Suatu pagi jam 7:20, Pak Adu, guru kelas 2, nemuin gua kasih tau soal keponakannya, Yusni, one of my fifth grade students. “Ibu, Yusni tidak masuk hari ini. Bukunya terbawa oleh kakaknya yang SMP. Jadi dia takut masuk sekolah.” Dengan sedikit terngaga, gua Cuma bisa jawab, “Oh, oke, Pak.” Gua lagi di tengah-tengah mempersiapkan buat kelas IPS, baca-baca lagi textbooknya, sembari nunggu kelas SBK selesai sebelum gua mulai kelas IPS gua.

Jauh di sana, gua bisa lihat rumahnya Yusni. His house is probably the nearest one to school. Lihat jam. 7:30. I’ve got about half an hour before my class starts. Otak berputar cepat. Harus bikin keputusan sekarang. Pergi atau tidak. Gua tutup buku IPS, masuk ke ruang kepala sekolah. “Bapa, beta mau izin sebentar, mau pergi ke rumah Yusni jemput dia.” Bapa Kepsek Cuma mengangguk, mungkin heran juga dia.

Jadilah gua jalan ke rumah Yusni di atas bukit. Dekat rumahnya dia, gua lihat Yusni lagi bermain. Begitu lihat gua, Yusni kaget dan langsung lari ke dalam rumah. “Shalom!” sapa gua. Yang menyambut itu Bu Sri, tante-nya Yusni. Kaget juga Bu Sri melihat Bu Guru sudah di depan rumah. “Beta mau jemput Yusni, Bu Sri,” gua menjelaskan sebelum ditanya. Langsung deh Bu Sri teriak suruh Yusni siap-siap.

Dalam perjalanan balik ke sekolah, Yusni jalan di belakang gua.Gua bilang ke dia, “Yusni, biar kamu tidak ada buku atau alat tulis, Ibu mau kamu tetap datang ke sekolah.” Dia tersenyum terus, malu kali yah. But he always does that, smiling all the time, when he’s embarrassed, when he did something wrong, when he did something right. The only time I saw him with a serious look was when he was listening to my morning devotions with stories of Abraham, Samson, Esther, Joseph, the apostles.

Berjalan ke sekolah, diiringi Yusni (who refused to walk besides me) dan adiknya, Rafli, anak kelas 2 yang harusnya masuk siang, I sighed. “Tau nggak,” I told them, “Ibu merasa seperti penggembala domba. Dan kalian domba-domba Ibu yang hilang dan Ibu cari.”

8:10. We were late for class for ten minutes. I didn’t immediately start on today’s IPS lessons on Indonesia’s ancient kingdoms. I started my class by telling the story of a shepherd, who had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them; who, for that one sheep, looked for it high and low. “Hari ini Ibu merasa seperti penggembala domba itu, yang mencari satu anak domba yang hilang, Yusni ini,” I told my class.

Indeed, my students are my little lambs. Every one of them has peculiar personalities. Some are so fragile, I felt like holding a glass.

Salah satu murid gua, Marson, bandel sekali. Tapi kalau diganggu, bahkan diejek sama anak perempuan, dia bisa menangis,dan kalau sudah begitu, ngambek tidak mau kerja lagi. The first time I went to his house for home visit, his father’s immediate comment of his son, “Ini anak jahat. Saya tempeleng juga dia tidak peduli.” His mom ran away from the house when he was still a baby. His father seemed to have given up on his youngest son.

Dealing with Marson is like dealing with a fragile snow flake. Hold it wrong a little, and it’ll break. Satu kali dia ngambek, tidak mau mengerjakan tes IPA. Gua membujuk-bujuk, sampai ingin rasanya ngenbanting sesuatu dan teriak untuk maksa dia kerjakan itu tes. Bu this is a child who seemed to have been beaten a lot, that another smack on his head won’t make him change. This is a child who, in anger, would punish himself. Gua terus bersabar.

Marson juga sering bolos sekolah. Beberapa kali gua kejar ke rumahnya. Pernah siang-siang di bawah terik matahari, pernah ketika sudah malam gelap. Every time I asked him why he didn’t come to school, he’d lie. “He’s a difficult child, Ibu,” his father, relatives, teachers would tell me, and that’s how they gave up. I won’t lie. He is a difficult child. In anger he would rip off his notes and tear it into pieces. He would cross out the little star I once gave him for submitting his homework on time, and told me that he didn’t need stars and I could give it to another kid. I asked him to re-tell the story he heard in his Sunday School, and he would stay so quiet. Sometimes I feel that he’s testing me, and I’m struggling with a piece of glass.

But this is also the kid who would tell me lots of stories on the way home from school. He’s very good at fiti burung (fiti = ketapel); he has that great natural accuracy. This is the only kid who was brave enough to catch the tokek in the classroom and throw it away (while I was running out of the classroom, screaming to a fellow teacher of the “beast” in my classroom hahaha). This is the child who has that bright, naughty smile that I like to see more often.

Lalu ada pula muridku yang lain, Robin. Dia juaranya alpa untuk kelas 5, dan pernah tertahan kelas dua kali. Minggu pertama sekolah, dia absen total. Gua harus pergi ke lapangan bola untuk ngedapetin dia, kenalan untuk pertama kali, dan minta dia datang ke sekolah. Robin’s story is similar to Marson’s, but probably worse. His mom ran away from home a couple of years ago. His dad only spoke Rote. No one’s really taking care of the family or the house. One time I did a home visit. Met his dad. Emang ternyata nggak bisa bahasa Indonesia; gua ampe mikir, gimana coba mo minta bapaknya nulis surat izin buat Robin, wong ngomong Indo aja satu, dua kata doang. And his house smelt of human excretion. The youngest child, Martin, 3 years old, went around the house without his pants. No one seemed to care enough.

Robin would miss out classes every now and then. Sometimes I would “pursue” him to his house, sometimes I would wait. He has that tendency to miss school. Sometimes he missed school to just play around, sometimes his father would take him to kopra factory to help him do some work. Recently he had been missing classes again. Setelah sekolah gua pergi ke rumahnya, probably for the fourth or fifth time this semester. Di rumahnya, gua hanya mendapati ayah-nya Robin lagi tidur pulas. Gua teriak “Shalom” berapa kali tidak bangun juga nih bapak. Akhirnya gua ke rumah tetangga, mau Tanya dimana Robin. Dan ternyata, there he was! Lagi tarik air dari sumur tetangga, pakai baju sekolah, dan adiknya Martin bersama dia, membawa jirigen kecil. “Kenapa tidak masuk hari ini, Robin?” I asked. He said he didn’t have a clean shirt. I saw him wearing a dirty school shirt, so probably he wasn’t lying. I told him, “Ibu tidak peduli kamu tidak punya seragam bersih. Ibu tidak peduli kamu pakai sepatu ko atau sandal ko. Pakai apa saja. Ibu mau lihat kamu di sekolah.” Besoknya dia datang ke sekolah dengan kaos putih berkerah merah. Gua jadi ingat the story I told my fifth grade class, of the little bird with red breast. Robin, si burung kecil berdada merah. Robin, muridku yang jago main bola, yang serius kalau mencatat catatan di kelas, yang suka menggambar dan mewarnai (like all of my other kids), dan yang tersenyum dengan gigi merahnya.

Murid-muridku ini seperti domba-domba. Masing-masing dengan kepribadian uniknya. Murid-muridku juga seperti bawang, with layers upon layers that I have to peel to get to them. Masing-masing dengan motivasi yang berbeda, kemampuan dan keahlian yang berbeda, reaksi ke incentive and punishment yang berbeda… basically, just humans, unique human beings, like all of us on earth.

Being a teacher is one hell of a job. No wonder God made Moses a shepherd for forty years before he led a bunch of stiff-necked Israelites on a forty-year journey across the desert.

So I guess now I’m playing the shepherdess.

Rote Ndao,

Friday, 12 October 2012

-me-