He had inherited the recorder from a distant uncle and it had been invaluable during his university days. He was a massive fan of Peter Tosh, Bob Marley and Joseph Hills and on the odd occasion when he was paid for delivering private lessons to neighbourhood children, he allowed himself batteries and listened to reggae on his wheezing tape recorder.
‘Until we develop a mind-set that sees us turn our backs on Babylon and these foreign Western societies where oppressed and displaced black people are treated like dirt, our own countries will always remain backwards,’ he had pointed out one lunchtime, jabbing the air with his red pen for emphasis.ĭoc Mo had lifted his theory from Jamaican reggae music that often lauded a return to the African motherland, whilst rejecting Babylon, a system built on a legacy of slavery and oppression. Unimpressed, he had sneered at them, before launching into a tirade about ‘the crippling brain drain brought about by the craven migration to white countries.’ Teacher salaries had not been paid for four months and there had been banner headlines and convoluted press conferences, with the military government claiming that it would not pay ‘ghost teachers’ until they were sure that they existed, and regularly came to work.ĭoc Mo remembered how at least six of his colleagues had been filling out the forms a couple of months previously, mini-clusters of the desperate huddled around stacks of printed paper. The green card lottery scheme had seeped into the school and set up camp in the yellow staffroom.
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