Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD

chapter 2 (1)

The first day of classes were to begin, Alex walked over to the office, carrying the fibreglass briefcase he'd bought at Woolco, and which had been high enough to fit the Brother typewriter in. Already, the lock had been broken by the customs official who'd merely snapped the clasps open.

No one was in the main office except Sali, the messenger. He walked out and crossed to the staff room and went inside. Two panes of glass were missing from the door. The tables and desks and fallen stacks of books were covered in fine sand. A musty smell from books starting to mildew over the summer, permeated the room. Alex opened all the windows, swept off a chair and redwood desk of fine sand, took a book titled "The Palm Wine Drunkard," with shadows of Africans in silhouette on the cover, set the briefcase on the desk, and sat down. One corner of the desk had a stack of student reports, with white, yellow and pink pages and carbon paper shoved in between them. On the wall at the front hung a master schedule, on bristol board, with the top left corner hanging limply down. Off in the corner was pile of tattered textbooks, half with covers missing, looking as if they'd all been dumped there in a hurry. He sat there by himself, sure they had said school opened on the eighth of September.

He waited and waited. Then Alex left, saw the door open a crack in a small building adjacent to the office, and stepped up into it. Musa was there unpacking boxes.

"Oh, hoh, Master Alex."

"Sannu, Musa...I thought school was starting today?"

"When the students come. They will pack in from the villages next week. Already some are in the hostels."

     "Oh, then what of classes?"

"When the students come. Even the principal has travelled."

"Oh... Did you get new textbooks?"

"The principal is not back from Maiduguri. He will bring money for the school. Here Omo and toilet paper. Do you have need for light bulbs?"

"No. Thanks. I got some of that stuff in the market already... What should I do in school?"

"You stay in your house, or you can journey to Kano. There is no work until the students come. The principal will come back also. He will send Sali to call you there."

"Oh, I'll probably be in my house there, then, Musa."

Alex stepped out of the building into the sand and walked across the compound. A tattered green and white flag hung limply from a pole in front of the main office. A sandy area off to the right was covered in dying grass. At both ends were lop-sided soccer posts at each end of the court. Everything about the school looked to be run-down and overgrown with grass, just as his house had been before they swathed a path around it. Someone had cut the grass around the edge of a tennis court though,and a net was up. There was even a wooden judge's tower. It was clear someone had swept it clean, had been using it over the summer. It was the only sign of non-abandonment.

Not far from the staff room was a tin shack. Smoke poured from a hole in the roof. An old woman, with many pieces of multi-coloured cloth wrapped around her, even her head, sat on the ground outside. Alex walked over. On a woven mat with rounded edges, were fresh mangoes and guavas. On a tin plate, sat a pile of greyish nuts, their pinkish skins flaking off so you could see browned meat inside.

"Gyada. Groundnuts, Master. Five kobo." A young boy stood beside him, in a bare feet and shorts. On his head was a tin bowl, worn like a hat. "I'm feeling hungry, Sir."

"Are you a student here?"

"Form three now, Sir. I am a Prefect already, Sir."

Alex did not know what a Prefect was, but he did not want to let them suspect he was completely ignorant. He thought it must be some kind of title -- the student was obviously proud of his accomplishment. "That's good," he said.

"Biu." He gave the woman a ten kobo coin. She took one small handful and handed it to him. He pointed to the boy, who snatched the nuts, rolled them between his hands and blew the flaked skins off. Alex did the same and nibbled one. The peanuts had been shelled, then roasted. The meat inside was golden, tasty.

He walked to the edge of the shack. "Sannu, Sannu," the man said and smiled a mouth of red-coloured teeth. One cook in a dirty brown uniform, blackened by wood ash, sat on a tattered mat, a string of prayer beads slipping from one hand to the next.

"Sannu baba. Ina aiki?" Alex greeted him.

"Aiki da godiya. Lafia, Bature?"

"Lafia lau." The greetings were the first thing he'd studied and memorized.

Inside were two huge blackened pots on fires of embers. One held a brownish liquid. Ashes floated on the top. Flies were still around, despite the smoke.

"Tea, Sir," the student said. "Tea for our bread. We will take our food. They will bring many loaves from the town."

"What is the other?"

"Meat sauce, for the next meal. They will prepare rice there when the tea is gone."

Alex turned and stood outside, and looked around. Several kids, whom he assumed were students also, were walking from the hostels carrying bowls. "How many students are here now?"

"Oh, we are many, Sir."

"These also -- ?" he gestured to two young boys, one with a  distended belly.

"No, Sir. They are not students here. They come for the food we drop. They go to the Koranic school by the railway. The students will all come soon. Sir, I think you will be teaching us?"

"Yes," he answered. They fed the students at the school. They would all come soon. He'd seen some lugging blue painted tin suitcases on their heads from the railway station.

"Are you from Britain, Sir?" We had one British lady here when we were in Form one."

"No, from Canada."

"Oh, hoh. It is very cold there. You will like our country Nigeria, Sir. It is too hot sometimes. Can you drive  a machine to your country? I will visit you there."

"No, its pretty far. You have to go by airplane."

"Then someday I will go for my studies there. You will help me sir?"

"Perhaps. I have to go now."

"Thank you, Sir."

Alex walked back toward the office. At least the students are polite, he thought. They called him Sir. One girl near the office did a half-curtsy, called him "Master." British mannerisms had filtered down into the school system along with the curriculum. He had been told caning was still a common practise. And many students went to London to study also. This was a mixed boarding school, a progressive change in the north, he'd been told. It was still all foreign to him. It would take some getting used to it all. 

Over the galvanized tin shacks, he could see one old man hacking away at sticks of petrified wood. Another was coming across the field with a bundle of sticks on his head. The cooks were the only ones anticipating the opening of the school. Food was a priority. It was the only sign of planning.