By Pascal Mwandambo
As I had foreseen earlier, the reopening of schools after the long corona break would be fraught with challenges.
Though some of these are being experienced in all learning institutions in the country, some are peculiar to some schools.
To be sincere, some of these are an indictment on the government for failing to lay sound policies that would guide the key sector in the event of a pandemic like the one we are grappling with.
Mavumbi Boys reopened as scheduled but we have experienced as many challenges as anyone would care to enumerate.
On reopening day, I encountered the first problem at the gate where three security officers were taking students and visitors temperatures as well as searching them thoroughly to ensure no student smuggled in any illicit stuff.
What surprised me was that most of the visitors were registering the same temperature of 34.
It was then that I realised that the thermo guns the school had procured were faulty.
I raised the issue during the first staff meeting and Obote promised to launch investigations into the matter.
My colleague Napoleon, who looked like he had spent a week inside a brewery, set the meeting on a collision course when he raised a controversial suggestion which I could have shot down had the principal not insisted it be elaborated upon.
Napoleon had suggested that next term, every student should report to school with two tree seedlings to be planted at intervals around the school compound.
His suggestion was backed by the directive of the Education Cabinet Secretary that school administrations should become innovative and let students learn under trees to enforce the social distance requirement.
“That’s a good suggestion, but the seedlings will take many years to mature and provide shade and in any event, corona will be history by then,” I protested adding “As an institution we should come up with practical solutions and short term measures to address challenges posed by the pandemic.”
Napoleon did not want to lose this debate and insisted that apart from providing shade, the trees would improve the environment.
Napoleon was yet to tell the meeting what had happened to the school fishing farming project after unknown people visited the school fish pond and sprinkled paraffin in the water, killing all the fish.
However, at the moment there were more critical issues that we needed to address.
Chief among them was the failure by the government to supply the extra desks that it had promised.
There was talk about the supplier having made substandard lockers which the school administration was reluctant to use.
“We need to improvise and allow some of students to study in the agriculture workshop and the Maendeleo Hall,” I suggested.
Napoleon looked at me as if I had invaded his turf.
Forget the fact that the workshop is a school facility just like the labs and the dormitories.
Before the meeting adjourned, I reminded the principal about the faulty thermo guns.
“If those faulty gadgets continue reading uniform temperatures for students and visitors, soon very sick people will enter the school undetected and the results will not be pleasant,” I opined.
Napoleon cast a sidelong look at me as if he was the one supplying the gadgets.
