Teachers Are Camels

It is a hot day, a sultry sun sinking its fingernails of heat into the back of one’s neck. Students shuffle past, wayward dunes of teenage hormones wafted by adolescent whims. Long-limbed yet in harnesses, pacing but never trotting, they navigate the sand-seas of lessons and assessments. Their sagging cheeks chewing on retorts that they dare not express, their lips pursed in institutionally recommended smiles belied by the wicked glint in their droopy eyes. During long spells of arid reporting, buffeted by gales of emailed reminders, they march on, squinting hopefully at the mirage of holidays. Time waves its fronds, green and enticing with the promise of flowing days to slake one’s parched soul. Teachers are Camels.

Soul numbing grains of whispers and perceptions nag at their nostrils as they watch the occasional parent-wagon speed through, throwing up screens of barely legitimate feedback. Blinking away these irritants, they move forward, their necks regally held above the barren parental mind that wishes their wards to be perpetually cossetted. Cacti have flowers. And teachers are camels.

During end of term sandstorms which unearths the lazy bounder that had been lurking under rock bellies, they draw on their reserves of personhood, strap on this extra lumber and ferry it till the semester break. The roving management remarks how successful the domestication has been. Look at all that load, dress it up with barbaric shawls and beads, make them pretty. But Baby! Have you seen a camel run?

Teachers are Camels.