Kitante

I took a trip to my elementary school for old time’s sake the other day and also to see who of my teachers were still there. My! Walking through the school was nostalgic; it brought tears to my eyes. The school is pretty much the same- memories of sitting in class, running and playing on the swings came rushing back to me like it was only yesterday. But for some reason everything seems to have shrunk, the school is so much smaller than it was back then, I guess I was looking at it from a different angle. Looking at the lower school waiting shed I smiled, I recalled the anxiety, the fun and laughter as we waited to be picked up by our parents. I passed by the class rooms, pupils talking at the top of their voices. Boy! Do I remember the many times we were asked to keep quiet, but it was extremely difficult. We had class prefects who were assigned the duty of jotting down names of talkative pupils. 

Once I recall a teacher knocking my head against that of my friend because we had been talking in class. Now I think… even though it is a discipline to be learned, children have a lot going through their little brains that keeping it all inside is a real task. Especially if they don’t have a teacher standing in front of them or if they are not doing an exam or some kind of activity that requires silence. In Mich’s play school there was a sign on the wall that said “use your inner voice”, what ever that means.

  I walked passed the amphitheatre and I could literally imagine it filled with girls all dressed in Red and white or Grey and white for the boys. Then down at what I will call the stage for lack of a better word I could see the head master Mr. Ssozi seated across from the school assembly. The head boy sitting and the head girl sitting at his left and right respectively with two scouts standing at attention on each end of the table. Sweet! I loved the school assemblies in the amphitheatre; we would get to hear interesting news from around the world. It was at such assemblies that the cleanest boy and girl of the week were announced and they each got a trophy. We also had about 45 minutes of entertainment in music and dance by the class whose turn it would be that week. Hmmmmmm.

 

I continued on to the rest of the classes 3 to7, its funny how the noise and shuffling lessened as I went further up the lane. P3 had the loudest children, P4 was less noisy, P5 was even quieter, P6 and P7, dead silent. I walked up to the door of the one of the P7 classes and I could have sworn it was empty, only to peep in a see a full class of pupils engrossed in study. After taking my tour of the school I walked up to the administration block, said hello to the secretary and asked if I could pop in to see the headmaster. She asked me to wait a short while after which she ushered me in and there was my P6 Class teacher, Mr. Senabulya - he is now the headmaster. He immediately recognized me, I didn’t have to introduce myself, that felt real good. We talked for a while, reminiscing the good old days.