SINGAPORE: They’re fiercely engrossed in their basketball game, shouts resounding over the canteen recess buzz. “Pass me the ball!” Ibramsa Idris Ahamed, 11, yells to his chubby-cheeked pal, Ahnt Phone Pai.
After he drops her off at the school gates at 6.30am, he heads straight for his 12-hour shift as a deliveryman. The next time she sees him, it is usually at the dinner table. When she first came to Farrer Park Primary this year, her knowledge of the English language was, according to her English and Mathematics teacher Tan Jac See, “zero”.
“I think she is a very quiet person,” he said. “She answers my questions in a very soft volume. But I like her because she always asks me what book to read.” He’d come to Singapore eight years ago not knowing English, but picked it up quickly and is now in Secondary 2. Almost every evening, he sits with Chaorui as she reads aloud from flash cards, correcting her patiently when she stumbles and encouraging her when she pronounces a word correctly.
“She pushed me away!” Idris declaimed loudly, with a grimace. “Teenagers on Earth are obviously more dangerous than expected.” With a dramatic flourish, he bowed to his classmates’ applause.Idris puts on his head prefect badge as he gets ready for school. Idris even made it a point to reach out to other newcomers: When Phone, his classmate from Myanmar, joined the school in Primary 4, Idris brought the quiet, bashful boy to the basketball court on his very first day.
When he has to stay back after school for prefectorial duties, Idris meets his mum at the school’s side gate to pick up a home-cooked lunch of sambar rasam. And he often gets questions when he unpacks this food. In a sea of children in the crowded canteen, Alina Adamenko sticks out as she queues to buy a mantou and Milo.
In some ways, Alina is a child of two cultures. While she enjoys the school canteen’s mantou, she also likes the Russian-style dumplings her mother cooks in soup at home. She has learnt a lot about Russian culture, she says, and was proud to wear a Russian traditional costume to school on International Friendship Day.
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Source: The Straits Times - 🏆 8. / 63 Read more »