I awoke to hear a murmer of voices from outside. In my semi-awake state I lay there listening to the sounds outside getting gradually louder. Smiling to myself, I imagined the students ruuning amuck. A couple of weeks ago we had spotted them yelling and whooping on the rooftop of their hostel. When I had asked them “Why?” the next day, they had just responded with “Why not?”- fair enough.
About ½ an hour later Shell awoke also and asked, “Whats that noise?”
“Just the students. Think they’re having another party.”
“Baby that doesn’t sound like a party. Look out the window.”
I looked out and felt like a complete fool. It was obvious she was right. About 400 students had gathered outside our building. They were yelling and chanting and had begun to throw rocks at the walls of our guesthouse.
Our room is at the top at the back so we could only see the overflow of the crowd that had spilled to the side of the building but we could hear bangs against the front and side of the building. Some were just small thuds, which we assumed were the rocks, but others were extremely loud ramming noises, where we guessed the students were smashing some objects against the front gate of the building.
What the hell is going on here? We’ve got pretty good senses of humour but this isn’t funny. This is fucking scary! We decided the best thing to do was to go over the top and panic, so we quickly double-bolted the door and moved the beds against it. Ok, now nobody can get through that without an axe or by burning it down. Lets hope that’s not going to happen.
The main problem (other than the angry mob) was that we had no information and of course we feared the worst. The two main facts that worried us were these:
1. They were obviously deliberately attacking our building (the guesthouse)
2. We were the only westerners at the university, so if for any reason they were angry
against westerners they maybe trying to get into the building to get to us.
Our conclusion: mwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
We decided to call the prinipal (who unfortunately was out of town). We didn’t care if it was 2am. He was already up, trying to deal with the mob with phone calls. He told us that it was basically a protest against some punishments the students thought were too harsh and that we shouldn’t worry. It had happened before and normally they just smashed some glass.
That made us feel a lot better and we got back into our beds (still against the door). Unfortunately the calmness caused by the principal’s words were soon counteracted as the ramming noise turned to massive explosion noises that actually shook the building. We tried to ignore them but it wasn’t easy. Eventually we heard sirens and the noise of obvious crowd control and dispersing. Then we heard a lot less noise – most of the students had bolted. We did hear
Eventually, our heartbeats slowed down, our breathing returned back to normal and the only other sound other than the normal noises of the night was an obviously policeman or security guard conducting an inspection of our building, so we went to sleep, thinking that we were probably stupid panicking foreigners until we awoke the next morning to witness the aftermath. Check it out for yourself:
By the way in addition to burning the two cars, the motorcycle and the pushbike (our bike – mwaaaaaaaa) they also went on a rampage throughout the campus, smashing hundreds of windows of buildings and vehicles, destroying dozens of computers, annhilating the ambulance and trashing the administration block and many other offices. One of the other lecturers was telling us about rocks that were thrown through his window and zoomed past his head. But don’t panic we’re fine. There was a few security guards beaten a bit but nobody was heart too badly. And it gave everybody something to talk about for the next week or two!
The wild dogs that live on campus had cute little puppies - there's 20 or 30 of them and they run around playing just outside the building we live in! Puts a smile on your face every morning. They're starting to growl and turn into real wild dogs now though. We love them!
Come play with me!
Anish, the principal's son, who is 7 and fluent in 3 languages and knows something about everything and is happy to tell you! He calls Scott 'Captain Scott' after the Antarctica expedition guy, and he's very cheeky but a nice kid - we play games with him a bit.
