Post date: Aug 9, 2014 2:33:39 AM
Wednesday, 25 September 1963
My first actual teaching is this afternoon, at last. For three days I have been re-grading the exams of the chemistry students. The last teacher was a bungler. Sometimes I wonder how these kids learn anything with some of the teachers they have — then I recall that they really don't learn anything from their teachers, and many don't learn much on their own. The weather is its usual 80-85 degrees and 100% humidity. It has been raining nearly every afternoon, and we had a good thunder storm last night.
Let me describe my accommodations:
Part of the problem is that I have no good place to type.
The compound is situated around two football fields with a boulevard of nine large mango trees between. The graduate houses (me) are on the west side of this and the boy's dorms at the south.
My house is just like all the others for graduates (6 houses) including the principal, except the principal has two houses [one for each wife] and lots of kids to wait on him. The front room is 20x8 feet with a desk and two chairs and a dining table. That about fills it. The floor has new linoleum which I have partly covered with a raffia mat. The windows will soon have curtains, I hope. The bedroom is 8x10 with a four-poster of iron to hold up the mosquito net. Also contained in this room is a wardrobe of little use and a vanity with a big mirror which blocks the light from the window. Oh, yes, a few more amenities: my doorways, at least bedroom and kitchen, are now high enough to walk thru. I had them cut bigger.
The kitchen has a kerosene fridge which is very temperamental: if the flame is not just right, it warms instead of cools. I went without meat for a week from this thing. I hijacked another book case to put in this room for food and pots. There is a nice long table here, but my steward insists on preparing food in the cook room out back. I want to rig up some kind of a sink so we don't always have to go round the house to dump water. I imagine that a porcelain sink is frightfully expensive in this place, so I may have to settle for a large funnel with a rag stopper.
The water supply is not just suspicious—it is the school bath. At least for the boys, who go swimming before they fill the buckets so they can wade upstream a little. I also carried water buckets when I went with my steward to see the water source. It is about a half-mile away and I figured it was no use walking back empty-handed, especially when Benson hates to make the trip. He thought it very funny that I should carry water. Also he would not chop wood yesterday, so I went out to do it and he laughed at my funny way of swinging an axe in a circle.
Yesterday I made a stew; I put the yams in, and when they were done, my steward promptly took them out! He thought it very funny that we should cook them together.
Behind the house is a row of rooms with wood stove, bathroom, and outhouse, fortunately with a can which the ‘night-soil‘ man, removes almost nightly. These are about 8x5 feet. Market day is every four days, so one must plan with some degree of thought.
My steward is not a genius at anything, especially meals. Monday he bought three yams (they are white here, about two feet long, six inches thru) which would last a family a week. He bought ten eggs, three of which he had thrown out before I found that they were bad only because the rooster got there first. I have had lunch at 4pm and one day I had lunch a 3 and dinner at 5 because Benson fixed it then. One egg is enough for breakfast. We will straighten him out. In the evening women sell fruit on the compound, but Benson is usually in such a stew about bath or dinner so he can go home before dark—that he forgets to buy fruit.
I caught my steward not boiling water the other day so I showed him how it bubbles when it boils. He sort of resents my being in the kitchen and my not taking a bath when he wants it, etc, but this is my house now and he will have to abide by my rules. Especially if I have to eat his cooking. I guess the British are more submissive, as the stewards generally like to work for them best. Some of Benson’s specialties are good, some require special ingredients from the city. I still have difficulty telling him I want to eat Nigerian food, but I guess his training only taught him to cook a certain few dishes which Europeans will eat. He came back from the market and told me he had to go back to get the things he needed for ‘his own‘ food. So I asked him what he would buy and he told me. Then I asked him to buy some of the same for me and he said I couldn't eat it! Stubborn cuss.
The one thing I could live off of here is fruit, and he forgets to buy it. [A large bowl of fruit--my typical breakfast--cost 3 cents, unless it contains pineapple, which adds another penny.]
My Jeep is to come today, so the word came. The British VSO will be aboard, and my settling-in kit as well, I hope. I will probably feed the new chap for several days, but Benson is scarcely able to feed one, much less two. He does make good yam cakes which are sort of like mashed potato pancakes.
Saturday when we went to Aba, Henry, the biology tutor, took me shopping so I could get all the things I needed in the little time we had. Then we went to his house and had fish turnovers and stout and met his family. His house is like mine, only bigger, with more rooms. These are of mud, about 8 inches thick, with corrugated iron roofs, and with no glass in the windows—only shutters. Fortunately I have screens. None of the jambs are plumb, so the shutters never stay open by themselves [and the mosquitoes and geckos come around the edges of the screens as if they weren't there].
Yesterday was a festival day in Arochuku (or Aro [the clan name]—Chuku [meaning 'god']) and Mr. Ikoku‘s second wife took us in to see the festivities. There were several groups who wandered thru singing and beating on drums, and every one was dressed up or masqueraded. It was great fun, but my camera got sick and I may not be able to fix it. I can't get the offending part out to work on it and it is no good as it is. Alas. I hear there is a good man in Aba for this.
Mr. Abraham, an Indian graduate, showed me around the villages in his VW and introduced me to the postmaster, and showed me the local ‘store'. There is a [Edinburgh-educated!] doctor and a hospital here, as well as several government buildings.
The VSO [British Volunteer Service Overseas — Mick Gidley] arrived yesterday. He is from a town in the Midlands he pronounces ‘Lester’ but must be spelled something like Leicester. He is in English and Art. Nice chap, but he was sort of scared when I first saw him. Better now. I had him over for dinner last night.
I was called by the boys to teach a Third Form science class today (half-way thru the class period) and with no preparation. This has to stop. Ikoku is making out a timetable. I hope it is a good one, as I would like to make some sort of preparation for these things. The Jeep, it seems, may be ready today, and may come today or tomorrow.
I just received a new time table. Must study it so I can figure out when I must teach.
2 October 1963, Wednesday eve
I have been lazy again: Sunday was followed by Monday, with only one class, and that a lab, so I didn't have to prepare much, and on Tuesday we celebrated the Independence and formation of the Republic of Nigeria. Several groups of townspeople came and danced for us on the compound and there was a dance last night with live music. Also a soccer game between the staff and the Junior team. I played, of course, and we lost, of course, but it was strictly a gentleman's game, and the front line of the staff team was really pretty good. It rained lightly just before, so the field was wet and slippery. I played in my bare feet as I had no suitable shoes.
Monday I spent several hours arranging chemicals and glassware in the lab. Most of the glass had never been unpacked in three years. I acquired two new cabinets, which were originally intended for the lab, but room had to be made for them. There are only a few glaring absences in the chemical and equipment list and it is really a quite well-equipped lab. I worked a bit today again filling the last cabinet and washing some of the glass which had been unpacked for biology use. The principal also purchased an ingenious set of teaching materials for electricity and magnetism. These he found in the States. [A couple of his older children work in the States.] It includes almost everything one could use for teaching this branch of physics and I will probably be teaching physics when Mr. Abraham leaves in a month or so. Ikoku doesn't think he can offer physics for the School Cert Exam, but if we get some optics equipment I think we can. We'll see; I have a fair job just working up the chemistry students. I found on Monday that they had no practical work, and didn't even know haw to write up a lab notebook. I have seventeen classes a week now, eight of these are in algebra, trig, and in arithmetic for Fourth Form boys. I have not prepared for these classes, as I have no textbook yet.
This evening starts my first Igbo language class. It rained cats and dogs this evening, and is raining yet. I would take a bucketful of water out of the barrel and it would be full again in about three minutes. The Junior boys played football in that rain until it became too dark to see.
I have not yet purchased any clothes, as I have been sort of broke. The banking system is funny here, and I have to have the bank manager in Umuahia write to the bank in Lagos to send him a letter saying it is alright to cash my cheques. These British and their funny systems. The Jeep has not yet arrived either, so I may not get to Umuahia, but I intend to complain if it doesn't arrive before this weekend. I can get clothes made in Arochuku, tho, so that will be no trouble. One of the boys will take me in. Shorts are about $1.75 with cloth—tailor-made! The weather is not so bad, but the sand flies eat me up in the morning, and I may have to take to wearing sox to keep them off my ankles.
I just watched a lizard [gecko] eat a rather large winged insect. They are good scavengers, and I would much rather have the lizards around than all the bugs. Thanks to the screens we have relatively few [large] bugs and almost no lizards in the house, but the reptiles are all over outside. Some are very pretty, with green and orange. I have seen no snakes yet.
Let me describe my supper: yam cake (very much like mashed potatoes), fried bananas, toast, and fresh bread, and jello with fresh fruit in it. Not bad, considering that we are out of meat, since market fell on Independence day and very few women came to sell. My steward was only able to get three eggs, so we are rationing my protein. Is there an accepted minimum intake for protein?
This is the first night I have had batteries and inclination to listen to my radio. I have heard BBC and Voice of America news broadcasts, and French and German music. The VOA came from Greenville, NC. They use simplified English spoken very slowly.