A lie
Meyers, Bill
A LIE Bill Meyers Twenty years ago I struck a boy and lied about it. He was black and I was white; he, a high school student; I, a college graduate. He was expelled and I went on for a...
...When old men and women would call out Anasara and wave to me in the marketplace, I'd rationalize that they didn't mean to be obnoxious and just didn't know how to hail a foreigner except by his religion and color...
...another time, I myself thwacked a habitual troublemaker...
...I demanded of the bigger one...
...For the young volunteer, the Peace Corps can be a harsh, prolonged initiation into adulthood...
...No sooner had I mentioned that after I tried to restrain him the boy hit me, the assistant principal began raining his own blows on the student...
...He was African and I, American...
...This second episode both surprised and scared me, for the blow made the boy's head hit his desk with a dangerously loud thump...
...The series of events that followed has haunted me...
...As school let out one day a couple of students started in with the "Anasara, Anasara" chants, then headed down a side street...
...Gradually, however, we adapted to local conditions and procedures...
...For the most part my students were good kids and eager learners...
...Eight months into my assignment at a high school, I too was resorting to the severe practices of my Nigerien counterparts...
...Allah will punish the boy," declared their spokesman...
...It is the hubris of the former Peace Corps volunteer to believe that one who has not survived a two-year stint in some remote corner of the third world has missed out on a basic life experience...
...The boy was expelled...
...What is your name...
...We voted again...
...I took a parallel lane, surprising them as they turned a corner...
...At first, unaccustomed to thinking of myself in terms of skin color, and not being Christian, I took the jeers in stride...
...Mine include this little secret: When the boy refused to divulge his identity and started to walk away from me on that dusty streetcorner, it was I who landed the first blow...
...Bill Meyers teaches in the department of political science at Northeastern University in Boston...
...It is not I alone who is aggrieved," I said...
...As any teacher will tell you, though, it's the few insolent ones who get under your skin...
...Not a single teacher changed his initial stand...
...In a first instance, I had one student slap an obstreperous other...
...The following day the school PTA converged en masse at the school and requested that we reconsider...
...For a white to understand the plight of blacks in America it is helpful to live in the West African bush for a couple of years...
...In Niger, tribal scars of identification are common...
...Along the way there are setbacks and regression...
...These were exceptional incidents...
...We enlightened Americans, of course, were initially horrified by such retrograde pedagogy...
...As he left the grounds after learning of the decision, he stopped in front of my class and threatened me...
...Yet not for a moment did he lose his silly, challenging grin...
...And skin was the basis of the taunts that maddened me...
...The next day, the assistant principal in charge of discipline summoned the rogue...
...Anasaral Anasaral went the cry, as I walked in town or strolled through the market, "White man...
...It was not only the mocking tone that I heard in the hoot that boiled my blood but the literal meaning of the word: "Christian, man of Nazareth...
...And where is the remorse of this boy, who threatens me again after his expulsion...
...He was expelled and I went on for a doctorate...
...White man...
...We even intended to beat the boy in front of Monsieur Bill's home but Monsieur Bill was not there to witness it....'If someone asks forgiveness,'" he concluded, invoking a local saying, '"you must forgive him.'" I responded by giving a little speech in French...
...When little children played by darting out of a corner, yelling Anasara and running away in delighted fright, I might accommodate their game by pretending to chase them...
...But our head principal pooh-poohed my demand for disciplinary action against the student, dismissing the incident as "a town matter...
...Corporal punishment was common in the schools of Niger, a former French colony in the poverty-stricken Sahel region of West-Central Africa...
...Hitting a boy and covering it up was certainly my low point...
...Vous etes dans quelle classe...
...African teachers often resorted to physical rebuke when their charges posed exceptional problems of discipline or dimwittedness...
...Whose class are you in...
...There the other teachers backed me up and voted to expel the boy...
...He refused to answer and defiantly turned to walk away...
...But when students screamed out Anasara at the top of their lungs, that was another story entirely...
...It is as if this boy has struck every teacher present here...
...I insisted on my right to call a staff meeting...
...The Peace Corps imparts mental scars of maturation...
Vol. 126 • May 1999 • No. 10
