Changing School
Sandra Echols Sharpe
Collisions of culture and necessity are not necessarily limited to those from far away.
In January of 1965, I bought all of the necessities to fill my Mbeya, Tanzania, school compound: reading materials, science equipment, paraffin (kerosene), some clothes, a book locker, and my certification from NYU-Syracuse that assured my qualification to teach as a Peace Corps Volunteer. But when you are in Mbeya, should you do what the Mbeyans do? Meca, the Land Rover driver, loaded my paraphernalia, drove through the town, turned onto the Chunya road, and headed uphill toward a church mission compound six miles from the center of Mbeya.
Ah! Wonderment...a stream-washed cloth, sun-dried...draped around a linearly plaited hill...a multiplicity of potato plants all growing in magnificent brown-green rows.... Mud houses, maize fields, people carrying fruit and vegetable baskets, local buses, and fields of pyrethrum flowers traverse the Rift Valley road. In less than thirty minutes, Meca’s unbridled Rover turns left wildly onto a narrow clay strip, jerkily pot-holing its way down a gradual incline. As it crosses an eroding one-lane wooden bridge, we roll past the dispensary and come to a full halt in front of a row of teachers’ houses.
The view on the left is of a white stucco building, that dispensary. It has a faded rouge porch with an open door. It looks vacant and hollowed out like an old gourd. Medicines have long since evaporated with the cool, misty, morning rains of the season. In front, five slab-mud, cement-covered homes are nested in a valley of rolling hills, picturesque and soothing to a tiring traveler. A morning rain plays a mighty drum roll on the corrugated roofs, welcoming me to the compound. Stately eucalyptus trees hurl down, from scented branches, rolls of raindrops.
At eight o’clock, Meca unloads all of my worldly possessions in my home, wishes me well and leaves.
One hundred steps from the teachers’ quarters are the classrooms. The elongated mud-brick building features windowless windows and doorless doors. The dark entrances empty their content of sky-blue A-line dresses, white shirts, and khaki pants. The teachers inspect them and beckon to me to join them. The students stand at attention. As I walk toward the school compound, a huge round field appears. In the dry season, it will host sports events, community ceremonies, and school events. On the far side of the field are the gardens and storage buildings, which house dried beans, rice, and other foodstuffs. I am introduced and asked to take my place with the teachers. Now we wait for the new headmaster.
Smiling, an older teacher, a traditional man, watches the road as a new headmaster comes to replace him.
Striding in to the rhythmic music of his irimba (thumb piano), Mr. Mpacama arrives at the Ngoba Upper Primary School to begin his duties as headmaster. The Board of Missionaries placed him here to upgrade the school. Because he is a strict, punctual man, they expect him to be a great disciplinarian.
With the changing of the guard, indulgences disappear. If I want coffee or tea, I must bring it in my thermos every morning. I must also supply my own biscuits (cookies). Early, around 6:30, the pounding feet of children run to the middle of the school compound to receive assignments. The headmaster tells group one, “Sickle the high grassy areas around the school only, and then sort the cuttings into a compost heap.” He says to another group of older students, “Begin kitchen duty.” They clang large pots and pans as lunch is prepared. The cutting and simmering of large quantities of vegetables, boiling of rice and tea and the slicing of papaya or seasonal fruits are daily routines. The sweeping of the compound, and mopping the storage areas, and liming the latrines are a necessity for maintaining sanitary conditions. The headmaster even initiates the inclusion of a sewing class. It is scheduled at the end of every day, therefore lengthening the average amount of time students spend in school.
Mr. Mpacama checks each group’s work, then signals for the students to return to the front of the school and line up. He blows the whistle and says, “Tusagewa, begin the exercises! Let them run one mile around the school compound!”
“Yes, headmaster!”
While most students run and chant, a small group remains to whisk away footprints from the drying schoolyard.
Promptly at 8:00, I ascend the concrete steps to the headmaster’s office. The smooth, mud-finished interior wall and the recently scrubbed concrete floor lend a muddy creek-water smell to the khaki pants and white shirt he is wearing. The headmaster says, “Welcome again to my office. Please sit down. Let me see your lesson plans for the week! I’m happy to see you are including the sewing lessons after school as part of your teaching load! The bolt of fabric, newspaper for making dress patterns and the needles and threads will be in the storage cabinet by 4:00 p.m. for you to use.”
“Thanks,” I say. “May I also use the microscopes tomorrow for the unit on one-cell organisms, and may I show pictures during geography class of the flora and fauna of the Indian Ocean coastline, around Dar es Salaam?”
“Yes,” he replies.
I continue, “Sarah and I share photos and borrow reading materials from other Peace Corps Volunteers’ book lockers. We pool information when we can illuminate the ecology of the coast. Our students are now seeing the natural beauty of the area.”
The headmaster replies, “Please feel free to exhibit resource materials in your classroom.” I leave his office and head toward the teacher’s workroom.
My feet keep walking, but my mind is a whirling cloud, drifting into history. Zanzibar: I will have to teach about the diaspora! I will have to teach about Mombasa.
Rain comes! RAIN. RAIN. RAIN. Foamy gray water, gallons of it make the compound, in an instant, look like thick mud soup, with our small teachers’ cottages stewing around in the middle.
The cold rain subsides. The one village car and the cottages shake off the vision, fill up and look like sanctuary. Now the chanting of the math students and the lecturing voices of the other teachers become louder as rainwater trickles into the compound.
The headmaster leaves his office and walks to his car. He says, “I am going downtown to pick up more cans of oil, sacks of rice, and medicine. You give first aid to many of the students with your own ointment and band-aids. Thank you!”
The headmaster continues, “If I don’t see you any more today, I will see you tomorrow mwalimu [teacher]. Enjoy your chakula at noon!”
I return to the teachers’ workroom until the history period begins. The day passes slowly. At the end of forty minutes, geography class begins. Then I teach English; we review for a test. Pressure is on! Students must pass the eighth-standard exit exams before they go to high school.
It is not long now before we see a 1956 Austin-Healy burping along the one-lane dirt road toward the school with Mr. Mpacama and perhaps two students in it. We could not see them clearly because the car windows are taped with newspaper. The shifting gears and ill-repaired clutch seem to enhance the old-fashioned scolding they receive. When the car stops, the badgering continues.
“It amazes me that none of your teachers could see you run away from school, in the middle of the day, over the bridge, up the hill to meet the bus! Why do you do this?” says Mr. Mpacama angrily. “Just to buy fish! I saw you wave your hands, and stop the bus. Then you boarded it, unpacked the fish, and placed them on the steps, stacking your purchases on the bus steps! You have no discipline! You should be studying! You caused the bus to be much later than usual getting to Mbeya town! This is a bold act! Meet me tomorrow after school, and I will give you your punishment!”
Apologetically, the students look at him and say, “We have a Friday ritual; we purchase fish for our families!” After school, Mr. Mpacama calls a meeting at his home briefing us about the incident. Hunger grips us; we nearly taste his boiling curry meat and ugali dish cooking on the stove.
He informs us that the school suffers from a lack of discipline. There are too many broken bricks that need to be re-made. The compound suffers from a lack of paint; just like many of the students, it suffers, needing revitalization. The fiery head master says, “It is sad that our school is behind Itope, Iringa, and Mpala, and other well-known schools in the district!” He continues, “Yesterday, during school hours, two of our model students left the compound to buy fish from a local bus driver. The punishment I will give requires the efforts of the entire seventh and eighth standards since others probably have been guilty of the same misdemeanor. Beginning tomorrow afternoon, students will make bricks to replenish the exhausted supply.”
There are hisses and cheers among the faculty. One teacher cautions him, “But, Mwalimu, the tradition of our school will be ruined if students make bricks for a punishment.” Nevertheless, the headmaster insists and teachers are dismissed.
Next day, after school is over, the seventh and eighth standard students meet in the compound.
As work begins, the old teacher, who is a traditional man, watches again. He pulls off his shirt and jumps into a pit. The arduous task of making bricks continues as he and the students dig three huge pits in the ground. Mounds of cut grasses are thrown into these holes and chopped up into small particles. Then the water bearers bring large cans of river water and dump it into the pits. Students jump in and press the wet clay with particles of grasses into a smooth consistency with their feet. Still others line up and scoop out the wet clay mixture and pour it into wooden brick molds, rectangular wooden frames. Each holds enough mud to form one brick. The old man and the students finally dump the first solidifying brick on the ground to dry, followed by the second and third ones. Unfortunately, I must oversee the brickmaking project. I feel like a camel herder.
At the end of the atonement week, two enormous pyramids of sun-dried bricks are piled up in a vacant space near the road. The old teacher is no longer watching or sitting by the side of the road. The bricks are fired using huge eucalyptus trees. They turn hard and indestructible.
The rain descends gently upon the cooling pyramids, but it does not abate the old teacher’s anger. He walks five miles to visit the district officer whose office is in the government boma (center). The old teacher explains the punishment to the district officer. Mr. Mpacama is summoned.
The district officer says, “Headmaster Mpacama, how could you inflict such a horrible punishment on your students? You know they walk barefooted seven to ten miles a day, over mountains and through valleys of maize to get to school each day. Surely, you could have punished only the two guilty students and allowed the others to go home to help with the afternoon chores! Surely, you could have waited until spring to make the bricks.”
Mr. Mpacama says, “Sir, look at the progress here. We have planted gardens. Now we sell vegetables to customers at the market and have cash to pay for many of the school’s expenses. Also our soccer team is excelling and more of our students are passing the standard eight exams this year!”
How could Mpacama possibly have achieved all of this having been the headmaster at for only short time? “Enough!” the district officer replies. “Since traditionally the making of bricks is a labor of love and not of atonement, I dismiss you from the school.”
Mr. Mpacama was sent—loudly protesting—to pick tea on a plantation in Tukuru, in the southern district of Tanzania. According to the old teacher, who is a traditional man, certain rituals of work must be maintained in order to give stability to a community. These rituals outweigh any notion of progress the headmaster could conjure up. To the old teacher, the headmaster is like an empty can, for the Swahili proverb even says, “An empty debe can [for carrying kerosene] makes the most noise!”
Sandra Echols Sharpe served as a teacher in Tanzania from 1965-67. She now resides in Greensboro, North Carolina.