We learnt much about nature in our high school science class. One of the marvels for us then, was the explanation for mirages which are commonly seen on hot days during the dry season. They are optical illusions caused by the reflection and refraction of light through the atmosphere. Some enterprising science teachers, wanting their pupils not to forget the lesson, would often additionally tell the mythical story of a traveler in the desert who wasted his water on non-essentials because he thought he was approaching an oasis. Travelling on and never reaching the supposed body of water, he nearly perished with thirst in the desert heat until he was found by some kind Bedouins who refreshed him with their own water.
Some students later used the legend of the desert traveler in an English language class when asked to illustrate the meaning of the saying, ‘All that glitters is not gold’.
Some people have striking experiences where things were not what they seemed. I remember one of our high school teachers, an Englishman, who wore the same white cotton shirt and brown khaki shorts to his classes day after day. We talked about him and he became the butt of many jokes, depicting him as too miserly to buy proper clothes to dress himself. It did not help that he had no car and walked to most of the places he went. In our eyes he became the epitome of all penny-pinching Englishmen: skimping on basic comforts and too stingy to spend the money he was earning even on himself. Some even likened him to Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly character in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol which we were reading at the time in the English Literature class.
He was also the Scoutmaster. One day he decided to hold our weekly Scout meeting at his house. We were deep in our perception of him as we arrived, wondering what new discoveries we would make. For a start we thought the house was too big for him: he was a bachelor and we could not imagine what he would be doing alone inside it.
“Rolling around in it” suggested one of my friends, conspiratorially, in the vernacular.
“I wonder what Scrooge would have done”, contributed another.
“Moving about from one room to another, day by day”, teased another helper.
“That would make him a mad man,” piped in the last boy.
We all laughed. After the day’s business he suggested we play some games. He then led us through a corridor to the back garden. The smiles were wiped off our faces as soon as we came to the big garden. There on a wire clothes-line on one side of the garden were hanging five identical pairs of khaki shorts and white shirts.
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A woman went swimming at the local recreation centre swimming pool. She dived in from the deep end, did the crawl under water and then surfaced near the shallow end. As she turned round she saw a head of hair moving slowly towards her and thought someone was about to drown. She raised an alarm to the life guards, and it was only as the guard dived into the water that she realised, to her embarrassment, that what she had seen was her own wig. She had forgotten about her chemotherapy and the wig she was using to cover her bald head, which she had forgotten to secure, before plunging into the water.
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A woman entered a doctor’s office without knocking. She sat down and after some small talk with the doctor, she stood up and unbuttoned her blouse. Then she sat down again. The doctor drew nearer, peered over her head, and began to fiddle just under her bra. She then got up again with the doctor still standing and peering over her shoulder to the front of her blouse; he seemed to fiddle again with something. Then she sat down, and they exchanged some words again. He put his hands again in her bosom and fiddled. Again, she stood up and this time she unbuttoned her blouse some more and as well undid her bra. Then she sat down again and while they were having more conversation, he resumed the apparent fiddling under her bra. She smiled when he took out his hands. The doctor then moved nearer to her and helped her do up her bra and then started to button her blouse. Just then a nurse entered the room, and looking at them, promptly excused herself, left the room, closing the door after her.
Outside she beckoned to a colleague, another young nurse.
“I don’t know what’s going on in there”, she said, in a low tone, pointing to the doctor’s room.
“What do you mean?”
“The doctor and the woman….” She then described what she saw.
“You have to tell the sister.”
“Must I? “I feel embarrassed for him. I thought he was a nice guy.”
“You can never tell; appearances can deceive. Remember what they told us at induction and orientation… to be on the lookout for any of these aberrations of behaviour, and to report them always.”
“I don’t like to tell tales.”
“You could be disciplined for not telling, if it’s eventually discovered. Come on, I’ll go with you.”
So, they went together to sister’s office to report the ‘incident’.
She questioned them and ascertained that the lady in question was still in the doctor’s office. Then she dismissed them and told them to leave the matter with her; she would handle the case. As the young nurses left her office, the sister got up and made for the doctor’s consulting room. She closed the door after her and seemed to stay there a long time. But there were no loud noises or shouting, or anything that would attract attention, coming from the room. The two young nurses looked at themselves, and pretended to be doing their work but they could not wait to see the outcome. The first nurse whispered,
“You know what I would like most right now?”
“What? It’s too early for chocolate.”
“Come on, don’t be daft. I’d like to be a fly on the wall in that room this minute; that’s what.”
Her colleague smiled, “Patience, girl; all will be revealed in due course.”
They resumed their busyness at work. They were surprised when the sister emerged with the doctor and the woman, all full of smiles. They looked at themselves in disbelief. The sister then gave the woman a hug as she waved her goodbye and the doctor returned to his room.
Later the sister explained to the young nurses that the woman was the doctor’s wife. She was just coming back from the special unit where she was undergoing treatment for cancer and the doctor was checking on her long intravenous catheter (called PICC) line.
