Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD

chapter 5 (1)

"Abba Mohammed, Ahmed Bukar ... Bauchi Yaro, Baba Husein, Bukar Mohammed..." Alex was calling out roll call. He still hadn't got the names straight. First or last name? They went  by either. Fifty-two students in Form 3 and it took more than ten minutes to run down the list. His throat was already parched.

Alex walked to the Form 5 classroom. Outside, the students were in groups talking. One was still coming from the hostel. He ushered them in and ordered them to take out their Practical English text, turn to Chapter seven. They were too slow. Several were getting scrap pieces of plywood off the floor from torn-apart desks to put on the metal frames. He was prepared, ready to push through the lesson so they would all be able to make a decent stab at the "O" Levels in May.

 

He'd ended up teaching two classes of English Language and three of Math, but he could do it from the top of his head, they were so weak. He'd had them reading the passages orally in turns and then answering the comprehensive questions at the end, going over the exercises and vocabulary also. But they weren't interested. One, Ali Hassan, wore his usual foolish grin and was still talking to the girl next to him. Alex thought of sending for the sergeant, have Ali caned to set an example and settle them down.

"I'm not teaching you until you're ready," he said instead and walked out and went over to the staff room. NEPA had been off for two days now and he was in no mood to put up with them this early in the morning. He sat at his desk and waited. After ten minutes, Ali Hassan and Mohammed Bukar entered.

"Why do you refuse to teach us, Sir? We are all serious."

"No. You're not ready."

"We are ready, Sir."

Alex waited. He looked out the window. Many were sitting on the cement porch outside the classroom.

"Go in the class. When you are ready to learn, I will teach you."

The two boys beamed, walked out back over to the classroom and the rest of the students went inside. He gave them an extra five minutes and then went over. The method worked as well as caning. He wrote notes on the blackboard, the painted plywood. The chalk squeaked with a grating sound when he wrote.

There were no bells. The messenger banged once with a pipe on a tire rim hanging outside the office. Sometimes teachers didn't hear it and went on teaching until someone else came in. Alex had a Seiko watch he'd bought at the market, brought back from the Hadj to Mecca, the days of the week in Arabic, and it was a self-wind, but kept good time. He'd got a good deal on it from Alhaji Tijani, unlike the watches hawked in the motor parks, which often had different faces than their insides.

He went to Form 3, wrote on the board to read the passage silently and to do the exercise at the end. He repeated the instruction to see if they had the right page. Even in Form 3, some students' English wasn't very good. Across at the other classes, the Form 1's waited in the classrooms, sitting on the floor. The Form 2's milled about. There were no teachers there today but the students had to stay there anyway. NYSC were supposed to be teaching Form 2's, but they seldom bothered to go to that end of the compound, except maybe to teach IRK or CRK -- the religious courses. The Form 1's weren't even on the schedule. Sometimes a senior student might go in and write some English words on the board for them, but the junior students weren't a priority. That was the way the system functioned. Alex kept quiet. He could not change it and they hated to be told what to do. He just did his work.  

By the fifth period, attendance was falling off. It was too hot. None of the fans in any of the classrooms worked now even if NEPA was on. The paneless windows let some breeze in but students were falling asleep at the desks.  Most had already gone back to the hostels.

 

At noon they had lunch. Senior Prefects stood with switches, on guard in the dining hall and tried to control it. They'd beat anyone who jumped too fast when they blew the whistle to get the bowls of gari. It was still chaos. Food slipped from hands to the floor. The dining hall was crawling with flies. Alex never went near. It almost made him sick. But there was no problem today. The students got their food and most took off to the hostels. Alex marked exercise books in the staff room, so he didn't have to do it at night by bush lamp and was the last to leave for his house. The messenger locked the staff room door behind him.

He cut by the hostel called Umar House, on the way across the compound. Several junior students were sweeping the sand in front of the quarters. A Prefect stood with a switch, watching them. It was the tier system. When they were in the upper forms, the younger students would act the same way. It only bothered him now when the bullying got too rough, when a student's hands bled from being struck by a stick. And the junior students had to be kept under control. There had to be a sense of order.

Alex remembered just last week it was one of them, one of the juniors, from a small village, who had complained that a juju man near the railway had touched him and made his organ disappear. All the students had run in a mob for the railway station, tried to stone the man, even broke windows there. The police had had to be called from the town to control them before they killed someone in their near-rioting. The DPO investigated the incident and they had to take the boy to the hospital to make sure his organ was still there. The Yoruba doctor had pronounced it was.

The juniors had to be civilized. Seniors caught junior students squatting, urinating in the shower stalls. "These bush boys haven't even seen toilets," they complained and so Form One was devoted to speaking English, becoming civilized and doing the Senior's chores, so they could study. Being out of their villages was foreign. Life at the school was a new institutionalized system they had to learn their role in. Still, to Alex, it was an ugly breed of organization.

At the side of the hostel were septic tanks, their cement tops cracked and broken. They'd been filled with old bed springs, glass, rocks and sticks. It was a real mess. Alex cut through the path leading to the circle, past the side of Shafeeq's house and his boy's quarters with the straw mats around it where the school tailor, Saleh, had created his own family compound. The tailor sewed the school uniforms and was trying to learn English. He had Kanuri scars and always smiled, seemed happy with his job. On a niim tree outside the boy's quarters hung a piece of blackboard. On it, someone had written:  "Hello.  My name is Saleh.  Tailor." Under the tree Saleh sat sewing a uniform from a bundle of white canvas-like cloth. "Afternoon Saleh," Alex said as he passed. Saleh beamed back with his usual greeting smile.

By Shafeeq's house, the papaya trees were already high above the compound wall and beginning to form fruit. Shafeeq, from the north of India near the Punjab, was quite a gardener. He had all kinds of plants and vegetables growing in there, had even put bed springs up against the wall to make another layer for gourds to climb on. He used every inch of the place and it was all mathematically laid out. Both Better Homes and Gardens and the World Bank should have had a photo of it to see what he'd accomplished there in that small area of sand. Shafeeq was economical -- he didn't waste anything. He even bought in bulk and had them ground grain at the market and saved a bundle on flour. Besides, his garden provided lots of vegetables. Shafeeq was thrifty. Alex could really learn something from him.

The week before, Shafeeq had invited everyone over for dinner, that is, everyone important. The Principal, Vice, Bank Manager, and Police Commander were the most important guests. Being on good terms with the Bank of the North Manager would probably speed up his remittances to a London  bank. All the Indians and Pakistanis, including the Doctors and the Egyptian dentist, were also there. Giving away free food and drinks was a big thing to Shafeeq. 

It was like a madhouse for Alex. The men, in a hoard, had gone for the food first -- there were no utensils around -- and the Youth Corpers had grabbed what they could. The women filled their plates after the mad rush and when everyone was stuffed, they sat around and belched. It was meant as a compliment to the generosity of Shafeeq's laid-out table and the enjoyment and tastefulness of the food. After, they'd all piled the dishes right on the floor under the table. No one had taken a single one to the kitchen. Then there was dancing, just sitting around drinking Maltina or minerals and a passing of Kola nuts. The Principal didn't like Shafeeq and had seen the party for the political ploy it was and didn't enjoy anything but the food. As was the custom, neither he nor the Vice had taken their wives either. They both left right after eating, more of an appearance than anything, even though Shafeeq couldn't do enough to cater to them.

Shafeeq was a bit of a sleaze, but he was a survivor, living on wits alone. They said he went through every loophole in the Public Service contract and applied for everything they were supposed to get in the fine print, but no one ever did and so no one else bothered to. He didn't spend much and was always looking to buy dollars or gold. Shafeeq  had grown up in the streets of Delhi and probably had forged his Educational qualifications. But he was smart, and could manipulate his way around. He had to. He'd brought his family, his wife and three young sons, to Africa to get ahead, to try for a better life. Unlike Alex, there was no security for Shafeeq to go back to. He was really fighting for survival, living a tenuous existence in another country where his people were barely tolerated.

Shafeeq was a Muslim. That was one thing he had going for himself. Alex suspected though, that he would be any religion they wanted him to be. He claimed to have a background in any subject the principal wanted him to teach. A chameleon, he adapted to suit his environment. Alex saw through this and was wary of him, but didn't mind him too much. It was understandable that Shafeeq was a bit of a weasel. He'd survived Delhi hadn't he? Shafeeq was equipped and experienced to survive here.

At the side of Shafeeq's compound, by a drain gutter, Alex saw a rat, one of the giant desert ones, dart into a hole under the house. That one wouldn't last too long. The bush students or the dogs would get it eventually. The rats were the size of muskrats and he'd seen them for sale in the village. The vendors skinned and hung them like rabbits. There is one thing about a high density population, Alex thought, every animal, every scrap of edible food is gobbled up in the north. Only hyenas and vultures could survive in the bush. Scavengers. Everything else was devoured.