The terror of Day One

First, there is the forest. Dense, green, impenetrable. Scary to look at. Scarier to imagine entering alone. Especially if you're very little. And neither your mother tongue nor your father tongue, for that matter, is English. You find yourself ensconced in a little yellow-painted chair. There are lots of other little ones too of your age seated in chairs of differing colour - red, green and blue. Pictures on the wall. Teddy bears, rabbits, kangaroos.

A lady - who doesn't look like mother at all - is clapping two large pink hands together and singing. She has yellow teeth. Mother's teeth are milk white. Mother also has black hair, long and plaited, not dusty brown and curly and short.

And mother sometimes plucks a rose from the garden and pins it in her hair. It looks so nice and smells so sweet. Only the lady's dress is filled with flowers, like a beautiful garden. Mother's skin is also chocolate and cool. 'Look, so many friends for you to make, don't be afraid. Over here you will play and you will learn more than I know,' said mother, in her own tongue, before giving a quick hug and waving goodbye.

The other children are singing, too. They know this song. They are clapping happily. The girl nearest wants you to hear her voice alone so she is screaming. Then the song ends. It is all so quiet you hear a bird outside still singing. Everybody laughs. They all hear the bird. You laugh too, and the girl nearest reaches out and touches your hand. She has blue eyes, not black like yours. Like the sky father showed you from the aeroplane window. Blue. She wants to be a friend. She says something but it is in her tongue. You say something back in yours. She is happy and removes her hand.

The clapping lady, who isn't mother, walks up to your chair. She is saying something, in her tongue, and smiling. She arrives, places a strong hand under your arm and helps you stand. Then she says something else to the others, moving her head slowly from left to right. Only one word of what she says makes sense. It is your name. Geetha. She says it like 'Gee-ta'. You like her now because she knows your name. Mother must have told her.

You smile and she smiles and holds you a little closer to her strong body, your head resting on a big flower on her dress. Suddenly you feel a little safer. You don't look around so much for mother.

You still want to say 'bathroom' but you know it can wait. Mother said, 'Call the lady Miss.' 'Miss', you say and then the other thing father reminded you to remember a hundred times, 'Thank you.' 'Miss Connor,' says the large smiling lady and makes you repeat it. You remember it, because Connor sounds very close to 'khana'. Miss Khana. Everybody laughs.

Then, after the break, the big surprise.

There's Salima. She has pink rim glasses and a green chair. She speaks both tongues. Theirs and yours. Yours, but a little differently. She was born in Karachi, not Gujarat like you. Miss Khana moves your chairs together. Salima tells you the girl with the sky blue eyes is called Leanne. Salima can tell you what Leanne is saying and tell Leanne what you are saying.

When the final bell rings, you walk out with two others, laughing happily. You forget you entered alone, close to tears. Mother is waiting outside, smiling too, beside the car. You cannot wait to tell her, in your own private tongue, what a day it's been. Salima, then Leanne and Miss Khana

First, as they say, there is the forest&.. (Loosely based on an actual observation of a young immigrant child's first timid moments in a foreign classroom.)

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.