Discipline

In African schools, as you may already be aware, there is corporal punishment.  It's the cornerstone  of school discipline on the whole continent, even though in Tanzania it's officially banned.  Karibu Tanzania:  it's banned, but the teachers still must follow set rules to administer it.*  At government schools there is a job called Discipline Master, and that is the teacher who regularly administers the punishment.  (Although all teachers can do it.)  The DM walks around the school assessing infractions and calls out students, usually after Assembly in the morning.  In front of the student body, students are singled out and hit for being late, for sleeping in class, for cutting up, for not doing their homework, for cheating on tests.  They are beaten for having unpaid school fees (this seems most unfair,) for having a dirty or incomplete uniform, for leaving their notebooks out in the rain, for loitering at the toilet too long.  As many things as a school child can think of, or not think of, to do wrong, all are punishable by being hit.

Punishment is administered with a cane made of stiff bamboo, or other stiff rod.The regulations say boys and girls are to be hit on the hand.  Boys can also be hit on the bottom, but only through their trousers.  Every teacher I have met has a story to tell about a demonic, cunning, or just plain mean Discipline Master who enjoys beating the shit out of students. The corollary is, sadly, the story of the student who somehow becomes the victim of a DM and is regularly beaten for trumped up infractions.  But even the most conscientious DM is committed to the idea that hitting students is a good and proper way to ensure their compliance and proper behavior.

At SEGA, a school founded and supported by Americans, corporal punishment is forbidden.  This has led to some interesting outcomes and discussions.  The veteran teachers say that discipline at SEGA is lax because the students know they can do anything and not be hit.  They don't buy into the idea of corporal punishment as ineffective - these teachers sincerely feel that at SEGA they are  deprived of a useful and regular tool to manage students. In the staff room, they talk longingly about the need for better discipline.  They say that the girls consider SEGA a country club, and don't have good school habits, because we don't hit them.  They say that beating a student is a clear, unequivocal means of punishment, and once it's administered the slate is clean and the problem is over.  Any other form of punishment is just too fraught with ideas of suitability and efficacy.  Some students seem to believe this, too.  Nobody at school, it seems, can imagine a world with both proper discipline and the absence of corporal punishment. 

 Another form of punishment is cleaning.  School cleaning in Africa is not done by employees, like janitors.  It's done by the students.  Washing blackboards, sweeping, picking up trash, mopping, scrubbing latrines, washing  up after meals, carrying water, serving lunch and tea to the teachers, even gardening, trimming grass and bushes, irrigating with buckets, and creating hardscape (as in, carrying rocks) - all are student jobs.   Students are assigned these jobs outside of class, before the start bell rings and after school.  If they don't do these jobs, they can be beaten for it, or simply assigned more cleaning as punishment.

At SEGA, we go in for cleaning as punishment in a big way.  I am currently in trouble with the Matron (supervisor of girls outside of class) because yesterday I refused to let her take my Form 2 students out of class for yard cleaning during the middle of an important lesson.  I am an affront to good order, as they were supposed to be punished for not doing the yard cleaning earlier.  

Interestingly, the only thing that is never a consideration for punishing student misbehavior at SEGA is lowering their grades. Last year, we encountered a huge cheating ring in Form 2, during a mid-term exam.  The punishment?  A letter to the parents, and being suspended from class for a week to do some large projects on the grounds.  At no time was giving them an 'F', or even docking their grades, considered.

There may be a considerable reason for that:  In Forms 2 and 4, (9th and 11th grades) the students don't really get a final mark from the school, they succeed or fail on the basis of their performance on the National Exam.  A student could  miss every 3rd day at school, do no homework, and sleep during class, but if she makes  45 or above on her NECTA, she goes on to the next level .  The students know this, and the teachers do too.  So there is a tendency to consider grades as separate from discipline, even in the other forms.

I'm glad I don't have to witness students being beaten.  I am sometimes frustrated by the lack of support given by the school and other teachers to a commitment to a discipline model without corporal punishment.  But we have lots of policy and procedure issues that need to be worked out.  It's not the TZ-way to push through a lot of decisions and then stick to them.  The path here wanders quite a bit more than that. 

And I think about my own discipline, both now and at that age.  I was certainly not a model student;  no goody two-shoes, I.  I did things to deadline, for grades, and because I liked to do them, in that order.  I don't think I would have been different if I had been afraid of being beaten.

Our girls have done well on their National Exams, and they don't seem less disciplined than my students at the school where I did my practice teaching,  which had quite an 'active' DM.  Kids this age are irrepressible and naturally make bad choices.  I've come to believe that if they expect to be hit,  it no more changes their behavior than anything else.  Students will avoid being hit, and being caught in the first place, but some will still be lazy, or cut-up, or not do their chores.  Some are Tom Sawyer, some are Huckleberry Finn.  Consistent modeling of good behavior by the teachers, consistent reward of good behavior on the part of students, and consistent punishment for  known infractions is the answer, but it's not the solution.

 

*Karibu Tanzania, lit., "Welcome to Tanzania".  A mildly ironic phrase used by PCV's to express some of the interesting and intractable anomalies of life in the country. 

 

 

STONE TOWN

So Brian is sick.  Not so much sick as malaise, and this has been happening since yesterday.  Today, having mastered a visa to India from Zanzibar, he comes into the room, all the places on his body touched by his shirt and his backpack soaked with sweat, and simply collapses.  His last gesture of courage is to drink a beer with me, the ritual of our friendship.  But after that, he’s down for the count.  Being helpless but not whining, sick but not really sick, maybe just needing a day off, a day without unrelenting heat, the imploring whispers of vendors. Anyway, he lies down in his bed at 3 o’clock in the sweltering afternoon, and he becomes inert.

He’s down for the count.  A/C turned up to max, he’s removed his one good cut-and-sewn shirt, worn out of respect to the Consulate, and lies on the bed.  And, dear heart, apologizing.  That is Brian’s charm, he has empathy without being controlling.  He doesn’t expect me to take care of him, but he’s conscious that he is removing himself from the ‘us’ that has been traveling together for over a week, the ‘us’ that has found a solid companionship.  The ‘us’ that has felt the softness of each other's lips.

I’m not worried about him.  He turns over, drinks water, doesn’t have a fever, doesn’t need to use the choo excessively.  I myself am having a wonderful day.  I’ve found, after only a little effort in the souk, a good computer fundi to get my computer working yet again. I’ve found a couple of good guesti’s for the future.  While Brian is off dealing with the bureaucracy of travel, I‘ve cut my hair in a style that I can look at in the mirror and admire, with a little squinting.  I’ve cut my nails and washed underwear.  So it’s been a good resting day for me, and I’m content to have Brian have one, too, even if he has to suffer the giving in while I do not.  I’m not really worried about him.  Tomorrow will tell.  I watch a little TV on my newly revived machine, put on lipstick, and go out.

Stone Town is a really special place.  As I joked with my girlfriends on Facebook this afternoon: “all Babar, unfortunately no elephants”.  Cities and places in Tanzania are not usually this old, or so dedicated to the Prophet. I imagine parts of Cairo and other storied places in sub-Saharan climes have this air of antique Occidentalia.  Carved doorways, strange minarets donated by rich men of the provinces in creative and opulent homage to their wealth and their religion. Crenellated forts along the water, the ornate Victorian overlay of some official buildings, the domed palaces of the Sultan. The narrow passageways of the souk, the grasping shopkeepers, the sequined abayas of the women, the restless young men.  Two things stand out:  So small and so African. Less than a square mile, it has a preserved feeling, and indeed, modern Zanzibar Town stretches far beyond the unwalled boundaries of the original city.  And I see the Swahili thread, the link to the antique world of the first tribal men and women of East Africa who met the Eastern world with eyes wide open and sailed with it. Their emblem is the triangular sail of the dhow, drawing the eye offshore and always moving downwind, it seems; the same boats that brought the captives from Bagamoyo.  I’ve seen the slave market, seen the fort and the church that protected the commerce.  It’s all preserved here without irony, but also with very little commercialism. Tourists are now the new commodity, ready to be resourced. Ultimately, I admire the creativity and grace that abounds in Stone Town and seems missing from the rest of my adopted country, even missing on the island outside of the Town.

I walk around the perimeter of the entire Old City under a new moon. On the tack back to the hotel, I walk along the waterfront and Forodhani Park, where I can buy supper from one of the al fresco grills that line the paths. In the soft evening, I'm glad of my clean nails and clothes, my bagless ease, my new shorter hair.  Half a dozen young entrepreneurs greet me and ask softly if I need anything.  I imagine: the shops are closed, so it must be a joint, or an escort, perhaps a new relationship. (When before I've talked more with them, they always promise a relationship in a way that seems like children hoping to be adopted.  I've seen enough of these couples to know that it is a worthwhile sales technique).  I think of Brian back in the hotel room and am glad he’s there, not because I want him to be there, sick, but because I like being alone out here with the idea of a man with me, a reason not to feel vulnerable to the opportunistic Swahilis. So I walk along fearlessly, not swinging my arms or whistling, not even meeting the eyes of men, but happy, and confident. 

In the park I chide the little boys for begging by telling them in KiSwahili that they must use good English to beg properly; this is my idea of an ironic joke.  I keep my schillings in my pocket until I have reached the food court, where I easily buy a huge piece of pweza (octopus) grilled, with salad, for dinner.  It's served with the traditional toothpicks for implements and costs six bucks.  Brian showed me how to do this when we were here before. While the holiday crush is over, the park is comfortably filled with families and travelers. On my own, I seem to understand the life of the Park, the community of it, and I chat with some of the other diners, toss a bit of fish to a patient cat.  There is a cooling breeze off the sea and a place to buy a liter of cold water for the room on the way home.

On the streets walking back after it’s quiet now.  The subsiding of the frenzy created by the cruise ship passengers passing through for the day, and the New Year’s holiday makers, has left the shopping streets shuttered, de-populated. To me it seems a normal Friday night in Stone Town, as if 5 nights in a hotel for locals has given me a neighborhood. This also is a pleasure, even if a self-indulgent one.  I think, since this is the second time through for me in a week, that people recognize me, they know what I’ve bought, what I will not be enticed to buy. It’s a small place, this Stone Town. I can walk around it in less than an hour. They know I come from the interior, that I’m not looking for souvenirs, that there is a good man traveling with me, for now, and that I speak a little of the language.  I feel safe, and happy.