A Dietary Deficiency

Soon after the year of Indian Independence, in 1947, when Muslims and Hindus decided to massacre each other in the name of religion, I saw the plight of the displaced. The refugees reached the far south where I lived, more than a thousand miles away, on foot -- their plight was pitiable. The families that came begging to my home were hungry, shabby, and their eyes looked upon the world without hope. We gave them rice conjee, more starchy liquid than rice, but they were grateful. 

 The latest Tory assault on the refugees trying to escape persecution of one sort or another defies comprehension. I was a migrant when I came to the U K; I found a tolerant people with a capacity for laughing at themselves. I now know that there is racism and an aversion to the other. But, we are also generous and compassionate.

 You could not invent Priti Patel if you tried. Reminds me of Lady Macbeth. A severe deficiency of the ‘milk of human kindness.’ A dietary deficiency that is irreversible, in her case. That level of cold heartlessness that she displays is sub-human. How does a person reach that nadir of cruelty? Yesterday my daughter and I talked about how disappointed we were in the people of this country, to have voted this monstrosity of a Tory mis-government into power. This is a conversation we have at regular intervals. In this instance, we were talking about the rise in National Insurance! Today we are ashamed, aghast, disgusted; there is nothing more to say; Hilary Mantel is so ashamed of the people who voted the Tories in that she wants to emigrate and change her citizenship. 

  

  Is this the same country that welcomed me here in 1974? I was on my way to Nigeria when I got a message from a Secondary School Headmaster in Wickford, saying, 'Please just come and see us.' The school was desperately short of Maths teachers and the Headmaster asked me to 'help out for a few months.' I had run away from an unsatisfactory marriage and was in a state of confusion and conflict. A few months to stop the dizzying swirl and think, I decided. I stayed for seven years. From Wickford I moved to a post in Dagenham. This country was kind to me. I loved my work, my friends. I grew in self-confidence. 

 

  So, I think, the border patrols are now instructed to drive the immigrants back into the angry waves, in their over-crowded, pathetic little boats? Are there people willing to do this for a wage? I hope not. This is a country that has always, in the past, given succour to the unfortunate, the displaced, the dispossessed. I have difficulty visualizing the RNLI pushing women and children back into the frothing sea. 

  We could of course get Priti puffed-up Patel into one of those boats and send her back ‘where she came from.’

Teachers' Life

 Teachers' day. Now, there's a thought. I was a teacher from 1963 to 1998. Actually, I never stopped being one. That tone - pedantic and authoritarian, does not please my children. Actually, the best teachers' days in my view are Saturdays and Sundays. Bliss to get up late, hang around in a housecoat all day, drink lethal numbers of cups of tea...

I was a smorgasbord kind of teacher -- I taught Secondary School, Primary school, Teacher Training college and nipped at the heels of University without much success. Too much like work, that last one. Until the British Council gave me a fancy name ('Maths Adviser -- deceived no one) and sent me to Africa to educate the 'natives.' Who knew a lot more Maths than I did, and a great deal more about how to train teachers without any resources other than a blackboard and chalk . One wag said to me, 'Just give us the money and go away, Anand.'

Uganda, for instance, put up with me with genuine affection and a smidgen of amusement. One day, the Makerere University lecturers invited me to one of their parties. No women around; I think I was a honorary male. They exchanged stories about the Tanzanian soldiers marching in to get rid of Idi Amin and the bombs whizzing past the top of the flat where we were meeting.

These guys were seriously clever, one of them had two Ph.Ds in Maths. Why two, Omurotu? I asked. Scholarships, he said. Whenever one was offered, I took it. The second one was in India and he came back with the Indian habit of wobbling their heads, which is often caricatured on T V in England. In the process of those two five-year scholarships, he lost his wife -- she gave up waiting around and left.

All the Maths syllabuses in Africa were too ambitious at Secondary level and sometimes at Primary level. Often the teachers at Primary level, who taught all the subjects to one class, did not have enough Maths in them to manage the aspirations of the Ministry of Education.

My first job was to get some consensus about what needed to be taught, when. Simultaneous Equations in Primary 5??  Jesus wept!

It was in Nigeria, in a tiny little town called Ikot Ekpene, on the Aba road, that I started my teaching career. My salary was nineteen pounds a month. It was a girls' training college and I loved walking into my first classroom of The Sacred Heart College, Ifuho. The college was run by American Catholic nuns, and all the girls had to wear uniforms -- brown pinafores over white blouses. Skirts had to touch the floor when the girls knelt for prayer, which was many times during the day. But that dirty brown on polished dark complexions?An abomination. Grass green is what I would have voted for.

They stuck their pens into their tight curls and firmly believed that my long knee length plait was an add-on. Until someone gave it a tug and it didn't come off.

That was just the beginning in Nigeria. I lasted five years in that country, until the Biafran issue brought war and destruction. We fled, leaving possessions behind.

I can see there is a great deal to talk about my peripatetic teaching life still to come. Zambia, Sierra Leone, ... Even Wickford in entrancing Essex. So, the rest in part two, if you don't mind.