This feeling is even worse to experience

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a student, who had been a problem for me in class and whose honesty I questioned every time she responded to a question. That experience taught me that first impressions, even of students, are usually wrong.

Last week, I had the same experience, but in reverse.

I was walking around my 5eme class while they were taking notes when I passed Berenisse, a student who has stopped by my house pretty regularly, and I’ve gotten to know pretty well. She’s spent a significant amount of time in Cotonou, ie more than most of my students, and has the most westernized take on her life and abilities of any of the students with whom I’ve talked.

As I walked by that day, I noticed sitting on her desk a purple Sharpie that had gone missing from my house about three months ago. I had chalked it up to one of my students or the kids in the neighborhood, but would not have thought Berenisse would have been the one with whom I would find the missing marker. I interrupted her notetaking to snatch it off her desk.

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

“Your house,” she answered simply, offering no explanation.

“You took this without asking. Why did you do that?”

Again, she offered no explanation.

I felt a little violated. A student who I had trusted and for whom I had high hopes had felt the need to cross the line into the territory of those students who just try to use me for what they think can get out of me.

Berenisse failed to show up my Girls Club that Wednesday, and her semi-regular weekly visits have ended. This self-imposed prohibition from anything with which I am involved it what makes me saddest. That she felt that I was that upset from the situation that she needed to break all ties with me. That she felt she was no longer welcome in my life.

A Sharpie certainly isn’t worth that.