Saturday, March 13, 2010

“He stole my ink.”

Said Alii as he pointed at Apolinary.  With raised eyebrows, I looked at Apolinary and said, “C’mon, give Alii back his pen.”  I was preparing to begin my English lesson and proceed to write some words on the blackboard.  Corrugated.  Expedition.  Triumph.  Unparalleled.  Exhilaration.  Alii waved his hand and caught my eye.

“No, no,” Alii signed excitedly, “He stole my INK, not my PEN.” Alii held up his pen and I looked at Apolinary to see him smiling a wicked grin.

“Huh? What?  How?” I asked to laughter from the class, especially from Monica and Josephine, joined at the hip like always.

“C’mon, can’t you take a joke?” Apolinary said as he shrugged. 

Francis came to Alii’s defense as he said, “Oh please!  Apolinary was too lazy to walk to the store and buy a pen so he just sucked the ink out of Alii’s pen.”

“What? Sucked the ink out of the pen?!” I said with a shocked expression on my face. Immediately after I said that, I realized that I might have opened a can of worms as the class began to clamor and provide instruction on how to steal ink. 

“You know, you need to first find the right kind of pen…” Francis began in his prefect mode, only to be interrupted by Mercy.

“No, if you’re good you can suck out ink of any pen.” Mercy retorts. I realize I now have to throw out the lesson plan I had designed for that class, a vocabulary list to supplement the reading I was prepared to give them for their homework assignment that night – and secretly I was hooked.  I wanted to know how these kids steal ink.

Mercy continues, “If you’re really good you can get it out of the fancy pens, but the Speedo pens are easy.” holding up an example.

Samuel adds, “Oh, make sure that you pick a pen that has enough ink to makes it worthwhile.”  The class all started talking at the same time about how important that was. 

Josephine picked up the process and explained the process of pulling out the ink tube from the pen without damaging or raising suspiciousness of the pens’ owner while Monica nodded. 

“You have really thought this out, haven’t you?” I said.  “Maybe you have too much time on your hands!” Another round of laughter from the class and five people started to sign at the same time, making the finish of the ink transfer process something that, to me, apparently only rocket scientists or Pwani Secondary students are able to do. 

“You then hold the other pen like this …” Said Salome, holding a pen under another pen, after hypothetically sucking the ink out of the other plastic tube almost to the point where it’s ready to come out.

“No!  Like this!” Osman cries, showing a different position.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, like that, or maybe like this …” Stephen sagely added as Stephen’s neighbor, Chengo demonstrated.  Mwavu also provided his hypothetical version of ink theft accompanied by commentary from Thomas.  Tall and skinny, Abdullahi captured our attention with his long arms picking up the same thread that Salome started.

I mused, have accidents ever happened? Students with ink-stained faces getting in trouble with the house parents? Poisoning by swallowing ink? I shared those thoughts with the students.

“Oh, that doesn’t happen much,” Shukurani responds with a carefree shrug as is her nature, “We practice.  We’re good.”

Indeed.  They’re good.  

3 comments:

John said...

Wow! Amazing story. But I'm confused. Are you saying they then transfer the ink into their own pens?

Unknown said...

John -

Yeah - I'm still not sure how they do that. I think there's some magic involved. :-) Regardless - that's not something I want to try any time soon, grin!

M Tech Computers said...

mtechcomputers

regards
m tech computers

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