by Peter Boehm
I decided to wait quietly for the next boy. I remember that, at that moment, I was so enthusiastic about my idea that I congratulated myself. But why? These young traders really aren’t anything special. You get them in every town in Africa.
The next boy was carrying a wooden tray with paper handkerchiefs. I spoke to him. But I soon wished that I hadn’t.
His name was Toussaint Mbaitobam and he was twelve years old. He’d been selling handkerchiefs in the bars of Moursal in the evenings for three years. “I use the money to buy pens and school books”, he explained, and wrote eagerly in the air with his finger. His mother lived in Cameroon – though admittedly this was just across the Chari River from N’Djamena – and he seemed to speak French.
“Yes, of course”, he said without hesitating. “I go now?” I would still have had time to let him go. But I said no, wait a moment, and I explained to him that I’d like to know more about him because I was a journalist and wanted to write about him.
I suggested that I might accompany him as he went about his work the following evening. But in order to do this, we first had to ask his father. His mother wasn’t in N’Djamena, and he was only twelve years old after all. So we needed his father’s permission.
He sat beside me and seemed unable to believe his luck. He rolled his eyes, his eyelids fluttered, and an expression of celestial happiness shone from his round face. He reminded me of an old maid, who was finally being courted after decades of waiting. That should have already made me suspicious. Why did the prospect of being written about bring him such euphoria?
We agreed to meet the following evening. He checked three times that we were talking about the same meeting point. Despite this, he was now reluctant to let me out of his sight. I told him a couple of times that he could go, and I’d see him the next day. But he seemed uncertain about whether it was sensible to let his stroke of luck out of his sight, just as soon as he’d found it.
But the following evening he turned up half an hour late. He was wearing the same pink t-shirt with a picture of Beethoven, grey trousers, and flip-flops on his bare feet. At 5 feet 7, he was far too tall for his twelve years, a plump child who had shot up in height, and whose mind hadn’t kept pace with his expanding body.
Toussaint now no longer spoke any French either. Just enough to explain that he sold paper handkerchiefs until five in the morning in order to pay his school fees.
Really until five? “Well, sometimes it’s only until three”, he said, patronisingly.
But when I asked him other questions he didn’t understand me – or didn’t want to – briefly stammered something, and left it at that. Ok, so I should have brought a translator along if I’d wanted to interview Toussaint. That would make everything harder, but not impossible, so we set off for a nearby Catholic church, where his father worked as a night watchman.
We stumbled slowly through the warm evening. Out of the blue, Toussaint asked me, “So when will we leave?” When he wanted to, he could certainly make himself understood, but he didn’t always want to.
Leave? I was surprised. Where were we going?
“Well, you’re taking me to Germany with you, aren’t you?”
That was a bolt out of the blue. Where had he got that idea from? It had to be a misunderstanding. The fact that Toussaint spoke broken French only when he wanted to was already starting to get on my nerves. But it had to be because of his poor French that he’d misunderstood me.
So I now explained to him, slowly but clearly, that I wasn’t going to be taking him anywhere.
To which he triumphantly replied, “But why are we going to my father then?!” – as though it must have been my mistake.
Young man, because you’re just twelve, I told him, and because I need to ask your father for permission before I can write about you.
His father, incidentally, agreed. And I thought that we’d cleared up the misunderstandings. Now Toussaint wouldn’t foster any other false hopes.
The following morning I met him at his home, in order to accompany him to school. The house, where he lived with his family, looked no worse than the others I’d seen in Moursal. There was no electricity or running water. There was the usual clay-walled latrine at the entrance gate, where you could also douse yourself with cold water and have a shower, and there were five brick huts around the sandy courtyard.
Toussaint was still sound asleep in one of these, lying on a thin raffia mat on the compacted clay floor. He got up, quickly rubbed his eyes, put on a pale brown T-shirt over Beethoven, and was ready for school.
His nine-year-old sister came with us. Because, at the time, his mother hadn’t had enough money for school fees, Toussaint had started school three years late, and was now in Year 3, with his sister. On the way to school, the little girl grabbed my hand, huddled close to me and said, “I want to come with you to Germany too.”
Grrrr! I turned to Toussaint – after all, he was the only one who could have told her this nonsense – and told him, really angrily this time, that I wouldn’t be taking anyone to Germany. I don’t want to hear anything more about it. Have I made myself clear?
Yes, Toussaint said. But he was also completely unmoved by my anger. He remained calm. He hadn’t done anything wrong. So who had? Had I, maybe?
Toussaint’s school was called “School of Good Prospects”. It was a large primary school, built in the 1970s, with four low buildings grouped around a sandy courtyard. There were three classrooms in each.
Besides Toussaint, there were four other older boys in Year 3. His friend Ferdinand, for instance, who sold counterfeit medicines from East Asia at the market in Moursal in the afternoons; and a second boy, who was busy chasing the younger pupils out of the classroom with a long, thick stick.
He was only eleven, but already quite the little policeman. He waved his rod theatrically in the air, performed a dance around the children with dramatic movements really, just hit them softly, drove them in front of him more like cattle, and stood in the doorway, legs astride, until the younger ones were lined up outside the classroom in three crooked rows.
What on earth is he doing? I asked, certain that the 11-year-old was ordering around his younger classmates because the teacher wasn’t there to reprimand him.
He was surprised, looked briefly uncertain, paused. But the other children said, as though it were obvious, that the teacher had made him responsible for ensuring discipline in the class – and he continued.
As I was standing by the school gate during the first break, a girl suddenly came charging up. “Brawl, brawl!” she called out, excitedly. So I followed a crowd of children, running towards a small meadow behind the playground wall.
There, two older boys were performing some kind of war dance. One of them had a stick, the other was holding a machete. They were spinning these wildly in the air, and looked as though they were about to hack their audience to pieces.
When one of the boys saw me among the spectators, he grabbed the machete from the other child’s hand and pummelled the ground and a tree even more wildly. I fled, before anyone could get hurt.
Toussaint’s classroom had tables and benches for all the children, and there was a blackboard on the front wall. In the Year 1 classroom just next door, however, there was no furniture, no blackboard, nothing at all apart from the bare room. There, the pupils sat on the floor to learn.
Moursal, however, wasn’t a poor area. With its many trees and gardens, the district looked rather like some European allotments, perhaps lacking in flowers or greenery. The streets were much dirtier too, and as there was no sewage system or drains, and waste water stood around in the ditches at the roadside, it smelt pretty horrendous.
Despite this, it wasn’t a slum – at least, not for Chad. Moursal was home mainly to low and middle-ranking civil servants, and was still known as the “intellectuals’ district”, in reference to the time when François Tombalbaye was President of Chad in the 1970s, and when the majority of government employees were stil
l recruited from the Sara people – the largest ethnic group in the south. So the fact that Moursal was how it was, just showed how far Chad’s citizens had fallen after decades of civil war, what final stages the country was in.
Toussaint’s teacher was in her mid-thirties, and slightly chubby. She looked homely in her dark skirt and striped blouse. Her hair was gathered in a tight bun on the top of her head.
She came hurrying across the yard shortly after 8am, with a stack of papers under her arm, and a long belt in her hand. She then called the pupils to attention, and marched them into the classroom in step, to her command.
She had 104 pupils in her class and today, on the last day of the second term, over 90 of them were squashed onto the benches.
The teacher sat down at her desk, filled in reports and asked the children to read aloud from a French book. All the pupils were from the south. They learn to read and write French there, whereas in the north they learn Arabic.
Before they start school, however, children in Chad only very rarely speak French. This means they have to learn to read and write in a foreign language, and that was how they read in Toussaint’s class too. Even the few who volunteered had to guess at the longer words.
And they didn’t understand what they were reading either. When the teacher gave them some comprehension questions on the short text at the end of the lesson, the children could only answer two or three of them. If any of the children actually gave an answer, then they invariably gave the wrong one.
The teacher called Toussaint to the front, probably because I was there. The text had already been read aloud three times, but he mumbled it to himself again, so quietly that he could have been saying anything, and so hesitantly that you could hardly call it reading.
The teacher became angry when she noticed that he didn’t have an exercise book on the bench in front of him. He’d left it at home, he said. He bought one at break time, and borrowed a pen. But he still didn’t write anything down.
Then, as I was interviewing him at home, it became clear that he had evidently never owned a school book. I’d asked him to get one and show it to me. Initially, he claimed he couldn’t find one. Then he admitted that he didn’t have any. And he’d never done any homework during his short school career either.
Toussaint’s teacher was completely overwhelmed with her huge class. While she was working with one pupil, the others would be pulling up the girls’ skirts, turning around and talking to children sitting behind them, and generally being very sociable. The noise level in the classroom was one which would have driven me mad after just five minutes.
Three times, the teacher stormed into the midst of the class, brandishing her belt, and rather half-heartedly flogged a child. “You’re being too loud,” she stammered, as justification, as though she didn’t quite believe her reasoning herself – the whole class had been chatting after all. And as soon as she was back at her desk, the children were being just as noisy as before.
During the lesson, none of the pupils wrote anything down, or even noted down vocabulary. After the lesson, the teacher collected in the tattered French books. They were kept at school. So in the next term, we can assume, the children will learn just as effectively and understand just as much as they have in this one.
And, as is so often the case in African schools, they’ll simply be dragged along further – even though they haven’t properly understood what they’ve been taught. But that wasn’t important either. The important thing was that the children should go to school because that’s the done thing today. It didn’t matter whether they gained anything from it. It was a case of pretending, of mimicry. After all, the real world has institutions like schools, so Africa has to have them too.
That’s why you so often notice in Africa, when you look more closely, that things designated as authorities, parties, churches or schools could actually contain just anything – only not what their name implies. Ah well, what can you do! They have to exist. And if you can’t fill the institutions, then you just enact them as best you can.
Toussaint didn’t pass the term. When he saw his report, he just said “Damn!”, as though he were surprised, and then we set off home. Soon, however, his thoughts were back on more interesting things.
“So you’ll take Ferdinand to Germany with you?” he said, his face again sporting a grin. With this, he once again wrong-footed me.
I now had no idea what I could do with him. A twelve-year-old child who caught me on the wrong foot again and again, and all I could do was stand my ground as best I could.
No – what makes you think that?! I said, as though I had no idea what he was talking about.
But I knew exactly what he was referring to. After the first lesson I’d popped outside briefly to get some fresh air. The wind had already blown so much sand from the playground into the classroom, and the air inside was so stuffy that I couldn’t bear it any longer.
Toussaint’s friend Ferdinand had come after me. He’d used his chance, when I was alone and couldn’t show him up in front of his classmates. He was fifteen. His left eye was cloudy, and he had a squint in his right one. So I felt sorry for him. But he now asked me, seriously, how I was and then, shyly, as though he wanted to thank me, “Ah, so you’ll take me with you to Germany.”
That was rather too much for me. I made my usual protestations that I wouldn’t be taking anyone with me. But he was persistent. “But you’ll take me!” Then I fled back to the classroom.
Toussaint now made out that he’d misunderstood me. “But you’ll take me, won’t you”, he said, as though, if I let something slip out, I’d have to take him with me. I’d promised, after all!
NO, young man, you’re not going anywhere!
“But Ferdinand said that you’re taking him with you.”
By now, I really wanted to know why these children so fervently believed that I’d take them to Germany. There had to be something behind this.
After school, we went to Toussaint’s house. He lived with his mother. It only later became clear why she didn’t live in Cameroon, as he had claimed.
His mother lived in a hut with Toussaint and his younger sister. Toussaint’s older brothers, his cousin Valentin and a family, unrelated to them, lived in the other huts. They all paid rent to Toussaint’s mother. Toussaint’s father slept in the grounds of the church where he worked.
After a while, his mother returned home from the market, with a huge bundle of firewood on her head. She sold vegetables and fish there. Toussaint had inherited his physical size from her. She was over 6 feet tall, and very slim. She had a hard, lined face, wore a brightly coloured shawl thrown around her body, and was already over fifty.
Toussaint’s 19-year-old cousin, Valentin, who was studying for his A-Levels, volunteered to translate. I first asked Toussaint about school, and then about his work. At the weekends, he travelled to Kousséri, the border town in Cameroon, where he bought two or three large packs of paper handkerchiefs, which he opened before throwing away the packaging and smuggling the individual packets across the border on his tray and selling them in Moursal.
The last question on my list was how he had come up with the idea that I’d take him to Germany with me. By now his mother was sitting with us. I hadn’t thought about the fact that she’d be able to listen in, via Valentin’s translation. The thought didn’t strike me until Valentin had already begun to translate my question, with a smirk.
Then I immediately felt sorry for Toussaint’s mother.
“What? Toussaint asked whether he can go to Germany with you?” she asked, indignantly. Shame and disappointment at her son’s ingratitude was written all over her face. “I love this child. Haven’t I done everything for him? I’ve slaved away to pay his school fees, and then this!” Valentin translated.
This time, Toussaint showed some reaction too. He sat there, shamefacedly, and rolled his eyes again, so you could see the whites at the edges. He was embarrassed too, this time. But only very briefly. He soon re
covered. It clearly wasn't the first time that he'd received bad news.
Toussaint then told me the following story – when he was nine years old, a Frenchman had spoken to him and one of his friends. He’d asked them why they didn’t go to school, instead of selling their wares at night. At the time, both of them were working outside the Galaxy Bar, as Toussaint still did today. It’s a Ndombolo disco in Moursal, where Toussaint does his best business of the evening. When the couples have danced themselves into a sweat, they often buy paper handkerchiefs from him, to wipe the sweat from their brows.
Toussaint’s friend had told the Frenchman that he’d already been sent home from the School of Good Prospects with a beating, because his parents hadn’t paid his school fees. At this, the Frenchman took pity on the child and took him to France with him.
At first sight, Toussaint’s story may sound implausible, but I don’t think he had made it up. It struck me as believable. Essentially, everything about it was right. It at least explained why Toussaint had wanted to make me believe that he sold paper handkerchiefs until five – ahem – three in the morning, even though the Galaxy Bar closed at midnight.
And at the School of Good Prospects, there really had been a couple of children standing outside each classroom in the morning, who would occasionally push the window shutters aside and tentatively listen in, but who didn’t come in. The teacher said that their parents hadn’t paid the school fees. And even Toussaint’s younger sister only received her term’s report once their mother had paid her fees.
And the unthinking Frenchman who had decided, on the spur of the moment, to take a child to France with him, like a stray dog you’ve fallen in love with on holiday at the beach, didn’t strike me as all that unfamiliar either. In Nairobi, I’ve often enough encountered Europeans who reacted like this to what they’ve seen in Africa.