Orientation? Not on your life!

I’m as crabby as a hermit tonight.

 

As usual, I had set aside Sneckie my Favourite Laptop when my second favourite child came to spend his mandatory hour chatting lightly of this and that with his darling Mama.

 

I admit I was already in a foul mood. Years of falling deeper and deeper into the mad rabbit hole of NGO life occasionally reverses itself suddenly, and I find myself vomited out into the daylight. The daylight, in this case, consists of realising I DON’T want to spend Saturday and half of Sunday tapping grimly at Sneckie the Enemy Laptop to produce some impossible document that will do nobody any good.

 

And you know, don’t you, how when you’re in a temper, you soek for things to affirm your fury? You actively go out and collect more irritating information.

 

So I asked my dearest one, meaningfully, How was Life Orientation at school today? The darling brightened, scenting an entertaining parental rage coming on. He hates LO as much as I do. He fails it regularly, which is the only sensible thing to do with LO. When he passes it, I will be worried indeed. It will be a sure sign he’s gone over to the mindless enemy. Pity he has to pass it to get through Grade 12.

 

Life Orientation is crap. In theory, it’s a good idea, but in practice it’s rubbish.

LO has four posh-sounding learning outcomes that the Department of Education has concocted to bamboozle us with. The first is that learners will achieve and maintain personal well-being, whatever that is. Quite a tall order for an adolescent male, given those crazy hormones and even crazier fantasies the gutter press is always banging on about. We won’t even start with the girls and entrenched inequalities that reduce their personal wellbeing somewhat.

And I wont bore you, or myself, with the other learning outcomes. If you want to read the whole mealie-mouthed load of codswallop, go to http://www.education.gov.za. I suspect – in fact I know – that most schools treat LO like a poor relation with bad breath and no money.

But I digress. Let me get back to my satisfying fury.

My darling was entertained by two American evangelists in LO today. And as he told the tale of how they finger-wagged, harangued and lectured about Sin, Hell Fire and the One Way to avoid the Great Detention, so his gentle mother became more and more hellishly furious. Seeing this, the darling stoked the fires, telling gruesome tales about the Rapture, and the inevitable fall into Hades for the likes of his beloved parent.

And does the school plan to invite a Muslim to talk about Islam? Or a Hindu? A Buddhist? A Jew? An Animist? Or Heaven forefend, an Atheist, or even a Humanist? The sweet mother asked with gritted teeth and bloodshot eyes.

No, quoth the darling. Why should they? They know that the evangelists are right. We don’t have to listen any further to any other point of view. There IS only One Way, dearest mother of mine. Discussion is useless. The school knows the truth.

He smirked as he left the Audience Chamber, after politely passing Sneckie the Rational Laptop back to me.

Little bastard.

Rouen-ed by women

My father would have loved a son. A cricket-loving, rugger-bugger, jut-jawed, man’s boy would have suited him well. They would have camped without benefit of tents, shot at crocodiles, roared at each other with testoronic fury, and ended up getting sozzled together at the club.  

Dang me if he didn’t get three skinny red-headed girls instead. By the time I was born, he had given up all hope of an ally in the home.  

“Christ, Poppet!” he must have roared at sight of me squalling like a noisy orange in a pink blanket. “Not another goddamn fucking girl.”

My father was never shy about his language, even in front of his delicate daughters. In fact, my older sister grew up believing that Fucking Chokwe Coon was the name of a Zambian tribe, so frequently did he address the office assistant by that elegant appellation.  

My father was outnumbered by women, like an old lion teased by silly young jackals. He tolerated it well, but growled every now and then to show who was boss.  

It wouldn’t have been so bad if we girls had been able to catch balls, or run, or take an interest in the local birdlife.  But oh no, our mother had to make bloody sissies of us all.  

“Christ, Poppet! You’ll turn them into bluestockings!” he yelled one Christmas when our presents turned out to be Art History books. Mine was on the Impressionists, and I still remember each beautiful page.  

Pictures, like scents and music, can take you right back to your childhood. I just have to look at Monet’s lovely picture of the cathedral at Rouen, and I’m nine years old again, sitting on the lavatory for hours, studying each painting with the attention that only a child can command.  My father tried to counter my mother’s genteel tastes by teaching us rude poems. I taught this one, in my turn, to my own children:  

As cold as a frog on an icebound pool,

As cold as the tip of an eskimo’s tool,

As cold as the fur on a polar bear’s bum,

As cold as an iceberg, chilly and glum.

As cold as charity, and that’s pretty chilly,

But not as cold as our poor Uncle Willy.

He’s dead, poor bastard.

Like poor Uncle Willy, my father is long dead, although I should imagine it’s not cold where he is. He’s probably roaring “Fucking pansy Beelzebub” at some cowering demon.  

Father Almighty

Jesus wep’, I’m turning into my father.  

No, I’m not growing a toothbrush moustache, despite my best attempts. Not going bald, either. Pity, it would be so much quicker to slosh a bit of soap around a naked scalp than it is to carefully wash, perm, curl, colour and spray my elegant locks into rigid obedience. Heh, I don’t think.  

And I’m not marrying my mother – heaven forefend. Necrophiliac lesbian incest is not one of my interests.

Besides, she said consideringly, it would be difficult to get hitched to a handful of scattered ash. Even if I could find the bits, which I suspect have been mislaid somewhere between the death and the resurrection of the body, I’m not sure where the veil would go, not to mention the garter. Unless one could find a bit of charred femur? And then, how would one know which collection of bitty grits is the left digitus quartus?  

Besides, I wouldn’t want to be my own step-parent (which I would be if I were married to my dead mother) because, as we have agreed already, I’m turning out to be so like my father.  

Like my father, I rage at what doesn’t please me. I don’t waste my time sulking or manipulating any more, When I’m crossed I just roar with monstrous furiosity, never allowing the opposition a chance to offer a case for the defence – or the offence. Its so much easier than tact and gracious patience. Much more honest.  

Take this evening, for example. I was quietly reading a newspaper blog about a certain boys’ school which has seen fit to expel some revolting miscreants for boozing in uniform at a sports event. The conversation lightly turned to forms of punishment. Beat the little shits! Said the blog commentators. The only way to get to the brain is through the bum!  I whipped myself into a furious temper, just like Dad. This is what I wrote in response, teeth gritted, veins pulsing, and eyes popping:  

Corporal punishment is always unacceptable, at school or at home. Besides being insulting, it’s ineffective in the long run. Children learn that violence is a quick and easy way to solve problems, and that the strong triumph over the weak. This is not what we need our kids to learn. Real discipline takes far more effort, time and commitment, and is based on firm boundaries, good examples, and a great deal of patience and love. Not quite as easy as a quick and dirty beating.

As for expulsion, the Schools Act clearly says that only the Head of the Education Department (in our case, Ms Mahanjana, the Superintendent-general) may expel a child, after a fair disciplinary hearing has taken place, and allowing for an appeal process. I’m surprised that the SGB [which expelled the children] didn’t know this, particularly since the Act is now 11 years old. They must have had time to read it. If not, they can find it on www.education.gov.za.

So you see how unreasonable I’m becoming. Just like my blessed Daddy.  

I guess the law about expulsion thing MAY have something to do with the crazy idea that education is a social good, not to mention a human right. Children, no matter how well-known they are as irresponsible felons, still have a right to education.

In fact, one could argue that it is only education that will save them, since their parents have clearly abdicated the task.  Of course, whether schooling has anything to do with education is a horse of a different blog, and we wont deal with it here. But watch this space.

Meanwhile, expulsion is a very serious sanction, only to be administered by the hierarchical equivalent of Sir Humphrey Appleby, not by any delinquent-maddened school principal and his self-righteous git governing body.  

And I guess that children who booze at sports events are NOT imitating their parents. Heaven forefend that we parents should ever sink into a beer-sodden rage over the rugby.  

After all, my hard-boozing, raging old man would never do such a thing. Why should I, or my children?

In Loco Parenthesis

My mother (bless her bones – not that she’s got any, we cremated her when she snuffed it) was never boring.  

Take her cooking. Any normal mother would feed the kids on chicken soup, loads of veg, hamburger, pizza, toasted sandwiches and milk. Dull stuff, but children like it.  

But not MY mother, oh no. She’d put her glasses on the end of her nose and scrutinise the recipe book, smeared with the makings of a thousand peculiar meals.  

“Ok, darlings,” She’d say to us kids. “Let’s have grilled kingklip with cheese sauce, croquette potatoes and petit pois for supper, followed by crème caramel.”  

“Hmm. We’ll have to make some creative changes to the recipe…no kingklip….not surprising here in Darkest bloody
Africa. A bit far from the sea for that – god, how I’d love a fresh oyster! The taste of the sea! Oh well. We’ll get some kapenta from Kabwe’s shop. It’ll be the same thing.” 

My sister and I would glance at each other meaningfully. We hated kapenta. Smelly, salty little heaps of dried fish with their eyes and guts still in, stinking like Christ knew what. Maybe the three-week-old unwashed underpants of an ageing sumo wrestler who doesn’t bother to shake it dry after use. Not in the least like kingklip. We’d see how we could scupper and de-supper THAT idea. 

“Ok, potato croquettes. Not potato, it’s so dull. We’ll have yam instead. After all if Caesar adsum iam forte, we can have some for supper. And Pompei aderat, so be grateful for the kapenta, girls. We’ll mix the yam with some nsima. I’ll just put more maize meal in, to make it stiffer. Cheese sauce…we’ll use powdered egg instead of cheese… Just add a little turmeric to make it yellower…there, it looks just like, doesn’t it, girls?”  

Don’t even ask about the crème caramel. 

This is the same mother who made soup from lucerne, a kind of leguminous cattle fodder. OK, it was delicious, but still. We wanted hotdogs, not hot savoury green milkshake made of cow food.  

This is the same mother who blithely served raw tilapia got from experimental fish station to her guests and family. “It’s delicious and exotic, girls,” she said. “It’s been soaked for 24 hours in lemon juice, so it’s as good as cooked.” My sister and I still huddle together over coffee, repeatedly unpacking that bit of parental violence to our psyches. We still haven’t healed. 

So is it surprising that my own children refuse to eat my cooking? I’ve taught them well never to trust an adult with a saucepan.

As they might remark, in their sarcastic but kindly way, my food is antithetical to their enjoyment.