NEVER TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?

Teaching is a gift used to sift talents
And also to lift hearts in swift flights
Teaching is like the craft of sculpting
Futures await teachers’ created vessels
…to accept their growth through your impact
…on their childhoods
But here I stand on the middle of this teaching ladder
Being told to never dream of becoming a millionaire
If it is the only thing I’d do
How is this fair?

II
I wake at dawn to visit the Fence
To make sure dormitories are well kept
I rush to the shower only to rush to classes
Closing as late as five’s half to the pm
Only to come sit down to plan
…for the next day
Sleep is not something I can do
For student’s knocks on my door
Are like planned songs
And they ask from exeats to help
From attention to tantrums
To report or for support
Making me a human on a sleepless wheel
For some nights are spent at hospitals
Tending to broken bodies
…and sometimes faking bodies

III
Saturdays are days I rest not
For my dawns are all for supervision
And my mornings are for inspections
If there be students whose conformity remain zero
Their punishments are my punishments
So I sit around watching them work
Only to come home to scripts needing my marking
…all through the weekends
Breaking to attend to needs
…which never tend to cease

IV
Vacations are naught but marking and collating
But I am told a teacher’s vacation has been arrested
And so all year
…I turn into a machine, working and working and working and working
Only to be told to squash dreams
…of becoming a millionaire
If only that is the only thing I’d do

V
Where will a politician be without my kind?
Where will a medic be without us?
Where will a contractor be without our help?
Where will all others be without teachers?
Yet we are dragged through penury
…like things to be shamed
We are dragged through uselessness
Like things to be disrespected
We are dragged through taunts
Like game needing a hunt
Holy books tell tales of teachers being prophets
And the heavenly honour which awaits their chores
Coupled with the blessings due them on earth
Where lies the minds of our leads?

VI
I know we are the grass being walked on
By elephants
I know we’re the grass, uprooted for umbrellas to be planted
I know we are the numbers being played like a game of oware
But fairness is putting respect
On an occupation which trains to fill positions worthy
Not throwing horrors to deter many a great others
…from venturing
Life is a wheel of sorts
Your generations await their turn
In this pauper’s field
Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia © August 2, 2021