Trust naughty students to nickname every teacher

A Form One student strolled into the staffroom and innocently requested to see ‘‘Mr Volcanic’. Teachers burst out in uncontrollable laughter and looked in the direction of the Geography teacher who stared back without comprehension.

Upon realising that he was the one being referred to as Mr Volcanic, he chuckled and rose to hear out his student.

In schools with observant and naughty youths, if anything moves, they will give it a nickname. Scores of pupils routinely nickname their teachers Thatcher, Alice Lakwena, Madonna, Mr Bean, James Bond, Eddie Murphy and Jackie Chan. Locally, Ms Morgan, drawn from the Tahidi High TV drama, is becoming a common teachers’nickname, especially for tough, curvaceous female teachers.

Okwonkos

A common source of teachers’ nicknames is the words that they repeat too often. One chap I know has distinguished himself as What Is It?’ A Biology teacher goes by the nicknameBromothymol Blue — a common laboratory dye. Yet another is Spirogyra for habitually over-teaching those water plants.

The repetition of such phrases as ‘you, moreover, in addition, as a consequence, really and so that’ have also earned many teachers unshakeable nicknames.

Chamurenga is a History teacher who particularly refers to the ‘Chamurenga war’ every few months. And another History teacher is baptised Antoinette from referring to this French queen too often.

Many Literature in English and Fasihi ya Kiswahili teachers make do with the names of characters that they over-emphasise in set books. Thus, many staffrooms have jaded Okonkwos (from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart); Wamalas (from John Ruganda’s The Burdens); Ndugu Jeros (from Wole Soyinka’s Trials and Tribulations of Brother Jero); Amezidis (from SA Mohammed’s Ame Zidi) and Romeos (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet), and so on.

Striking physical features earn many teachers their nicknames, too. Thus, any heavily built and strict male teacher easily becomes any of the World Wrestling Entertainment’s athletes such as The Undertaker and the Big Show. A rotund and short lady teacher in one school is called Saucer, while another one with “footballers’ legs” is Michelin, sheng for sporty legs!

And talking of deputy head teachers brings me to the unsavoury nicknames, especially reserved for them. In one school, the deputy principal goes by the fearsome nickname Lucifer from his no nonsense style! Another one is roundly acclaimed as The Beast, and yet another one is called Curious, for his keenness in getting to the bottom of all issues.

Other names associated with deputy head teachers due to their real and imagined harshness include Milosevic, Bokassa, Hitler and Stalin — all heads of states whose cruelty is well documented.

A teacher in one school gives the impression of being on the edge of existence by wearing one weather-beaten jacket day in day out. Consequently, his students have nicknamed him Survivor. In yet another school, Mr Hunger yawns rather too early in the day in one school, giving the impression of being permanently famished.

But the cake goes to the nickname given to a male History teacher, who has the habit of surreptitiously scratching his nuts. The lads call him ‘Testicles’ — in their mother tongue!