To Catch A Predator

One of the things that is hard, as I discovered while visiting people in America, is to make people realize how absolutely commonplace some things are. There is such a contrast between what is accepted as “normal”. One example is that, in Mozambique, littering is just what you do. That's because so little of what you consume is waste that usually what gets thrown out is a banana peel or maybe a pop can or something along those lines. When our trash heap gets full we just take it out of town and dump it wherever we want. Leaves, branches, wrappers, boxes, papers, everything. There is no such thing as separating your recycling. You are probably shaking you head saying that's ridiculous. You probably live in the Northwest where you get chastised for putting a plastic bottle in with the metal cans.

The point I'm trying to make is you see recycling as responsible and normative. Kids in Nampula see it as redundant; trash is trash. Just as you consider getting a coffee from Starbucks every morning as necessary and normal while I see it as addictive and prodigal.

I tell people different things are in Nampula and they just can't quite fathom it. I say how short life expectancy is (45) and it's shocking to them. I say how short school days are (3 or 4 hrs) and its a surprise. I say how widespread corruption is and it's alarming. I say how long people walk just to get water and it's saddening. But to me it's just the way things are and after a while I just accept it as fact. That's not to say I feel like anything is any less tragic or sad, it is just sometimes is a little lost on me because it's “normal” to life in Nampula.

But those are mostly just cold statistics. What is harder to accept sometimes is how different behaviors can be. I want to stress the idea that something can be normal without being right. If someone gets murdered in your community, it can be a real shock. If you live somewhere like Detroit, where folks are murdered daily, it can be numbing.

This year there was an incident at the high school here. Five students (NONE OF OURS, I WANT TO BE SUPER CLEAR ON THAT) came forward to say that a teacher at the school had given them HIV. A sixth girl came forward to say that she had slept with the teacher but had stopped recently and had not tested positive for the disease. Classes were canceled for the day and all the teachers were summoned for a meeting.

What was your first reaction at hearing this. If you just read through it without thinking, read it again. I'll wait for you....

Five girls got HIV after sleeping with their teacher! My first reaction was disgust at how these girls were probably pressured by the teacher in exchange for getting a passing grade. Teachers will sometime select certain people and pressure them and give them undeservedly bad results in order to exact favors from them later on. These favors are usually in the form of money or sex.

Then my second reaction was that there was no way that five and almost six girls got pressured. At least one of them would have to have stepped forward before now. How overt was this teacher, and why had nobody said anything until now. At least another teacher would be jealous or a boyfriend of these girls would have found out. I was mad and deeply saddened.

You really need to understand that is is not even 10% as shocking as it would be where you are living (assuming you don't live in sub-Saharan Africa). This probably isn't even 2% as shocking as you think it is. Troubling and deeply sad, definitely. But not shocking. The reason is, sadly to say, it happens quite a bit. These kinds of events flood the rumor mill, but hardly makes the news as a scandal.

Then as each piece of the puzzle came in, my opinion and emotions became more and more confusing and layered.

We learned that the teacher at the center of this had been kicked out of a high school across town for almost the exact same thing. I even found a few news stories online from the year before. That time he had been accused of giving 4 girls HIV in exchange for passing grades at the end of the year. Instead of being fired, he was just transferred quietly. To our school. Lucky us. This man started to seem like a predator who goes about quaerens quem devoret.

Then we learned that during the morning when all of this unfolded, there was an assembly held and the principal had all the girls come stand in front and told anybody else that had information to come forward and say it in front of the whole school. At this point any idea of privacy for these girls was gone and everybody knew their names and faces. I was horrified that these girls would be the ones vilified during the situation and made examples of in front of the class. The object was to subtly shame these girls and discourage anybody else from speaking out.

Then we started hearing from some of our kids that attend the high school. Two boys in particular that have class with all these girls and their teacher (they are all in grade 12). They say, in the case of at least four of these girls, that is probably the only way they were going to pass that year as they were mostly illiterate. But not because they were being treated unfairly or had to succumb to these means in order to pass, but basically because that was the way these girls had obtained passing grades since forever. It seems the girls went about quaerens per quem ad devoret.

You see, while some people try to get extra help from the teacher by asking if they can stay after class or come in during lunch to discuss a reading or solve some problem, these girls get extra help by on day one of the school year asking questions like “What's your phone number? What neighborhood do you live in? What hours are your wife not home?” The boys said—and while this is not exactly the expression they used it conveys the same meaning—that these girls were putting it on pretty heavily.

So here is the summary of what we have so far. Five girls get HIV from sleeping with a teacher. Abhorrent in every way. Girls appeared to be trading sex for passing grades. Not surprising in the least. The principal calls out the girls and has them show their faces to everybody. Shocking. The girls turn out to be the ones initiating with the teacher. Disgraceful.

I talked soon after with some of our girls to get their take on it. One that knows them basically had the attitude that they got what was coming to them and was glad because as girls get away with this it puts that much more pressure on the rest of the girls to do the same and almost becomes expected behavior. Others that didn't them were not surprised and say that almost from day one you can spot the girls that, as they say here, are running after teachers for some "special help".

The fallout from all of this? The story didn't even make the news. If it did, thousands of people would have been complaining wanting to know why the TV cameras and journalists never came to their school, because that stuff happens all over the place. The girls, they quietly stay put and are finishing the rest of the year. And have HIV for the rest of their lives.

The teacher, instead of being transferred, just went from teaching during the day to teaching night school. If anything, it might have been just the upgrade he wanted. He stays at the same school, and gets to teach for half the hours. People generally agree that the teacher came out a winner in this situation because they say he went from having only six girls to having at least twenty. Night school is full people that generally just pay a bribe to pass a class and is notorious for sexual promiscuity in every way shape and form. Teachers with other teachers, students with other students, and teachers with students. People will fail a grade five times in a row and keep enrolling in adult education classes not because they want to pass, but because it is the equivalent of going to a bar for a single person. If you want a hookup, and are looking for others that want the same, you go to night school.

As you wrestle with this story, keep in mind two things I said in the beginning. Being normal or a common occurrence does not make it right. What happened is wrong and sinful and detestable in every way. The second thing is to not impose your thinking or attitudes on the characters in this story. As deplorable as this situation was, the tendency would be to say this teacher is a predator and even if the girls voluntarily got involved with him, they were only giving into a sexist archetype and were victims of societal pressures. I argue that the situation is more complex than that, and I know many of you will disagree with me. But in saying that, I believe it does not make what happened any less tragic. Just know that what is normal here may not be so wherever you are reading this.