15th March 2010 – Always Listen to Advice

Sometimes I wonder why it takes some of us so long to heed advice from those who have more experience in certain matters. Here is how I learned the lesson in a less than easy way.

For a couple weeks we had a family of wasps building a house on our gate, a couple of feet from the door through which we go in and out. Everyone who had visited us had noticed this construction going on and each one warned us about how severe the sting of a wasp can be and advised us on how to get rid of them: Some day after dark, spray the family with insecticide so as to slow them down, then knock down the house and crush it. Well, I delayed, and continued to watch them grow bigger, to increase in number, the house to get larger. Saturday morning when returning from praying with our Small Christian Community, I opened the gate and was immediately stung by one of them. I came into the house and made a paste of bicarbonate of soda and water, applied it, and the pain quickly became a little less. I was teaching within a short time and so rushed off to do that. The students noticed my white flaky arm (dried baking soda paste) but I explained what had happened and went on with the class. The pain and the swelling weren’t bad on Saturday but Sunday, Sunday night, Monday, Monday night the redness and itchiness were really severe. By Tuesday the swelling was down and the itching tolerable. I kept thinking about how it would have felt like to have more than one of those creatures do the stinging, or what if it had been a child that was stung. By next time I may have learned to listen to advice.

The last Sunday of the month is visiting day at school and teachers are asked to be there to discuss with any parents who want to their concerns about their daughters. On the last Sunday of February there were quite a few parents who came to visit, including one with a baby who has been born since her daughter came to school. It was a thrill for Doreen to get to meet her little sister! There was crying and laughing going on, both from those who had visitors and those who watched from a distance while others embraced their mothers. The parents that I talked to were concerned about their daughters, asking about their progress in their lessons, about their discipline at school, how they behave, how they get along with the other students, etc. And inevitably they thanked me for not only teaching their daughters but also for caring for them, guiding them, helping them develop.