The other day I was rooting around for something else, and came across the manuscript that I wrote 20 years ago about my Peace Corps adventures. I had forgotten about it. I submitted it to some editors back then, and they were… “oh. One of those Peace Corps stories. Well they don’t sell very well. Sorry.” None the less, over the past couple days I reread it, and found it humorous, tongue in cheek, and a pretty enjoyable read. It brought back a story that I want to tell here.
Lomkhuleko and The Fine Coffee Table
The second year that I was at my school in Swaziland, I had been hard lobbying the school committee to let me enroll girls in my woodworking program. Girls were supposed to take Home EC, and woodworking was for boys. By the power of my winning personality, or maybe because they just got tired of hearing about it, they finally gave me permission to offer the course to girls, on the first day of the semester, if I must, but they were figuring that I would have no takers. On the contrary, I found 6 girls who hated Home Ec so much, that they would try woodworking instead. Yippie.
So, I got them going in first year woodworking, successfully more or less, integrating them with the class full of boys, bringing my class to 30 students. I had 10 full sets of woodworking tools that the Ministry of Education had donated to my program, so a class of 30 had to be creative so that everybody could have access to the tools. I spread the girls out among the workbenches in my classroom, and encouraged the boys to be helpful to them. It was a polygamous culture, so in fact, some of the girls were the aunties of some of the boys, and some of the boys were uncles to some of the girls, so the whole familial respect thing made it work pretty well.
Lomkhuleko was the smallest and quietest of the new girls, but she looked like she was the one who most wanted to be there. Our first project was a small table, with simple glued joints, that had 2 crossed boards for the feet, a couple 2×2 sticks for the uprights, and another pair of crossed boards for the top support, on which was glued a small 14″ x 14″ piece of masonite hardboard for the tabletop. Small, simple, easy joints to make. It was maybe 18″ tall. I handed out wood, and had them get to work.
My policy was that if your basic table warranted an 80% or better grade, then you could paint or varnish it. The day came due for turning them in, and there were the 31 tables in a row across the front of my classroom, awaiting me to put a grade to them, so that those who made a nice one, could come in after school and paint or varnish them. There were 31 because I also made any project that the classes made, and I would put mine up in front with everybody elses, and we would discuss them as a class, talking about how some things could have been better in their construction, and which ones were closest to the original plan that they drew. When it came to mine, I would choose a student to be teacher, and I would take their seat in the class, and be the most obnoxious student I could think of how to be, waving my hand around and interrupting, and being generally annoying to the discussion. It was my favorite part of any project. I dismissed the class, and was sitting there after school, deciding what grades to assign the projects.
Lomkhuleko came into the woodshop about half an hour after everybody had gone home, just to check if she had received a grade high enough to be able to paint her table. She liked woodworking class. She had indeed been awarded an 88% on her table, and I told her to come in tomorrow at lunch, and she could paint her table.
So, she came in the next day at lunch, and I dragged out about 10 quarts of different color paint that she could choose from. Just then a student came to the door and told me that the headmaster had requested my presence in the staff room, so I gave Lomkhuleko a paint brush, and a can opener, and told her that I would be right back, and went to the staff room. As it turned out, I spent the lunch hour in the staff room with teachers and the headmaster, and at the end of lunch hour, I rushed back to the shop, so I could put the paints away and prepare for the next class. As I entered the shop, I saw that Lomkhuleko had opened every one of the cans of paint, and I thought, “Oh man, what is she doing?” I approached her workbench to find that she had in fact, taken small pieces of notebook paper and twisted them into small pointy things, and had painted a picture of her homestead on the tabletop, rendered in various colors, and a pretty good representation of how her homestead looked, with several small mud huts, and grass and flowers, a mother, and a couple dogs. It was a work of art. She had even blended some colors on pieces of paper to get the hues she wanted for the various things in her picture. I was amazed. I upgraded her grade to a 100%. I asked her, “Lomkhuleko, have you ever painted a picture before?”
“no sir,” she said, “I have never had colored paints to try to paint with.” She had totally risen to the challenge, and I looked forward to showing it to the rest of the class the next day, to demonstrate the possible.
A couple weeks later, I was sitting in a discussion with some of the school fathers, and overheard Lomkhulekos father telling another father, “Yes, my daughter brought home a fine coffee table that she made in Maseko’s class, and gave to her grandmother. It is very nice. I am happy that Maseko has helped our children by teaching the woodworking class.” He had been one of the most resistant of the school committee to the idea of girls in woodworking.
Girls matter. 