The tale of the ant and a thousand goats
Forgive me, but I am in awe. Not with the raw power of nature, nor with the skill of an artisan. I have not committed a cardinal sin which has been forgiven nor has a Maasai killed a lion before my eyes. Rather, I have been to school.
What do you have to do before you can begin school?
‘Can you touch your left ear with your right arm going over the top of your head?’, Tomboy the Maasai chief had asked me over a pancake breakfast. Feeling I am about to be tricked, I do so. He continues, ‘OK, you must be more than four years old, so now you must go to school’, he says. ‘This is how we know when the children are ready for school. Quick, you must go now or you will be late’.
Charcoal on the old school floor.
We are late and made later by the mud, sticky and cloying after last night’s rain and I struggle with my footing over the three kilometres from camp to school. Mud creeps up my trousers and turns my shoes soil red whilst Sam, my Maasai guide, walks light-footed with elegance and ease in his recycled car tyre sandals, carrying his spear. We talk of his time at school as we walk - when there were no chairs and tables in class, no books nor pens. Any writing, he says, was done in charcoal on the classroom floor and then wiped clean.
Just kids
The sound track of a thousand goats bleating is replaced by the shrieks and shouts of eighty children chasing a much dented and deflated ball. We approach a zinc-roofed hut, isolated on the great plain. As we arrive, we become the new game as a living forest of dusty, dry skinned tiny hands reach out to to touch us and exited voices squeal the world-wide words of children; ‘Hallo, how are you?’ There are no surrounding walls to pass through, no gates, no cameras to stare into, no codes to press, no bossy signs to make you feel like suspected paedophile. Just kids at school in their break time, playing and a thin wire keeping the goats and sheep from entering the classrooms.
Soon the teachers will have a chair to sit on
William the Headmaster emerges from the single storied building and gently asks the children to leave us, which they do and he walks towards us with pride across foot flattened soil to the new extension, recently completed with monies from the local community. It is empty inside but with school boy enthusiasm he maps out partitions, delineating a staff room, a resource cupboard, a classroom with a teacher’s desk. ‘Soon’, he says, ‘The teachers will have a seat to sit on, a desk to write on, and a cupboard to put their things into’.
Outside a handbell rings for the end of break and William takes me to his class where the children have entered in ordered silence, foreheads already creased in concentration.
The new curriculum starts today
Naisinkan, Lamankian, Kayioni along with nine other classmates sit at their shared bench-desks facing their head teacher. ‘Open your books to page 1, children’, instructs William. ‘Today we are going to study Living and Non Living Things’. The class is quiet, obedient, attentive and do as they are bid. Exercise books are opened to the first page and words are neatly written in biro, as all children are wont to do on their first page of the new school year.
On the blackboard, a painted strip of black on the wall, William begins to write with a large hand sized lump of chalk, a list of twenty objects - window - stone - fly - bottle - grass. The children copy his words and order them into two columns, the living and the non-living..
Gras and glass and a soggy page
There is studiousness and silence. Flies sift around lightly shorn scalps and a gentle breeze blows through the glassless windows. The children’s clothes are dusty and loose on their small, thin frames. The paper in their books is thin and poorly bound. An ant walks across the floor and a boy picks it up with the tip of his pen and with great care puts it into the chipped bowl on his desk containing the resources for the lesson; a limp castor oil leaf, a stone, a shard of glass and stem of grass and a soggy page from last year’s discarded text book.
Dad on a visit
A man appears and leans into the class through a window frame and watches the children at work, smiling. His son is sick and he has walked several kilometres to school to report his child’s absence.
William exits the room temporarily, leaving us as the only adults to oversee the class. The ant escapes and the boy gently coaxes it back into his bowl. The father keeps smiling at the window. There is no talking, just writing and sorting objects into columns drawn on the page. On his return a few minutes later, William marks each book with a red pen, writing ‘good’ along with the date.
The teacher’s walking across the plains
Next door, through the thin wood partition, we observe another class whose teacher is still walking across the plains to take up her new appointment. The children sit patiently, books open, silent, their biros in the desks’ rills.
Soon William says it will be time for lunch and some of these children will have a three kilometre walk home before returning for afternoon school.
So much with so little
We too have a three kilometre walk back to camp across the crust now forming on the sheep cropped earth. Sam tells of the government paying £200 per pupil per annum in addition to the supply of the curriculum text books, of local governments building simple classrooms, of parents paying for extra teachers, writing equipment and uniforms.
Abundant awe and pride
Over lunch back at the camp, a simple dish of boiled potatoes in a light tomato sauce, Tomboy listens to my incredulous awe of having seen so much at the cost of so little. Simple learning aids, and a teacher kind and gentle. I compare our schools with they computers, learning supports, with its endless reporting and testing, and all its many opportunities. I talk of children not respecting their teachers, and of parents who are unsupportive. I am awed by having seen so much achieved with so little. Tomboy smiles with pride.
