Cordella Lewis This time of year is special for me. July is not only a month when every campus is on break, but one of travel and renewal, one in which to exhale and get ready to face September. In my case, it is a month of family birthdays, for me, my brother, my younger daughter, my son-in-law and his daughter. This July, I find myself seated in an attic-like room with sloping roofs. It is called a salle de jeux and it looks out the window at a steep line of hills standing somehow stiffly at ease as they continue to protect Switzerland's well-known Lake Geneva.
I am anticipating the August 1 celebration by members of the Jamaica Association in Switzerland, led by Paul Whylie through the United Nations mission to the island, as well as fêtês de Genéve which annually pulls a huge international following, both to be staged lakeside. I am also catching up with The Sunday Gleaner dated 15-07-07, which I brought along so that my older daughter can realign with homeland vibes related more perhaps to the literary arts than political posturings. Thus this article from 'a room with aview', about life on campus at Mona.
When I was on campus at the ripe old age of 31, it was no unheard of for a student to wish to lie 'in a mouldy grave' looking up through a tombstone at the sky, given the vicissitudes of life away from the security of home. Where there was an 'unseen' question on previous test papers for which no one prepared you, there were now unseen forces there to destabilise your dream of success.
Yet, some days your gaze would be involuntarily drawn up to the soothing morning mist that temporarily swathed the Jack's Hill skyline - only to find that, before that day ended, it might be unceremoniously replaced by smothering smoke. You could not help fretting whether it was caused by spontaneous brush fire caused maybe from flint igniting naturally on some hillsides, or by carelessness, or by arson.
A beacon of hope was The Chapel, which, if your teachers had bequeathed you a little classical exposure, might bring to mind a restful tune entitled In a monastery garden. It could also conjure up a magic place set in a secret garden straight out of story books. Maybe because I hailed from Trelawny, though, I warmed to the fact that every stone in that historic building was painstakingly transported from that parish to this spot beside the crumbling aqueduct, also built by slaves. On the few occasions I attended, there should have been more of a believer's reaction to the eager sermonising, but I myself would have to confess to having missed half of it - too busy gazing up into the 'heavenly' ceiling at the flags and other colorful heraldry and national paraphernalia dutifully contributed to this one-of-a-kind chapel by sister islands.
Their names were etched there - Santa Lucia, Dominica, Antigua, Nevis, some of whose pretty villages have names like Laventille and Anse-la-raye, introduced in lectures courtesy a growing band of respected Caribbean writers - rolled rather heavily off the Jamaican tongue. This penchant added light humour tinged with equally light embarrassment inclass.
I thought too, of my mother, who, though she had planted and reaped so that I could come to this place, which she would never see, would want me to count my blessings.
After all, I was walking back to the queen of halls: Seacole, where us residents were styled 'ladies' and the porters were simple, unpretentious males who manned telephones and handed out room keys with eyes averted. Pride in Seacole Hall was not only because it was named for a woman of historical substance who helped put Jamaica on the world map, but because it was then presided over by another woman of undoubted dignity and elegance.
Under her 'open house' regime, she not only allowed you to play with her two small children, but served real tea and 'light cake' while doing a spot of counselling at a time when students were not yet so troubled as to need professional counsellors. On discovering that a book in the library comprised short stories set in Panama titled Tropic Death was said to be written by one Eric Walrond, her father, she went up further in my estimation.
Life on campus was heady, I thought; there were new pan-African sentiments; there was a new freedom of thought and action. You could walk the tended pathways wearing casual clothes despite your former social standing, or lack of it. Why, even tutors wore rusty jeans and old T-shirts and did not have to comb their hair. Most young men did not insult us young ladies, did not shout, sing or curse in public.
They had no cars and so walked everywhere clutching texts and notebooks. Evenings were for clubbing - the ones where drama, drumming, creative writing and dance abounded, and to practise on playing fields which had no walls separating August Town from the campus.
I wrote that first essay my way too, and had what they call up there an 'epiphany', to whit, a rude awakening. I had felt that because I'd never failed English before, I was entitled to my opinion. I read the set texts (they're no longer mere books), but because I still lacked techniques of research, reference and interpretation, I did not allow textual material to intrude on the new thinking of a student enrolled at the highest institution of learning where tutors have different roles from lecturers.
I presented my essay and went away to prepare my Spanish, with most of what I had learned before forgotten, and my geography, taught by a lecturer who was really an artist in calligraphy, cartography and cadastral mapping. The first set of essays handed back by the lecturer, who happened to be Jamaican, were greeted by some with big smiles and a new code of silence. I thought those few left behind were going on the dean's honour roll. I was puzzled by the pained expression on the lecturer's face.
Then she gave a lop-sided grin and said, "Let me remind you that this is not high school."
My mind did a quick back-flip to both Excelsior and Shortwood where my essays used to be read to the class.
The surname sitting beside me slumped on the desk, but I was still hopeful.
"This is a place of discovery," the lecturer went on. "You find out; you are not told things here. We expect bibliographies, pagination showing Ibid, and the vital use of quotes. It might surprise you to know that ideas should not be presented on paper without acknowledgement of source."
What was that?
I, we, all the dregs of the class, slipped further toward floor level, wondering who the hell was Ibid. She prepared to hand out scripts (for that is what our papers had become) by issuing a rejoinder that any grade below B-minus could cost you your place within these hallowed halls. I felt that shiver. More, I burnt hot with fever, even smelt the pungent cedar leaves used back at home to smother it.
A shadow fell. My mother was standing over me. She was handing me the cold tip of a spade. I did not cry then, putting out my hand to receive the crystallised paper from the lecturer. I looked at the C-plus and stuffed it in a briefcase which I no longer deserved. I had let down Ms. Mary Seacole, who gave all that foreign service inwartime so that such as I could reap what we did not sow. I must now slink back to her nice new hotel room with bunk bed, spacious desk, shelves, and the unlimited use of electricity, for self-evaluation.
Our little group stumbled in a daze toward the open sunlight and the spreading Tree of Knowledge outside. It was the first time the tutor had ever left the classroom after we did, and we froze as she addressed our neckbacks: 'Those who read and regurgitate are guilty of plagiarism, (play-wha'?) yet if you come here thinking your ideas are that lofty, this place is not for you.'
Truly we were only 'schewdents', a motley, shameful crew, most of whom decided to pack their new suitcases (all grips, whether nicknamed dulcimena or rosabella, left back in Trelawny) painstakingly bought with yellow yam money, and return home. Campus gossip, twinned with a new virtue called verisimilitude, though both were often at odds, caused each one to merely sneak around the building and return through a side door as Slinky Sam - a character come to life from Use of English handouts.
English classes did not always cut you down to size but could sometimes provide hilarity, and they weren't simply about conjugation either, which you should have mastered before entering The Institution. The fixed expression on the face of one quaint lecturer who had breezed into the tropics (he was brisk) from somewhere in the British Isles could be interpreted either as a grin or a grimace since the teeth at either end of his taut lips were always visible. We thought we were good at character assessment when it was agreed that Riding Hood's wolf was a more appropriate pseudonym for him than Alice's Cheshire cat, for disappearing was not one of his habits. To crown it all, he was the expert not only on Beowulf, but on the Seven Deadly sins. And because he wielded a mean marking pencil, I think I once came dangerously close to becoming a poet by getting all rhetorical and composing a deep, searching question in my notebook:
'Are you a name on adoor,
Or a pencil poised over my furore?'
Needless to say, I got no answer.
We found, too, that we needed this lecturer, because along the walkways en route to the Library one of the Seven Sins flourished, and that was to lay-wait the unsuspecting student and engage him in suss to his detriment! Lyming, as it was called, seemed so 'easeful' you never knew you caught it. It had identifiable traces of sloth and envy - forget lust and pride and greed and gluttony and anger and all those other biblical injunctions. 'Lyme' was actually a kind of enjoyable, irresistible 'sin' imported into the island by students with calypso riddims in their blood, and thereafter exported to the great Mother Country by one of their writers, to boot. It might have meant the sour fruit of a weak will to us, but for them wasting time turned out to be really a hint that they ain' got to 'beat book' (the opposite of lyme) so hard. Dey pan beaters does be bright as mawnin star, bwai.
The other Deadly campus Sin, based on envy and the stirring up of anger, was to Lend your Notes, the borrower being the most innocent-faced Jamaican schewdent. For example, the young girl would say: 'Ah never understand a word in that leckcha. Ah strain fe undastan how 'aubade' could mean dawn, and when ah look pon me notebook a see ongle two line a notes! Jeesaas, how yu write su much, wid all numeration and main points undaline in red?'
The young man would say: 'Lawd Gad, guess wha'? Mi tape recarder nuh stap recard! De las' two class me beg mi spar teck notes fi me, an' because we did-a run dumplin' boat de night before, de wretch nuh drap asleep in leckcha? A pure Satan.'
This young man's hands are by now on his head.
Out of all this, one thing soon became necessary, absolutely, as they now say unnecessarily. Instead of Living in Hall and Visiting the Library, you now had to Live in the Library and Visit your assigned Hall - be it the one where unseen males cursed the leaves off the trees, the one swathed in the mysteries of ideology, the mixed-bag one, or the so-called liberated female one. This Visit was of necessity for ablutions and the three meals a day at canteen. The Jamaican government's foreign trade ties then actually afforded lamb - the meat of a woolly animal from Down Under - a taste which I myself acquired and am now struggling to recall. Those three meals a day for me - with dessert - were fraught with memories of Shortwood College as well.
But, enter Caricom, and only butter remains.
On campus you watch how the seasons pass, recalling George Campbell, days when there is that 'swish of water' or when 'gold sun shines'. But when the poui blooms golden, fluffy and yellow with the trees illuminating the campus like glorious lanterns, watch out. Two things hit schewdents then (by this, their very thoughts come in note form: 1) exams round the cawna 2) those professional borrowers of notes morph into Cheshire cats -all teeth and blinding flashes of oblivion.) Many who had not trimmed their lamps and let the midnight oil dry out are shocked by these campus norms. I, for one, had to stop sketching palm trees along the edges of notes featuring little dry Coconuts ready to drop and Conk C-students. This is when you admit the presence of the genius among you, like this guy who seemingly without effort (he looked so smilingly innocent) could collect nine As and one B on tests, when it was widely felt that the B tutor had failed and should play the Slinky Sam game. We hoped when this guy became a lawyer he would take some of us to lunch. Not anything about a crush, but simply because he would be earning about four times the salary of others, and, after all, hadn't we defended his scholarly integrity?
My worthy opponents, I could be one of those still waiting.
The room went silent when I got my first A the lowest and highest marks are never loudly proclaimed, news creeps among students by osmosis.
I had gone there to major in English but that 'A' was in Spanish Lit. Struggling for a while to keep from drowning in the allusions and delusions of the protagonists in the sargasso sea, the tutor summed up my Jean Rhys essay by awarding it a grudging 'B', and with puzzling words which I still have trouble grasping: 'I can't see the wood for the trees.'
As if the topic was Robin Hood escapading in Sherwood Forest, for Christ's sake.
Now don't get me wrong. My Spanish was not all that good either, compared to some little high-schoolers slightly more than half my age but who knew twice as much as I did, much to my chagrin. Thank a writer native to Spain named Fred Lorca. Bless his heart, the man understood the Jamaican sensibilities on nature, children, courting and mourning rituals so well that he was an instant hit, long after Columbus and long before Mr. Silva. There was a Ms. Bernarda in one of his plays who mourned her dear departed for seven years dressed in pure black. One of our government leaders verified from observing our culture that we wrap that up in nine nights, dressed in bright dancehall colours. Bernarda's daughters remained childless because they were outside the wedlock grid thing. Our dawtas 'have out their lot' first and get a Jewel-o-rama ring slipped on after the children graduate - same difference. They mourn themselves into skin and bones. Here, without yellow curry goat, white rice and green banana (you see how the colours 'wedi-wedi'?) there will be no mourning! There, the se-oras put their children to sleep with those pretty little tunes they call 'nanas infantiles'. Our ooman dem naw change no course. Dem sey, give the damn cry-cry pickney-dem two bitch evva slap because the chupid lallaby in the treetop don't impress dem-ya yute.
Same difference again.
Then everybody end up sitting in the moonlight, round standpipe, under street light or rose bush, while two shady figures slink off behind naseberry here or mulberry tree there.
Apart from the appeal of Mr. Lorca, the professor himself was an enigma. He walked along corridors with head bowed in a suitably contemplative mood, hands loosely clasped behind his back. In class his words flowed soothingly out of a voice-tunnel not unlike a rural cave where we as children used to fetch cool water in dry time. Words like 'sonorous' , we learned, had nothing to do with snoring but carried lofty symbolism especially when applied to Garcilaso, G—ngora and Guillen - poets with difficult names now made easy. He himself seemed so caught up in the 'poetic consciousness' of these famous writers who adored nature, that we were carried along. You had to get an A from a tutor who taught from his heart and never pushed to collect assignments or give demerits. So everyone did them, though not everyone got A!
When he came down to earth he actually took his class to mainland Mexico and Merida, to actually touch pyramids named Chichen Itza and float past Hanging Gardens called Xochimilco, places hitherto seen only on the map. Afterwards we lay about in moderately priced haciendas, then fanned out along streets cobbled with ballast from old ships, in order to purchase items with Spanish names: guayabera shirt for the boyfriends and husbands, chiapa and juipil clothing for women, crafts and real jewellery, as well as woolen shawls quite unnecessary back in Jamaica. Neither my mother nor I ever found out how that trip was paid for (our contribution was minimal), and Prof was too gentlemanly to burden us with the details of how he got the trip funded.
'Don't worry,' he sighed, raising his weary eyes to our anxious faces.
Still, it was quite possible as a student to be in despair or confusion.
Life inside that insular compound had as much to teach as life outside of it. Since I had nowhere else to take my suitcase, I stuck around though tutors and their varied approaches, for they too had to cope with the 'infinite variety' of their charges. A West Indian lecturer introduced a West Indian literature course on The West Indian campus. Show Mr. Dickens (God rest his soul, as well as those of Pip and the convict) that we would give him 'dickans' if he was still around, with our home-grown novelists, poets and playwrights, and rampant dialects which home-grown tutors are fighting to save from intellectual squabbling.
Seriously, though, my sisters, I do admit that those were kinder times.
- Cordella Lewis
