My son loves the Queen's English

My son has settled in school by now. Though sometimes he does not admit that he enjoys the company children his age. That is, depending on what is happening at home at that moment when the subject of school is broached.

So when I called to speak to him (he is in boarding school), he sounded very excited but hurried.

I could hear the giggles in the background. He was probably eager to go back to playing with his mates.

We have developed this habit of filling in on whatever is happening in each other’s life. Big or small, good or bad. We share.

Of course as a parent, I censor some (no need to burden a ten year old with adult issues) things, but he tells me everything. Or so I think.

On this fine Friday evening when I called, I did not have to ask him what is new. He was eager to tell me.

Turns out the exciting news is that he had a new teacher of English. A female teacher.

Is she any better than they one who was there before? “Yes, she’s Luo,” he responded.

I was dumbstruck. Why would a teacher of English who is Luo excite him that much? I asked him as much.

He told me that this one speaks good English like Willice the Wordmaster who appears on KTN every Friday evening. And that she did not interchange ‘r’ with ‘l’ and vice versa while speaking.

This statement burst my bubble. At his age, 10 years, he already knows tribal stereotypes.

I had mixed feelings about this. I was not sure whether this was a good or a bad thing. And then I did what most adults are guilty of — compare his childhood to mine.

It is that moment of self reflection that I realised that his childhood is starkly different from mine.

I was brought up in an environment with many from my tribe, and that means there were many people around me who used to speak good English.

I have a good command of the English language and I have exposed my son to the same, thus when he goes to a school where the people speak, think and act differently from him, he will surely notice.

During the school holidays, he records all the segments of KTN’s Friday Briefing which has Willice the Wordmaster.

At one point, when he was going through radio channels on his phone, we stumbled on the BBC.

The topic of discussion was something to do with Boko Haram.

But he did not stop because he likes to listen such topics, but because the beauty of the English language that was being spoken by both the presenter and the interviewee. I listened too.

When I was thinking about that, it hit me that his remark when we talked on phone had nothing to do with the teacher’s tribe. My son loves to listen to and learn good English, which to him is the Queen’s English.