Festus tells me to go act as her parent and ask the school why they have sent her home. Maggie says it’s because she didn’t use lotion this morning on her face. I am so furious.
I stop and tell the nurses that I’m leaving and they let me know that Carol did not come in the morning for her Typhoid medication and has gone to school, despite the fact the nurses told her she had to stay at home.
I march down the road to Unique Standard and stop half way. I tell Maggie that if she hasn’t been completely honest about why she has been sent home, that she needs to tell me now. She says the teacher told her she needed to use lotion on her face.
I walk straight to the office and ask the woman there to speak with the deputy headmistress. She tells me, the all Ugandans say it, “First you wait, she’s coming.”
“I don’t want to wait. She has summoned a parent to school. I did not come to wait. I have a class to teach in Ntenjeru in twenty minutes.”
I ask where she is and go to the classroom where she is calling students and sending them home to get their school fees. After she finishes in that classroom, she comes outside and says that she’s finishing up and I can wait for her in the office. I tell her I don’t want to wait.
“I’m coming.”
“Really? It looks like you’re staying. I do not want to wait.”
“I’m coming.”
She goes into the classroom and in the end I wait anyway, but not that long.
I see Carol walking to one of her classes. I tell her to come here and I ask her why in the world she has come to school and why she didn’t take her medicine. She lies and says she took it this morning. She tells me that Festus has told her to come to school.
The headmistress comes and invites me to sit with her in the room. We begin the hour and a half conversation about corporal punishment in
According to the Deputy Headmistress, Maggie was with a group of students who were late to school. So she made all the students lay on their stomachs on the grass so she could hit them with a stick. When the headmistress got to Maggie and hit her only once, she jumped up and refused to be caned fully! Can you believe it? Then she supposedly had the disrespect to look at the headmistress in the eyes. And on top of that, she rolled them.
Maggie interrupted to say that the headmistress did not cane her. I told her that we were talking and it wasn’t time for her to have her say. The headmistress added that she shouldn’t be standing in the first place.
Maggie knelt down on the floor and looked down. “You see how disrespectful!” the headmistress thought this lack of kneeling somehow backed her claims.
She goes on to tell me that when Maggie got up, she saw that Maggie had on make up. She told her she is wasting her time in the morning making herself look like this and that she has to go home and get a parent.
“I’m sorry, but I’m confused about why you can’t understand a child wanting to protect themselves physically. Tell me why you are continuing to cane students when it is against
Same old talk… Apparently the Minister knows that all teachers cane and only passed the law for some unknown reason.
“I agree that when students misbehave there needs to be punishment. I disagree with how you choose to punish.
“You are caning the students because they choose which rules they are going to follow and which they were going to break. How effective do you think caning is to these children when they know it is against
She talks about how hard it has been at the school. She was just summoned to that possession three months ago. She says that the teachers aren’t disciplining in class because they don’t think it is their job. She says that the prefects are not helping, but making things worse. The head boy and girl are a joke. So all the disciplining is falling on her. And she is so overwhelmed with work, that she does not have time to think of other kinds of punishment and to supervise the children to make sure they do what she’s asked.
So, she just swat-swats and goes on her way.
“Is that very effective? Do you find the behavior improving?”
She tells me that she has tried other things. Like making the kids that are late sweep the school before they go to class. But the kids just like sweeping.
“I am very impressed that you are trying other methods of discipline. That makes me feel a lot better than from what I’ve been hearing about the school. But you can’t give up. You should consider changing the punishment time. Obviously, these late students do not care to be on time to class, so by making them sweep you are allowing them to miss even more of the class they did not care to go to.
What would happen if you made the punishment during lunch, or during their free time? Then you will see that the punishment is effective.”
More excuses. The conversation goes on and we agree that the problem is teamwork and accountability. She says that eventually she wants to put the cane down and run the school differently. I tell her she needs to meet with all the teachers and come up with a plan and a program that will be uniformly instituted by each person.
I tell her about taking attendance and also other ways of punishing students. I tell her that we do not want her caning any children from Volset. She is annoyed that I’ve said this in front of Maggie and says if they kids knew she would not hit them, they would never listen.
I tell her that if she sends a note home for us or gives us a call, we will discipline the children at home, and that they would wish for a caning after the work will have them do. I told Maggie that the conversation we’ve had is private and she is not to be telling anyone what was discussed.
The headmistress talks about how much she loves the girls of the school and wants them to be successful and not digging in their gardens in the village for the rest of their life. She explains that when she was in school, her teachers never caned anyone. She said that she loved all her teachers and did not fear them. She said that everyone behaved.
“Don’t you want that for your school here? Don’t you think these kids deserve the same environment?”
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I though I was almost an hour late for class. But as I get to school I remember we are on mid-term schedule and I haven’t missed my classes. I don’t even have classes. I ask if I can have time to meet with the students to give them a study guide for their math test on Wednesday and they make time for me to talk with the students.
I give them practice questions and actual questions from the exam. They clap and are happy that I’m trying to help them get a good grade.
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I get home and all the kids from the neighborhood are around. I start a game of duck-duck-goose. After our game we sing a song I learned in Primary at church. “Do As I’m Doing.” I clap and they follow, I stomp and they follow. “I can do it fast or slow, I can do it high or low…”
Next, we sing “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes” and then we have a big game or Ring-Around-The-Rosie. We stay on the ground and I decide that I should teach them the ABCs. I start the song and some of them already know it. They sing it to a different tune and rhythm. I am so impressed. Marilyn comes outside and video tapes them singing.
We end in a big “Do As I’m Doing” song, where each of the older kids gets a turn to decide what we do. Their parents shout directions from across the road. Nakato’s mom tells her to put her hands on her hips and sway from side to side. Nakato is full of giggles.
As soon as we got to the part of the song, “I can do it fast…” and we all started shaking our hips at super speeds, Nakato lost it and fell on the ground laughing until she could hardly breath. Haha.
Her and Wasswa are twins. They are both some of my favorites when we play duck-duck-goose, because you can always tell who they are going to pick. As they come closer to them in the circle, they start giggling more, until finally they can barely say, “goose.”
I love these kids.
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After I’m finished I go to leave, but tell the kids to keep playing without me. I want them to still do this when I’m gone. They keep going and stay pretty organized. I run and get my camera and take some pictures of the fun.
I’m doing laundry today and get the water ready. As I’m filling the tubs I start to have another sneeze attack. Maybe it wasn’t the jackfruit, maybe it’s something in the front yard that I’m allergic to. I hope so. I love jackfruit.
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Absolutely enormous planes fly overhead in my dream. We were on a boat or canoe talking. We stopped our conversation and stared as the ominous craft made its way into the distance towards the hotel built on the water of the lake.
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