The rains finally fell down
from the heavens. They have brought: flash floods- in city centres, hail, and
all your household problems.
This rainy season has made me wish I learned a lot more
while in high school. Not more theory, but more practical things that have to
do with engineering and wood work.
For the first three years of high school I took a subject
called Introductory Technology. A compulsory subject for the first three years
of this particular institution of education; a subject that when you were
learning it felt utterly pointless and was the bane of your existence. If you
attended this school you will remember the first line you wrote in your baby
blue exercise book, in somewhat illegible handwriting, dated somewhere in
September of a particular year… “Technology is not a new thing in Nigeria”. On
hindsight I think it was supposed to be an integrated subject of the wood work
and engineering. I only remember doing the theory aspect of it, perhaps in the
years that followed things changed and there were more practicals.
Would the practicals have
helped me now? Yes I believe so. I think I would have a rough idea what to do
when confronted with wood work and engineering challenges. I remember learning about woodwork joints and
hinges, but when two cupboard hinges fell off and I had no clue how to fix
them.
I felt short-changed by my world class secondary education.
The best I could do was identify that it was a hinge and purchase a new one in
a hardware store. Then the new hinge sat for a while on the kitchen counter
waiting for someone with practical knowledge of hinge changing to appear and
fix it. When that eventually happened I stood close by and had my Intro Tech
practical a decade too late.
Perhaps it is because I am a girl that it was never considered
necessary to learn such things. Is it assumed that the girl child does not need
to learn or know this, or that a boy will always be there to save the said
damsel from the engineering problems? At high
school number 3 that I attended, a prestigious girls’
school, I do not recall ever hearing anyone mention woodwork or the like. I will
give the school the benefit of the doubt that I attended the school as a
senior, where subjects were optional…. But there was no option for the
technical subjects.
So does that mean because I am a girl I will have to ask
someone to change light bulbs for me or anything else. No. But if you have not
been afforded the opportunity by circumstance or curiosity to learn how to do
these simple engineering things, chances are that you will have to ask someone
to help you out.
I wish I had had a better idea of roofing; the heavy
raindrops fell into our family living room. Plop, plop, plop. Had I known that
all I needed to do was get a ladder, walk across the roof and place the roofing
tiles back into their grooves our ceiling in the family living room would not
have stains of blotches of rain. Circumstance will make me curious next time to
walk across the roof.
The life giving rain makes everything green including the
lawn. It transforms from a well manicured lawn to a meadow of grass and weeds
almost instantaneously, given the right amount of rain and heat. So to keep up
appearances with the other houses on our street, I took the lawn mower and cut
the grass. Every so often, I had to check the lawn mower, as it was “sounding
sick”. My limited knowledge allowed me to fix the minor problems, but I could
not figure out what the sputtering sound was, until it decided not to wake up. So
there I was, unintentionally growing a meadow, housing all sorts of insects and
a dead machine that I could not fix. I parted, begrudgingly, wondering why I
did not know how to change these parts by myself, with a significant amount of
money to have parts replaced.
If only that was the end of my problems, but no. The rain
kept, and keeps falling. There were the light fittings that got wet during a
three day spell of rain, short circuiting the lights of the household. A
problem I was able to identify due to circumstance and education- I must give
due credit to my high school teachers who taught me about this. But alas I
could identify it; however the fixing part was
the dilemma.
Oh, and then did I mention that where I live, when there are
heavy rainstorms and thunder storms our power supply is often cut off, conveniently
disguised as load shedding. Incessant a power cuts damage electrical appliances.
Everyone here knows that. So we do our best to guard our appliances, but our
human capacity cannot always compete with the powers of our electricity supply
companies.
Now imagine this: it is a few days before the holiday season
begins, family has begun arriving form near and far. You have done the
necessary grocery shopping and added the few extras that you would only buy
during the holidays; but there is nowhere to store the perishable fresh food.
The unwanted marriage between erratic power supply and poorly engineered
appliances has birthed still born appliances. Now a miraculous resurrection has
to happen, and this is not the first time. The engineering gurus arrive just in
time. That fixed but as they leave we ponder “a working fridge does not mean
that we will be able to cook the food on a half working stove in the evening with
lights that do not work”. Having pity on us the engineers fix the light- a tiny
little problem that the expensive education did not prepare me for. As for the
stove, eating raw food is back in fashion.
Now that we can partially cook our fresh food under bright
florescent light, we think all is well, until the raindrops start falling, the
thunder bashed, lightning struck. But we have a plan, investing in a stand by
generator. So in the event of the load shedding we have a plan. But I have
spoken too soon. The groceries have been bought and holiday specials of meat
have been purchased. The resurrected fridge is
humming away happily and so is the deep freezer until the power goes. The
generator refuses to switch on.
This one I cannot fix, especially in the dark of the night,
with raindrops falling on my head. Day light comes and the power is still ‘on
holiday’. I do a quick run through. Circumstance and curiosity have not
prepared me to fix the problems caused by other people- highly trained and
educated people in fact- who allow bad fuels to be sold to the unaware public,
thus affecting my generator.
All my education allows me to do in this circumstance is think fast: I realise
that if I do not pick up the phone quickly and find the technicians their
office will close for the holiday season and I
will be stuck. Stuck, with the holiday delicacies that will only be fit
for vultures if the problem is not sorted, I
feel like your household version of Olivia Pope, or Ray Donavan, or Frank
Underwood or any of those dramatic fictional television characters who instantaneously
“handle” or “fix” things.
Difference is that they have assistances and they possibly
went to school like I did, but lucky enough they got better training than I
did. Circumstance this weekend has taught me to jump start a car, clean
corroded car battery terminals and fix in a new battery. My world class high
school education and even the introduction to technology did not prepare me for
this. My number 10 and 12 spanners and Google have done a better job than my
technology classes. So as I type this long reflection I’m wondering about a lot
of things: why I never had more
practical subjects at school; wondering what the current policy makers and
educators are thinking that practical subjects in school are optional as
opposed to compulsory-don’t get me started on that, our local high school
curriculum praised as it might be has several gaping flaws; wondering why the
girl child is not exposed to as much engineering- why do only boys get taught
to do the ‘handy work in majority of households’; wondering why you do not
learn how to fix a car when you learn to drive.
Perhaps my problem is that I do not want to part with money,
having to call someone to fix something. That is not true. I will call them the
gurus in their respective fields, but when I can I want them to respond,
swiftly. I do not enjoy being held hostage waiting for the so called service
professionals to arrive and fix my problems and then after making me wait for what
feels like an eternity demand that I part with such a large sum of hard earned
money. It is a cruel economy, so do not blame me if I want to do it myself and
try to beat the system.
Because these television characters are so good at their
jobs they are always given more to do. They never catch a break. And true to
that in reality it is the same, not a glamourous, and the problems are not
fixed as swiftly. I so sit here, (wondering when the world will read this since
my Wi-Fi is down and I called the service
professionals to come to fix the problem 6 days ago) typing this up as the
rains are falling and I hear the thunder, I shudder and wonder what will happen
next, knowing that my next unplanned engineering learning curve will be quite
steep as I “handle” and “fix” things.
And now it is 3 weeks later and the service providers have
fixed my Wi-Fi and I can post this up. I have
expressed my rage. It has not changed much. So is it narcissistic to smile when
I see that an acclaimed author, one that I admire, living on the other side of
Africa, also suffers from the problem of poor service providers. Read about her
troubles in a piece entitled, Lights
out Nigeria.
