I still remember him like it was yesterday, even though it has been a very long time since I last saw him. How could I not remember Mr Sune?
When he walked into our class when I was in third year of secondary school, we were all excited to have a European teacher as our Math teacher. Most of our teachers were African and some were Asian. Being the only European teacher in school made Mr Sune stand out.
A very calm and gentle individual who was soft spoken and stared at you with his warm gaze via his almost rimless glasses, Mr Sune was a brilliant Mathematics teacher who knew his stuff. I recall once presenting him with a challenging math problem that was outside the syllabus (which my tutor had shared with me just for fun). I shared the problem with him in front of the rest of the students. He calmly worked through the problem, taking his time, eventually arriving at the correct solution. He then looked at me calmly and lovingly told me, “don’t you ever do that to me again.” Mr Sune was a Math genius.
Whenever he taught us, he told us when solving Math problems, “be lazy” by which he meant find the fastest and simplest way to get to the solution following the respective Math rules and principles. He used to tell us that Math problems were “chemsha bongo”.
Just before my Form 4 National Examinations, he waited for me to finish the last class period so that he could give me words of assurance for my success in the Mathematics exam that was to come. That was towards the end of 1997.
I recall receiving a post card from him once while he was in Sweden.
As fate would have it, I bumped into him in 2005 when I was already a doctor and we happened to be in the same apartment building in Dar es Salaam. I had the honour of catching up with him briefly and even gifting him a book that was a biography of Albert Einstein.
I never forgot my teacher, remembering him every now and then. I recently learned via an AI search that he passed away in 2017 in Dar es Salaam.
What can educators learn from Mr Sune? What can I learn? That a good teacher is one who maintains her calmness and is gentle and approachable. A good teacher is one who is passionate about what he does and truly and sincerely cares for his students. I shall never forget my teacher. As I think about him, I am filled with lovely memories of his teaching as well as bitter pain that I shall never see him again. I thank God that I had the honour of being his student once upon a time.
