The Unpaid Debt of Sacrifice

(She taught while her child was sent home in the tongue of olden sorrow) She stood before the class— chalk in hand, heart in shards, yet her voice did not waver. The sun poured through cracked windows, spilling golden lies across the floor, as if the world outside cared. But behind her calm, behind the grace stitched in her wrapper, a storm raged— not of thunder, but of a mother’s ache. Just an hour before, her own child had been turned away— sent home, not for wrong, but for unpaid fees stacked like forgotten letters on a dusty desk of debt. This— this woman who taught with fire, who stayed behind to mark papers soaked in red ink and dreams, who gave sleep to lesson plans, who whispered hope into stubborn minds— She could not afford the very thing she gave. Imagine that: Teaching other people’s children while your own child sits at home, eyes on a closed school gate, learning the weight of unfairness before learning fractions. It broke me! I had seen many things, but not a smile trying to outshine sorrow. Not hands that held chalk when they should have held her child. So I did what I could— offered half my pay, hoping it could buy back her child’s seat in a classroom she helped build. She cried. Not the soft kind. Not the quiet drip of rain on rooftops. But a flood. The kind that carries pain away and leaves gratitude in its place. But this is not about me! This is about a country where teachers are expected to feed minds, while starving silently. Where those who plant the future can’t harvest from it. Where educators are treated like dust— everywhere, yet invisible. Nigeria, hear us— We are not machines. We carry nations in our voices. We write tomorrow in chalk and sweat. When will teachers stop being the sacrifice on the altar of broken systems? When will we be seen not as tools, but as treasures?