"The prefects are dead! Long live the prefects!"

Form 3 students, soon to be sworn in prefects, taunt form 4 prefects who are resigning. PGSS, Chisitu, Malawi

I went to the Prefect hand off ceremony today. I didn't know what a prefect was, so I had no idea what to expect. Turns out a prefect is just one of the form 4 students (the oldest class) whose job it is to make sure that various tasks, mainly punishments, get done. For example: there are 6 "sanitation" prefects whose job it is to make sure the cleaning gets done and to monitor other students when they've been assigned extra cleaning as punishment. Each of the labs has its own set of prefects (one head prefect and one vice prefect), Idah was voted/chosen the vice-prefect for the geography lab. I got the distinct impression she didn't want the job and that she, like me, didn't really know what the job entailed. The prefects are choose by a student run election, but the teachers can arbitrarily pick someone else if they don't like the results of the election. There were a few choices the teachers made the students certainly did not like (I did not envy the poor girls who were chosen by the teachers over the girls the students themselves had chosen).

The ceremony itself was very interesting. Except for a small minority in the cities Malawians don't really party, they certainly don't go out dancing on Saturday nights. I think that they compensate for this by doing a lot of singing and dancing every chance they get. Political rallys, sunday church, or, at boarding school, a hand-over ceremony.

The first two hours of the ceremony consisted of a long series of parades. The old prefects, generally in pairs, had dressed up in costumes somehow tied to what responsibilities they'd had, for example the science lab prefects were wearing white coats and holding microscopes (first time i saw a microscope at the school) while the kitchen prefects were dressed as cooks. They'd then parade down the hall, dancing and singing to the music which, unlike the disco night a few weeks ago, was dj'd by a teacher and a student. The walk, the long slow dancing meander, from the end of the hall to the front, where the seats reserved for the out-going prefects were, took at least 5 minutes per prefect. On multiple occasions the teachers asked the student to hurry things up so that the ceremony would end today. I doubt their request was even heard, but even if it was it wouldn't have mattered. With the exception of a fire, or a hurricane, I don't think there's anything that would have convinced the girls to cut short this ceremony.

Once the old prefects were done parading it was time to announce the new prefects. The strange thing, for someone like me who had only seen the happy dances of the out-going prefects, is that not many students actually want to be a prefect. I'm not sure if it was distress at having extra work for a year, or the fact that they were chosen over other girls who'd won the "prefect election", or what, but there were a number of girls who looked very unhappy when they heard their name called.

The final prefect to be announced is the "head-girl", to the best of my understanding this role is a mix between a student-body president and valedictorian, no matter what it equates to the students were very interested in finding out if the girl they'd chosen had been confirmed by the teachers and staff. However, knowing full well that as soon as they announced this name the students would start to disperse, the teachers took some time to talk to the students. Most Malawian schools don't have a graduation ceremony, once you're done with your exams you pack up your stuff and go home. At PGSS the prefect ceremony doubles, for the teachers at least, as a graduation/good-bye-and-good-luck ceremony. There was a lot of reminiscing by the head-mistress and a few of the older teachers about this class, the students, and lots of well-wishing. Finally, right before the students rioted, the head-girl's name was announced, it was who the student body wanted, so there was a lot of singing and dancing as everyone walked back to the hostels for dinner.

ps - wow, i'm done taking pictures.

pps - i ran into a group of form 3 students the next day, they'd all lost their voices from all the singing and shouting.

this picture was published on friday, may 22 2009. there is a full size version available. this picture was taken with a 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 on a nikon d200. the settings when this was taken were: focal length: 26.0 mm; shutter speed: 1/90; iso: 400. this image has the following tags: malawi.