Youth and foolishness. I’ve noticed no matter how matured a young person looks, there will always be traces of immaturity in a number of things done.

Sometimes the microscope just has to zoom in further to find the traces. They are always there. It takes time for many of them to wilt and fall off.

During my high school days I was so desperate to make it at the end of my final year exams that I went to extreme limits.

Perhaps, it wasn’t my fault. I saw how many who couldn’t pass their exams and had no money for remedial school, ended up on the streets as hawkers, a financial burden and nuisance to their families. This fear to not end like them Inspired my extremism.

Sometimes when I bumped into a former prefect in high school who used to be so arrogant and mean. On one hand I felt sad. There was always that other half of me that secretly rejoiced at the fall of the babylonian.

I remember one day I left home and instead of heading to school, I went to one French woman’s house. I used to teach her children English after school. We had interschool sports at the time so I knew there will be no classes. The plan was to go to her home and study in the quiet environment while her kids were gone to school.

Her husband goes to another town to work on week days and returns on weekends. The French woman, Mrs. Annette, was happy to see me and admired my determination to make good use of my time. She was from Mali and could not speak English. She therefore had no neighbors with whom she could have conversations.

With my little French, we could exchange lots of information.
At first, she would leave me to study. But all over her face, I could see the boredom of being left with a big house in the company of a TV that spoke and refused to be spoken to. She would come to where I was, look at the pictures in my English textbooks, and comment about my handwriting, “C’est Jolie! “

Away she would go. Only to return about thirty minutes later to pick a vegetable from the garden they tendered on their compound, adding that in their country Mali, people loved to farm even if they were big shots in society. She noticed in our country, food was expensive because many people see farming to be a job for the low and insignificant.

When I got tired of studying, I retired into their living room. All the channels watched in that house were French. Somehow, it helped me pick up many vocabulary in French.

The good news about going to Mrs. Annette’s place was that I got free meals. That way, I saved the money for my transport and feeding.

As a woman always left at home to herself, it seemed there was a lot bottled in her for years. Now that there was someone in sight to chat with, a lot came out that perhaps should have been held back.

She spoke about many things. Her family back home and the fact that of all the four children living with them, only one was her child-the lastborn. I thought they were all her children. She said the two boys were children of her rivals. Her husband had two other wives back in Mali. She was his favorite wife, that was why he brought her to live with him in another country.

She said the other wives were imposed on him by her mother-in-law. The only girl living among them was her niece.

The more time I spent with Mrs. Annette, the more she shared of her private life, even her suspicions about her husband. And the more I grew fond of her. I did not know how it happened, but soon, I got jealous whenever her husband came on weekends. I believed everything she said about her husband, without ever hearing her husband’s side of the story.

The warmth and friendship between Mrs. Annette and I grew intense until the arrival of her daughter and son. I didn’t know she had children with a different man before she met her current husband.

They came all the way from Mali to spend the summer holidays, three solid months. The French summer holidays were longer than ours and started earlier.

Her daughter, a teenager named Françoise, was very intelligent, beautiful and humble.

But her coming changed everything…