Childhood: The privilege of a good primary school education

My knuckles hurt

I doubt my parents have ever recognised the value of the primary school education I had and how that seems to have contributed to the makeup of who I am and my personality.

I went to three primary schools starting with the Army Children’s School in Kaduna where I spent a year. There are three things I remember about that school, my first day when as soon as my mother and aunt appeared to take me home, I walked out of the class without the school having closed.

The Indian headmistress usually had a fingernail inspection and if we had any nails growing, she clipped the back of our fingers with the edge of a ruler. For a kid of just over 5 years of age, it is strange that we were expected to clip our nails, which should have been the responsibility of our parents.

Bussed around

I guess the idea was we were punished to the extent that we had to inform our parents of what they need to do, that was my introduction to the rottenness of corporal punishment. The last event was when my father arrived late to pick me up.

I got on the school bus and went to sit at the back. Just before the bus pulled away, my dad’s car pulled up, I made no move to get off and he basically followed the bus literally round town before he got attention of the driver and the permission to take me off the bus.

A better place

I am glad we left Kaduna because my second school, Corona Primary School, Shamrock House in Bukuru, Jos was a completely different place. I joined the school jumping a class to class 3 and had the amazing opportunity for a well-rounded education.

Our school was international and followed a more English curriculum as opposed to the rival Hillcrest School that had more of an American system. I remember we had reading, writing and spelling classes beyond the usual lessons. We had many excursions, notably one to the veterinary school at Vom.

We had scope to explore, to inquire, to question, to challenge, to debate and to dispute, all teachers were accessible, I never once saw the use of corporal punishment, yet the quality and standard of discipline was high. I think this environment gave me the boldness to have views and opinions with the ability to project those with conviction.

A full education

Whilst my parents have intimated that I have always been a conversationalist for as long as they could remember, I just knew I could engage anyone in conversation if they were interested enough to want a conversation. The number of difficult and tight spots just being able to speak my mind has gotten me out of are innumerable, I’ve been blessed.

Our library was stocked with books I ravenously devoured but I never really liked writing, especially writing letters that seemed to grow on me much later in life. One day, I found a French course book in one of the cupboards in our class and whilst I had no means of knowing the pronunciations, I began to teach myself French.

It is quite strange that one is still learning new things from events of over 40 years ago. The line of a song we practiced before a performance I never got to attend, I learnt today was from The Pirates of Penzance – A Policeman’s lot Is not a happy one – it is strange I never bothered to check all this while.

A greater sense of adventure

After three years in Jos, we returned to Kaduna where I was enrolled in the Sacred Heart Primary School for the sixth year. Though I missed 4 months of school attending common entrance examinations in South-West Nigeria, I was already quite independent minded and more or less able to travel alone and make the necessary enquiries to get anywhere I needed to get to.

Yet, in that year, I joined painting classes which just helped improve my sense of expression and for some reason I could not explain, I was cast as Pharaoh in our school’s Christmas production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

As Pharaoh of all Egypt in 1975

One interesting event in my school year was attending a Sharia Court session in Kaduna, we were pupils of a Catholic School with backgrounds too varied to count and yet that was a thing of great interest to us all.

More than eye-opening

What primary school education gave me was a great sense of adventure in learning, a demanding curiosity to understand things, a very inquisitive mind and sometimes I very liberal view of things. The environment in which I studied was quite multiracial, I had schoolmates from all around the world and that gave me a broad worldview of equality in our humanity.

They tried to beat that out of many of us with that kind of background in secondary school, but they failed, we were fearless, wily and sometimes too streetwise for our own liking. We were rarely the top of the class in those times, because we could never learn by rote, we had to understand what we were taught and answered questions as we understood what we had learnt.

Now, I am not a man of many letters, but nothing can better the quality of foundational and diverse primary school education I was privileged to have. That in my view can be the differentiator in many things and opportunities I have had in life.

When we toured the primary schools in that Cape Town suburb just over two weeks ago, it dawned on me again why a good primary school education sets the stage for an amazing life. Very little can compensate for the lack of this foundation, even if that person ends up being very successful in any walk of life.

South Africa: My last full day

Far away in the same place

When I left Johannesburg just two weeks ago, I had an 11-hour stopover in Cape Town. This being my first trip back to Africa in 25 years I thought of breaking down my return leg by visiting at least one other city besides Johannesburg, I chose between Cape Town and Nairobi.

The distance from Johannesburg to Cape Town is just about 1,280 kilometres by air, if we did that in Europe we probably would have flown over two countries or more, we never really grasp how vast Africa is.

It was a two-hour flight to Cape Town and I arrived just after 11:00AM, stepping out into the Arrivals area I saw the Cape Town Tourism stand where I thought I could get some information about where to visit and what to see.

Quite a let-down, I say

I cannot say they were very helpful and they were most unhelpful when it transpired that they did not have a chip/PIN payment system but had to take an imprint of my credit card. In this day and age, one has to be suspicious of such payment methods, the smallest stores I visited in South Africa had electronic means of payment, and a tourism desk in an international airport not having this facility is unacceptably beyond the pale.

To add insult to injury, they refused cash and then proceeded at attempting to blackmail me into adopting their payment system or having to join long queues to go to the top of Table Mountain.

I did not relent, I asked for my card and the imprint they had taken and left to make my own plans.

A short tour of Cape Town

Thankfully, a colleague resident of Cape Town had checked that the weather around the Table Mountain was not particularly fair, he suggested I take an UberBlack taxi cab to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront from where I could board a tour bus.

Victoria & Alfred, the monarch and her second son, should not be confused with Victoria and Albert, the monarch and her consort. Prince Albert laid the foundation stones of the harbour in 1860, hence that name.

From the airport to the waterfront, you could see that South Africans have many things to be proud of, the UberBlack cab driver gave me Cape Town in a nutshell, pointing out landmarks and historic places before telling me of the hospital where Christiaan Barnard conducted the first heart transplant in 1967.

Of Cape Town and the people

From the waterfront, I boarded the CitySightseeing Bus that had an electronic payment system having excluded going to the top of the Table Mountain apart from the long stop at the landing point of the cableway car that goes to the top.

I doubt if we ventured to any place apart from the richest and most salubrious parts of Cape Town before we returned to the waterfront where I was picked up by my colleague.

The journey to his place had us go through a very English-looking suburb and a tour of public schools of the English kind where rivalries were very much like Eton versus Harrow, there is privilege and opportunity that comes with many things like race and ability. You must never pooh-pooh the privilege of a good early education.

At his home, over the sampling of some fine South African wines we had a braai, a South African barbecue. Having run out of fire-lighters, my host drenched the middle of kitchen towel paper with cooking oil and then lit the dry ends over which he placed the wood. The slow burn of the kitchen paper was enough to set the wood alight, and soon we had a barbecue fire.

As dusk fell, I got another UberBlack cab to the airport and prepared to board my 11:30-hour flight back to Amsterdam. That was the end of my 13-night working visit to South Africa.

Thought Picnic: Feuds amongst kith

The wondering

He guessed there were times when his siblings have probably asked themselves whether they all were scions of the same parentage, reared under the same roof and sired by the same people.

With all their different personalities and walks of life, he does see a spectrum with a seam of similarity between them whilst attitudes might well be different.

There is every possibility that with all the opportunities they all had, they might well not have turned out as well as was expected of them, but this was not for the want of trying. All gratitude must still go to their parents for their love and their sacrifices, the siblings all are glad they are both still about, healthy and well, and that is a wonderful story.

The entreating

Yet, a recent encounter and exchange between them revealed a flaw, a division between the respectable and the uncouth visited upon the unsuspecting that it was both shocking and deplorable.

A request that amends be made was grudgingly done before the deployment of religious blackmail to prove a point that would have still not excused the contemptible behaviour.

However, just as many lines were crossed, the order was breached that the forebears might have to be intimated of some new information. The order in which they thought they had their wards is probably not someone in the lower order thinks is the case.

The unyielding

What brings on such haughtiness is surprising, probably an inability to subject oneself to scrutiny, a questioning of authority at every opportunity, a lack of breeding – perish the thought, those before have the most impeccable manners, rebelliousness? Well, that one has always had a rebellious streak, quite more so than the first.

A breakdown has ensued and it is going to get worse before it gets better, if it does get better. The silence of the elders must not be misconstrued as blindness, ignorance, indifference or weakness.

They can choose to ignore just because it is unnecessary to engage, people keep their cool to achieve many ends and choose their words carefully to send a strong message.

The puzzling

At this point for all that have decided to scratch their noses in puzzlement, one has chosen to scratch their nose with the gaping fangs of a viper, and as the reasonable degenerates into the utterly unreasonable, bystanders will shake their heads in wonder, was this not so entirely avoidable?

Yes, the question returns to haunt the present – were they reared under the same roof? Doubts remain, but the truth is there, some allowed instruction and others refused it.

South Africa: Where injustice parts for justice continued

Many tongues and places

There are some many quirky things about South Africa that make such interesting reading. This is a country of 11 official languages and 3 capitals.

The 3 capitals part was one that really surprised me, because all the while I thought Pretoria was the only capital of South Africa. As it transpires, the administration consisting of the President and the cabinet, mainly the executive sits in Pretoria, the legislature sits in Cape Town and the judiciary sits in Bloemfontein.

Yet, the Constitutional Court of South Africa is based in Johannesburg and this is where the Chief Justice of South Africa sits, whilst this court only is superior to the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa based in Bloemfontein, the Constitutional Court only adjudicates on constitutional matters, the highest court for non-constitutional matters is the Supreme Court.

On a plain of old pains

The Constitutional Court is located at Constitution Hill built with bricks of a demolished awaiting trial wing of a former prison on the grounds of the Old Fort Prison complex that included a women’s goal, a white’s only prison that once admitted Nelson Mandela to its hospital wing and Number Four.

What happened there is best read in the words of those were inmates of Number Four. An eerie calmness settles on you as you climb up to walk the perimeter dyke fence wall of the fort which gives you views of a dangerous inner-city neighbourhood of Braamfontein and Hillbrow that my hostess said whites will rarely venture into and further afield are the richer suburbs of Johannesburg.

Looking towards a new future

The façade of the court has the name of court in the 11 official languages in colourful type and this overlooks the Eternal Flame of Democracy, which was lit on the commemoration of 15 years of the South African constitution.

Having left the Apartheid Museum and stopped off at Constitution Hill, this place merged history, the present and the future in one single of narrative of where injustice dehumanised and justice began to humanise giving hope to a greater and thriving unity of the good of humanity.

South Africa has a long journey ahead, I can see some strong foundations being laid, and some other structures need to be jettisoned, but process will never been stopped in its tracks, the future is coming, the future is upon us.

South Africa: Ever writing a better story of our own lives

Going Uber with boldness

As I grew in confidence to get around Johannesburg, I abandoned the overpriced taxi services offered by my hotel and took to the use of UberBlack which is the high-end luxury chauffeur service of Uber.

One of the inconveniences of hailing a taxi cab by Uber was that it always pointed to the address next-door and I had to edit that address every time before putting in my destination. I still feel the Android app for Uber is still in need of updating to give it a better and more intuitive user experience.

When my rides arrived, I still had to look out for the model of car, the number plate and then the identity and name of the driver. It would have been more helpful to include the colour of the vehicle too.

A memorable Uber ride

Of the many rides I had on Uber, there was one that remained quite memorable in my mind, I mostly sat in front with the driver and started off a conversation about how they were, how their day has been and then I told them I was visiting from the UK and we just talked.

On this occasion, it was a late night ride and as we began to converse, he talked of an event in his life when his fiancée left him and he thought it was the end of his life. He was sad, depressed and literally abandoned hope.

Then he came to, he thought about what might be in 10 years’ time if he did meet the lady who broke his heart again. Would she be glad that she left him? Would he be glad that she left him? Would they both be glad that they had moved on with their lives in a productive and positive manner?

That brought him to the conclusion that he had to do the best for himself and hope for another chance in love and happiness. And so he finished his studies, found a new lover, built a family and he is now as happy as he can ever be.

Ever writing a better story

What struck me about this was that without him knowing, he had already written a better story about his own life, as we all try to write our own versions of a fairy tale that has the final line of ‘they lived happily ever after.’

As I have written many times before, our lives are stories, we can decide how we want those stories written by the way we face the issues and life and hopefully find that strength to come through adversity to a better place.

Sadly, many never get to write a continuing story with a happier ending for all sorts of reasons and it does not make their story less a human story, but in sharing our own stories in our own voice, we might just be the voice and the encouragement that gives the other person, the faith, the hope and the support they need to see beyond the hills, see beyond the clouds and press on to a brighter day.

South Africa: A land not at ease

Unease in the land

There are many things I have wanted to write about my recent trip to South Africa, many of which are quite unsettling because I did not see a country at ease with itself.

Rather, in all that on the surface would have looked like a thriving society, there was an underbelly of lack, penury, poverty and destitution.

To say the country is not in a state of constant civil unrest is to ignore the fact that there are so many strikes and protests with the sad reality that very little seems to be in place for arbitration or conciliation.

The protests seem to have a militant strain and in the two weeks that I was in South Africa, at least two protesters lost their lives to police gunshots, the police having been overwhelmed to the point that they could not retreat but attack the protesters.

Riot in the camps

The thought that civilians will die at the hands of the security forces in black majority rule South Africa in 2015 is sad, especially after the Marikana killings where 41 striking mineworkers also lost their lives at the hands of the police in 2012, leaving us to draw parallels with the Sharpeville massacre of 1960.

I felt dreadfully sorry for the fact that one can begin to draw these kind of comparisons along with the fact that the leadership seems to be rocked by scandals from all ends compromising the independence and impartiality of institutions necessary to protect the hard-earned democracy of South Africa.

I will hate to think things are coming apart at the seams, but with the recent xenophobia attacks, a lack of appreciation of history and the rise of reactionary politics used to distract the people from the failings of their leaders at the centre, we have another country with great potential that risks never being realised because it has no leaders to lead the country in mind and purpose to the “Promised Land”.

Failed on the streets

Those who live in shacks on land they risk being driven from by whim or capriciousness and those who live in well-secured compounds that boast signs of “Armed Response” as part of their security response arrangements speaks more beyond what meets the eye.

The yawning chasm between the haves and have-nots will not be bridged in a generation and probably not in many generations if South Africa is to endure the rent seeking leadership it currently has.

The African National Congress (ANC) has taken the people for granted for so long that they seemed to have lost purpose or direction. Without a doubt, it is time for the people to begin to consider alternatives, the alternatives with their interests in mind.

If change is to come to the people of South Africa and unite them in common purpose, they need greater men than these at the helm, people in the stature of Nelson Mandela or who like F. W. de Klerk realised change had to come and like Desmond Tutu who stands as a Colossus in humility and humanity. The men in charge do not have the least it takes to do the latches of the shoes of these mentioned great men of history.

South Africa: On leaving and the goodbyes I sadly didn't get to make

As much and much else

Much as there is still much to write about my just under 2-week visit to South Africa and much as there is a lot of making up to do when I get back home, I have commenced my return leg back home.

The return journey will be from Johannesburg to Cape Town to The Netherlands and then to England, to be completed in just about 30 hours.

Much as I accomplished much of what I came here to do and much as I hardly had a social life for the duration of my stay apart from a moments I caught with friends that I was unable to make happen again. I regret not being able to make time for more engagement, it was just lots of hectic days that at the end of the day your returned and crashed out.

Face up

On checking out at the hotel, I still had credit left that was given to me as change, the clerk at the desk had such as glum disposition that appeared to add insult to injury after all that I had endured in the first week of my stay, I was not disposed to rewarding such sullenness with any generosity and she probably deprived her other colleagues of something too.

The hospitality business is one where being able to man a desk is the first of many qualifications and the unquantifiable parts are a welcoming, smiling, appearing to be helpful, considerate and engaging personality. Get those wrong and having lost the opportunity to make a good first impression, any other impression will be graded on the scale of the failed first attempt that only the extraordinary can attempt at redemption.

I will be visiting this hotel where I stayed for 13 nights on Trip Advisor, I know I will not return to this hotel or any under this chain, nor will I recommend it to anyone visiting Johannesburg, it was my lesson in tolerable endurance.

Thank you

To get to the airport, I had one of three choices, to allow the hotel book one of their exorbitantly priced taxis, get the shuttle to the Gautrain station where I could board the high-speed train to O R Tambo International Airport or hail UberBlack on my phone and have that service get me to the airport. After very little consideration, I went for the third option and had a pleasant ride to the airport.

As I bid Johannesburg farewell and consequently South Africa and Africa at large, this was an experience I was not particularly looking forward to, but when I leant in, it was one I will always remember. Some of the people I met will become great friends, people who made time and space for me welcoming me as guest with honour and respect, I owe much gratitude I cannot fully pay.

I might return to South Africa, I do not know, but my hope and wish for South Africa is and remains with all that I saw - 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika'.