When ‘ghost’ suppliers dump school furniture and pupils stretch on their bellies to write, excerpts of a simple letter to my son:

All too often, you find classroom desks piled up for months in yards belonging to the assemblies, and even some educational directorates. The furniture is meant for you. But you are stretching on your belly to write. The distance you cover every dawn to school―and back under the angry sun― is enough stretch.

Your headmaster looks over his shoulder by the tick of the clock, soaked in the fear of his superiors in politics. He is incurably allergic to remote transfer. He leans towards my left ear, looks back again; then, whispers to me: “This sea of dual desks you see is for exhibition and nothing more. It is meant to dab an impression on the minds of the masses that problems are being solved.”

Son, now I know why it takes you a stretch to spell your name. If you could spell DEADLINE without a stretch, I would need not remind you, either, with a stretch that we must cross the FINISH LINE by 2015, happy that at least the global dream of universal basic education has been realized.