The Olympic Games are now over. Our meagre participation as a nation produced equally meagre results. The sole exception was the netball team, which held its own among the best in the world and emerged with considerable dignity. Beyond that, we entered very few competitors in most of the events. I suspect this has less to do with an absence of talent than with our neglect of these disciplines.
Last week, I asked a few MUBAS students whether they knew what pole vault, javelin, and discus were. Not one of them did. To them, these terms were the proverbial double Dutch, as they probably are to the vast majority of Malawians. Yet when I was at primary school, these disciplines, along with several others, were familiar to us and widely practised.
Let me ask the reader to understand me correctly: I did not attend a private school. When I speak of athletics being practised in primary schools, I am referring to public schools, not privileged private institutions. In those days, intra-school athletic competitions were a regular feature of school life, with pupils competing against one another in a variety of events. Some of my classmates proved to be remarkably gifted athletes. I remember, for instance, Nedson Somanje, who excelled in the 800 metres. Alex Mdziwabwako, who was a class or two ahead of me, was a formidable high jumper.
Roughly once every term, several schools would come together for inter-school athletic competitions. Their finest athletes would be brought together to compete, and the events often occupied most of the day. My own school, William Murray Demonstration School, was particularly successful in these competitions.
I was never much of an athlete myself, but I followed the various events with keen interest. During our free time, after school, some of us would gather on the school football ground and improvise versions of the different athletic disciplines. The high jump was by far the most popular.
The equipment and facilities used for athletics were, in many cases, improvised. For the high jump, long jump and pole vault events, for instance, a shallow pit was dug in the middle of the school ground and filled with sand to provide a reasonably soft landing. In time, the sand was replaced with sawdust, which proved even more forgiving when one came crashing down.
We even invented a crude game, which we called Mau Mau, based on the high jump. We would drive two sticks, cut from the branches of the Ailanthus altissima (tree of heaven), into the ground about 1.5 metres apart along one side of the shallow pit. We stripped the leaves from the branches, leaving short sections of the leaf stalk protruding at intervals along each stick. A long piece of grass was then laid across the two sticks, resting on these protruding stalks and serving as our horizontal bar.
One by one, we would attempt to clear the bar. If everyone succeeded, the bar would be raised, and we would all have another go. But if one of us failed, those who had already cleared the bar would each give him a slap. The ritual continued until the bar reached a height that none of us could conquer.
What this demonstrates is that the apparatus required for many athletic events need not be prohibitively expensive. If public primary schools in the 1970s could provide the rudiments of such facilities, there is little reason to suppose that schools today could not do likewise. Pole vaulting was somewhat more problematic, since we used a bamboo pole to propel the jumper into the air. Needless to say, this carried an obvious risk: a bamboo pole could snap, leaving the jumper in considerable danger. For javelin, meanwhile, we made do with pieces of grass.
Sadly, hardly any of these events are attempted in our schools today. It is not, I believe, because schools cannot afford the necessary equipment. As I have already suggested, much of it could be improvised at remarkably little cost. Rather, the problem is that the priorities of our schools have changed. Football and netball are virtually the only sports that still enjoy any semblance of widespread participation.
The consequence of this neglect is plain to see. We are no longer an athletic nation, and yet we marvel when our neighbours in East Africa, or athletes from Jamaica, emerge from the Olympic Games and similar international competitions with dozens of medals. Perhaps the difference is not that they possess some mysterious reservoir of talent that we lack, but that they have given their young people the opportunity to discover, nurture and develop whatever talent they possess.