Ah...mon école

A Ballad of a Blue School Building in the Rainy Season
By Carissa

When drought comes to town
Your blue painting peels off
As time goes by

Your corridors
Staircases, classrooms,
and the rest of your places
Have gone worn
With spider webs all over the places
That have grown

Dust covers all
Chairs, desks, boards
Insects spread in many places
Drawing disgusts of everyone
who sees them

November

December

January

February...

Look outside, dear friends
See the sky goes dark gray at the horizon
Listen to the thunder rumbles in the distance
See, your smiles quickly grow wide
Hope flashes in your mind

The season we've all been waiting for
have finally come
Raindrops fill our ears
As soon as everyone' hands
clasped on their chests
Praying
Muttering
"Oh God, please let it rain all night.
Let the water pours from the opened sky
With all Your might."

By the time dawn breaks,
A ringtone wakes everyone up
A message that brings good news
A message that will make everyone rejoice
Everyone, still on their beds,
Looks up with their droppy eyes
Towards the blinding screen.

"School's shut down for today."

A sentence that will
make everyone jumps off their beds
Crying in happiness, rejoicing
Doing rain dances

Spread the word, dear friends
Let them all know that
Our beloved school
have finally succeeded collecting the water
poured from the opened dark sky

The yard
The corridor
The tennis court
Even the classrooms
are all but flooded with
brownish water and mud
with garbage floating on it

Oh school,
I wish you knew,
That you're the only school in town
has become what seems to me like
A reservoir
In the rainy season

Oh school,
You're one in a million
No other schools are just like you
No other schools that require
the students to wear slippers
to go to school
In the rainy season

Other schools will hardly recognize
The common phrase of
Ngobok

Yes, that's our school
Our beloved school
No matter if we hate it or love it
So let's wear those slippers proudly
On your feet
And crawl through the flood
Like there's no tomorrow

Because...
Our school is just one in a million
And it's


Tarakanita

(Ah, see how "beautiful" our school looks like when it's flooded?
No other schools have this interesting type of Mirrored Reflection view
produced by the flooding water
just like what's depicted in the picture above)