Memories Of Teaching At Kawambwa Secondary School

By Garreth Byrne

The tragic accident involving 100 students from Kawambwa Technical Secondary School early in April shocked Zambia and the news has been reported internationally. Forty-two students lost their lives when an overloaded truck rolled over at a sharp bend on an escarpment near the beauty spot of Ntumbachushi Falls on the gravel road between Kawambwa and Kazembe. Over thirty boys were injured, some seriously, and some were flown to Lusaka for treatment. A government enquiry has been ordered. This tragedy – perhaps disaster would be a more accurate word – will remain in the national memory for a long time. May God in His mercy comfort all the grieving relatives and friends.

News of this tragedy brings back to me personally some memories of almost three-and-a-half years that I spent at Kawambwa Secondary school as a young expatriate teacher between 1968 and 1972. I was a recent graduate from University College Dublin and Trinity College, also in the same city, and I decided to start my teaching career in Zambia as I was interested in experiencing life in Africa. The Government was recruiting expatriate teachers at the time to work in the expanding secondary school system until enough Zambian teachers could graduate from UNZA and the teacher colleges at Kabwe and elsewhere.

I arrived at the school on a hot dusty September day in 1968, having been driven there with another expatriate teacher in a Landrover provided by the Chief Education Officer in Mansa. We had come through the small village of Chipili and then past Mwenda, where we caught a glimpse of a neat whitewashed primary school, then up along the climbing escarpment from where we got a panoramic view over the savannah bush land that is typical of Luapula Province, the monotony of which is relieved by occasional clearances of dambo marshland or circular cultivated gardens known as chitemene. We stopped at a tsetse fly control post five miles south of Kawambwa before proceeding to the village. Kawambwa then had a main laterite street with the government guest house and the boma on one side and a small straggle of shops such as CBC and Patels on the other. We then drove along the Nchelenge road, six miles to the tiny village of Lwatula and turned left into the school.

There was a cluster of staff houses at one end of “the station” as it was called in civil service parlance. The headmaster and deputy houses were enclosed by mature shrubs and trees while the smaller B32 three-bed bungalow houses for other teachers had patches of grass to the front and rear, with only a few frangipani, poinsettia and hedging plants for decoration. Two smaller three-bedroomed houses stood apart from the general cluster. I was told that when the school was built between 1960 and 1962 with the support of the copper companies it was envisaged that a couple of the teachers would be Africans. Hence these two small houses were called the African teachers’ houses – a nomenclature which faded into oblivion during the years after independence when the staffing of schools was rapidly Zambianised. In fact I personally lived alone for one term in one of these buildings when staffing levels were below establishment. For much of my time at the school I shared a B32 with another expatriate bachelor.

Across the football pitch and visible from the staff compound were the classroom and administration buildings. Behind these was the forest into which we sometimes saw groups of singing villagers progressing to a traditional funeral site. A couple of hundred metres away were the student dormitories and kitchen with its dining hall. Beyond this area was a collection of small brick buildings where the caretaker, cooks and maintenance staff lived with their carefully cultivated vegetable gardens and chickens.

Mr. M.E.Chisuse was the Headmaster when I arrived at Kawambwa. He was a well-built, soft spoken, friendly man who had fled from Malawi to escape being arrested by the security police of the dictator Kamuzu Banda. Chisuse was from the northern province of Malawi and had worked in the civil service after graduating from Fort Hare University in South Africa. Like many educated northerners he criticized the conservative and authoritarian social policies of Banda. A friend tipped him off that he was on an arrest list, so he and his young family hightailed it across the border into Zambia, where they were given political asylum. Soon Mr. Chisuse was working in the teaching service.

He held a staff party at his house to welcome two newly-arrived Irish bachelors and an English couple just recently arrived at the same time. The deputy head was Mr. Cato Makasa, a Zambian, who later served as headmaster at Samfya Secondary School on the shore of Lake Bangweulu. At this time there were about 15 teachers and just over 500 boarding students. The boarding master and teacher of French was named Muzimba, a native of Zaire. Mr. Martin Lupeta was the only other Zambian member of staff at the end of 1968. In 1971 he became deputy head and later was promoted to headmaster at an educational institution in the Copperbelt. The rest of the teachers came from the UK, Ireland, Canada and India, all of them career teachers attracted to Zambia by the climate, the positive attitude of the Ministry of Education, and the satisfactory terms of service. Canadian teachers were volunteers sent by the CUSO organization. I met several of them during my time in Zambia and was impressed by their idealistic commitment to the betterment of a new developing nation.

Living temporarily in one of the small houses was Fr. Harry Weghorst, a Dutch member of the White Fathers missionary society. He taught the agreed syllabus RE course at the school. He had also taught English for a term or two when there was a sudden shortage of staff. He told me that about six months before my arrival there had been angry student demonstrations after a white Rhodesian electrician had assaulted a school night watchman whom he encountered at the rear of a staff house during a party. Some ugly words were used and news of the incident roused the anger of students, who were aware that UDI had been declared in Southern Rhodesia in the recent past. The electrician fled to another house, where he lay low for two days until a platoon of riot police had flown up from the Copperbelt to disperse the demonstrating students. After calm had been restored (and the electrician had rapidly quit the province) several frightened expatriate teachers asked to be transferred to other schools. This left the school severely short staffed for two terms at least.

School Theatre in the Bush

I soon settled into my English teaching duties and learned how to adapt to the evolving language syllabus. We were supposed to teach functional English, with emphasis on correct grammar and punctuation and a form of essay writing called situational composition. The chief inspector of English at the Ministry in Ridgeway was an Englishman called Clark, who organized regional and national seminars and workshops on the teaching of English. He and his colleagues were dynamic and sympathetic and did a lot to make the English syllabus relevant to the socio-economic needs of the new nation. An Australian called Kiernan visited us at Kawambwa to give teachers advice and encouragement.

I was asked shortly after my arrival to supervise students rehearsing a two-act play by the Nigerian dramatist Obotunde Ijimere. Entitled Everyman, it was an adaptation to a modern African setting of a Middle English morality play, showing the power of money to corrupt. We rehearsed this play on warm afternoons at a specially cleared rectangular site in the nearby bush. My predecessor from England, David Wallace, had called it Theatre in the Bush in an interview given to the daily newspapers.

The students performed one evening early in December 1968 on a makeshift outdoor stage consisting of several wooden tables from the dining hall placed next to the verandah of classrooms near the staffroom. Sacking was put on the tables, then carpets, furniture and other props. Several hundred boys stood around while the invited District Secretary and teachers sat on chairs placed near the stage. The prologue featured God seated on his throne in heaven, in this case sitting precariously on a chair on the classroom roof, deciding solemnly to send Iku (Death) down to earth in order to punish Everyman for his life of serious transgressions. We somehow contrived to place a spotlight of sorts on the roof so spectators could observe the deity as He intoned his judgement. For about an hour the spectators were entertained and the Drama Club was allowed to bring the play to Mbereshi Girls Secondary School down in the Luapula valley about 24 miles away.

One bright Sunday morning about a dozen boys piled the props and costumes onto the back of the school’s ancient Bedford vanette, driven by Stephen Bowa. The students sat on benches as the vanette proceeded carefully along the dusty road towards the Luapula valley. I remember that the steep escarpment with its twisting hairpin bends was the only interesting feature in the unchanging savannah landscape. I sat in the passenger seat beside Mr. Bowa.

The boys spent some time after lunch setting things up in the assembly hall of what is now known as Mabel Shaw Secondary School for girls (after the distinguished London Missionary Society educationalist who founded the school in the 1920s) and the early evening performance went without hitch.

I accompanied members of Kawambwa Boys Ballroom Dancing club to sessions at Mbereshi also. I got to know teachers there and on a couple of occasions rode my small but sturdy Honda 90 cc trail motorbike down to Mbereshi. One Christmas (1970 I think) I spent several days as a guest and witnessed staff at the local hospital processing through the wards singing Christmas carols to the patients. They were led by Dr. John Parry from England, who had spent about twenty years in Mbereshi, having been posted there by the LMS, I think. He and his wife spoke fluent Bemba and were well respected members of the community. Nurses handed out dolls and toys to children in the wards, and clothing to the adults. These materials had been shipped by well-wishers in the UK. Dr. Parry explained that for some mysterious reason the children at Mbereshi would not accept black dolls, only white ones, so the black dolls were given to any expatriate children of teaching staff. The old redbrick church and the remains of a mission workshop were interesting features of this isolated place in Luapula Province. The early missionaries had constructed a gravity feed water supply system which still operated well. One other relic of the old days of LMS was an antique wooden piano in the home of an old African church member. When I visited him he proudly played a simple hymn on the instrument, which needed a bit of tuning.

Around March 1969 President Kaunda came to Kawambwa and the students of many schools went to the airstrip to greet him. That afternoon he addressed a large enthusiastic crowd at the boma. Near the steps leading up to the sheltered high platform made from compressed earth stood two local UNIP activists holding placards urging the President to ban the watchtower sect on account of its negative attitudes towards civil authority. Wisely, KK didn’t do this, although he did forbid Watchtower members from movingg around villages and housing estates, knocking on doors and distributing literature. There were a few boys belonging to this sect in our school and I didn’t wish them to feel uncomfortable.

The next day KK came to our school and showed special interest in the Young Farmers Club poultry and vegetable project. After an encouraging speech he and his convoy of vehicles left for Nchelenge on the shores of Lake Mweru, some 40 miles north. As the Landrovers and trucks supplied by the boma slowly followed in the rear, several of our students were seen jumping on uninvited to cadge lifts to Nchelenge. This was to have repercussions the following month.

Indiscipline

For some time the inspectors at Lusaka ministry had been troubled by reports of indiscipline at our school, and this incident following KK’s visit was the last straw. Early one morning before lessons we teachers met a couple of inspectors who had flown up from Lusaka in an aeroplane belonging to the Ministry of Education. That afternoon they addressed a special staff meeting in the absence of the headmaster. The 44 boys who had absconded were suspended and would not be readmitted until their parents paid a K20 levy (fine). The bigger shock to us teachers was that the ministry had decided to transfer Mr. Chisuse to a school in Livingstone, and a new headmaster, from Livingstone, was to be sent to the school in the new term after the Easter break.

Mr. Chisuse remained on as headmaster until May. Then one morning a truck came from the CEO in Mansa to take his family and household effects away. Our students filed out of classrooms and lined the long avenue leading from the administration block out to the main road at Lwatula village They waved branches plucked from bush trees as a traditional salute to an esteemed person, and their heartfelt emotional display impeded the progress of the truck as it wound it way out of the school grounds. Our students did not grasp the irony of the situation, viz. that their lax discipline had contributed to the headmaster’s departure. Some years later, in the mid-1970s, I met Mr. Chisuse in Livingstone. He had settled in well to his new situation and was content. Later he was transferred on promotion to an educational institution in the Copperbelt.

About a year after my arrival in Kawambwa I was visited by the inspector of Agricultural Science, an Englishman named Mike Capel. I took him on a tour of the YFC projects. I had been asked by a Canadian volunteer teacher to take charge of the club when his contract was up. Mike Capel was trying to promote the teaching of Ag. Science in secondary schools around Zambia. He wondered if I would try teaching the subject in our school.  I agreed to give it a bash, and during the holidays I participated in a teacher workshop held at the Natural Resources College near the airport on the Great East Road outside Lusaka. At this time (1970) there were only 4 Ag. Sc. graduate teachers of the subject in the schools; but there were also about 60 unqualified specialists like myself who had been inveigled into introducing the subject. It was hoped that specialist teachers could eventually replace us and build on our simple foundations. We were imbued with a pioneering spirit, feeling that we were contributing something practical to the school curriculum

Mr. Capel made ministry funds available to our school so I could buy a lock-up tool shed, building materials for a pigsty and a Honda F190 power tiller. Stephen Bowa drove me down to the Copperbelt where we secured the necessary equipment, plus assorted textbooks on Ag. Sc., metal- and woodwork, history, geography, English and other topics that I selected hurriedly at The Bookshelf shop in Ndola with end of the school year surplus funds that the new headmaster had authorized me to spend. After the agricultural science students and I had completed the pigsty, with some technical advice from an officer in Kawambwa PWD, Mr. Bowa and I made a trip to the Mansa Farm Institute to collect four piglets to be used as a practical teaching component in the subject course. I was helped by a Mr. Kubi who worked at the farm institute.

The new headmaster was a South African named Jeff Matjiu. A tall, dignified, well spoken and light tanned man with a neat moustache, he had graduated from Fort Hare, like many foreign African teachers in Zambia at that time. He kept a tidy office, knew how to delegate and was particularly efficient at meetings with staff and school prefects. He was an interesting conversationalist at informal social gatherings.

Boarding Conditions for Students

He helped the four teachers in charge of dormitories to reorganize things so that cleanliness and order prevailed in that sector. I was one of the housemasters and depended on the prefects to achieve these aims. Boarding is a critical area in any large rural school and if anything goes badly wrong it affects school morale. School water supply depended on a diesel pump located at a stream flowing through a dambo somewhat downhill about one and a half kilometres from the school grounds. If the pump broke down and a spare part needed to be obtained from the Copperbelt it affected the flush toilets in dormitories and staff houses alike. Barrels of water for the kitchen had to be transported pending repairs. I think we experienced water shortages a number of times, and I know that some bush schools elsewhere were actually closed and students sent home to prevent outbreaks of disease.

School food is also a matter that concerns students and school administrators. Our school kitchens had no refrigerators, so meat and dried fish had to be fetched regularly by the boarding master from sources often far from the school – generally down the Luapula valley in the case of dried bream and other fish species. Dried kapenta came from outside the province. The YFC sold poultry and fresh vegetables to the kitchen occasionally but could never be a regular supplier due to irrigation constraints.

Timber from the forest was burnt in fireplaces at the outside walls of the kitchen and food was cooked in great metal cauldrons. On a few mornings classes had to be suspended so that all students, led by prefects, could go and fetch fallen trunks and branches. Once or twice I remember that we teachers marked time in the staffroom while kitchen staff cooked the breakfast nshima behind schedule. Dried kapenta and bags of mealie meal were locked in a small store which was often washed down under the supervision of the boarding master. Dried fish might occasionally go rotten in the heat and humidity, or weevils might burrow into bags of mealie and rice, so everything had to be checked regularly.

I introduced Ag. Sc. to the school curriculum in a simple sort of way. However, Woodwork and Technical Drawing were introduced more professionally around 1969-70 by an able British teacher, David Holman. He supervised the establishment of a timber store and tried to obtain equipment for practical work. Initially he spent some time teaching a lot of theory until enough basic materials arrived. He was a qualified schools football referee and spent a lot of time with a few other interested teachers in training the football teams. Rural schools football was definitely in the fourth division then, as was proven when the Kawambwa boys senior team went down to a tournament in the Copperbelt and were trounced 10-0. Nevertheless inter-schools matches within our province were well contested affairs and the boma often lent trucks for transport to schools in Mansa, Mwense and other faraway places. Our school also hosted annual athletics tournaments during the dry season in June or July. Zambian and expatriate teachers put a lot of afternoon time into promoting sport and administrators at bomas did what they could to help with transport.

From the second half of 1970 the school staff began to be supported by the arrival of Zambian qualified teachers from Kabwe College. The first UNZA graduate Zambian headmaster was Mr. A.E.C.Mulemena, who arrived in 1971 and replaced Mr. Matjiu who returned to Livingstone, having accomplished his task of improving discipline and boarding conditions. Mr. Mulemena was from Southern Province. By year’s end the school had both a headmaster and deputy from Zambia. Mr. Martin Lupeta was the deputy.

Zambianisation was now firmly proceeding in the teaching service, a tribute to government policy of expanding UNZA and teacher training colleges like that in Kabwe.

Expatriate teachers made a significant contribution to secondary schools between Independence and the late 1970s. In many rural towns they made varying levels of effort to participate in local social life. In Kawambwa when I arrived late in 1968 there was a club based in a thatched building near the boma. This apparently had been a whites-only club when colonials ran the local administration. We foreign teachers at ‘Kaways’ (as the school was called by the students) were invited by Zambians in charge of the club to join and I remember drinking there several times, but after a while I lost interest as the atmosphere seemed to lack zest. Instead my friends and I tended to visit local bars such as Chansa’s and Pilula’s. Harrison Pilula ran a thriving motel on the outskirts of the town. He had previously been a personnel officer working for one of the copper companies. For over a year he had a resident band called The Clusters which entertained the packed bar on weekends.

Expatriate teachers from Europe and North America occasionally threw parties to which Zambian friends from Pilula’s were sometimes invited. During my few years there teachers departing at the end of contracts generally threw their own parties in addition to official farewells organized by the headmaster, and again some of the town friends were invited. I won’t say that all expatriates tried to broaden their circle of friends. I must also sadly say, looking back over the years that have since passed, that too much socializing in Zambia during the late 1960s and through the 70s was based on drinking, sometimes excessively.

I left Kawambwa early in 1972. I later returned to Zambia and taught in Livingstone, until 1977. In 1991, after many years of absence, I returned to Livingstone and taught for a couple of years. I saw that the copper prosperity that existed until the late 1970s had evaporated and living standards had deteriorated generally. My years in Kawambwa will always be prominent in my memory as it was my first job after graduating. Students and fellow teachers treated me well and the residents of Kawambwa and surrounds were courteous. A teacher like me rarely gets to hear from former students, but I think of some of my best students from that time and hope they had satisfactory careers.

Garreth Byrne spent a total of eight and a half years teaching in three schools in Zambia. He taught English in Tanzania and co-ordinated rural development work for an Irish aid agency in the late 1980s, a job he got on the strength of his  involvement in Zambia schools agriculture. He has also taught English in Malawi, the Sultanate of Oman, China and his own country, Ireland. Office administration and freelance journalism have been among his other work experiences.

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