Caning

A boy was caned in front of me today. I don’t know his name; I don’t think I can recognise him even from the 53 (it turns out there are 53 of them after all) faces in the class, much less remember what he looked like. Because when I watched him, it was not fear that I saw; it was nothing. Actually, it probably was not nothing—he must’ve had some sort of expression—but I was looking for fear, and I did not find it. Nothing like what I’d been expecting to see from a boy being caned.

It threw me off guard. When I realised that the teacher had sent the boy to fetch a cane, I was very, very nervous. I panicked. I didn’t know what I would do—should do—could do—if the caning did happen. I knew that I would stop him if he hurt the boy. I worked up the guts and prepared to step forward. That was a very tense five minutes for me.

But what I saw was very different from what I’d expected.

The teacher told the student to lie down on the ground. The boy did as he was told, and the teacher struck him three times. He made no sound. It was over before I’d gotten over myself. But what astonished me the most was that the other kids were laughing and jeering the whole time, as though it was some kind of joke.

Several times I've noticed the people here laughing about really rather morbid things. The teachers at Lisori, laughing about how “God knows where the next meal will come from; the people don’t;” Kennedy, about the police officer who arrested Baracka and stops our vehicle every time just to make us feel uncomfortable; the kids, about the caning and the fear-based system the teachers use to keep control. I don’t know if it’s a coping mechanism that they have learnt to use in order to deal with the tension and anxiety or if I am misinterpreting the situation, but it is strange to me. And kind of awkward as well. I’m not quite sure how to react: if I laugh with them, I feel out-of-place; but if I don’t laugh, it also seems inappropriate.

I still don’t know how I feel about this caning experience. In some ways it was not as bad as I’d imagined, because the boy made no commotion. I couldn't even tell if he was in pain. But it was also worse, because their reaction seems so wrong to me. I spoke to some of the others back at WISER, and we could only reason that caning is just so normalised here that the students find it entertaining when one of them is caned. I didn’t do anything then, partly because I was surprised, partly because I didn’t want to make a scene, mostly because I was too scared. But I do want to speak to the students before I speak with the teachers, because I want to know why they behave the way they do.