The last couple of days have been a bad time for my students. The government has an organization problem at the highest level, and has failed to pay for the student’s food in schools all across the country. I think our school may have saved up money in case of such a circumstance – this situation occurs every year – but by last Wednesday there was no money at all and the students didn’t eat anything. That night I was sitting outside when I heard a group of young men, obviously my charges, marching throughout Ndanda singing and yelling. At first I thought it was some sort of religious parade; the Christian students sing, loudly, every night at about 7:30. They didn’t sound angry and in fact the songs were identical to the songs they sing every Thursday when they’re running. When one of the nuns who lives next door told me they didn’t have any food, I wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not.
The next day, Thursday, I spent two hours at home preparing my lessons and then arrived to prepare a chemistry practical. Nobody told me anything was wrong; I didn’t hear any classes, but this all that unusual. I mixed chemicals for the next two hours and then went to teach mathematics, but there were no students in the classroom. Any school-wide meetings take place underneath a big tree outside the Physics lab, where I teach all my classes, and when I left the classroom I saw some Form VI’s sitting underneath the tree. “Come! Tell us a story!” I knew a handful of the students and whenever I do sit with a few students a handful of others will show up to see what’s going on.
They were hungry and, understandably, quite pissed. One of them, Pius, who is involved in student government somehow, explained that the situation to me. He asked if these sorts of things happen in America. He asked if he could come to my house so I could give him food (“ha ha! You’re funny!). He asked if I could take over as the teacher in charge of food and wellness. I was told there would be no classes this day, that the students were on strike. I was once again in a situation where I couldn’t do anything to help anybody; the solutions to these problems lay far outside Ndanda Secondary. After some thirty minutes I retreated back to the laboratory to prepare for an exam which would probably not occur.
I was in the laboratory with our new chemistry teacher, who cannot prepare solutions, and with our lab assistant, who also cannot prepare solutions and is in general worthless. Happily I already knew what to look for, I had written the mock examinations for the entire region, and after about an hour we were finished. During this time the district commissioner came from Lindi, the biggest “city” near us, and I watched him talk to his students from the chemistry lab. He was in the uncomfortable position of a leader explaining to his constituents why he had screwed them, and he wasn’t handling the pressure well. Sometime during his speech several riot police, bearing clubs, gas masks and assault rifles, vaporized; they kept out of immediate sight of the meeting but everyone knew about them. It started raining ten minutes after the meeting began and all my students ran for cover.
My first instinct was to get as far away from the cops as possible, but my students weren’t in a rioting mood and I wanted to see how the things worked out. Several of my form V’s were waiting in the corridors outside my classroom. The ones I talked to were angry and worried that the school would close; they lived very far from Ndanda and didn’t have the bus fare to make it back home. Random students walked past me and told me they were dying.
A legacy from its time as a mission school, Ndanda secondary has large hall which can function as an auditorium; the meeting continued there and again I remained, against my better judgment. As things turned out there were no problems, the students thought (correctly) I sympathized with them and were eager to share their problems. When the meeting began the District Comissioner kept on talking, smiling, and waving his arms and my students kept on asking him questions angrily; I didn’t understand everything but I knew he was promising food while those around me were complaining “politics! He’s just talking.” Our headmaster, who never before has missed a chance to articulate, stood quietly at the side, unwilling to take the blame for someone else’s mistakes. Afterwards a man, who I later learned is the police chief, stood up and urged the students not to resort to violence. He explained that after a short period they may have to close the school, but the students would have a deciding voice in any decision. Then everybody left.
Later I met an ex-teacher (Ngaga, who had left for an accounting job in Kigoma), who told me this sort of problem happens all the time, to all government students. Today when I arrived classes had resumed like normal so I assume the problem was fixed; almost all students sat for the lab practical.
The last time I had been in United Hall with such a crowd, the reason had been a meeting of the teacher’s union to discuss a strike. The teachers hadn’t been paid wages in several months, and some were still expecting moving allowances from a year ago. How can an education system even pretend to serve its country, if it cannot pay its teachers and it cannot feed its students?
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