Andrew Gray's travel tales

31st July

The eleven high schools in Vanuatu's Penama Province - which comprises
Pentecost and the neighbouring islands of Maewo and Ambae - are closer
together than those in the Scottish Highlands. However, for them,
inter-school sport presents an even greater challenge. Maewo's high school
is the only one on its island, and getting between the various high schools
on Pentecost and Ambae involves braving dirt roads that not even the most
roadkill-hungry Highland sports coach would try and drive a minibus on.
Flying teams from island to island would be unaffordable, and although
Penama's three islands are not far apart, getting between them on Vanuatu's
meandering cargo ships can involve journeys of a day or more - the
equivalent of Gairloch High School's celebrated hockey team having to sail
to Denmark.

Nevertheless, the islands are home to some talented athletes and players,
and sport is one of the few areas in which local youths can show genuine
achievement. Pentecost will never produce an Albert Einstein or a Bill Gates
(nor would other parts of the world if potential Einsteins and Gateses had
to overcome the educational hurdles that children here face), but it's not
inconceivable that it might one day produce a global sports star. One
Ranwadi student has already been to Australia to run in a Pacific-wide
athletics tournament - a big deal on an island where most people see foreign
travel as an impossible dream - and another local athlete is currently
training in New Zealand.

A few years ago, a group of headmasters keen to nurture this sort of talent
set up the Penama Inter-Secondary School Sports Association (PISSA), and
proposed that a week should be set aside from the school year during which
competitors from their various schools could come together for a big sports
tournament. The idea of spending a week watching football rather than
working in the classroom met with little resistance from the province's
teachers, and the PISSA Games were established.

Sport in Vanuatu, like in most poor countries, revolves around football
(soccer). This is the universal game, one that you can play anywhere,
provided you can lay your hands on some sort of ball (for village children
having a kickabout, an unripe orange will suffice) and a couple of random
objects to serve as goalposts (coconut stumps do nicely). Basketball hoops
and tennis rackets, by contrast, do not exist in nature. It is no
coincidence that the main countries in which soccer is not a big deal - the
USA, Australia, New Zealand - are rich countries that invest heavily in
sports.

Most schools in Vanuatu do have a pair of basketball hoops - although
American volunteers lament that the islanders "don't truly understand the
game" - so 'bass-kett' (as the locals say it) is also included the PISSA
Games. It is, after all, the best sport in which to strut about looking
cool. Netball, basketball's uncool relative, is also played, but only by the
girls.

Unlike on other Pacific islands, rugby has never caught on here: ni-Vanuatu
are not built like Maoris or Samoans. Nor has cricket, possibly because
large fields are few and far between on mountainous islands. Any attempt to
play cricket here would turn into an exercise in retrieving well-hit balls
from the surrounding jungle. Tennis and hockey, which are among the most
expensive of ball games in terms of equipment, are not played either. This
is a shame, because with all the experience that islanders have at
precision-wielding of knives and axes in their gardens, they would probably
do very well if armed with a racket or a hockey stick. A handful of schools
do, however, have table tennis (ping pong) tables.

Petanque (boules) is played enthusiastically by the French-influenced
schools in Vanuatu. This is one of the few events in which they can beat
their more sports-minded Anglophone opponents, who have barely heard of
petanque and sometimes don't even show up to the matches.

Volleyball is played, and this year 'beach volleyball' was also included in
the PISSA programme, although it was not going to be played on the beach.
(Vanuatu lacks the golden expanses of sand found along the coast of
California - its shorelines tend to be steep and narrow, and most are strewn
with stones, coral, coconuts and driftwood.)

The remaining sports contested at the PISSA Games are variants of the
islanders' beloved football. There is handball (whose exact rules I have
never bothered figuring out but whose basic principle is fairly
self-explanatory), and futsal (a form of indoor football that the ni-Vanuatu
play outdoors).

This year, it was the turn of the College de Melsisi to host the Games.
Melsisi is a small school, and at the start of the year their sports
facilities consisted of a rutted football field, used mainly by the local
cows, and a couple of run-down basketball courts on the small triangle of
flat land by the mouth of the river. They needed to be improved.

After filling in a lot of forms, Sara the Peace Corps girl sent out letters
to her friends and relatives back in the United States, pointing out that
spare dollars were worth a lot more in a Third World village than
languishing in a US bank account and that contributions to Peace Corps
projects were fully tax-deductible. Four thousand dollars later, men in
their kava bars were nodding happily and murmuring about what an asset Sara
was to their village.

"She's also put a lot of her time and effort into helping people here," I
added.

"Yes," they agreed, and went back to talking about the money.

Sacks of cement were ordered, and construction began on a third basketball
court, overseen by teams of local villagers. Basketball hoops and volleyball
nets were ordered. A beach volleyball court was dug out and filled with sand
brought by boat from Ranwadi (apparently we have the sandiest beach in the
area), and a petanque area was prepared. Running tracks were painted onto
the sports field using what looked like old engine oil.

The cows huddled nervously in one corner of the field, wondering what was
going on.

The principal of the College de Melsisi asked me to look up the dimensions
of a table tennis table, and ordered his school handyman to make one. The
handyman had better things to do, and plans were announced to scrap table
tennis from the programme. The schools with good table tennis players
wailed, and promised to bring tables with them to ensure that the game was
played.

Some of the money was spent on lighting, and a bank of fluorescent tubes was
rigged up alongside the basketball courts. An open-walled hut was built at
one side of the field to serve as a grandstand and a headquarters for those
organising the games. An aid agency agreed to supply medals and trophies for
the winners, in return for being allowed the opportunity to come and give
health talks to the assembled students.

"To be a good sportsman, leave with free marijuana, alcohol, tobacco and
kava," said a well-meaning but unfortunately-worded banner.

Local people geared themselves up for the arrival of a thousand or so
students, teachers and spectators. Several families constructed food stalls
- shacks of wood and corrugated iron, walled with palm leaves - under the
coconut trees between the sports field and the river, or perched on the
hillside above the field. The menu was the same at nearly every one: rice
and chicken, flavoured with a little dollop of a tasty gravy-like mixture.

Electricity was wired into the stalls - making these little shacks
better-equipped than most proper Vanuatu kitchens - and some entertained
their customers with music and videos. Lights around the field flickered on
and off as the school's electricity generator struggled to cope with the
load.

The cows disappeared. A few days later, as I made my way down to a pool in
the river for a wash (Melsisi's water supply had faltered under the demand
of a thousand extra people and several of the village taps were running
dry), I discovered the herd hiding amongst the coconut trees in the valley
upstream from the sports field, looking thoroughly unhappy.

Melsisi's established kava bars, and the two or three huts that occasionally
serve as restaurants, also prepared themselves for a week of good business.
Some arranged live string bands to entertain their guests. One tried to
organise a barbecue steak night, but the bullock that was destined to be
barbecued disliked the idea, and after a long chase the chef gave up and put
chicken on the menu instead.

Students from the schools on Ambae and Maewo islands crowded onto a
badly-overloaded cargo ship bound for Pentecost. Those from northern
Pentecost came by boat too - it would have been a long and uncomfortable
journey on the island's roads. Ranwadi's students walked the four miles (6
km) to Melsisi, with the school truck bringing their luggage. Students
staked out places to sleep on classroom floors - boys and girls in separate
classrooms, obviously - and I found a mat and sleeping bag waiting for me on
the floor of Sara's house. A visiting Peace Corps volunteer from Maewo had
already laid claim to Sara's spare bed.

The one thing that could still spoil everybody's plans was the weather. On
the eve of the games, things did not look good. I caught a lift to Melsisi
on the back of a truck, and arrived in heavy rain, soaked and shivering. The
village's roads had already turned to sticky mud, and crowds of people were
tip-toeing around, trying to avoid the slimiest patches. Some called out
greetings, but through the rain and darkness I could barely make out who
they were. I escaped from the confusion, squelched my way up to Sara's
house, stripped off as many of my wet clothes as I decently could, and sat
down in a puddle of water.

A delegation of school governors from the College de Melsisi had already
been sent up the mountain to complain to the sorcerer who controls the
weather.

"Your games don't start until tomorrow," the old man reportedly pointed out
to them. "Tomorrow there will be fine weather."

The sorcerer kept his promise. The next day, the sun was shining. Crowds of
people gathered around the soggy field, perched on rocks and coconut stumps,
to watch the opening ceremony. Proceedings began, two hours behind schedule,
and competitors from nine schools paraded onto the field in their school
uniforms. (One of Penama's eleven schools, in typical Vanuatu fashion, had
failed to get a squad organised for the games this year, whilst another, in
equally typical Vanuatu fashion, had simply failed to show up.) The students
marched like lines of computerised lemmings. I had the urge to click on one
or two of them and watch them stop, count to five, put their fingers in
their ears and explode into pixels.

The students from the school on Maewo wore faded blue shirts, with faded
grey skirts and shorts. Evidently these were dull, quiet, hard-working
students. Half of the girls would probably become nuns. Ranwadi's students
looked a little livelier, but still respectable - boys in white shirts and
black shorts, girls in pale blue blouses and dark blue skirts. Some of the
Ambae schools combined bright white shirts with strong blue skirts and
shorts. These high-contrast kids were clearly tearaways. Or perhaps I
shouldn't be judging schoolchildren by the colour of their uniforms.

Children beat slit drums, and a group of visiting dignitaries was formally
welcomed. Leading them was none other than the Prime Minister of Vanuatu,
Ham Lini - a Pentecost islander himself, and the brother of Father Walter
Lini, who originally led the tiny nation to independence. (I hope that
nobody will consider it a great insult to Vanuatu democracy - or to American
democracy, for that matter - if I point out what a remarkable coincidence it
is that, out of the thousands of eligible people, the one most suited to
running the country just happened to be a close relative of one of his
predecessors.) Accompanying Lini was the local Member of Parliament, Charlot
Salwai - known as Sarlo to his constituents, who can't pronounce 'sh'
sounds. In one of the frequent reshuffles by which Ham Lini manages to stay
on top of his fractious government, Sarlo had recently been appointed as
Minister for Education, and back on his home island he was now being treated
with great honour. The Honourable Prime Minister and the Honourable Minister
for Education were accompanied by a crowd of lesser dignitaries, including
the school principals, the chairman of PISSA, the Provincial Education
Officer, and local chiefs.

The Vanuatu flag was raised, and the crowd stood up respectfully while the
national anthem was sung. Several of the assembled VIPs gave speeches, most
of which were devoted to welcoming and thanking the other dignitaries who
had come. During this, I had time to reflect that if every speaker at an
event thanks every other speaker, and is also thanked by the master of
ceremonies, the total number of thank-yous is equal to the square of number
of speakers. Six speakers equals 36 thank-yous. Eight speakers will give 64
thank-yous. If there are ten speakers, then a hundred thank-yous must be
said. That much thanking takes a long time. And that doesn't even include
the many words of thanks given to people who weren't giving speeches, such
as the poor students assembled in lines in the sun in front of the podium. I
lost count of how many speeches there actually were: Sara, in helping to
draw up the schedule for the day, had tried bravely to keep the number down
to three or four, but Sara's colleagues kept sneaking additional speakers
into the programme.

The new basketball court was formally opened, and the local priest blessed
it with what I assumed was holy water. The court, paid for by Sara's
fundraising efforts, was due to be opened by an "honoured representative
from Peace Corps", but no such person showed up, so Sara cut the ribbon
herself, standing in front of the crowd in her pink island dress and rubber
reef shoes. Sara was not, however, deemed a sufficiently Important Person to
be invited to the 'refreshments' (I passed the principal of the College de
Melsisi carrying a heavy box that made an alcoholic chinking sound) laid on
for the VIPs after the ceremony.

The Prime Minister's speech came last. He began by telling his audience that
what he saw before him was "a failure". This was not an insult, it was
explained to me afterwards, but was merely an exhortation to the people to
work harder to make their country a better place. The rest of the speech was
filled with words about the importance of respect and "obedience" (I can
only imagine what the newspapers would say if Tony Blair or Gordon Brown
ever used that word), and a reminder that we all owe everything to Father
God, which won applause from the audience. Most people on Pentecost don't
get the chance to hear the Prime Minister on the radio or read his words in
the newspapers, and this was one the biggest crowds that would assemble on
the island this year. Ham Lini did not waste the opportunity to show to all
these good, traditional rural voters that he is a good, traditional guy.

- - -

The first proper day of the PISSA Games was devoted to athletics. Students
were divided into two age groups - Juniors (Years 7 to 10) and Seniors
(Years 11, 12 and 13). Schools with exceptionally gifted junior students
tried to run them in senior races. Some juniors (students who had probably
missed years of schooling because their families had difficulty paying the
school fees) looked as if they were about nineteen anyway.

Mr Agasten, the Ranwadi sports master, had drawn up a programme of events
for the day and dusted off his starting gun, which left him partially deaf
for the rest of the week. Other people were assigned to time runners and
count laps. Some weren't sure which runners they were supposed to be
watching, and some lost count. Sara sat at a table trying to scribble down
names and times while nine sports masters stood and argued in Pidgin English
about which student had come in which position.

The sports masters were an interesting collection of characters. One looked
as if he should have been behind the wheel of a truck in the American
Midwest, and one looked like the evil sea captain from Pirates of the
Caribbean. One looked like a French footballer, whilst another looked like a
French hairdresser. One resembled a gorilla. Mostly they were an amiable
bunch, however, and they showed a great willingness to work together towards
the common goal of ensuring that the day's events had finished by the time
the kava bars opened.

On the second day of competition, the team games began. Sara and I drew up
an enormous timetable that attempted to fit together the 60 football
matches, 60 basketball matches, 60 volleyball matches, 60 beach volleyball
matches, 60 petanque matches, 60 table tennis matches, 60 handball matches,
60 futsal matches and 30 netball matches that were due to be played, in such
a way that no student would need to be in two places at once, and no two
teams would be trying to use the same pitch at the same time. Individualised
daily copies of the schedule were handed out, listing exactly where each
team needed to be at each time, and the sports masters were warned that if
they didn't stick to the schedule in a particular event, it would mess up
the programme of events elsewhere.

Being Pacific islanders, they didn't stick to the schedule. However, the
dozens of carefully drawn-up timetables blowing around the sports field did
go some way towards turning potential chaos into mere disorganisation. At
the end of each day, the sports masters got together to reconcile the
intended schedule for the day with what had actually happened, and tried to
work out how all the games that had got missed out could be fitted in later.
New timetables were hashed out, and rehashed. After a while, I gave up
trying to type up new timetables on the computer, and simply let the sports
masters work it out amongst themselves.

A public address system had been set up, and announcements were put out in
Pidgin English telling people and teams where they needed to be. In between
announcements, the loudspeakers played a random assortment of music, which
ranged from Enya to Jingle Bells. Listening to the latter on a sunny July
day on a tropical island produces the kind of disconnection between
experience and reality that can usually be achieved only with drugs.

Nobody had planned out who was supposed to overseeing the various games, but
volunteers were soon found. Mr Jay, one of the local truck drivers,
discovered a talent as a handball referee. The bursar of one of the Ambae
schools, who happened to be a former volleyball star, helped Sara look after
the beach volleyball tournaments (and did an excellent job until the day he
discovered a store selling Tusker beer). One of Ranwadi's new gap girls,
after a short briefing on what petanque was, spent the rest of the week
umpiring the game.

The teacher from the College de Melsisi who was asked to look after the
table tennis tournament wanted to be down on the field watching the football
instead, and lied that the school had lost all its table tennis balls. Table
tennis was quietly dropped from the programme.

Only for the all-important football games had anybody made an effort to
organise a qualified referee - a huge, dark, sinister man. He looked
familiar.

"Who's the referee?" I asked.

"He was our postmaster when you were here back in 2001," I was told. "He was
the guy who used to steal our mail."

On the penultimate day of the games, the referee walked away, complaining
that he wasn't being sufficiently well paid. Nobody else, as far as I could
gather, was being paid at all.

The Principal of Ranwadi, a passionate sports fan, sat intently beside the
football field whenever his school was playing, absorbed in the game,
muttering to nobody in particular.

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes. No. No, no. Yes, yes - no. No, no. No, no. No! No -
yes. Yes, yes, yes. YES!!"

The Principal of the College de Melsisi, having worked hard to prepare for
the games, decided he'd earned himself the week off, and spent most of the
time relaxing at his house. His major contribution to the proceedings -
aside from drinking with the Prime Minister - was to go down to the school
office where poor Sara was frantically photocopying score sheets and
timetables, and tell her not to waste paper.

- - -

Teams in the different sports played against one another in round-robin
tournaments, and schools were ranked according to the number of points they
had won. Having volunteered to do the scorekeeping, I drew up a big
spreadsheet that would add up the results and distil them together,
according to an agreed formula, to reveal which school was the best overall.
I spent much of the week sitting in Sara's house, trying to make sense of
the various muddy and tattered score sheets that I'd been handed by the
referees and type the results into the computer.

In sports such as football and netball, I was to give 3 points for a win, 2
points for a draw, and 1 point for a team that lost but did make the effort
to get a team together and play. In events like volleyball and petanque,
where a draw is impossible, it was 2 points for a win and 1 point for a
loss. Opinion differed as to whether or not it was possible for a basketball
game to end in a draw. The two Americans were adamant that it couldn't, but
nobody else could see why not.

"What should I do if two teams get the same number of points?" I asked the
sports masters on the first day.

"Rank them by goal average," came the reply.

What is goal average? A quick search on the Internet revealed that it's a
slightly-flawed measure of a team's performance that was abandoned in
English and international football in the late 1960s. (Basically you divide
the number of goals scored by the number of goals conceded, instead of
subtracting the numbers.) Since goal average was one of the few things the
sports masters seemed to agree on, I didn't argue.

The senior boys' football competition - the event that people cared most
about - was a close-run thing. Ranwadi and their main rivals, St Patrick's
College, emerged joint leaders with 10 points each. Ranwadi had scored five
goals and conceded two; St Patrick's had scored four goals and conceded one.
Had the teams been ranked under the system used by most modern football
leagues, Ranwadi would have been on top, equalling St Patrick's on goal
difference and beating them on goals scored. However, under the outdated
goal average system that the sports masters had recommended, it was 2.5 to
Ranwadi and 4 to St Patrick's College. Our boys came in second.

That mattered. When I got the computer to add together the overall results
for the PISSA Games, St Patrick's were ahead of Ranwadi in the senior
category by a single point. If it hadn't been for the football result, it
would have been the other way around.

I scanned the results desperately, looking for errors, anything that might
have led to Ranwadi winning fewer points than they deserved. I found a
couple of scores that had been incorrectly entered, but nothing that made a
difference to the final result. Had the points been added up properly, I
wondered. Computers can't miscalculate, but they can be incorrectly
programmed. The PISSA scoring system, originally devised by Ranwadi's
scientifically-minded Mr Noel, was designed on paper to be fair and
straightforward, but in real life it had acquired complexities and
ambiguities. Scanning through the spreadsheets, I spotted two or three
semi-legitimate, defensible adjustments that didn't favour our school in any
obvious way, but would have the overall effect of shifting an extra point or
two into Ranwadi's column.

In general, people in Vanuatu are not mathematically-minded. My students
will happily tell me that there are three hundred metres in three
centimetres, and if a mis-pressed digit on a pocket calculator led them to
conclude that two and two made five, many of them would accept it without
question. My contract with the country's Ministry of Education states that I
am employed for a period of two years beginning in January 2007 and
finishing in December 2007. However, like most un-mathematical people, the
islanders are adept at adding up two particular things: money and sports
results. Even a subtle manipulation of the scoring of the games might well
be noticed, and if anybody suspected that I'd tipped the tables in my own
school's favour there would be hell to pay. Besides, it simply wouldn't have
been fair. As the scorekeeper I had to be impartial, and if the computer had
told me that Ranwadi was the number one school then I certainly wouldn't
have been scrambling to recalculate the figures.

Reluctantly, I left the spreadsheet as it was.

- - -

The final day of the PISSA Games coincided with Vanuatu Independence Day.

History has passed quickly in Vanuatu. Like most Third World countries, the
young republic has a child-heavy population (at twenty-four, I am older than
the average ni-Vanuatu), and the majority of today's islanders were not
alive on 30th July, 1980, when Britain and France finally brought to an end
their chaotic attempt at joint government in the former New Hebrides. This
is perhaps just as well: you might expect the ni-Vanuatu who do remember the
days of colonial rule to be bitter towards their former masters. British and
French settlers appropriated much of the territory's best land and held onto
it for a century, treating the islanders like foreigners in their own
country. They usurped traditional hierarchies, trampled on local customs,
and presided over the collapse of the native population. They imported a
petty thousand-year-old rivalry between two nations on the other side of the
world, infecting the islanders with it, so that twenty-seven years after
Vanuatu government officially ceased to be a tussle between the British and
the French, you can still see the fault lines between these two factions in
the country's politics.

Yet Britain and France also gave their ill-gotten territory schools,
hospitals, roads, airports, wharves, and churches. The two powers brought at
least a semblance of law and order to the archipelago, and ended the rape
and pillage committed by an earlier generation of European visitors: traders
who sold the islanders into near-slavery on Queensland sugar plantations, or
sold them to their cannibal enemies as meat, and in the process had
unscrupulously filled the islands with guns, germs and steel (to borrow a
phrase from Jared Diamond's excellent book about why people from Europe
colonised places like Vanuatu and not the other way round). They also ended
most of the rape and pillage committed by the islanders against one another.
In place of tribal warfare, the British and French bequeathed Vanuatu a
legacy of freedom, democracy and national unity, even if the colonists did
not apply any of these principles very well at the time. Before the
Europeans left, Vanuatu may not have been an independent country, but before
they arrived, it was not a country at all.

Older ni-Vanuatu today look back on their former British and French rulers
in much the way that adults look back on their former schoolteachers. At the
time they were overbearing and resented, but many years on it is possible to
respect them for the job that they did, and appreciate the ways in which
their teaching helped turn their pupils into better people. Looking back on
all the teachers who once shouted at me and punished me, the teachers I
swore at and whose lessons I disrupted, I cannot think of a single one
towards whom I have any ill feeling today. In fact, if I met them in the
street I would probably be pleased to see them. And I'd like to think that
most of them feel the same towards me.

In a similar way, the people of Vanuatu today are nothing but welcoming and
courteous towards the British and French whose ancestors once oppressed
them. A couple of them have even expressed gratitude to me for "all the
things that your country taught us". Nor are the ni-Vanuatu unique in this
respect. I cannot remember encountering anti-British sentiment in any of the
dozen or so former British colonies that I have visited (with the slight
exception of Ireland, which arguably wasn't a colony). In Fiji, the people
who asked where I came from smiled sentimentally at the answer and said "ah,
mother country". In Malaysia, the businessman who leaned over to start a
conversation with me at a street café told me that the British were decent
people (not "dirty bastards" like a dozen other nationalities he listed). In
Belize, I met British soldiers who are still made welcome in their former
territory (having a bunch of friendly Brits doing military training in your
jungles helps encourage jealous neighbours to stay on their own side of the
border). In Singapore, the 19th-century figure who originally claimed the
island in the name of the British still has plazas and hotels named after
him.

The Scots still resent the English, of course - "we are colonised by
wankers", said Ewan McGregor's character in Trainspotting - but they are the
exception that proves the rule: Scotland has never been a colony. (In fact,
enterprising Scots were responsible for the existence of large parts of the
British Empire, and profited handsomely from it. Several of the Europeans
who feature in Vanuatu's history were Scottish.) Based on my experience
elsewhere in the world, if the English really had colonised the Scots then
the Scots would probably respect us for it.

In the interminably long speech that kicked off the Vanuatu Independence Day
celebrations in Melsisi, there was little about shaking off the yoke of
colonial oppression. Instead, there was a lot about the need to work hard
towards a better future for the young country. In his own speech a week
earlier, the Prime Minister had quoted a line from the national anthem:

"You-me savvy plenty work ee stap 'long all island b'long you-me." We know
there is plenty of work still to be done on our islands.

When the Independence Day speech was over and the flag had been raised, the
final sports matches were played. That evening, students gathered in the
rain for the handing out of the trophies. I had managed to get hold of a box
of feux d'artifice (people in Melsisi refer to unfamiliar foreign things by
their French names rather than their English ones), which I let off from the
hillside above the sports ground. It wasn't much of a firework display: they
were small garden fireworks, and I hadn't been able set them up in advance
in case they got wet, so there were long pauses as I slid about on the
hillside removing each firework from its waterproof bag and trying to find a
soft patch of ground to poke it into. However, most of the children watching
had never seen fireworks before, and the crowd went wild.

I didn't enjoy the moment when the final result of the PISSA Games was
announced. Ranwadi's students had trained hard this year and were desperate
to come first, but in both Junior and Senior categories they had to settle
for second place. The announcer read out the final scores, beginning with
ninth place, then eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, and third. When it
was revealed that Ranwadi was number two, I suspected that the outbreak of
cheering was not coming from our own students.

I felt even worse than the students did, knowing by following a flawed
scoring system had deprived my team of a trophy that was probably rightfully
theirs.

My colleagues were quick to spot the dubious football result that had cost
Ranwadi its prize.

"You should have ranked them by goal difference," they told me. (The sports
masters had all been very clear that they wanted goal average.) "They may
have said goal average, but they meant goal difference." (Sports masters
ought to know what they're talking about when it comes to their favourite
sport.) "Goal average is an outdated way of doing things." (If I questioned
every local practice that strikes me as outdated, I'd make myself very
unpopular.) "This would never have happened if you had used the proper
system." (It was pure chance that the system disadvantaged Ranwadi - the
scores could just as easily have been the other way round.) "We should have
been consulted about what scoring system to use." (Ranwadi's teachers were
too busy praying with the students to attend the daily meetings with the
other sports masters and coaches.) And so on.

The matter was soon forgiven and forgotten, but I was left with the
unpleasant knowledge that a thing that mattered more to some my friends,
colleagues and students than anything else in the school year - winning the
PISSA Games - had been needlessly lost to them as a direct result of
something that I had done.

"There's an old saying in my village," said old Ezekiel the school mechanic,
often a source of gentlemanly wisdom. "If you kill a pig, you can't eat its
head in your own nakamal."

I wasn't sure that I understood.