Jimmy moved forward to smell the women

Jimmy was uncontrollable, lunged forward at the women.....

Jimmy slowly walked up to the women and stood there in silence. The women were getting very nervous and those in front of the queue looked around for some signs of comfort. There was no other person in sight. What was going to happen to them?

Then the women heard Jimmy starting to growl. He turned around to see if Mr Singh had followed him. There was tension in the air as Jimmy assessed the situation and started to plan an attack. Again the older woman in the front of the queue decided to use the presence of her mind and ask loudly," Whose dog is this? Why has he been left without a leash?" Mr Singh quickened his pace and caught up with Jimmy and the women. There he was, making growling noises and giving the women a fright. " Jimmy come" said his master and then repeated it several times. Jimmy turned away from the women and came back to Mr Singh, walking by his side like the well trained dog that he was. Mr Singh took no notice of the women who had by then started to carry on with their journey.

Then, suddenly, he heard one of the women say," Jimmy come, come here, Jimmy come" and next heard the whole group of women bursting out in a loud laughter. They were trying to copy Mr Singh talking to his dog. Then one of the women reminded the others how they had been terrified when Jimmy had walked up to them. They also realised that the Asian dog owner had not done much to comfort them. 'Jimmy come, come on"- how strange that this angry dog was willing to listen so much to his owner. One of the women thought, it was quite a strange name for a dog. She had never heard of a dog with the name of 'Jimmy come'.

The time when Rozio made excellent vegetable curry and lentils

A story of the 'houseboy' who became so good

This was the term, considered to be harmless and accurate enough for describing the hundreds of domestic workers who worked for East African Asians. Some families used the term 'house servants' but in our household we decided that it was insensitive to call them servants. There was also a moral view - no person could become so important and so high and mighty in life that another person would become their servant. Over a period of time I decided to settle for the term, 'domestic worker'.

One such worker was 'Rozio'. I believe that his correct name was Aloizio. 'Rozio' was the result of constant mispronunciation and 'Asianisation' of his name. Rozio first came to work on a building site as a labourer. He impressed the Sikh building contractor with his hard work, courtesy and good nature. He was also very clean and did not smell of tobacco, an aspect that Sikhs were generally very averse to. Smoking was strictly forbidden in their religion and anyone who smelt of tobacco was considered to be lowly and unhygienic. Alcohol was also forbidden in the Sikh religion but no one minded their house workers having a few drinks from time to time, even when they smelt like a distillery. In fact many a house worker benefited from their habit. The 'bwana' or master was sometimes generous and gave them a few drinks to reward them for hard work. But I am digressing...

Rozio's hard work and cleanliness was further rewarded when he was promoted to the position of the site chef, working mainly for the Sikh craftsmen. Many building sites were located hundreds of miles away from the main towns where the contractors and their skilled Asian staff used to live. The staff had to be fed and good, clean Indian food had to be made available. The African staff had to fend for themselves and on a construction site, several fires were lit in the early evening to cook the dinners for all the people who worked on the site.

Rozio soon became an expert cook for the Sikh craftsmen. They taught him how to cook good Indian food with a rich Punjabi flavour. Rozio made good progress and found himself being offered high pay and even a bed in the 'Indian yard'. Then someone discovered a product which was in the form of a cube and wrapped in a yellow paper. He showed Rozio how to add it to the Sikhs' lentil soup or 'daal'. Rozio's daal became a talk of the town and many visitors were treated to this extraordinary vegetarian dish cooked by an African worker.

Then one day, when on a trip back to his family home in Kampala, the Sikh site foreman had taken a cube from Rozio's kitchen. He showed it to his wife. He told her that when the 'daal' was just about ready to be eaten, all one had to do was to add one cube of the additive to it and bring the whole dish to another boil. The result was a fantastic lentil soup. And so the daal was made and when the foreman's family sat down to eat, one of the sons, who had been educated in England said, " Wow, this is truly a great daal". "Do you like it?," asked the old foreman excitedly, " ...Rozio puts this special thing in the daal to make it taste so good". " Let me see it," said the young Sikh. A cube was quickly taken out of the box and presented with great pride for the son to see. Then the young man said," Do you know what this is? This is Oxo. Do you know that this cube has beef stock in it and that is what has been used for flavouring your vegetables and daals?" Beef was strictly forbidden. No Sikh would openly eat beef or a beef product in those days. Most of the Asian staff at the building site were older Sikhs who had vowed never to eat beef.

The Sikh foreman was absolutely distraught and then became angry. That 'bllady' Rozio had been feeding them beef stock. He must be sacked the very minute they returned to the building site. Then it occurred to him that someone else, another Sikh, had bought the Oxo cubes for Rozio to use in his cooking. Rozio was saved but the Oxo cubes were banned from the Sikhs' kitchen forever.

Running Away from Dad - 2

We can take ourselves out of the sakati .....

....but we cannot take the sakati out of us! The sakatis are still live in our memories.

I have been unable to write for two weeks but I am sure many of you will want to know how the issue of the accidental kicking of a football into Mrs Chana's dinner was resolved.

It was simple. Dad went quiet for the next two days but every single moment in his presence was tortuous. When was he going to ask me to explain my bad behaviour? How was he going to deal with me?

After the fourth day, his silence began to trouble me. I was concerned - why was he not asking me to explain my bad behaviour? He must know that it was a serious case of misconduct. After another two days, I decided that I may have to remind him of the incident! He must deal with it. His silence was punishing me. After another few days, he called me to his room. I decided that the time had come for me to prepare myself for a beating. I knocked at his open door, something I had never done before. He turned around, looked at me and said," I am going to see a film. Do you want to go with me?" I knew then that he had no intention of discussing that issue! Who would want to miss the chance of seeing a film? It was 'Ben Hur' and dad decided that it was important for me to see it for educational reasons.

I have never forgotten the day we saw that film. Ben Hur had intervened. He had saved me from a pasting.

Running Away from Dad - 1

How to use visitors as a human shield!

For many former East African Asians, their lives in the 'sakati' system provide endless nostalgia. The sakati was an orderly cluster of flats facing a common rectangular compound not different in layout from today's 'designer' courtyards in Central London's gated properties. They are shared spaces and are bordered by buildings. All sakatis had families living at the perimeter, with the front doors of their flats or houses facing the common area. Each sakati was a community, consisting of households which mostly got on well with each other but there were some which did not get on too well at all. Sakatis bred healthy and open minded people in most cases. There were sakatis which bred vendettas, encouraged the firing of emotional Hisbullah rockets in the form of insults and taunts. Brinkmanship between families was rife. It prevailed across the compound in abundance.

There was very little privacy in the sakati especially where a family chose to have a literally open door policy. Any one could call at any time, bring a dish and take away a dish if they got the smell of what you were cooking. Sakatis were like a community of ants or bees. If you stood at a vantage point, you could see families at work and play almost like a children's activity book which has small windows that open out into various activities. I am thinking of 'advent calendars'.

Anyway, one day a group of boys decided to have a football match inside the sakati. The evening was approaching fast and we had to produce a result. The boys were totally oblivious to the red hot charcoal fires that were cooking the evening meals of many families. They had lost track of the time. The African sunset would soon plunge the sakati into darkness. The lighting was poor. Some years ago there had been a serious incidence when the neighbour's newly married daughter-in-law had bumped into someone's grandfather. Anyway, a high ball came towards me and in the semi-darkness I decided to head it but could not control the direction into which the ball was going to go.

The ball landed in a large saucepan of a neighbour, Mrs Chana, who had just finished cooking a rather oily chicken curry on the coalfire. Her cooking was actually not very good. I remember that she always overspiced her food and added tons of chillies to her curries. Both of their older sons came home seriously drunk after their evening hockey games. They wanted the hottest curry you could find on Ngara Road. The ball hit Mrs Chana's dinner with a rather low, heavy and muffled thud. That was very bad news. From the sound I guessed that the ball had landed right in the middle of the saucepan. I knew that the damage had been done. Mrs Chana started screaming and I decided to run out of the sakati and pretended to have nothing to do with the ball in the chicken curry ....

On reaching the sakati's main door, I realised that we were about to receive visitors; a meanish uncle and his family were approaching the sakati entrance. As I have said before, unnannounced visitors were quite common. It did not matter that they timed their visit to include a meal. They asked me why was I running away at such a speed. Was my father at home? "Stop and talk to us!" shouted my aunt. As I was turning at the corner at top speed I ran into another neighbour who was returning home from work. " Yes, dad is at home. Go right in" I yelled as I ran out. All was quiet for about twenty minutes as I stood under street light and got my breath back. Then I realised that I had to go back.

On reaching the front door, I looked towards Mrs Chana's house and found that their door was shut. Had they picked out the ball from their their meal and were they eating the curry? I decided that it wasn't important at all to find out at that stage... the more urgent issue was how to survive once I got home.

Then I heard dad say with remarkable calm," Dont worry. He is going to come back sooner or later. He sleeps in the bed in the verandah and I will be able to see him". Our visitors were my insurance policy. I decided to enter the house and go straight to the visitors, be very sociable and cheerful and sit very close to them for protection. Dad could lose his temper without any warning. There was every prospect of stopping a missile in the form of a shoe. Dinner followed and soon the visitors left. An eerie silence followed and I knew that dad would spring into action at any time.

" How was school today?" he asked. That was not a good start. Any question about school at that time of the night was a prescription for disaster. Dad was slowly preparing his ground but it put me on the defensive. Any confirmation about lack of progress at school would be badly timed. His anger about the loss of Mrs Chana's cooking was apparent. In addition it had given dad control of the situation. I realised then that I should not have run....I was in deep trouble and dad knew it.

To be continued. Some facts and names have been changed to protect identities. I have also taken some artistic licence and added a bit of fiction.

Time for Some Humour

Time for a change?

For the next few weeks I will look at the humourous side of our lives in East Africa.

• There is no intention of offering racist jikes, an action that I deplore.
• There is no plan to pick on any single community each time a comment is published.
• Any references made to communities will refrain from using any form of insulting language.
• There will be no references to religion, culture and customs of any community.

Phew! All these preconditions probably makes the task easier, not harder, and leaves one to reflect on genuine incidents where the above safeguards can be respected.

Community leaders became gatekeepers and 'askaris'

How to lead by default

East African Asian communities often chose their leaders by using highly original selection criteria. Any person had a good potential for becoming an Asian leader as long as :

• They had visible wealth to sustain their power base. It did not matter if the money came from their businesses- for no one ever looked into company accounts to see if they were in debt to the hilt. The Asian was a good leadership prospect as long as they drove the latest model of a gleaming black Mercedes Benz, even if they did not own it and even if it could be claimed by bailiffs at any time.
• They had the historical links with the caste of the majority community. This was paramount as the caste system was imported from India to help maintain inherited power and status. Power was not acquired on merit.
• They had the ability to speak reasonably good English. Their command of the English language put them in the front of the race as long as they were successful in nurturing the British. The Asian old guard was largely loyal to the colonial masters and were hungry for recognition by them.
• They were married to a rich man's daughter. Financial status was an automatic prequalification for leadership even if the money belonged to the wife's father. You had to be seen in 'posh' circles of society.
• They were doctors or dentists. No one had any time for a veterinary surgeon, entomologist or weather forecaster. These professions reflected low esteem and were a waste of time. Doctors had power for obvious reasons; they kept you fit and well.
• They were office bearers of service clubs such as the Rotary and Lions. This type of affiliation confirmed their popularity and ability to lead.
• They could speak on a public platform reasonably well. " It gives me great pleasures, to welcomes yous to our celebrations" said one leader in a welcome speech to a dignitary. His sense was that the multiple and overwhelming pleasure of welcoming the visitor had to be communicated very openly. Respect for the visitor had to be evident. The use of the word 'you' was harsh and disrespectful. 'Yous' had a connotation of 'thou' or 'more than one'. I learnt many years later that some Indian maharajahs liked to be counted not as one for each maharajah, but as 1.25 or 'sawai' which made one larger than life of the ordinary mortals they were supposed to lead. I am sure someone else will have a better explanation or can help express this with more contextual authority.

The outcome of such leadership selection criteria was that they did not understand community priorities; did not take risks to speak on behalf of the community they led, did not show enterprise and innovation and denied that there were any problems in their communities. One of the key strategies was denial.

They maintained that the social ills that occured in other societies did not 'happen' in the Asian communities. There was no domestic violence, wife beating, child abuse, abuse of servants, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness and even high blood pressure. These were the conditions and diseases of the highly irresponsible and decadent people in other communities. They were a reflection of social decay which had never taken root in Asian communities. After all, the Asian family was well known for its sound value systems, they took care of their elderly parents and never mistreated the 'servants'.

Such was the unshakeable belief in the Asian community that younger Asians who acquired university education in East Africa and who challenged the old guard were automatically sidelined. Question: Did these leaders migrate to the west, expecting to continue to be the leaders of the Asian communities in the new lands?

What's it got to do with age?

One of the characteristics of highly regulated educational systems in the ‘western’ countries is that students are placed in schools by using standard admissions criteria – age, level of attainment, parents’ address, ability to pay and so on. However, the placing of students in primary and secondary schools in the developing countries still presents some interesting challenges. In towns and cities where there is a high level of rural to urban migration and also the resulting deprivation, students may start primary school as much as five to seven years late compared to the average age of entry which is five years.

East African Asians migrated to the three ‘EA countries’ and one of the first actions they had to complete was to get their children into primary and secondary schools. In Kampala, it was not uncommon to have school mates who were five to ten years older than one because they had either started school late or their parents had migrated into the East African countries when their children were ‘too old’. I am reminded of many such friendship scenarios, some of which were very funny but a few were also sad.

The relatively older children tended to be poor performers than their friends who had started at the right age mainly because the older children had missed entry level basics which formed the platform of the school curriculum. But the older children were more socially and physically mature, often causing confusion in their social life, sporting and educational competitions. Nowhere did this cause more problems than in the area of personal relationships. There were boys and girls who were so much older than the average class age that they could not fit in. Their classmates could not trust them or have meaningful friendships. There were also a few humorous episodes where younger children had crushes on older children or vice versa. Could older children easily fall in love with younger children or the other way around?

After all these years, it is interesting to see how children in schools with a wide spread of age bands coped with each other. Did the age difference stimulate competition or inhibit it? Did it encourage bullying? One aspect has been painful to remember. Parents of older girls had no choice when they performed less than satisfactorily at school. They just waited for the girls to reach the legal age of marriage, which was 18 and no sooner had they reached this age they found themselves married to older Asian men. Other older boys missed further education which was more regulated and the competition for places was severe as there were fewer places.

It occurs to me that the steady stream of Asian migration into East Africa, especially for families with children of various ages must have had many effects on education, competition and attainment.

Many of the above observations also apply to African children who started to join schools in the cities. Many of these schools were built for Asian and 'European' migrants. After independence the schools were desegregated, and rightly so. However, many of the African children from rural areas were much older than their Asian classmates.

There are studies here for someone to work on.

The search for Gregory

Once a teacher, always a teacher

Kololo Secondary School which is based in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, stirs up fond memories for hundreds of Ugandan Asians who went to study there from the mid 1950s to late 1972, when the Asian community was expelled from that country. The school was recognised as a centre of excellence, as an achieving school and a source of immense pride not only for students who went there but also for their parents. Many former Ugandan Asians who went to Kololo have formed affiliated groups and organised fundraising dinners for the benefit of the school. Groups have organised reunions and meetings in the United Kingdom, USA and Canada.

One subject that invariably comes up at Kololo 'oldboys' or 'oldgirls' networks is teachers. What happened to them? Where did they go? How did they survive? Such was the impact of the Asian exodus that students lost contact with each other and lost contacts with their teachers.

The name of Mr Greg Gregory came up a few weeks ago on various chatlines. A number of former Kololians persevered and someone produced enough information to help me trace him to England. A search engine provided a link and I wrote to him saying, " Are you the Mr Gregory who......". This morning, Mr Gregory's reply was waiting for me and he said, "Yes, I am that teacher" or words to that effect. Mr Gregory is the inventor of the Block system, a system of education and learning that places the responsibility for learning on the student. It encourages the student to develop ideas, plan and carry out research and to complete assignments related to subjects identified by the curriculum. That is my understanding 40 years after working in a block. Further information is available from Mr Grefory's website www.rggregory.com.

Mr Gregory was an innovator by any standards and the challenge that faces people who break from tradition is that they have to defend themselves and their vision. This is even more so when a teacher is seen to take radical action which unsettles the traditionalists in a school. Mr Gregory had no problem dealing with his critics. He won the support of the Head Teacher, the late Mr Raval. It was not until my own children started to work on projects during their secondary school education that I realised how much Mr Gregory had done to offer to me the skills for research and learning, even if they may not be too evident in this blog!

Former Kololo school students will be celebrating the successful 'search for Gregory' and I know many chatlines and meetings will be talking about the old block system. I hope to interview Mr Gregory in the next few weeks. I hope that my description of the Block system, as summarised above, will withstand Mr. Gregory's scrutiny. Once a teacher, always a teacher.