Liberia
Jahri- Ann

 

“I do not want to punish you on a Monday morning,” warned Mr. Singh.
The chattering of the girl students in the vast hall, stopped abruptly. They all watched him attentively and listened routinely as if he was a divine nature and a state of royalty. He was standing in the middle of the hefty stage. Behind him were elevated closed curtains of the stage. He was a short hunched-back man, on his face showed the start of being aged. He wore a white blouse and dark pants at all times he was seen at the school. He was a man of many words. A man of ignorance Liberia thought.
He began to talk again.
“You have no respect for god. You come into this holy hall for the sake of worshipping god and this is how you behave?”
   He shifted on the stage and began to point indirectly while he talked.
“If you come into this cathedral and continue to talk among yourselves, something must awfully be wrong with you. Something,” he emphasized, “must really be wrong with you. You have no respect for god at all.”
There was continued deafening silence. Liberia, could hear the steady heartbeats of the girls, while Mr. Singh continued talking.
Liberia began to close her eyes. She wanted to wish all of this away. She wanted to relinquish her soul and open the people’s eyes to the truth that will set them free from this spiritual confinement.
 Every word he spoke, she thought, targeting those girls as imperfect humans. She felt the oppressive atmosphere weighing down on her shoulders all over her physical and mental being. She shook in a rhythm as if silently pushing away the mentally oppressive hands from her shoulders.
“You come here now!”
“Yes you!”
A girl emerged slowly from the long closely packed queues of girls to the front of the hall and looked up at Mr. Singh on the stage.
“Go over there in the corner and kneel down on the floor. I will deal with you after.”
The girl, whom Liberia recognized as Anna, proceeded to the corner of the room in front of the girls and knelt on the floor with her head down.
Still, then he continued to talk to the girls until his talking seemed to drift away from Liberia’s ears and she could supposedly hear chipmunk-like talking. It was no use though. Is was as if his talking alone, his voice, despite her not comprehending, or not listening to what he was saying, it was still enough to shatter the souls of these living students.
She started to feel searing; she attempted to cool her self down by blowing at her chest and fanning herself with her hands. She could feel sweat dripping down her face and she fanned her face with both hands.
She glanced around the queues of girls to see if anyone was watching her but no one noticed or cared. She also realized no one seemed to be sweating or showing any trace of felted heat.
The girls began singing and clapping their hands together in what Liberia thought of as falsehood worship.
Jesus, you are my hero…my provider…you are my king
She could not wait for it to be over. Though in reality she felt it was never going to be over as she headed out of the hall in a single ordered, queue of girls. She was heading back to class with the other students.
The life she had at school felt hypocritical. It was like a never-ending, drained out nightmare. It was a mental pain, a mental strain. She couldn’t look these innocent black youngsters in the eye. In their eyes she saw oppression, sorrow, and fear. She saw innocent souls hidden in them. Just waiting to break free.
As she entered the class, she strolled to her seat and sat down. Began thinking of a place far away. Places were she could live the way she wanted to live. A place where she could be true to her heart. A place away where she did not have to follow the flawed rules and customs of a school that reflected the corrupted and moral deteriorating ways of this Black dominant society. She would never attempt to talk to any of the students in the school about this. It was clear already that they would not understand. They being themselves the seed of the reflection of a dysfunctional society; in which adults aren’t fully aware of the rights they should have as human beings and the rights they unconsciously strip from the country’s youngsters.
The first class was chemistry. The teacher’s name was Ms. Massey. A young teacher, who at once, she told the class, had just graduated with a degree from the leading university in the country and was now teaching at the school. Liberia felt an uneasy feeling at the sight of her. She thought all these teachers to be corrupted but Ms. Massey was her worst. She was bespectacled with very large glasses; her dark eyes were beady and dull, her face chubby and her body thin. Liberia waited until students began standing when they saw that she had entered the classroom, until she stood. Liberia hated the school regulations that the students should stand when the teacher entered the classroom and stand when they were departing the classroom. Was it that the teachers wanted to feel a sense of respect, of pride? Or superiority, thought Liberia.
“Good morning class.” she said.
“Good morning Miss Massey.” drawled the students in reply. Liberia had not said anything. She never had she never will.
“Today we start Allotropes. Can anyone tell me what allotropes are?”
No one answered or even attempted to answer.
“Where’s the homework?” she said quickly, she had just remembered, “the homework on drawing diamond and graphite molecules.”
Liberia wondered if she had done it before, turning around apathetically, to open her school bag for it.
Some girls glanced tentatively at each other. Others confidently took their books out, containing their homework and rested them open on the desks.
Liberia had done it, but she wasn’t eager to show Ms. Massey the homework like other girls who had done it.
“I’m coming around to check the homework,” she said sternly.
She began to walk between the rows of desks looking approvingly at the sight of finished homework. She stopped at a girl who had obviously didn’t do her homework. She was searching in her school bag for her supposed homework. The look on her face said she had not remembered it and did not do it.
The teacher stared at her. Spun around back to the front of the class, “those who had not done their homework; stand,” she ordered. One by one, girls rose out of their seats, until the only remainder that was still sitting, was Liberia and 8 other girls out of the 40 students in the class.
“You will stand with your notebooks in her hands, taking notes, until the end of the class,” she said dully.
The standing girls shuffled around, until they had their notebooks up in their hands with their pens ready. They all looked emotionless, all seemed like they were muttering in their heads that they forgot to do it. Liberia herself was always slightly; shaken in her mind, at how easily teachers could punish students but never let it showed.


Chapter 2
“Okay you children know that you cannot come up to the teacher and say: ‘You can’t teach. You’re teaching foolishness.’ You can’t do that. You children know it is out of your mind to even think about doing it.
In this school there is a chain of command. Mr. Singh the principal is at the top, then the vice principals, then the grade coordinators, the teachers, the head girl, the deputy head girl, the six form prefects, the class leader, deputy class leaders and unfortunately you the students, last. Respect should go down the chain of command from Mr. Singh down.
“What if they don’t respect you?” Someone mumbled. Everyone ignored or paid no attention to it but Liberia turned in direction of the girl and looked to see if anyone would reply to the statement but no one did.
Liberia hated the school. She did not see why people had to live the way, she viewed it all as moral deterioration. At this school she preferred to be alone at most times. She could not see herself mingling with people who have lived like this their whole lives and knew no better. Perhaps it would rub off on her and she will become assimilated into this worse life. She stared at the students around her. All in the same uniforms, all in oppressed physical state that reflected their oppressed and deprived psychological welfare.
The uniform was not a problem to her though. Wearing the uniform of the school meant absolutely nothing and it was either nothing or liberty. Wearing the uniform was a strict regulation and not wearing it was forbidden. She wondered how they could focus on the strict wearing of uniforms than on the psychological welfare development of the students in the school. She had been there; watching these students being easily punished and easily insulted, snubbed and discouraged by teachers, so-called grade coordinators and principal.
“Liberia! Are you paying attention?”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes miss.” she nodded as she answered. it was an old regulation to answer the female teachers as miss and the males as sir.
“Pay attention and stop daydreaming about boys.”
Liberia starred at her and tried to keep an apathetic expression on her face.
“That is all you girls think about. Boyfriend this and boyfriend that and can’t even do your school work!” she said fixedly.
Some students murmured, giggled to each other.
“Go home and idle you time watch TV and go out on road with boys. That’s what you all do! Talk about things that only big people should talk about! Living a double life. Acting like you’re a big woman, and act like you’ll work you own money. Some of you don’t even know your abc’s much less. Wasting time. When I give home work I expect you all to do it! And complete it!”
“Turn to chapter 4 in your text books and read!”
“All the girls that are standing, I want 1000lines saying ‘I must do my homework and be a delinquent student.” I want it tomorrow.”
She stormed to sit at the wooden chair in front of the wooden desk situated in front of the class.
After school she and her fellow associates gathered together in school’s small gazebo.
“Are you really going to write 500 lines?” Liberia said pretentiously incredulously.
“Yep. Plus we have to write it in pen and pencil.” Said Sara in her usual fast voice.
“If I were you I wouldn’t do it.”
“Liberia, please help me write lines.”
“What? I said if I were you I would not do it so…”
“Oh Trina! Help me write some lines.”
Trina did not respond then sat down and took out some cxc mathematics workbook, and started skipping through the pages and began writing.
Anna She dropped her bag on the wood lined table and shuffled around in her bag for loose paper. Took out what Liberia thought was a massive amount, laid it on the table, and proceeded on for a pencil and pen.
When she receded, she gave Trina a pleading look. Trina was busy eyeing the notes in the text book. Anna turned to look at Liberia with an even more sensuous pleadingly look. Liberia shook her head signifying ‘no’. She was not going to do it, she was not going to write any lines. She was not going to submit to mental slavery. Instead she was thinking about this life and trying to pick out any speck of flaws. She felt isolated from it.
“I have homework.”
“since when you do homework.”
“since I came into this country. What choice do I have?”
“You always talk like that.”
“and..”
“It’s unrealistic.”
“That’s not a word to use to describe this petty situation.”
“whatever.”
And she started writing lines.
Alicia came charging into the gazebo.
Ann turned in happiness. “Yes Alicia help me write lines,” handing her some paper. She took and began writing.
Liberia could not concentrate on her so-called homework. She went over to sit in the corner away from the group of girls. She stared outside at the trees and the flowers. She would not see beauty in them for she thought the society’s operation had sucked them out. Dilapidated them and demolished their core. Until all that was left was the shanty exterior. It was naught not even outside beauty. Instead was a dark and depressing nature.
The complex but deteriorating method of the grading system and the lack of remorse or sympathy for these students spurred her vexation. She wondered if it was really the unconsciousness and the lack of a better life, they have never experienced. Or was it the lack of human rights and how uneducated they were of it in the education system. Was it the freedom of slavery, their ancestors had fought for, died and would be shocked to know their descendants still haven’t acquired it. But instead trapped under it in their mentality.
As she drove in her aunt’s car she wished she could drive forever and never stop. For if she could stop it would be for a wonderful cause and not to be penetrating her thoughts on a better life. This society is suffering and actually blind of it. They cause the people around them and themselves to live a certain deteriorating way because of their unconsciousness. You see nothing wrong with your life so you make no progress to let it shine in grandeur.

      
      

 

 

Copyright © 2007 Jahri- Ann
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