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| Our Welcoming Entrance - Vestibule |
Perched on a large rock near the entrance to a construction site, illuminated only by the small flashlight in my hand, I listened to the voices pass by in the dark as people went on about their evening business.
As unlikely as it may seem, I was in the process of administering a University Entrance Exam, albeit, what was rapidly turning into the most ghetto attempt at professionalism ever conceived. Zooming out for some context on my nighttime perch brings into view the large building behind me, well on its way to becoming one of the nicer buildings along one of the more central and developed streets of Hargeisa, but currently in a state of sorrow half-completion. A windowless concrete hulk, the bare walls, staircases submerged in cement dust, and piles of rubble surrounding the entrance bespoke a construction project that, like much else in Somaliland, was running significantly behind schedule.
All this was fine and good, save the minor detail that Ilya, our Comrade-cum-University Administrator in Chief, had scheduled the Entrance Examination for our Adult English Program to be THAT night, at THAT exact location. It was to be given to prospective students who, having braved the unexpected turn-off down a dirt road and entered the grounds of the eerie construction site, would make their way up the debris strewn stairwell to a classroom on the second floor, distinguished primarily by the fact that some tiles had been put in across the floor, which had also been apologetically swept. It speaks volumes about the adaptability and general tolerance for ineptness that we expected students to navigate this obstacle course just to sit for our exam, and it might have gone off without a hitch, if it weren’t for one minor construction detail that absolutely HAD to have been completed by this point in time… Indeed, prospective students could locate the towering building shell, step through the rusty wire and bent nails on the stairway, and find the one classroom with the swept floor and the desks we had trucked from our secondary school, EXCEPT for the minor detail that the exam was slated to begin after dark, and we had no lights.
“The wiring was supposed to be completed last week!”, “This is such a poor reflection of our program, we should postpone the exam!” were Ilya’s initial pronouncements. With no lights to illuminate even the bare floor or rubble filled stairs of our semi-completed locale, cancelling the exam, changing its location, or just giving the whole enterprise up would have been logical actions. Did we do any of these things? Of course not, otherwise how would I have ended up sitting on a large rock at the construction site entrance, ushering shadowy figures across the road to come forward, “weren’t they here for the Adult English Exam?”
Our “solution” was to leave Abaarso for the exam 30 minutes early, stop by the only electronics shop in the market minutes before it closed, and negotiate for four electric lanterns, which we would use to provide safety, reassurance, adequate testing conditions, and all the comforts of home for the intrepid test takers who would see our lantern, shining in the empty rectangle where a window would eventually be, as a beacon to everything that our program stood for: Preparedness, Professionalism, … Enlightenment?
My job was first to strategically establish key areas of illumination so as to minimize our casualty toll, placing one lantern in the hallway, one at the turn in the stairwell, and two in the classroom where the students would pleasantly work their way through their test papers, enjoying the cool breeze through the window frame and the soft blare of the two adjacent mosques calling out their evening time prayers. Secondly, I would establish myself as the docent to this ghoulish edifice of education and wait patiently on the large rock outside the entrance for any souls brave enough to wander near, ready to guide them with my single beam through the horror movie set that would be their testing locale.
As I waited there patiently and listened to the voices float by in the deep evening gloom, I was reminded of another uneven dirt road, the one that ran, or often flowed, past our house in Buea, Cameroon. There, as well as here, strangers passed in a seemingly endless procession, heading who knows where but always willing to offer a word of greeting, or nod hello to the strange white figure seated, staring out at them. Though these two dirt roads existed in manifestly different contexts, one ambling off into the jungle under sagging power lines and constantly pawed by chickens, the other mere blocks from the Ministries of Finance, Agriculture, Livestock and Somaliland’s Parliament, they held for me a comforting similarity. Both were immune to the hustle and bustle that might be expected to comprise a country’s fourth largest city, or a semi-country’s capital. Both were of soil, uneven, reshaped by the rains and immodestly slippery when wet, the kind of roads that seemed more at home in a quiet countryside. But for the many feet that morning and evening molded them into something new. But for the cars, carts, and trucks that tried to put them straight and only ended up mired in their muddy grip. These were not roads that resisted change, no, they merely bent and sunk, tilted and turned to each new force that rode them. These roads were indifferent to whether the woman whose car got stuck every time it drizzled and repaid our assistance with fresh pineapples left on the front porch needed to be somewhere, or would rather have kept her pineapples. And they were indifferent to our English exam, advertised by a pale figure, perched atop a large rock, outside a creepy construction site.
Eventually several examinees arrived, were ushered to a chorus of excuses and apologies up the debris strewn staircases, and successfully sat for the exam. One young lady even had two of her friends accompany her as far as the exam room door before explaining that they had only come to reassure her and would wait outside. It would be hard to say I blame her; chances are I wouldn’t have set foot in a strange building that matched ours’ description if I had the 101st Airborne Division following behind me. But TIA (This Is Africa), and the students who came were determined to enroll in our course, to better their English, to fulfill all the promises that such a language offered. But as the tiny lanterns illuminated the test takers, struggling through the grammar exercises before them, I felt that they shouldn’t be judged by this building, by this situation, by the half-finished wreck around them or the desire to speak a language not their own that drove them to such a place. Rather, I’d like to think of the voices outside, the silhouettes moving in the darkness, and the road they traveled on.
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| Our "Ambiently" Lit Exam Room |
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| The View Out On Downtown Hargeisa from the Unfinished Roof |
