Slaying the dragon - Serial Story

Previous memoirs:
In 1969 Nick, from Cape Town, arrived in Namibia like a stranger in Jerusalem. As a young teacher he was faced with many new scenarios in the tiny town of Aroab, none of which he could have planned for...

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The day before the school was scheduled to open, we received information that a certain Mr Jones would be arriving that Thursday from Keetmanshoop to act as principal for the first quarter. A school committee member would conduct the opening ceremony. Lady Luck, for once, smiled on me.

Mr Jones, although displaying a pleasant approachable demeanour, was clearly ill at ease in his newly assigned position. This was evidenced by his periodic nervous giggles at anything remotely funny or extraordinary. At least it served to ease the tension we both felt.

Before Mr Jones’s arrival I had had time to come to grips with certain tasks, including familiarising myself with the Lister engine that provided electricity to the entire school and hostel complex. On that first evening I had taken my borrowed torch to follow the well-trodden footpath to the engine room. The closer I ventured, the more overwhelming became the thunderous roar of that piece of mechanical engineering. Momentarily I felt like Don Quixote on my way to slay the dragon. In the doorway I hesitated for a moment, allowing this steel and oil monster to threaten me with post-traumatic stress disorder for evermore. I gritted my teeth, located the switch, and squeezed it forcefully. I took a childlike delight in its death rattle.

Outside in the darkness that enveloped my entire surroundings, I swept the torchlight from side to side, careful not to miss a scorpion or hunting spider on their nocturnal wanderings.

It was only during this time that I became acquainted with the latter despicable little creature. It sports a pair of menacing mandibles akin to the teeth of hair clippers and has earned itself the name haarskeerder, literally “hair shaver”. I quickly learned that they had the uncanny ability to accelerate from a stationary position to the speed of light in a split second Now, that really took the wind out of my sails. From whence I hailed, there was none such threatening dangers to my youthful well-being, neither physically nor psychologically. But there were more unsavoury experiences awaiting me.

Friday morning, 17 January 1969, was the third morning I was standing in front of my first class ever. In the first row were the ten Std 1’s, in the middle row the 14 Std 2’s and the third row eleven Std 3’s. A total of 35 pupils, more than half of the whole school crammed into my class, thirty-five pairs of eyes focused on me to instil in them some degree of knowledge. Unfortunately there were no textbooks, no example of the previous year’s work, no work schemes, no direction – a ship without a sail, rigging in tatters, and the captain overboard.

The children used words that were foreign to me and I was bombarded with the Afrikaans vernacular such as erdmannetjie, gys, etc.

“Sir, do you know what a tirk is?” “Sure enough I do. Turks live in a country called Turkey.”

I was met with a chorus of laughter and bland stares of incredulity. What a stupid teacher!

It was only once they had caught and shown me a tirk, a blackish-brown lizard and a pale brown gys (grasshopper without wings) that we could understand one another.

To my further dismay the blackboard was in urgent need of paint. A wet cloth had to be used to dampen the area where you wanted to write. As the chalk dried, the pupils could read it. To clean the board gave my upper arm muscles adequate exercise.

I remembered my mother’s advice to “whistle while you work” (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). I grimly wondered what “Whistle...” would sound like to the tune of “In darkness lost completely, from saving grace removed...”?


Nick van Zyl