A Classroom Chronicle

After graduating from Lauto­ka Teachers College in 2003, the following year I was posted to Nasau District School, Nasau, Nalawa, in the highlands of Ra.

At that time, our students came from the eight villages that be­longed to the district of Nasau namely Nasukamai, Nauria, Va­nuakula, Ovalau, Nukulau, Nubu­makita, Sawanivo and Nasau.

I taught there for five years, and this is one of those funny incidents that occurred while I was there.

The year was 2006 and we had a new teacher transferred into school by the name of Peceli Kolikoli who was from Nadroga.

He was a very experienced and dy­namic teacher and during our first staff meeting accepted the respon­sibility of teaching Class one.

From the outset let me state that Mr Kolikoli was a very strict indi­vidual and his Class one students reflected that. They were probably the best disciplined in school.

During the year, there was this unique and special relationship be­tween him and his students but one day his students would turn the ta­ble on their ‘tauvu’ teacher.

In that year, Classes one and two occupied the old wooden building just beside the main school build­ing.

Class one occupied one room while the second one had Class two with their teacher Koini Vakarilaba.

The Ministry of Education had allocated funds for a new concrete building for the Class one and two and work was about to be complet­ed that year.

The school management in antici­pation of having the new building opening then took the wall separat­ing the two classes in the old wood­en building with the intention of turning it into a school hall.

Due to some technical issues there was a delay in the opening of the new school building and the man­agement had no choice but to put up the walls again but only tempo­rarily without any stringent car­pentry work.

It was basically put up so it could be easily taken down again a few weeks later.

So, on this cold Tuesday morning Mr Kolikoli’s Class one Ra students decided to take revenge on their tauvu from Nadroga.

Their teacher had a habit of rock­ing his chair while sitting and one of them decided to replace his teacher’s chair with another chair, with one of its hind legs broken.

As soon as Mr Kolikoli entered the room everyone stood up went through the routine of greeting en­vironment.

Mr Kolikoli then made his way to his table and sat down. Behind him was the wooden wall that the school management had temporarily put up and on the other side was Class two.

Minutes later, sure enough, Mr Ko­likoli began rocking his chair.

Mrs Vakarilaba, the Class two teacher had just started marking her class attendance at her table ,which was fortunately leaning to­wards the side when the classroom wall fell with a bang, with Mr Ko­likoli following after with his legs up in the air and ultimately falling on top of the fallen wall.

You see, as soon as he rocked his chair with the one leg missing, he fell back and crashed against the wall, which was temporarily put up.

The wall could not withsatnd the force and both the wall and Mr Ko­likoli ended up on the floor of the Class two room.

The climax of it all was as soon as Mr Kolikoli crashed through the floor his Class one students all shouted in unison ‘Ma’e!’

For their own special reasons, Mr Kolikoli and his Class one students would definitely never forget that cold Tuesday morning.

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