Chamber of Horrors

Exams at St. Joseph’s Convent School in Zanzibar were not a particular blessing to those students like me, whose long term and short term memory were somehow delinquent at birth.  Whatever subject it was, memory (rote learning) played a very important role in determining whether you were an A student or a C student or just to be committed to an asylum. Of course, during the years that I went to School, there was little recognition about individual differences and students were judged essentially, not on their thinking skills (this was reserved for the teachers who somehow rarely used them) but on how much students could remember, regurgitate during an exam and spit it out with wild abandon. Consequently, my best performance at School was abysmally mediocre and this had a corrosive effect on my self effacing sense of self worth.  I was convinced, however, that I was a genius but for a malfunction in my genes.  But then, I was ahead of my time.

What made this even more distressing is an incident that took place during one of the exams. This was at a time when I was just beginning to grow hair on my face and other sensitive places. I was sitting in front of a fellow student called Felix (Bon-Bon) Rodrigues; wracking my brains to get at the answers to questions that somehow seemed as though they were set on another planet.  I did everything including shaking my head from side to side hoping that my brains would mysteriously metamorphosize and bring into focus the answer to those questions, when Sr. Stefana approached my desk, bent over and picked up a small piece of paper just under my feet.  At this stage I thought nothing of it and put it down to Sr. Stefana’s fetish for scraps of paper and good house keeping.  No sooner had the exam come to an end and our answer sheets were collected, Sr. Stefana approached me very seriously and asked that I remain in class after the other students had left.  The first question that a student asks himself when this happens is “What did I do now?” Surely Sr. Stefana was not looking out for a date!!!!Chuckle! chuckle!

Sr. Stefana summoned me to her desk and threw at me unceremoniously the piece of paper that she had picked up from under my feet earlier on and demanded whether I had written it.  The note simply read: “Please search a girl for him!”  The unfortunate thing was that it was convincingly in my handwriting.  Did I write it when I shook my head from side to side and developed temporary amnesia?!  My immediate response to Sr. Stefana was that I was not the author of the note.

Sr. Stefana would not be convinced.

“Now, you are telling me a lie!” she accused me in her thick Anglo-Germanic accent.

“Sister, I swear before God that I did not write that,” I defended myself.

“Well,” she said very pointedly, “Go down into that room, and wait for me.”

The room in question was the one you walked down six steps (and you hoped you broke your neck while in the process) for it earned the name “Chamber of Horrors.”

Now I knew that I was in for it. I was traumatized by what was about to happen to me and could identify with those innocent victims on death row.

Sr. Stefana made me lie on the rough floor face down, after determining there were no witnesses and applied the cane (a thick bamboo stick) until my behind began throbbing like my heart. I was in excruciating pain. After Sr. Stefana was out of breath (it was apparently her exercise for the day) I was asked to disappear and never lie again.  It took me close to a week to get over the indignity and the pain inflicted on my smarting rear end but that was not the most hurtful part.   At that age, it was not difficult to hate Sr. Stefana who was one nun that I seriously thought was trained by the Gestapo.  After all, this incident took place during the Second World War, and we were particularly aware about German atrocities.  Sr. Stefana was a German nun who should have served somewhere in a concentration camp without her habit.  She already had a bad one I thought.

Many years later, Felix (Bon-Bon) a classmate, confessed to me that he was the villain and the author of the note.  It is a pity that with the passage of time one looks back at such experiences with a sense of hesitant forgiveness and one can even laugh at it perhaps with some derision.  I do know, however, that if this confession was made earlier, Felix would have had a serious concussion which would have atoned for the suffering that he put me through.

The irony of the matter is that the note contained nothing that was offensive, uncatholic, or repugnant in any way but for the fact that our nuns really believed that though we were in a co-ed school, it was irreligious for Catholic boys to have anything to do with Catholic girls. The two species had to be kept apart at all costs. The whole setup of the School was such that girls were separated from boys in the seating arrangement in the classroom. The two winding iron staircases leading to the classrooms on the first floor were to be used one for girls and the other for boys. I guess there was always a temptation that boys would unhesitatingly look up the skirts of the girls.  The assembly of boys and girls before classes in the morning were also segregated.  Boys and girls marched in single file separately to their respective classes.  The boys also had their own playground and so did the girls.  Girls were discouraged from having conversations with boys.  I guess that this imposed social apartheid was meant to sublimate the growing sexual appetites of the sexes as they slid into adolescence. However, adolescence has its own logic.

How misled were our nuns at St. Joseph’s Convent School in Zanzibar. Little did they realize that one can always use ones eyes (since there was a restriction on all other faculties) to hold a conversation.  Thank Heavens the nuns did not know this. The girls sure knew the language, and the boys were multi-lingual experts at it. No wonder most of the students of St. Joseph’s Convent School became very innovative in their careers as they went to different parts of the world to seek their fortunes.

Mother Superior had a cane that was sewn into her skirt like a scabbard that holds a sword.  Each morning she made her rounds of the classrooms, read out the names of offending students who were lined up in front of the class. Then, like one of the musketeers, she pulled out her cane from her skirt, and asked each student in turn to stretch out their palms so that her cane could do its trick.  Sometimes she missed the palm when the student pulled it away and hit her own leg but the onlookers dare not laugh although they were all in smiles and enjoying the show richly.

All in all, most of us got an “education” at St. Joesph’s Convent School.  Many merely got their “Schooling” to which there was attached a grade. We now recognize that there is a distinct difference between these two concepts.

Most of us also look upon the sisters at St. Joseph’s Convent School as dedicated to their jobs. 

Some of us try to convince ourselves that they only did what judicious parents were required to do at the time and to follow the edict which was “spare the rod and spoil the child.”  

Haven’t we come a long way today??!!!!