Mrs Brown

Mrs. Brown

Everyone who knew Mrs. Susan Brown has a story about her, it is either funny, heartwarming, or both.

I first met Mrs. Susan Brown on a warm Wednesday morning in November 2017. I was shortlisted for a position at Combretum Trust School and she chaired the interview panel. We had spoken a few minutes earlier on the phone, because I had gone to the wrong place, ended up lost and subsequently late for my interview. I sat down apprehensively, slightly worried my tardiness had made the wrong impression. The normal interview questions fell down on me like an avalanche:

1.  Tell us about yourself – my favorite story to tell.

2. How do you deal with conflict – I avoid it.

3.  What makes you the best candidate for the job – I have a very unique skill set.

4. What your ideal salary – peanuts are fine, but I’m not sure that’s a healthy diet.

Just so you know; those were the responses in my head, not the ones that came out of my mouth.

Mrs. Brown liked a lot of my answers, she said that I was well spoken, articulate. She even added that she couldn’t figure out what tribe I was because I spoke with an accent. I was almost offended, this grey haired white lady with glasses resting on the bridge of her nose was surprised that I could express myself in the queen’s language better than most. In her defense, I tend to use UNIQUE words a lot, even my learners sometimes have to look up some of the words I use in class. A few questions later I realized that she wasn’t being snobbish or obnoxious, she was being honest. Mrs. Brown was being frank, blunt, as straightforward as a Kwambi from Omusimboti. That’s the first thing I learned about Susan Brown, she was not afraid to speak the truth, especially when it came to the state of the Namibian Education system.

A few months later, I had been on the Combretum staff for three months, and was slowly liking the peculiarity of the place. At the end of a particularly busy day, she and I sat down, she told me that she had been slightly surprised how well I had settled at Combretum. She said that she had been worried that my unconventional approach might put the learners off a bit, that perhaps I was a bit too weird to fit into the school where the motto was “proud to be different.” Her mothering instinct showed – she was protective of the kids at the school, the way a Lioness protects her cubs.

However, the kids loved my ‘strange’ approach, and I assured her that as much as I was spontaneous, everything I did was meticulously planned. I realized how committed she was to providing quality education for the kids at the school, for her, the kids came first. That’s one of the many things we agreed on, that the education system should play to the child’s strengths, not box everyone into an academic cube that makes learning monotonous. Mrs. Brown felt strongly that every child had something that could be polished, she was critical of how our education system was basically failing every child who was not academically inclined. Not every child will become a doctor, but if the system is set up to cater for only that type of learner, are we surprised at the high failure rate?

One of my favorite things about Mrs. Brown was that she broke every stereotype that I had about old educators – egotistical, bureaucratic, protocol worshippers. She broke the mold, she wasn’t rigid, she wasn’t overbearing, and she didn’t stand in the way, she allowed me to get on with things. She’d often ask me what my plan was, I would e-mail her the plan, she would change a thing or two, and then she’d tell me to get on with things. I really thrived at Combretum because for the first time in my career as an educator, I was not fighting the system, the system was set up to play to my strengths and in turn I paid that forward to the kids. I taught in a way that played to their strengths, a little bit of strange in the classroom makes the whole thing fun.

Mrs. Brown was also very funny, she had a sharp and serious kind of humor. At the beginning of the year she told me that she wanted me to take on more responsibility at Combretum, “I want to change the notion that education in Africa should be represented by old white people trying to save the African child.” She had this vision of the Namibian educator being young, educated, and deeply caring towards kids. I wasn’t the bit afraid of the responsibility (okay, maybe just a bit), Mrs. Sue had my back, so naturally I warmed to taking on more tasks and growing. She told this other joke about white people who had benefitted from imperialism wanting to invest in education in Africa because it made them feel better, it eased their guilty conscience about benefiting from looting Africa’s natural resources. It was my favorite of her jokes, because as crude and insensitive as it sounded, giving money to a ‘good’ cause makes people feel good about themselves. The reality is that education is expensive. Quality education is even more expensive, and ways need to be found to fund quality education. The legacy that Mrs. Brown leaves behind is that of wanting to give the Namibian child quality education, she fought for it for years, with the same vigor that she fought cancer. She made sure that she did all she could to ensure that what she started would continue, and that is truly admirable.

Mr. Bruce Buchanan is the longest serving teacher at Combretum Trust School (founding father), and he likes telling the story of the tree on the Combretum Crest. Combretaceae is a family of trees, the one on the crest is Combretum imberbe (Leadwood), it has one unique adaptation, when it dies, it remains sturdy and stands tall for quite some time before it disintegrates (up to 100 years). It gives the ecosystem housed in the tree the opportunity to migrate and re-stabilize itself, the tree buys the animals time to start over. The tree protects the families of animals in it, that’s the same concept applied at Combretum. Every child at Combretum is part of the herd, the school is a family, as Mrs. Brown wanted it to be.

I was heartbroken at Mrs. Brown’s passing, we all knew that the day would come, but nothing really prepares you for how much that the blow that death deals out will hurt. My heart is still sore. But, I don’t think Mrs. Brown would approve of moping around, she’d want us to eventually get on with things.

Go well Mrs. Susan Brown, we’ll carry on the fight.