Stressful Day

We have had a few challenges during our time in Nigeria, but on Friday I had the biggest challenge of my headship career. At the end of the school day, some children had left, lots were going to afterschool activities, and hundreds of people were on site milling around looking at the book stalls, chatting to friends and enjoying the afternoon sunshine, we had a fire. The school hall caught fire. Within seconds of a parent telling me she could smell smoke in the hall, the stage, curtains and roof were ablaze. We set off the alarms and the children knew exactly what to do, they went to the muster points and sat down, BUT NANNIES PANICKED. We nearly had a disaster as some of them ran and pushed children out of the way and tried to climb the fences. We could have had children crushed against the fences- doesn't bear thinking about It took so much shouting and screaming to calm them down. We cleared the classroom blocks and then had nannies pushing us out of the way to go back into the buildings to get the children's bags. Eventually we calmed them down, but there are lessons to be learnt and we will practice fire drills at the end of the day for parents and nannies regularly.

The school hall burnt to the ground, my staff broke down the covered walkways that joined the hall to the classrooms, we used every fire extinguisher and jury-rigged a hose from the pool, but the fire service took 1 hour to get to us. We saved the rest of the school, but the hall no.
We were lucky- not one injury, but boy will we do training with nannies now!!
As I said earlier on in the blog history you have to be self-reliant in Nigeria. you cannot rely on the infrastructure that we take for granted.
So on my CV now it says, historic school with original, colonial architecture celebrates 60 years in one place- new head comes and burns it down!!!!
On Saturday we had an emergency technical committee meeting to ensure that we have the hall fenced off and made safe for school to open on Monday- this was a little bizarre, as we needed to get the contractor to buy and erect the zinc hoardings, but he needed cash money before he would do it!! SO, we all emptied our pockets, went to the cash machines and gave the guy N250,000 (£1000)  so he could go to the market (which only takes cash) and buy the materials- B&Q need to come to Nigeria and soon please. Can you imagine that happening in  a school in the UK?
But we all laughed, thanked God for looking after the school and gladly worked throughout the day.