It was not until I lived for some time in a country where palm trees
of many varieties, most notably coconut palms, grow in abundance that I
realised the practical point of this story. The leaves of the coconut palm
are such wonderfully useful things, versatile and adaptable. In Seychelles,
where I lived, they have innumerable uses.

The leaves can be tied in a vertical position, overlapping each other
to provide a very effective barrier against the wind. Many homes still have
outhouses or kitchens constructed in this way. They can be used to thatch
a roof, although for long-term cover the leaves of other types of palm are
preferred. Even on modern roofs, the palm trees have the last laugh; corrugated
iron is much easier to hammer onto the roof of a house, but it doesn’t half
get hot under there. The obvious solution? Put a layer or two of palm leaves
over the top to shade it.

Down on the ground again, many more uses. If the leaflets are pulled
off the midrib they can be woven loosely into a basket called a kapatya.
This is suitable for carrying vegetables or eggs, and though strong, is
a fairly makeshift affair, and discarded after being used only once or twice.
We have plastic bags . . .

The cut green branches can be laid over newly transplanted young plants
and are excellent for shading them from the strong sun until their root
systems recover. When spread closely over the ground they make a springy
clean surface on which can be placed almost anything you care to imagine:
fresh fish, cleaned and washed waiting to go in the pot, salt fish drying
in the sun or clothes to dry, mattresses to air; dishes piled up before
and after washing-up make it into a draining board, complete with ready-made
drainage slats. They are also very nice for people to sit on, keeping sand,
dust or mud off bums.

It was when I was walking over one of those leafy platforms to pick
up my dry washing that the penny suddenly dropped. Yes, they were so cool
and comfortable to my bare feet; it must have been infinitely preferable
to walk over them than along a hot, stony, dusty road, even for a donkey.
With the state of the roads in those parts, palm branches might have improved
the surface no end, and been effective in laying the dust clouds. And of
course, for special occasions they are tied up against any available wall,
fence or post, as a decoration, preferably adorned with branches of bougainvillea
for good measure.

So, with the arrival of a popular hero such as Jesus, it would have
been the most natural thing in the world for his supporters to hack down
a few palm leaves to brandish in celebration. Afterwards, when the crowds
had gone away, the place could be tidied up again with the aid of a coconut
leaf broom, made from the spines of the dry leaves. Mystery solved.

But back to our native British ‘palms’: they are not solely decorative.
The catkins of Salix caprea are described as ‘the earliest common source
of palm’ in spring’. According a report, writing in 1664, ‘the palms are
4 inches long and full of lanuginous cotton’. The writer suggests that a
‘poor body might in an hour’s space gather a pound or two of it, which resembling
the finest silk might doubtless be converted to a profitable use’-pillow
stuffing, for example, if it was dried carefully.

So you see, we could possibly have welcomed Christ to Manchester, or
Birmingham or Sheffield using our native ‘palms’, but it would have required
a lot of advance preparation and a very calm day if this ‘pillow stuffing’
was to be strewn along the road. At least in times gone by there would have
been plenty of willow trees to make a decent covering. Nowadays you’d be
hard-pressed to collect enough in an hour to stuff a pincushion. So what
would we do? Roll out the red carpet? (Acrylic, oil-based, energy intensive,
high entropy.) Dismiss Him as a crank? Or just ignore Him?

Susan Tyzack is a teacher and writer.

The syllabus was loosely based on a modified Nuffield Science course.
Not completely modified, since the word ‘snow’ appeared more than once,
but the whole lot was in the process of being rewritten and re-adapted to
suit the needs of Seychellois pupils. To the delight of my rural science
heritage, there was a small vegetable plot. Philip, the technician, showed
me round: okra and aubergines, cucumber and pumpkins, and ‘zariko’ beans
(from the French les haricots verts). It was very impressive. Did the pupils
do all the work? ‘You know,’ said Philip, ‘these children are very lazy.
They don’t want to get their uniforms dirty.’ It transpired that everything
had been planted by Philip during the school holidays.

So, back to the laboratory. Or rather, half a laboratory. The other
half was the Home Economics room, from which it was separated by a row of
cupboards high enough to block the view but inadequate for keeping out the
aroma of baking cakes or preventing eavesdropping on recipes for curried
chicken.

At one end, again partitioned by cupboards, was the prep room. Here
Philip would sit surrounded by pictures of his favoured football team, Manchester
United. At the other end there were two sinks and in between was a table
space for 15. As all my classes were at least double that, conditions were
cramped: 35 pupils perched on very big stools (half of these pinched from
Home Economics) at very small tables is not conducive to laboratory safety.
I decided to use the half-lab for none but the messiest lessons.

For example, the eye dissection. This was one of the occasions when
Philip excelled himself, managing to procure a number of bull’s eyes from
the abattoir. No mean achievement that, since there were not many cattle
in the Seychelles and it was not every day that any were slaughtered. To
make up the shortfall in bulls’ eyes he had thrown in a good collection
of fish eyes wrapped in newspaper. This also, though I didn’t realise it
at the time, was quite a coup: in Creole cuisine, most fish eyes end up
on the dinner plate. Such was my enthusiasm at the sight of those eyes that
something, at least, penetrated to the pupils. Or so it seemed three years
later when I met Harry, by then a student at the polytechnic.

‘Miss, do you remember when we cut up those eyes?’ he asked. ‘You said
‘Oh look, it’s lisye pwason’.’ He grinned broadly. Me, showing off my Creole,
as if they didn’t all know what fish eyes looked like. Mostly I abandoned
the lab and used the classroom.

Ahhh! Those blissful tropical days in concrete classrooms, looking through
the glass louvres out over heat-shimmered wavy corrugated iron rooftops
towards the sea. There didn’t seem to be enough about HEAT in the syllabus,
but plenty of instances of radiation, convection and conduction. The main
advantage of the classroom was that everyone had a desk and chair of their
own. In other respects things were still less than ideal. Just in the middle
of a particularly interesting question-and-answer session (‘Well, why do
you think the electricity comes out at that end?’) a TATA bus would rattle
by, or building work would start on the new science lab; or there’d be a
singing lesson next door, or it would start raining – and you know how hard
it rains on a tin roof! And yet when my class was getting excited and noisy,
making electric circuits, working in groups to measure heights, passing
a squeeze from hand to hand to get an average reaction time, or making recycled
paper, there was always a deathly hush from everywhere else.

Whenever possible I put an out-of-school interpretation on the syllabus.
We visited the farm school and did land-use pictures. We went to the power
station and the centre for alternative energy research. We walked up to
the woods in search of boat construction materials, raffia and coconut husks,
and then down to the harbour to sail them. That was for the section on wind
energy.

By this time I had learnt a lot of Creole, which was a great help with
a few classes in which the majority of pupils could speak little English.
They would still find the exams very difficult, in English, but at least
they might understand a bit of basic science. There were, however, certain
words I did not know and this led me into trouble in the lesson on chicken
reproduction. The moral is: always, always learn the naughty words. Although,
all things considered, perhaps it was better that way.

In the face of continual changes in minor and sometimes major matters,
and tight governmental control of the curriculum, it was hard to maintain
one’s professional self-esteem. Changes in time-tabling, in the structure
of the school day, in the content of the syllabus, in the subjects included
in the curriculum (cross out Geography, insert Political Education) were
all dictated from the Ministry for Education, and put great pressure on
teachers. Add to this an enormous burden of administrative tasks, report
writing, pupil profiling, records of work, in-service training days in the
holidays, new intitiatives . . . You can see why they found it so hard to
recruit and keep teachers, and why they had to turn to expatriates.

I started off talking about Seychelles . . . but doesn’t it sound familiar?
Though they, being a relatively newly independent country, have good reason
to make changes.

On balance, despite the difficulties, I had a happy time at the school.
Eventually, one year and one term after my arrival, the new laboratory was
finished. It was beautiful, clean, spacious and cool, shaded by the main
school building as well as having the luxury of a fan. There were brand
new microscopes (enough for one each), bunsen burners that worked on bottled
gas and all sorts of extra equipment that I’d asked for a year before. The
answer had always been ‘Wait till you get the new lab,’ and here it was.
We even had an additional lab technician so that Philip could spend more
time looking at his football magazines.

Six weeks later, a letter from the Ministry of Education informed me
that I was to be transferred to another school. Appeals, protests, arguments
and pleadings were all in vain. So it was back to the drawing board. Or
rather, back to another dusty, old, stifling and ill-equipped laboratory.

Susan Tyzack is now based in Staffordshire.