Feats of Engineering

  

It was mandatory for all Catholics in Zanzibar (or so rumour had it) to send their children to a Catholic School in order to obtain a Catholic education.  It was hoped that with this slant to education the students would eventually inherit heaven.   The only school of choice was therefore St. Joesph’s Convent School which was run by Sisters of the Precious Blood.  The Precious Blood referred to, was that of Jesus. The Catholic Church was faithful to its archaic belief at the time that science should not be taught in any of its schools because science, by its very nature of enquiry, interfered with the creation of God, and was therefore sinful.  Most parents, influenced by this thinking, did not realize that their children could never aspire to becoming doctors or engineers since most universities at the time required at least High School physics and chemistry certification.    There were only a handful of Catholic parents, however, who were “renegade” enough to send their children to the Government Secondary School where science was offered, but folklore, maliciously voiced in whispers, ruled that they took their chances on their “salvation” and that their misguided children would grow up to be heathens. Of course this kind of thinking proved to be flawed since a few years later, the Church changed its original unshakable position and encouraged Catholic Schools to include science in their curriculum, just like eating meat on Fridays ceased to carry with it the pain of eternal damnation.  The most that it could do is to give you indigestion or at worst constipation.  However, many students were damaged as a result of the deficit in science education at St. Joseph’s Convent School. 

   One wondered whether any form of creativity might have been construed as being sinful given the interpretation of scripture at the time, but there had to be some encouragement given to the students so that their creativity would not be completely suppressed.   This creativity was sometimes exercised in the privacy of one’s home.  And so my brother and I (at ages 8 and 7) came up with the idea that we could create a mouse trap that was guaranteed to catch mice and hopefully rid any home of this vermin.  The contraption was simply a narrow elongated box about a foot long and opened at one end. This was to be the entrance.  This entrance had a cover that was to open and close at the command of the “mouse catcher” who held a string in his hand a few feet away and the other end was skilfully attached to the inside of the door with a nail and out through a little hole at the other end. The door to the trap could move up and down.

   There was no thought given to the fact that the trapping of mice was a labour intensive process, but we were convinced that labour aside, this trap was fully functional and very effective.  The procedure was simple.  The door was kept open and the trap stuffed with cheese which was perhaps the most expensive part of the process.  It was to be placed in a spot where mice were particularly playful and irresponsible.   As soon as the aroma of cheese penetrated the hiding place of mice, they came out to investigate.  The “mouse catcher” was to be as still as a statue, and it would not hurt if he stopped breathing until the mouse (or mice) entered the trap.  As soon as this occurred, the “mouse catcher” pulled the string, the door to the trap shut and the mice were history.  They could then be taken to an open area, and brooms in hand the door to the trap was opened as the petrified mice ran out of the trap for dear life.  The results were far too goring for those who love mice.

   Another creation was a trap to catch pigeons.  This was almost like a pre-historic contraption but aren’t we grateful today for the invention of the wheel centuries ago.  How on earth could nobody have thought about it!   It was a large box open on one side.  It was balanced on a stick to which a string was tied.  Under the box, was placed a generous amount of grain.  The “pigeon catcher” like the “mouse catcher” was required to sit some distance away from this trap, while his partner attracted the pigeons by throwing the grain high enough against the trap so that the noise created would attract the pigeons. In a short time, there were pigeons walking over each other pecking away at the grain outside the waiting trap.  Finally, they were obliged to walk under the menacing box.  When a few got in, the string was pulled and “bingo” there were two or sometimes three pigeons in the ambitious box wandering why night descended on them so quickly.  Pigeons brought in a healthy two shillings each at the local market and so we demonstrated at a very early age our entrepreneurship.  The money was used to go to the movies to watch the serialized version of “Under Sea Kingdom” starring Buster Crabbe and Flash Gordan.

   Our final contraption was an air gun that could be loaded with pellets.  Pellets were not easily available but both my brother and I would have a lot of fun cranking up the gun pointing it at a make-belief target and pulling the trigger.  After a few thousand shots, the spring inside the gun had gone revoltingly loose. Finally, a friend was able to find some pellets.  We loaded the gun and fired.  It dropped a couple of feet away.  Under normal conditions the gun would be relegated to the garbage bin.  However, my brother and I were convinced that the air gun was pretty effective if the target was a foot or less away from the gun. This had to be put to the test.  My brother was to hold the gun between his big toes brought together to accommodate the front end of the gun; his finger on the trigger after the gun was cranked.  I was to attract the pigeons by throwing grain as close as possible to a large heap of grain that was deliberately placed just below my brother’s toes.  True to form, the pigeons came in droves pecking away at the grain.  Once they got to my brother’s toes, he took aim at the closest pigeon and shot it in the head.  The pigeon started seeing stars while the other pigeons made a quick exit.  The dazed pigeon was promptly caught and placed in a safe place to recover from its trauma.

The following day, the pigeon was cooing away when it saw us, but we knew that it had nothing nice to say to us.

Whatever it had to say to us, it was still worth two shillings.