CONSOLATA PRIMARY SCHOOL THE LAST DAYS

 

My mother started working as a social welfare officer sometime in 1961, she was famously known as Mama maendeleo, she managed a number of women’s groups in Iringa town, she would also teach them a variety of handcrafts and with a little help from the Government, the groups would get a bit of funding and produce beautiful things they would sell and make a living. My mother’s best friend was Biti Yusuph, it seems like they were always together. I loved visiting Biti Yusuph's home, she always had something to eat sometimes even rice and meat, and sometimes she would even give me five or ten cents, and I would suddenly be very rich. With that money I mostly just spent it on sweet things, Toffees, brown sugar, which you could get either the hard type or the soft  sticky type we  called Ganduu.

Money wasn’t much of a concern because I don’t remember lacking anything. But there were a number of money making ventures that I involved myself in, mostly for fun, not so much for financial reasons. On the other side of town, was the area  that was known as Uzunguni, European area, because that’s where the Europeans used to live, there was a bakery run by a Greek. He would throw away loaves of bread which had not been sold after a certain period. For us these loaves of bread were still very much ok, so we would visit his dump every week and pick the best pieces of bread and eat them to our fill. There was a sisal labourer's camp that was known as SILABU, here young men from the southern part of Tanzania who were on their way to sisal farms in Morogoro and Tanga would make a stop and rest here, we would also bring some of the loaves and sell to them. I don’t remember the price, but we got enough money to buy some of our favorite toys, marbles, and footballs in particular. 

Also as I mentioned earlier money making venture was going to steal mangoes at Itamba during the weekends and selling at school during the week days. It was encouraged to sell stuff at school because some of  the students desperately needed any money they could get, some families were really very poor.   

Before I move on to another phase of my life, I need to say something about cleanliness. Every morning before classes there would be a cleanliness inspection.  While the school band would be playing a song, teachers would be walking around checking personal hygiene of every child, dirty and long fingernails, long hair, uncombed hair, dirty uniforms. A teacher would walk around with a scissors and cut of hair from anyone he thinks has long hair, and another teacher would be going around with a stick checking dirty fingernails, a whack on the finger would befall anyone whose fingers were seen as dirty or long.

We were not allowed to wear leather shoes or slippers. Only canvas shoes. And of course no pull overs or sweaters, however cold it was.

Sweeping the school compound was a daily chore, but the worst was cleaning the toilets. The toilets were very simple type. A trench was dug and cemented on top with several holes made about a meter apart, with no wall in between for privacy, that was called a toilet. And because the trench had no water the toilets would be used the whole day, and the next morning, those whose turn was to clean the toilets would have to use buckets of water to flush all yesterday’s load.
I still shudder thinking of that horrible duty.

Around July 1964, my father had decided that his works station will be in Mbeya. And so we moved to Mbeya.