El Messelemiya Higher Secondary School for Boys: # 1 The start of the school day
The plaintive tones of Victoria de los Angeles waft gently on the warm evening air. The electricity has returned to my little house next to the Higher Secondary School for Boys in El Messelemiya. It is five thirty and already the signs of the night are here. The bats in the eaves of the roof of my house are getting excited, it is nearly time for their flight to the trees and the insects there.
It is dusk and the insects are starting to bite the howaja – me! My light skin is a rare delicacy in these parts and they are not slow to enjoy it. The frogs in the nearby ditches and canals of the irrigation scheme are starting their nightly chorus, which might be taken for a farm generator that has been left running. Victoria finishes her aria and Lily Bolero signals the World News.
It has been another hot day in my calendar of hot days that started when I stepped down from the Sudanair Tristar at Khartoum Airport, twelve weeks ago. Up until that time, my total experience of prolonged hot weather had been the summer of 1976. This is different. The temperature can reach 45C and does, frequently. These evenings provide the only relief from the incessant heat of a Sudanese autumn.
The freshness of the early morning is short lived here, with the rising sun putting an abrupt end to coolness at six. A shower is pleasant but provides no lasting feeling of refreshment – the water is already warm in the pipe, and the sensation, so eagerly anticipated, is lost.
A night spent under a mosquito net is not unpleasant. Sleep comes easily enough after the debilitating heat of the day, and my colleagues’ prayers at 4am hardly disturb me. Rising at six is no hardship.
Sometimes, while I am shaving, my mirror standing on top of the wall that surrounds our home, I hear the boys shouting a chant as they run around the school grounds with the ageing soldier struggling to keep up. When they reach my bit of the wall, I wave at them and they shout, “Hey, Mister Robert!” in between their rhythmic shouts, a tribe of young warriors limbering up for the day that lies ahead.
The day starts early here. At 7.30am the school bell rings and two hundred and odd lively boys stand to attention for the retired soldier who inspects them in the manner of the British who left in 1956.
Another bell at 7.45am signals the start of the day’s lessons and the boys are playfully chased to their crowded classrooms by the soldier. He is supposed to cane the boys who are sent to him, but lately some of the teachers have suspected him of shirking his responsibilities. I personally think that, like me, he has grown fond of the boys and does not like to hurt them.
The second bell goes and lessons begin. In Sudan, a class of 35 is a small one with classes of 50 or 60 being more common. A sea of faces can be unnerving at first until you realize that this is not a Stanley Baker film, but the Sudan, and the boys are not out to get the teacher’s blood, or indeed his goat, but actually want to learn some English from the ‘howaja’ who has come from that mythical land called England, a plane journey and an age away.
Robert L. Fielding
It is dusk and the insects are starting to bite the howaja – me! My light skin is a rare delicacy in these parts and they are not slow to enjoy it. The frogs in the nearby ditches and canals of the irrigation scheme are starting their nightly chorus, which might be taken for a farm generator that has been left running. Victoria finishes her aria and Lily Bolero signals the World News.
It has been another hot day in my calendar of hot days that started when I stepped down from the Sudanair Tristar at Khartoum Airport, twelve weeks ago. Up until that time, my total experience of prolonged hot weather had been the summer of 1976. This is different. The temperature can reach 45C and does, frequently. These evenings provide the only relief from the incessant heat of a Sudanese autumn.
The freshness of the early morning is short lived here, with the rising sun putting an abrupt end to coolness at six. A shower is pleasant but provides no lasting feeling of refreshment – the water is already warm in the pipe, and the sensation, so eagerly anticipated, is lost.
A night spent under a mosquito net is not unpleasant. Sleep comes easily enough after the debilitating heat of the day, and my colleagues’ prayers at 4am hardly disturb me. Rising at six is no hardship.
Sometimes, while I am shaving, my mirror standing on top of the wall that surrounds our home, I hear the boys shouting a chant as they run around the school grounds with the ageing soldier struggling to keep up. When they reach my bit of the wall, I wave at them and they shout, “Hey, Mister Robert!” in between their rhythmic shouts, a tribe of young warriors limbering up for the day that lies ahead.
The day starts early here. At 7.30am the school bell rings and two hundred and odd lively boys stand to attention for the retired soldier who inspects them in the manner of the British who left in 1956.
Another bell at 7.45am signals the start of the day’s lessons and the boys are playfully chased to their crowded classrooms by the soldier. He is supposed to cane the boys who are sent to him, but lately some of the teachers have suspected him of shirking his responsibilities. I personally think that, like me, he has grown fond of the boys and does not like to hurt them.
The second bell goes and lessons begin. In Sudan, a class of 35 is a small one with classes of 50 or 60 being more common. A sea of faces can be unnerving at first until you realize that this is not a Stanley Baker film, but the Sudan, and the boys are not out to get the teacher’s blood, or indeed his goat, but actually want to learn some English from the ‘howaja’ who has come from that mythical land called England, a plane journey and an age away.
Robert L. Fielding
posted by Justice @ 9:30 PM
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