Playing Hooky

As a teacher, I believe school is incredibly important. Not just for learning the curriculum but for the whole host of other social and independent skills children learn so by default, the more children go to school, the more they will develop. As a child / teenager I would always attend school. I would honestly go home to my mother if I missed the bus and even on snow-filled days somehow make it into school to classes of half empty seats. Even in my 11 years as a teacher I never missed a day except for a couple of days sick leave.  (Sadly a downside to teaching primary is you do come into contact with every single germ and bug, though Murphy’s Law states that the majority of illness should hit teachers on the first day of the school holidays!) I must confess that there were some Sunday evenings when the Monday morning blues would commence early and I would make grand plans for how else I could spend a day – but then being a grown up would kick in again and with the arrival of the children into my class on the Monday morning, I would remember how much I loved my job!

However, today for the first time I played hooky AND I took my 2 children with me! Now I have gone for the shock factor I ought to clarify that statement. The Honeycomb Hub isn’t open yet so technically I’m not really playing hooky and it was only for the afternoon. However, it was an impulse decision and it felt awesome! The look on my boys’ faces when I walked in to their nursery classes to collect them meaning they were the first to go rather than being the last ones collected is a golden moment deposited into the memory treasure box of my mind.

A bit of back story. For around the last 8 months, my husband and I have been in the ordeal that is relocating ourselves to another country. We have had no company to organise visas, flights, temporary accommodation, bank accounts, business premises, packing up and leasing our house, importing our car and a container of belongings, setting up nurseries, applying for schools…. We have done it all with the help of my sister whilst my husband worked full time, I worked part time and we looked after our wonderful 2 boys. As you can probably imagine, there has been a lot of worry, self-doubt and stress which has obviously diffused down to our 2 boys. We have not been spending the quality time with them that we used to, even when we do spend time with them we are distracted and that has led to a change in their behaviour. Their listening skills are not what they were, they have become argumentative and often seek our attention and so we have fallen into the awful habit (that I always said I would never do) of finding a free babysitter – the television. And as we all know, too much screen time has a negative effect on children’s behaviour. When actually, they have also just been uprooted from the only home they have known, thrown down into another continent that is hugely different to their home (and really hot) and as good as ignored by their parents. – I may be being over harsh on ourselves here but as I really looked at my son this morning, and he told me again he didn’t want to go to nursery, I realised that all he wanted was to be with his parents. To be listened to. To not just be told but to feel like he and his brother were the most important thing in the world and not the documents, e-mails or paint selections.

As soon as the meeting I had at their nursery finished (a lovely idea as a meet and greet for new parents) I rushed to their classes and we were out of there, heading down the road to Gaborone Game reserve. It was a bargain to enter at just P20 for the 3 of us and our car (we would have invited Daddy but he was in England for work) and we were off. A few metres down the road and the rebel in me really took over. The boys were out of their seats, clambering in the front and taking it in turns to help me drive – before you judge me too harshly, we were only driving at 5km an hour and I’m fairly certain we were the only car visiting, usually I am incredibly strict about car safety!

We eagerly peered out of the windows and there was great excitement at our first spotting of six zebra. Then we saw ostrich, warthogs, impala, monkeys, dassie and guinea fowl. We talked, we laughed, we took silly selfies and discussed the important question of if we could only fill a game park with one animal, which would it be? The boys ate their sandwiches as we drove around for 2 hours (rookie mistake, I forgot snacks for myself!) and we had a fabulous time. In fact, the only thing missing (apart from my husband, obviously) was a convenient ice cream stand! So, what is a girl to do but head in the direction of the Bull & Bush, aka Anna’s ice-cream shop in the lingo of my sons, and do the decent thing. It was a golden afternoon. Yes, we still had a few moments where listening wasn’t brilliant and we got a bit cross with each other but those moments were the exception rather than the rule.

There was also one proud-mother moment that proved the difference (and importance) of putting everything else on hold and spending that quality time with my boys. A lady I met and was chatting to at the Bull & Bush told me that I had lovely, polite boys. Now, I know my boys are lovely and I know they can be polite however it has been a while since anyone else has told me that. I get comments about their wonderful blonde hair or blue eyes (a bit of a rarity in Botswana!) and people mention their cheeky smiles but my heart almost burst to have a virtual stranger tell me this. And do I think it was a coincidence that it happened just after we had played hooky? Not one bit!

FYI – Big one decided he wanted a game park full of zebra, little one said monkeys (no surprises there!) and I plumped for the warthogs though was actually rather torn between them and ostriches!

Please note, I am not condoning everyone playing hooky! However, on a very rare occasion it can provide just what the soul needs – a bit of a walk on the wild side, a mini adventure and an opportunity to re-connect with those you have been neglecting.