UNICEF Porta-Potties and Punishment

Two little boys walked out of the principal’s office of a local public school, followed up the vice principal, an instrument of corporal punishment in the form of a bamboo stick in his hand. As the boys ran back to class, darks looks on their faces, I was told they had left the school without permission, running after a car. Running after cars seems to be an irresistible if forbidden recreational activity for small school children during school hours. Their parents were worried when they arrived at the school and they were missing. “What do you do when the older kids go against a rule?” I asked. “We give them work to do in the fields,” I was told. I mumbled that at least they were being productive, and we walked together to a classroom he wanted to show me. Before we entered I peered through a broken glass window to see – on the far end – two electronic sockets. They had been installed in preparation for the four computers the school owned and also in preparation for the new laptops the school is meant to receive as part of the One Laptop Per-Child program. They are still waiting for the laptops after over a year of waiting.

The broken glass I was peering through was the result of a boy with poor aim, a rubber ball, and the boy's over-exuberance for a real, live, manufactured rubber ball. I remember hearing the loud “crash!” a month ago, following by a downward-looking boy making his way to the principal’s office, carrying a note from his teacher indicating his parents would owe the school money to repair the window. At the time, the bamboo stick was not necessary. Paying for the broken window was punishment enough.

Looking at the wall of the school, I saw at least five more broken windows, all to be fixed when the breakers bring money which will take time to scratch up.

Another school employee came to unlock the classroom and we walked to the side of the room with the sockets – two small, modern-looking sockets on a dark, damp, concrete wall, placed under two windows looking out to three sets of bathrooms sitting outside under the hot dry-season sun. On the far left were the new bathrooms, made out of concrete, which are in use. In the center were the old toilets, made from bricks, which are no longer in use. And on the far right I saw six sets of portable toilets –Porta-Potties, PortaJohns, or P-Pots, if you will. Their whiteness gleaned and their modernity matched the new sockets inside. “What about those?” I asked. “They are broken,” I was told. “So why did you bring them?” I asked. Apparently UNICEF donated them and they were convenient at the time, because, well, you just plop them down without the need for any timely building. They were necessary for the students some time ago, before bathroom building was complete.

But suddenly memories of porta potties in the Israeli army flashed before my eyes, and their price tags did to – those things aren’t cheap by any standards. “Aren’t those very expensive?” I asked. The VP nodded. They were much more expensive than the permanent toilets, but there was no money to fix them. I imagine Porta-Potty fixing takes some element of specialization that the traditional toilet/outhouse fixer might not have. So there they sit, rusting, in the sun.

I am happy that, at the very least, the computers have been fixed and the new electronic sockets will be happily utilized. ASYV volunteers recently fixed their computers that had been sitting broken in some back room for the past year or so.

Maybe they will also eventually get more books, printers, photocopiers, or projectors, so teachers don’t have to write entire chapters from textbooks on the blackboard. Corporal punishment can hardly be replaced with repetitive chalkboard-writing (think Bart Simpson opening credits) because extensive chalkboard writing is the norm for any old class.

Entire intricate copies of digestive systems are drawn on chalkboards along with multiple chapters of, say, the history of Ghananian independence. There is no sense of summarizing and outlines in the local Rubona school, and in some ways there can’t be – everyone reading from the board is the only way to read full sentences and learn grammar and syntax.

After having a tour or electronic sockets and UNICEF Porta-Potties I went to say hi to a teacher in the library, and was happy to see that the library was filled with books – all text books, but books. They had just been finally delivered from some other area which had somehow finally received them from some other place that had finally received them from Macmillan Publishers and Oxford University Press. Two-thirds into the school year, but there. The youngest children, in the current government policy, will be reading textbooks in Kinyarwanda, not English. The Kinyarwanda books had arrived as well, all cute and cartoony and age-six appropriate.

I doubt there are enough textbooks for all the six and seven-year olds, or any of the grades, but at least there are enough for small groups to share. Taking textbooks home is not really an option because almost nobody has electricity at home, and it is too dark to read.

Perhaps the smaller kids will read a book during their free time at school, resist chasing cars, and avoid the vice principal’s bamboo stick.