Walking the talk

This idea came to mind last month, when one of my staff asked me to sponsor his son on a walk-a-thon to raise money for his school.  I read the form. “He’s walking four kilometres only?  Sure, no problem.” I offered $5.00 per km. and signed the form.  My project officer continued to stand and look expectantly at me. “Can I have the twenty dollars please?”  “When he’s done the walk”, I replied. “No, we have to hand in all the money beforehand.” “But what if he doesn’t complete the walk?”  I was still thinking that the pupils were exerting  themselves for the school, so that the reward would be proportional to the effort. “No”, my staff replied. “That’s not how we do it.  We get all the money beforehand” Now I’m intrigued.  “But what if, on the day, some of the pupils don’t do the walk?  They still get the money.”  I have this vision of the school, with percipient foresight, training the next generation of URP ‘workers’. “The money’s for the school.” “Yes, I know it’s a good cause, so why not just ask for donations?  Why dress it up as a walk-a-thon?” The conversation continued without resolving what was, to me, the sort of logical inconsistency I love to get my teeth into, and my staff wish I wouldn’t.  However, it’s a new school in need of support and I happily made my donation, whilst remembering another place, and another time.

I recalled my secondary school; the place, Zimbabwe; the year, 1970.  The same school from which Zimbabwe’s little powerhouse of a wicket keeper hailed, some 30 years later.  We were a school of some 700 to 800 boys, as always in need of money.  So we organised a sponsored walk.  The route was from the school, to the airport, and back, a distance of about 22 miles, but officially labelled as 20 miles for sponsorship purposes.  This is similar to walking from Port of Spain to Piarco and back! And we were sponsored by the mile.   Get twenty sponsors at  50 cents a mile, and you raise $200, if you finish.  Thirty years ago, a dollar was worth much more, and even sponsorship at 10c/mile was worth it.  One of my father’s colleagues (probably not a friend) sponsored him for nothing, for the first 12 miles, and at $10 per mile for miles 13 to 20!  Every mile along the route there was a verification station that stamped our walking record sheets with the distance completed.  The money we raised was in direct proportion to the effort we made.  No one ever considered any other possibility. More than 600 pupils, parents and staff undertook the walk, beginning in the cold, slanting light of a Saturday morning in winter, and ending between 21/2 and 8 hours later, depending on age, fitness and endurance. My old school magazine reports that almost $9000 was raised, sufficient to build two tennis courts, two basketball courts, shelters on various playing fields and improve the frontage of the whole school.  I cannot recall any of this, as by then I was in my final year and more concerned with ‘A’ Levels than school infrastructure.  But I have one outstanding recollection, a picture of crystal clarity burned indelibly into the chemical code of my memory. 

As a prefect, one of my responsibilities was gate duty, manning the entrance to the school to control the conflicting flows of traffic and pupils, and monitor late-comers.  That’s where I was on the Monday after the Walk.  It was as if we had been transformed into a school of invalids, as if some all-encompassing disaster had struck down the pupils and staff.  En mass, they, we, hobbled, limped, shuffled, to assembly; a school of the halt and the lame, with bandaged legs and feet, sticks and crutches, a community of mutual aches and pains. But there were no unhappy faces.  Pupils, teachers, siblings and parents had achieved a common target, and as we chuckled and laughed at each other’s infirmities, we were bound up and buoyed up in a burning glow of mutual sacrifice and achievement that swept away all the academic, sporting and authority barriers that normally characterise school life.  I watched the school pass before me that morning, and whatever time the pupils arrived, I recorded none as being late! The image and feelings of that morning have been with me, undiminished, for over thirty years. I hoped that the son of my projects officer would have the chance to experience some of this, though 4 km was hardly stress. On beginning this article, I remembered to ask about the walk-a-thon. (What’s wrong with the word ‘walk’, or are we trying to covertly create the impression that the equivalent of once round the savanna is akin to running a marathon?) Yes, the school held it’s walk-a-thon, but neither my staff member nor his son were there, as he had lessons that day. Are we bringing up our children to expect remuneration whether or not they do the work?

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