The Beautiful Tree (7 page)

At a narrow bridge across the dark canal, our guides negotiated with a young man in a canoe. And after some deliberations, we climbed down into it; the water looked even less inviting the closer we were to it. We glided down a narrow canal between the wood shacks and out into a wider waterway, a young boy effortlessly punting us. In the wider canal, women paddled by in their canoes full of produce—tomatoes and rape, spinach and yams, dried crayfish and larger fish. One canoe contained only water buckets; another had packets of cookies and soft drinks. A pied kingfisher flew by and balanced on a pole, looking for its prey in the murky waters. We glided past churches on stilts and stores on stilts, a thatched-roof building with “restaurant and bar” proudly displayed, but no schools. Finally, we maneuvered expertly down into another narrow canal—where were these boys taking me? Of course I was a bit nervous; I self-consciously felt my wallet in my trouser pocket, bulging with a month’s supply of dollars, there being no ATMs in Lagos (somehow I had thought it would be safer here than in the budget hotel); I’d better be a bit careful. I gingerly climbed out of the canoe and up onto the wood platform, where a dozen or so children were sitting, all now giggling at me in their midst. An old man, naked apart from tiny brown shorts, swatted at the children with a long cane, and they darted away, squealing with a mixture of pain and delight, only to return again moments later to crowd around me. I asked them their names. One tiny girl in a brilliantly clean pink dress—time and time again, I was brought to wonder how people’s clothes could be kept so clean with so much filth around—told me her name was Sandra. She smiled beautifully and held on to me: “So where do you go to school?” “KPS,” she said, and all around chanted, “KPS.” What does that stand for? She cried out, “Kennedy Private School”—or at least that’s what I thought I heard. I had found my first private school in the shantytown of Makoko. And suddenly it seemed that the teenage boys knew exactly where they were taking me. Would Sandra show me her school?

Down the gangplanks again, I moved more confidently now, above the black water swirling with mysterious life forms, the children accompanying me, holding my hand, telling me to be careful as I walk over plank sections that were rotten or falling apart. And there it was: a pink plastered building, with faded pictures of children’s toys and animals, and the name of the school, not “Kennedy” but “Ken Ade” Private School emblazoned across the top of the wall.

It was closed for the national holiday, and the proprietor was officiating at a function some distance away; but that didn’t ruin my excitement. One of the fishermen who had come with me had the proprietor’s cell phone number; it was out of range at the moment, but this could be the way to find him later. After a while, my guides wanted to return, feeling uneasy there; and although everyone seemed friendly enough, I followed them back along Apollo Street, reluctantly, but satisfied that I had found my first private school in Makoko.

The proprietor of Ken Ade Private School, Mr. Bawo Sabo Elieu Ayeseminikan (“Call me BSE,” he told me when I eventually got through on the phone, which is somehow easier to remember) met me at the end of the muddy track when I returned a few days later, by the speed bump where the paved road ends. There was no holiday this time, but a national strike, with protests against a gasoline price hike promised around the country. At the hotel, the atmosphere at breakfast had been like a summer camp: all the workers had stayed away, partly in fear of intimidation; one besuited manager made scrambled eggs, and there were instant coffee, tea bags, and an urn of hot water so we could make our own beverages. I offered to do the dishes to show my solidarity with the management. No one must leave the hotel, I was told. It was likely to be dangerous across the city.

But I was anxious to get back to Makoko. On the phone, BSE told me that there should be no problem getting around in Makoko that day—he dismissed my fears and emboldened me. Finding a car that was willing to take me there was another matter, but eventually one driver agreed, and it was a dream driving swiftly through the uncharacteristically empty streets; he too clearly wanted to leave me at the public school—gates firmly locked shut on this day of strikes—on the outskirts of Makoko when it dawned on him where I wanted to go.

I followed BSE to his school. Inside the pink building, it was dark and very hot. Three classrooms were cordoned off with wooden partitions, while a fourth classroom was in a separate room behind; children sat at wood desks, while young teachers energetically taught. There was no strike in this or, it turned out, any of the other private schools in Makoko. We sat in his tiny office, while outside someone rigged up a generator and the fan began to whir. I wasn’t sure if I’d rather have had the sultry heat or the deafening noise. Children crowded around the office: “Do you want to see the white man?” joked BSE. Some of the braver ones touched my hair; others shook my hand. He pointed out Sandra in one of the classrooms, and she hid her face, beaming shyly as I greeted her, the girl who had led me to this school.

BSE had three sites for Ken Ade Private School: the youngest children were housed in his church hall a few hundred yards up the road, learning on wood benches in front of blackboards; the middle children were in the pink building—actually the finest building in all of Makoko. And his eldest pupils were in a nearby building made of planks nailed to posts that supported a tin roof. (This building later burned down in the Great Fire of Makoko on December 6, 2004. Everyone you meet will give you the precise date, indeed precise dates are given for most key events.) BSE took me to see a site he had bought, so that he didn’t have to be victim to landlords anymore and could invest in a school that he knew would always be his. He wanted to move one of his three schools to this site, and even build a junior secondary school. We walked down filthy, narrow alleyways, through water and mud, stepping delicately on the rocks and sodden sandbags that were placed there. In the open sewer were tiny fishes. The new site was partially flooded, but large enough for his dream school, with decrepit tin shacks on one side (I was surprised to see that a family lived in them) and beautiful purple flowers growing in the mud. We passed women smoking tiny crayfish, crammed on a thin mesh over a smoldering fire; one gathered handfuls and offered them to me to taste; I knew I shouldn’t—for health reasons—but knew I should—to keep face with my new host. I chewed gingerly on one; it tasted surprisingly sweet; she stuffed the remainder into a plastic bag for me to take.

BSE had himself set up the school on April 16, 1990. He had started, like many, in a very small way, with a few children, with parents paying daily fees when they could afford to do so. Now he has about 200 children, from nursery school to sixth grade. The fees are about 2,200 naira ($17) per term, or about $4 per month, but 25 children attend for free. “If a child is orphaned, what can I do? I can’t send her away,” he tells me. His motives for setting up the school seemed to be a mixture of philanthropy and commerce—yes, he needed work and saw that there was demand for private schooling on the part of parents disillusioned with the state schools. But his heart also went out to the children in his community and from his church—how could he help them better themselves? There were the public schools at the end of the road, three schools on the same site—we both chuckled at this. How could anyone but a bureaucrat think of that? They weren’t too far away, only about a kilometer from where he established his school, but even so, the distance may have been a problem for some of the parents. They particularly didn’t want their girls going down those crowded streets where abductors might lurk. But mainly it was the educational standards in the public school that made parents want an alternative. When they encouraged BSE to set up the school nearly 15 years earlier, parents knew that the teachers were frequently on strike—in fairness to the teachers, protesting about nonpayment of their salaries.

I asked if I could meet some parents and visit some in their homes on stilts. The parents from the community were all poor—the men usually fished; the women traded in fish or sold other goods along the main streets. Their maximum earnings might amount to about $50 per month, but many were on lower incomes. Families were complicated here: Sandra lived with her mother, who was the second wife of the fisherman father of another child in the school, Godwin. Meanwhile, his mother lived a few doors down with her son James. In their home, Sandra told me that she really enjoyed reading. How many books did she have at home? I asked, looking around the crowded living room. She had her English reader, she told me, then butted in the conversation later: “Oh, and my agricultural science book.” James said he had “at least four” books at home.

The parents told me without hesitation that there was no question of where they sent their children if they could afford it—to private school. Some had one or two of their children in the private school and one or two others in the public school—and they knew well, they told me, how differently children were treated in each. One woman said, “We see how children’s books never get touched in the public school.” One handsome young father, reading Shakespeare when we approached him outside his home on stilts, told me that in the private school, “the teachers are dependable.” Another man ventured: “We pass the public school many days and see the children outside all of the time, doing nothing. But in the private schools, we see them everyday working hard.”

I spent a lot of time observing the classes, in BSE’s school and in every other private school I visited, unannounced. With the occasional exception, the teachers were teaching when I visited—in the rare case when a teacher was off sick, the principal had given the children work and was keeping an eye on their progress. Lucky was a typical teacher. He was 23, had just completed his high school diploma, and wanted to go to college to study economics. He couldn’t afford to do that, so he continued living where he was brought up in Makoko and taught. He told me that he felt privileged to be a teacher: “When I am teaching, I am also learning. When I’m teaching children that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the other two sides, I have to think deeply: why is that the case? And I find I learn all sorts of new things for myself.” He was clearly enthusiastic about teaching and engaged all the children with him. His commitment and passion made him exactly the sort of teacher you would want for yourself or your own children. Or there was Remy, a bold, vivacious young woman, who commanded attention from all her children. She said that she enjoyed teaching so much in the private school because the class sizes were so small and she could give all the children individual attention. She loved being with children, she said.

Ken Ade Private School was one of the 26 private schools, BSE told me, in Makoko that were registered with the federation, the Association of Formidable Educational Development. BSE was its Makoko chapter coordinator. But there were also more schools that were “not registered,” he told me—that is, it transpired, not registered
with the association:
government registration seemed irrelevant. BSE said that they wanted to create a national federation, although now it was only active in Lagos State. It was only for the low-fee private schools, like the ones in Makoko, and others that existed all over Lagos State, including the rural areas. Why was it formed? In 2000, he told me, there was a two-pronged attack to close down private schools like his. On one front was the posh private school association, the Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, which represented schools charging anything from 10 to 100 times what his school charged. APPS complained to the government about the low quality in schools like his, which prompted the government to move to close down the low-fee private schools. “We are still fighting that battle now,” he said. “We are trying to give the people who are not so rich the privilege of having some decent education.” With the association, they fought the closure, and with the change of government they were neglected for a bit. But then a few months earlier, the government of Lagos again issued an edict saying that they must be closed down. They were fighting it and had received a six-month stay of execution. Meanwhile, the association wrote to all the kings—as the local chiefs are called—in Lagos State telling them about the government’s threat, saying 600,000 children would be pushed out of school and thousands of staff laid off if the government proceeded. “When you have a headache,” said BSE, “the solution is not to cut off the head! If government has a problem with us, then we can work together to help us improve, not cut us off completely!” But there was no self-pity. “We find it impossible to meet all their regulations; we can’t possibly afford them all.” As we walked around the shantytown, he related that he had written to the Lagos education department saying that instead of hassling the private schools, why didn’t it help them with a revolving loan fund? He had received, he said, no reply.