By Barbara Grant Nnoka
December 1958: Just exactly two months ago, I
came back to Nigeria from a five-month holiday among friends in the U.S.,
and when I arrived at the boys’ secondary school where I teach English, I
was two days late for the first classes of the third and last term of the
year. In addition to scrubbing and washing my own house, getting my children
settled again, and doing some rapid readjustment myself (we had flown on a
plane, which carried us from New York to Accra in exactly twenty-four
hours), I found the school dramatic society ready with a cast to start
rehearsals of Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops To Conquer. Lest the choice of
an eighteenth-century English comedy featuring romantic schemes and mistaken
identities seem a strange choice for a boys’ school in twentieth-century
Nigeria, I should explain that we use a somewhat adapted form of the British
secondary school system, in which a countrywide exam is given annually. The
three-hour literature exam covers only "set" books from a syllabus announced
two years in advance. She Stoops To Conquer is a set book for our seniors
this year and will be for the seniors next year. Having taught it twice and
rehearsed it for a performance, I could, if anyone were to ask me, recite
most of it verbatim.
Anyway, two months ago, I took down the names of the cast, who had been
selected in my absence by the vice principal. What follows is a record of
our progress through to the day set for the performance, together with some
of the aftermath.
September 22. We have begun on a two-rehearsal-a-week schedule for
the first reading. Everything went well on Tuesday afternoon, and we had a
business meeting of the society Thursday during recess; but on Saturday, I
sat in the classroom appointed for the rehearsal from 10 a.m. until 10:45
a.m. waiting for six boys to walk fifty yards from the dormitory to the
rehearsal place. The day students showed up, and I sent two messages to the
dormitory, but I was left to cool my heels.
It is sometimes hard to cool one’s heels in the equatorial rain forest of
Southern Nigeria, so I considered what had happened as carefully as I could
over the weekend. I am a woman--and I know boys in some Nigerian schools
have confessed they believe women M.A.’s must have been given special,
easier exams; for they hold it to be an incontrovertible truth that women
cannot do as well as men. I think my boys have been disabused of this
particular misconception, but the more I thought about it, the more certain
I was that they would not have done this to even the most junior of my
African male colleagues. So this morning, I knocked on the principal’s door
and requested some help in discipline. He asked for the names of the
offenders and sent a messenger to call them from class. I went about my
teaching with the senior class.
Hardly ten minutes later, three of the six offenders burst into my class and
pleaded with me to write notes to the principal, accepting their late but,
they insisted, genuine excuses. But my ego was hurt, and I sent them away.
After about half an hour, I was given a small scrap of paper by the school
clerk, and I glanced at it only enough to note that the principal had seen
the boys and expected I would have no further trouble. He thanked me for
calling his attention to the matter, and I put the scrap in the back of a
book. About three periods later, I went to the junior class from which most
of the cast came. Eboh, who is Marlow, the tongue-tied young hero of the
play (he had really chosen the part for himself by virtue of the seniority
system which is deeply entrenched, and an appalling amount of
self-confidence in one so young) rose and announced his resignation from the
play. I was about to accept it and consider the matter closed, but Eboh had
a speech to go with the resignation. "I cannot act," he said, "with six
strokes hanging over my head."
I have just found the note from the principal and re-read it. He said, "I
have impressed upon the actors the importance of attending rehearsals,"
meaning apparently that he has threatened the cast with the cane if they
don’t cooperate.
October 13. I have asked the president of the dramatic society to
appoint a production committee, and they are to price--in the market--the
following items:
-
one kerosene tin to be cut in half by the
tinker and made into two stage lights
-
two light sockets and bulbs (as large as are
sold) plus wire enough to reach the light socket dangling from the ceiling
in the assembly room, which is the only source of electricity in the room
-
fifteen-eighteen yards of material suitable
for a curtain
-
twenty-four feet of wire to hang it on
-
rings to sew on the curtain
-
cord
October 17. Another dramatic society
adviser, a very conscientious Nigerian with excellent experience in
teaching, went with me today to the principal. We set the date--November 14.
We also asked the principal to write for help with the production to the
heads of two schools associated with ours (by virtue of being owned by the
same man): the commercial college, which is just finishing a new building
and will, we hope, supply planks for the stage, and the elementary school,
from which we want the "manual labor master" who knows how to build such
things. The underpinnings of the stage will be, I gather, cement blocks and
the benches from the dining hall. We tried a stage of similar construction
one evening in 1956 for a one-act play, and the boards creaked and groaned.
But I have been assured that this background noise is not necessary and can
be eliminated. We shall see.
October 20. It has been decided not to tax the students for the
expenses of the production, but rather to charge admission to the
performance. The principal does not feel he can make attendance compulsory,
but neither does he quite dare to open the performance to the public. So I
am not sure we will recover the money that is being given us as an advance.
But anything is better than having to collect from the boys directly, and it
seems to be customary for students to support financially their own
extra-curricular activities.
I must now arrange for a committee to sit at the door, usher, etc., and,
frankly, I can’t think of a single boy I trust not to let in his friends for
free.
November 7. We are only one week from the performance. The condition
of the cast is deplorable. The prospects for a stage and curtain are
uncertain, and my dreams of a semi-finished production are vanishing.
I thought we had a "natural" to play Hastings, Marlow’s friend. Emanuel is
tall and debonair, with a flashing smile and a dashing taste in clothes. For
the past week he has been dressing up his tropical white school uniform with
a paisley scarf tucked inside the open-necked shirt. He has also changed his
signature from Emanuel to Louis A. (for Louis Armstrong, he says) Okegbe,
and this may be a symptom of some deeper change in character. At any rate,
he fails to appear at rehearsals, drags his feet when he comes, and looks,
in an African way, positively pale and wan.
When we started planning for the play almost a year ago, Adebayo, who plays
Tony Lumpkin, the play’s prankster, was missing one large front tooth; but
early in this school year the government dental office at Benin, thirty
miles away, put in a false one. Adebayo’s spirits were much restored, and he
seemed to be enjoying Tony Lumpkin’s antics. Then, one day he vanished. His
seat in class was empty; a messenger to the dormitory found no trace--and
finally, in a low voice, his best friends confessed, "He’s lost his tooth."
We are now skipping the Tony scenes until Adebayo gets back from Benin with
a new tooth.
I drove David Uvieghara to the hospital today. He was in a state of
semi-hysteria. I hope the medical officer has some sedatives in the pharmacy
so David can get some rest. When I first got back from my American holiday,
David announced at the weekly meeting of the dramatic society that the part
assigned to him was too small. Remembering a nervous collapse at the end of
last year when he faced a challenge similar to performing in a play, I
suggested that I give the part to someone else and he could spend his time
on his studies. About a month later, I announced at the weekly meeting that
we needed a few servants, especially a maid with whom Kate Hardcastle, one
of the heroines, discusses her plans to masquerade as a barmaid. David rose
to his feet and announced he was ready. I tried to look un-astonished and
said, "Thank you." He reported promptly for each rehearsal of his scene and
had the speeches memorized the first week. But yesterday, he was trembling
and weak, and today he was quite beside himself. I guess we should not be
doing a production along with final exams.
November 11. I was kindly let off from invigilating (the British term
used here for proctoring) the seniors’ external examination, the Cambridge
School Certificate Exam; and I have spent two days, more or less, on
costumes.
Constance Neville, the play’s second heroine, will wear an old lawn
nightgown, dressed up with two crepe paper flowers around the bottom, a bow
sash, and a rolled scarf collar. Vincent, who plays Miss Neville, doesn’t
know it’s a nightie, and that helps. Mrs. Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin’s mother,
will wear some heavy gray cotton drapes I had in 1954--three in the skirt
and one for a shawl. Kate will use a cotton evening skirt of mine with a
couple of different "overskirts" and, eventually, an apron. Her bonnet--a
brown paper brim covered with yellow crepe paper and fastened to a roundish
back piece--is safely stashed away on top of the wardrobe. Its tie is a
once-white grosgrain ribbon that I inherited from a girl with whom I shared
an apartment in Washington, D.C., in 1948.
I have frills in the making for the men’s neckwear--the one completed thus
far was made from lace off the bottom of an old slip. I am experimenting
with wig No. 1 which, at this point, consists of pencil-sized curls of
cotton batting sewed onto a strip of white cloth. I have four wigs to do.
Tony’s costume will be an odd mixture of some blue jeans and a green and
brown gingham plaid jerkin over a long-sleeved shirt. The jerkin was part of
a maternity outfit I had.
November 12. I went with our school’s other white "madam," a Scottish wife
of a Scottish engineer who works at the plywood factory in Sapele. We bought
fifteen yards of a red cotton damask-like material for a curtain. (Red was
the color suggested by the principal.) We have to thank the manager of the
local Kingsway (the retail department of the United Africa Company, all part
of the UNILEVER conglomerate) who gave us a special price of 70 cents (U.S.)
a yard. This leaves me only $3.00 for all the other bits and pieces as well
as the job of finding a sewing machine on which to stitch the seams and
hems.
This curtain appears to have some significance, which escapes me. It must be
hung so that it can be drawn open and closed again from the sides. We
absolutely cannot have two boys, one on each side, pull the curtain by hand
and body across the stage. I have not had time yet to figure out the
mechanics of this, or to calculate the amount of cord we will need. But I am
very busy probing for the source of this curious notion, which has risen to
torment me. I have the peculiar feeling it came from a white man!
Tony has returned but failed to report for rehearsal and Mrs. Hardcastle
asked me to "check" on this.
November 13. We have now begun what I am sure is a self-defeating
process. We have postponed the production for two weeks. Emanuel Okegbe, who
plays Hastings, says he cannot learn Act V until after the exams. I know him
well enough to be certain that he is no more likely to learn lines after
exams than before. But although he is never present at rehearsal unless
dragged in, he is something of a leader among the cast, and it is quite
impossible for me alone to raise morale high enough to get the show on the
road.
I, too, can use a little relief from the stress of extracurricular activity.
David Uvieghara returned to school today. His family took him from the
government hospital the day after I got him admitted, and he has since been
receiving African medicine in his own village, thirty-five miles away. He is
calm although he still appears somewhat distracted, and I have not discussed
the play with him.
November 21. Exams ended at noon today, and there has thus far been
only dead silence from the cast.
November 24. Rehearsals have been resumed, this time at the
insistence of the cast. Tony was nowhere in the compound today, but the
others seem to be rising quite adequately to the occasion, now set for
December 3.
December 1 (Monday). My optimism was unwarranted. With classes
suspended while masters read exams, students go to the post office, the
clinic at the hospital, the ‘store,’ and the town. Only once during three
days did we find enough of the cast in the school compound to get through
one whole act.
On Friday we had finally mustered about two-thirds of the cast, and it was
agreed to have a full rehearsal at 3:30 on Saturday. On Saturday, I got into
school clothes and was in the Class VI room by 3:40. One or two others
drifted in. By about 4:15, we had Tony, Kate, Neville, Marlow, and
Hastings--but no Sir Charles Marlow (indeed we had not seen him all week),
and Mrs. Hardcastle was reported to have ‘traveled.’ Kate vanished after the
first ten minutes, strolling off the compound with the Landlord, right under
my very nose. The only reason I could offer for this was that when Richard
(Kate) arrived, he asked me if it was true that he had failed English. I
said yes and then he disappeared. Father Hardcastle made his Act V
appearance, but by the time we got back to Act I, he also had beat a hasty
retreat. Hastings, who has been on his good behavior lately, fetched
Hardcastle from his room in a nearby rooming house.
At the end of this, I said our only hope for a performance on Wednesday was
a long rehearsal on Sunday--but everyone shook his head. Mrs. Hardcastle
would not be back; how could they tell the other absent ones? Monday would
be time enough. I said I doubted it, and by this morning, Monday, I had
decided I had to report to the principal that we had not yet been through
the play from beginning to end and could not perform on Wednesday.
He asked why and I explained. My colleague, who has been trying
unsuccessfully to get the stage built, supported me--and the principal asked
for the names of the cast. I scribbled them all on the back of an
envelope--yea, even unto the very least servant with four lines. They were
all rounded up, lined up in the principal’s office, and told they were
suspended not just for the rest of this year, but for the whole first term
next year, too.
Undated. We have had two days of ‘begging’--individually and collectively.
Delegations have been at my house, have met me at school, have been to Emma
Ibeneme, my friend and neighbor who teaches at another school, to beg her to
beg me. I have thus far managed to maintain a pose of severity, but I wish I
had a stage director to help me with the timing of this little drama. I have
a feeling it is my cue, but I don’t know my lines very well.
December 3. We had the last staff meeting of the year today--to
discuss promotions and other items. The other items included a rather
self-righteous announcement by the principal about the punishment handed to
the players. I thought this was a cue if I’d ever heard one, so I rose to
say what seemed to me "logical" in view of some other circumstances, which
had developed concurrently with the inglorious finale of the play.
I had proctored our internal final exams with great energy and had unearthed
four obvious cases of cheating. Boys brought prepared answers to the exam
room where, because each student supplies his own paper, he could insert the
pre-written sheets in his sheaf of answer papers--if he had been lucky
enough to have guessed one or more of the questions.
The first culprit was taken to the principal who gave him zero for that
exam. The next day we caught four more students cheating, including the
original violator, who had returned for his next exam. On his second
offense, he was sent from school, but the other three were simply given
failing grades for the course. The contrast between the severity of the
punishment meted out to my actors and what was given to the cheaters stung
my moral sense and perplexed me. I suggested to the staff at the meeting
that one value in punishment of any sort was consistency, and I asked the
principal to review both cases, in neither of which I concurred with his
decision.
Sparks flew. It may have been an African man who feels he should never be
challenged anywhere by a woman (not that the women don’t do it!) or it may
have been a black man who resented the European in his midst or it may have
been a principal a little uncertain of himself and not wanting to let it
appear to his staff. Whatever the cause, the principal first brushed off my
complaint by explaining that the cheating was just "copying," which really
infuriated me. Then he pounded the table, flashed his eyes (Ibos pride
themselves on their ability to look fierce), and asked me what right I had
to question his motives.
Since his motives were the farthest thing from my mind, I was stumped. I
tried to protest that he was missing the point, but he had to finish his
speech, and in the end I decided it was easier for me to say I was sorry if
I had offended than it was for him even to see that he had offended me. So I
said it--and he snapped, "Thank you for saying you’re sorry."
After a pause I said I was quite prepared to accept an apology from the boys
concerned for time wasted, money spent, and responsibility shirked, and I
hoped he would be willing to accept such an apology. I further hoped that
upon application, he would reconsider the suspensions for next year. This
seemed to go down better and we parted.
I went directly to Emma Ibeneme, who had been recruited by me as a mediator,
so she could ask the boys to come and suggest proper apologies as a way out.
December 4. Today I received my apology. It reads:
The Penitent Offenders
Academy Secondary School
Sapele
4th Dec. 1958
Madam B. J. Nnoka
Academy Secondary School
Sapele
Madam,
We are the entire pupils concerned with this
recalcitrant exhibition due to our failures to attend the play rehearsals of
the play, She Stoops To Conquer, lamently beg the honor of the Madam to
understand that we have really offended her.
It has not only aroused the anger of Madam because her
expensive time have been uselessly spent, but we have caused the Madam to
hear false incompetent name which some people might have called her. We are
indeed sorry for this and we pledge from the inmost care of our minds never
to be so insorbourdinate any longer.
We humbly wish to pluck a mercy of Madam on us and with
broken spirits of punishments wish Madam to forgive us our misdeeds if this
our humble piece of apology meet her with a sympathetic consideration.
We are Yours
Obediently
The Offenders.
I have sent a note to the principal recommending clemency.
School closes tomorrow.
