MEMOIR | EXPAT LIVING IN AFRICA

My Teacher Asked Me to Draw a Picture of Our Weekend Activity So I Drew My Family Naked

I took the instruction at school very literally.

When I was four-and-a-half years old, my family and I moved across the globe from the grey winter of Oxford, UK, to the hot, dry yet fertile, and wide open African plains of Tanzania.

My first school was in a tiny, single-room building that was purpose-built for the British expat community who had been stationed here for the project my father was involved in. It was a project I now understand to have been connected to agriculture. But back then, my young mind only understood that there was some connection with local farmers who grew cashews, and who gave us sacks of the things which we loved to munch our way through.

The assigned teacher of the school was a deeply Christian, God-fearing English woman who was also the wife of one of my dad’s colleagues and mother of a boy a few years older than me. In fact, there were only a handful of families involved, and only three of which had children of primary school age.

Another family had daughters of secondary school age and so they had put them in boarding schools in England and the girls would come out to Tanzania just for the holidays. Meanwhile, our tiny little primary school consisted of just five children at its smallest, and eight at its biggest.

It was what you might call intimate. As was our compound and the whole British community there. But thankfully, there were other well-established expat communities in the area who welcomed us with open arms and kept the social experiences of adults and children alike a little more varied.

The most established community that existed there in Mtwara, in southern Tanzania, was a Finnish community. Many seemed to have been living there for many years; the children were extremely settled and acclimatised to a different way of life and their school was large and thriving.

The Fins had their own community club which all expats were invited to join. This offered us a much wider scope of activities and social life. There was, of course, a bar. There was also a pool, and various sporting activities, though the only one I specifically remember was tennis.

I loved to watch my dad play matches with other expat men. My keen observance led me to play tennis later in life when I played for my school team back in England. But then, it may have been not so much the tennis itself that imprinted deeply on my memory, and more the experience one day when I sat on a bee.

Even at the age of five it can be pretty mortifying to have your pants pulled down by your dad and be placed over the bar of the Fin Club to have the barman cover your bare butt with ice. A strong memory, indeed.

But that wasn’t what inspired my drawing one Monday morning when my teacher asked us to draw a picture of what we had done at the weekend.

One thing that I came to learn very early on about expat communities is that they love to recreate their home territory as much as possible.

Although I am sure that the Fins were quite happy to leave behind the bitter winters with no sunlight in the northern European regions, there were other aspects that they couldn’t live without.

Fins are well known for their love of self-care, especially in the form of spas. And central to every Finnish spa is the sauna.

Honestly, in such cold climates, who would expect anything else? Yet, in the hot, dusty African plains of Tanzania, their saunas were still as much a central part of life as ever. And so, the Finnish community had built a large communal sauna as part of the community club, to which all members were invited.

Most Brits didn’t bother. It wasn’t that they didn’t like saunas. Not at all.

It was that they were distinctly and typically British. Or, in other words, prudish.

And those Fins weren’t.

So while the Brits would be fine in a communal sauna with their privates well-covered, that wasn’t what happened in that sauna.

My mother, however, didn’t have a drop of British blood in her. Born and bred in the hotter, sunnier land of Israel, she didn’t understand the sentiment of having inhibitions when you could let it all hang out for the sake of a nice, hot sauna. She wanted to take advantage of what was on offer. And if it was good enough for the Fins, it was good enough for her.

As they say, while in Finland, do as the Fins. Okay, it wasn’t quite Finland, but minus the heat and the terrain it could easily have been mistaken as such.

What my dad had thought, I have no idea. But having been a student in London during the flower-child era of the ’60s, I suspect that nudity didn’t bother him either.

So, as the Fins, we did.

Which led to us spending many of our Sundays going as a family to the community sauna with all of the other Finnish families.

Everyone together. Naked mothers, fathers, children, grannies and granddads all in there, sharing the heat. Uninhibited and free, relaxing in the steamy wooden-panelled room, and then showering in the open showers.

As a young child, I was fascinated by these naked bodies, from the variety in hairy covering to the incredible sagging breasts of the grandmothers.

At five, I had no reason to ever wonder what fully developed male genitalia looked like. Nothing was hidden from the innocent eyes of us children. As if it was completely normal…which it was.

And which was why I thought it was a perfectly normal and common activity to hang out naked in groups consisting of several generations of men and women together. And to then produce a picture of it for my prim and proper schoolteacher when she instructed us to draw what we had done at the weekend with our families.

My Reserved British Schoolteacher Was Not Impressed

Sadly, Mrs. Bennett, as I called her, was rather alarmed when I smiled sweetly and innocently handed over my work of art.

She decided that she needed to call on my parents to discuss this with them. Since our little purpose-built schoolroom was only around a 100-metre walk from my front door, it was not exactly out of her way or a bother to do so.

She sat my parents down out of earshot of me. Most likely, I had gone off to play in my room with my dolls and teddies, completely oblivious to any concerns of wrong-doing. But when I heard my mother and father bidding farewell to Mrs. Bennett, I emerged to find out what she had wanted.

I could see my mother was having a hard time trying to suppress her amusement until the woman was far enough away, and then she collapsed on the sofa, unable to contain the laughter erupting from her anymore.

It was only then that I learnt that drawing your family in the nod was not a normal or accepted thing to do in a tiny expat school. Especially not for a teacher whose faith was so deeply rooted in the Church of England.

So I learnt to guard what I produced in my art for my remaining school years.

Well…most of the time.

Thanks for reading! Why not check out this other memoir I wrote a while back: