I still recall that Winter of ’99 when I was in my dorm room at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. A new rendition of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was on the television with the main character of Ebenezer Scrooge being played by the famous actor Patrick Stewart. I shall not forget that moment, not only because the book is one of my all time favourites but also because of the reason I was watching that movie at the time.
Dr Carol Manthey was my professor for that term teaching me creative writing and literature. Being in her class was like being with an older sister guiding you in reading, analysing and discussing fascinating works of literature. Her classes were relaxed, fun and friendly which pushed my English writing to another level. The semester involved a lot of reading and writing and much of the assessment was based on the progress of the students across the term such that the final exam carried only 5% of the total score. As a result, the kind professor decided that her students should not sit for an exam but instead watch a movie together in one of the classes at the University as a moment of celebration of the hard work done by the students as well as one of social bonding.
It turned out that the movie the class had chosen to watch was, at the time, against my religious sentiments. I thus spoke to my professor and told her that I would not be comfortable watching that particular movie. “What would you prefer to watch then?” she asked. I said “A Christmas Carol” perhaps because Christmas was around the corner. “Okay, so you can watch that instead”, she said. So, I asked her where and when should I watch the movie as part of my final exam formality and she mentioned that I could watch it at home at my own time. “How do you know that I’ll watch the movie?” I asked her. What she told me at that moment are words that will never leave me.
“I trust you”, she said.
More than getting a decent grade of a lower B in that very challenging course and significantly improving my writing skills, Dr Carol Manthey taught me something even more profound on that American winter afternoon: that while we humans normally give our trust to people who have earned them, sometimes its okay, even necessary, to trust someone even if they have yet to earn your trust. It is precisely because of the wisdom of my teacher that I made sure I did watch A Christmas Carol, not because I was a huge Dickens fan (which I was) but because my teacher looked into my soul and believed in me – that I was a person who would honour my word to her; and honour I did, with God as a witness to that ordinary and yet eternal moment in the life of a young university student from Tanzania.
