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When a Student Strike Isn’t Really a Strike - Bob Stokes

Page history last edited by Henry Hamburger 10 years, 2 months ago

 

It all started with a classified ad in the November ‘67, Atlantic Monthly: “Train Teachers in  East Africa! Teachers College, Columbia University.” Eight months later, the family was in Kenya, raring to go for the greatest two years of our lives. It was a wonderful life being a rich American in Kenya (rich is relative) at a time when the moon landing was made, working in a college right next to the golf course, and having friends in three countries in the same  program. What with the rewards of working with the students, and of house servants, game parks, Malindi, and visiting friends, it seemed hard to believe that I was getting paid for all of this!  But wait: everything TEEA tutors did was not always rock and roll, and I still remember one day near the end of the two year tour when I earned my pay.

 

Back in 1970 the quickest way for a Kenyan principal to make a name with the government was to put down a student strike and make the Nairobi papers. Striking students were considered traitors, not only to Kenya but to their families and clan. After all, they were the lucky ones who were fortunate enough to have been selected for training that would free them from the life sentence of working on the shamba, and they had better show their appreciation, by God! All student discipline at our college was handled by the Kenyan principal and his assistant which was the way it should have been what with the language and cultural limitations of expatriate tutors. During month long teaching practice, students would be taken by college bus out to the rural elementary schools early in the morning and then collected at the end of a long school day. The conditions at these schools were difficult to say the least with no water and the very minimum of school supplies. I remember observing one kid trying to teach sixty-five children in standard three while the regular teacher was off working on his shamba.

 

One evening when all the students were back at the college, they refused to enter the dining hall for their evening meal. The Irish expatriate tutor who had the duty tried to find out why they weren’t eating and was told that the principal had refused to send any lunch out to them that day because they hadn’t been washing the debes (large containers) which contained their maize and bean lunch, and the college cooks had been complaining. Very soon the principal and his assistant took over, and no expats were involved any further in the matter that night.

 

The next morning, the messenger came around to all the tutors’ houses with the notice that a staff meeting was to be held at 8:00. As I approached the office, all the student teachers who were due to go out that day were sitting on the grass with the buses waiting and uniformed police in attendance. I got a sick feeling in my stomach, and all I could think was “Student strike!” And the principal confirmed this as soon as we got inside. The provincial education officer (PEO) was in attendance, and the principal announced that the striking students were to be expelled for the defiance of authority. He went on to tell us about the unwashed debes and how the students had refused to wash them after being warned and then wouldn’t eat their evening meal on the previous day. The staff was thunderstruck to say the least as here were one hundred twenty-five of our graduating students being kicked out forever. Questions started, and the PEO told us that the entire staff was expected to support the principal in the expulsion. I felt the need to speak: “Did the students," I asked, "refuse to board the buses this morning?” The principal responded that they had not but that he had ordered them not to go but to wait outside the office.

 

So I said that then there was really no strike as they had not refused to go out to their  schools. And I went on to say that we had been hired by the Kenyan government to train teachers for the nation, and if we expelled our entire graduating class, we had failed in our duties. I said that the fault seemed to be ours, and rather than expelling them, we should be looking for some way to do the job for which we had been hired. Then the stuff hit the fan! The PEO said he was shocked by the lack of loyalty on the part of the staff, but the tutors were now aroused and were unanimous against expulsion. A compromise was reached and all the students were suspended until they could get either their father or chief to come back and plead their case with the principal. Every student complied, teaching practice went on, and the class graduated. I graduated myself the next month, much to the relief of the principal who had lost the best chance he ever had to make his reputation nationally.

 

 

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