to begin without the tattered Mauritanian flag slapping overhead.

Ten minutes later, a half hour into the first day of school, several more children and a teacher trickled in, pushing attendance to ten and thirty percent, respectively. During Ramadan, a month during which Muslims fast ascetically during the day and feast gluttonously when the sun sets, I expected peu d’élèves (students_ and even fewer enseignants (teachers). Less people, I supposed, to witness students plummeting from flagpoles.

I sat patiently observing the marginally scholarly scene: small children arrived haphazardly (honoring the fluidity of 7:30am according to RIM-timepieces), They chattered excitedly in a dialect of Hassaniye I had not yet learned – high pitched, school children murmur – and admired crisp melifas, shiny shoes, new bookbags, empty notebooks, unused pens and intricate hair extensions. The few teachers that deigned to come to work lounged on the floor next to the director, who had been sprawled under his desk since I had arrived. Clearly, little instruction was going to occur, so Muhammed, the only teacher on his feet, threw open a rusty door and distributed small brooms made of dried neem tree branches and covered in a summer’s worth of cobwebs and dust. The students should have cleaned the brooms before cleaning the classrooms. And by students, I mean boys, since the girls were expected to sit and demurely adjust their veils while their male counterparts sprinted across the courtyard, flung open shutters, knocked over desks and danced through clouds of sand and each other.

I decided to remedy the girls boredom; what better than with the presence of an unknown nasraniye?

Everything about me shocked and engaged them. Adults in Mauritania do not engage in conversations with children, who are too young to merit such attention. To their wide-eyed wonder, I smiled in their direction, greeted the girls in Hassaniye, and sat down between them. Despite my age, my young friends were dressed more conservatively than me. While they sported modestly colored melifas, I wore a golden yellow wrap skirt and a head scarf dyed in flashy Kaedi patterns. I was as silent as my outfit was loud, and they chattered around me, occasionally intelligible and constantly curious. Eventually they stood and organized themselves into a small walking party. I remained seated, unsure if this tour of the school grounds had an age limit. A small moor girl, young but self-assured and already stunningly beautiful, turned, adjusting her veil. “Wahaay she called to me and held out her hand. Come on.

What began as a leisurely walk around Ecole 3 eventually picked up speed. Before long, we were a colored blur of melifas, wrap skirts and shrieks of laughter, darting between school buildings and chasing each other breathless. I never had less than two girls per arm pulling me across the gravel, and three more urging me forward with shouts and giggles. We kicked up rocks and dirt with the boys. So much for being demure.

I have not seen Fatimatu since that first day of school. She has since fallen in line with the four hundred other students at Ecole 3, her piercing eyes and delicate features among dozens of veiled schoolgirls. I know as a teacher, I should not have favorites, but I look for her each time I visit the school.