For her 28th birthday Esma, the first grade teacher, threw a party at the school. She invited some other female teachers, me, and her regular year-round students. Summer school students were from well-off families. Families who cared about English and had the money to pay the exhorbitant summer school fees, but not enough for the whole year. The students at Esma's party were her year-round Grade 5 class.
They were all cheerful kids who clearly liked Esma very much, and she said she wanted to have a party for them because she loved them and missed them too.
They all looked well-fed, some of them much too well-fed. Their English was almost perfect. Even their accents were almost perfect—almost American.
After the BBQ Esma broke the kids into teams and sent them all on a scavenger hunt. After 15 minutes a group of boys came running back to her waving a bag of chips.
“Teacher, this is the treaure?! We all share this? Teacher it wasn't worth looking for!”
“Wow,” she said to the adults, “when we played that game with the summer school kids no one complained about the prize.”
After that it was time for cake. She had two made up, a toffee and a strawberry, with “Happy Birthday T. Esma” written on both. The children ate a little before they began chasing each other around the soccer field with chunks of cake, trying to smear it on each other's faces. I think maybe it's traditional.
“It's disgusting,” said Esma. By the time their parents came to pick them up the sun was setting, the temperature was finally almost tolerable. There was a telling mess scattered around the lawn for the teachers to clean up. Whole slices of birthday cake, paper serving plates empty but for the untouched vegetables, an unopened bag of potato chips.
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