Down memory lane into school logs

By Padma Edirisinghe

In the 1990s, a set of queer circumstances made me go all the way to Balangoda in the Ratnapura district to survey almost accidentally a school log book. Of course, I had contact with one before, but that was personal. In fact it was the log made by my father, a headmaster of a school in Etnawala, who had made the singular entry.

It read,

“School was closed today for no child attended it.”

He had gone on to give the reason, which ran as follows,

“A child of mine died yesterday suddenly and the parents would have deduced that I will not hold school today”.

Reading this you are intelligent enough to conclude that it was not I who died but lived on to produce a 1001 pieces that I doubt whether anybody reads. The time context of my sister’s death was the first decades of the 20th century.

Independence

I had also strayed into remarks like this in other log books, a species of educational literature, that I had taken a fancy to, “Closed school today because Ethiopia got her Independence”. Considering the time context, I wonder who has erred here, the headmaster or I or Ethiopia. Penned in the 1890s, this remark was more dependable.

“School was not held today as the floor was paved with new cow dung”.

That meant the school was paved throughout with cow dung.

Anyway, my interest in school logs continued since they give an odd peep into the history of schools and my rise into a rather high hierarchy in the education ministry gave me the power to demand this strange collection from schools I visited. I started right from the centre of Colombo and requested the log.

The head was away. They are frequently out than in and no wonder, with the numerous conferences held. So others in command, retaliated by scratching their heads. Some had not even heard of such a thing. An elderly staff member explained that the college office had shifted so much in the past years that many things were misplaced.

Sorry, he sobbed.

Boastful

I walked to the neighbouring school, a girl’s school where things were better. The head was legitimately boastful and described her school as the first girl’s English school in the island. But tragedy had taken place. Time was late 19th C and there were no local ladies qualified to head the school and ads were placed in foreign countries to publicise the vacancies. An Australian female answered and was taken in. But poor woman, unlike the German-American, Marie Musaeus Higgins who began to love this island, this lady pined for her home and hearth and became insomniac and walking about in the night on the green around her quarters fell into a disused well and died on foreign soil.

Of course all that I did not read in that log book which was supplemented by the head’s narrative.

To return to Balangoda, my reading the log book of Balangoda school was accidental.

I was on circuit in the Sabaragamuwa district but this school was not in the itinerary. It was taboo to visit schools not in the itinerary, especially if you are using a state vehicle. And if that vehicle broke down the driver was forbidden to try to repair it. He is expected to give calls to the head office to send a repair man or an alternate vehicle. In the absence of mobile phones that meant he had to trek to the nearest PO. So, it led many a driver to recklessly tinker with the broken-down vehicle to get back to home and hearth with the noblesse passenger.

Dilapidated

So while the driver was busy flouting the law I strayed out and as fate would have it, was again, accosted with the sight of a dilapidated school. The time was about 3.00 pm.

I expected the place to be empty and it was, except for who I presumed to be the headmaster who still sat at the head table.

He was surprised to see me and, lo and behold, as they say in old English texts, offered to show me the school log book that he dragged out with alacrity from a top drawer.

No transfer of offices, I asked remembering that grand school in Colombo that had so many offices but log book missing.

The furniture gleamed there while the Balangoda school furniture looked so drab and dull but the log was preserved carefully and almost revered while in “Colombo central”, it was of zero position.

This log book at Balangoda was a veritable treasure house of the history of the school.. It had been the brainchild of the Buddhist Theosophical Movement that flourished in the late 19th century and Ratwatte family had donated the land. The log book recorded all that info. Need any evidence to substantiate all that? IT was a lucky day.

When I got back to the road, the driver illegally had attended to the vehicle and not only that, informed by the boy in the Balangoda Ratwatte waluwa the Haamu on seeing the stranded vehicle and the perspiring driver, had sent him tea.

I too was invited into the walauwa and served the best tea in the most fabulous tea set I ever saw.

Pardon me my ego, but maybe he sensed that I was worth it. I told him what the headmaster said about the Ratwatte contribution to the school but he was not ready to beat his drum about it and only philosophized, that when things start moving for the better, those in the neighbourhood simply are drawn to come into the picture.

Dwelling on the desolate cloak the area had begun to wear in the thick of imperialism, he heaped praise on Anagarika Dharmapala and laughed on the recollection of his Sobhana Rathaya in which he went round scolding people for acting as slaves of the British empire forgetting their own glorious past that needs resuscitation.

“Maybe if I read further down the log book, I would have read about it” I ventured.

“What is this log book? I have heard only of Army log books” Clifford Ratwatte wished to know.

When I explained, he commended it as a grand endeavour.

Faulty

Later, I recommended this grand endeavour for an establishment known as the school archives. I wonder what happened to the idea. Did it get off the ground, I often wonder in my retirement, burdened with faulty knees that had once taken me all over the island and a bit of the vast world.

But what is me, but an insignificant ant in this vast world but I ruminate on the fact that least photo copies of the first few pages of well maintained school logs that trace the genesis of schools would be so educative and finally could voyage into a fertile segment of the country’s history.