Hartley Neita, Contributor
LONG BEFORE Nutritions Holdings Limited was thought of, there were various organisations like churches and citizens associations, together with individual men and women of goodwill who went about providing a meal a day for children who could not afford to buy a midday lunch.
This work was voluntary. Companies or farmers provided the basic food. Women organised themselves in teams to cook the meals. A company provided the vehicle to carry the meals to the schools, and the teachers with the assistance of the older girls at the schools helped to serve the lunches.
It was brothers and sisters helping brothers and sisters, for 'there but for the grace of God go I.'
A friend told me recently that at the time she went to elementary school in Kingston, this school lunch was in place. She was probably about age 10 as she had not yet taken the Common Entrance Examination.
"Those of us who could afford to choose our own meal, looked with scorn at the food provided for the 'poorer' children, and called it 'bullo slush'. To this day, I don't know what 'Bullo slush' meant. All I knew then was that it was poor-pickney-food!" she said.
One day she saw a friend of hers, walking some distance away towards the canteen where the "bullo slush" was served. Her friend, of course, was not going for this poor-pickney-food. In jest she shouted.
"Don't finish the bullo slush, you hear!"
As she turned to continue where she was going, in front of her appeared the principal. His face, normally cheerful, was stern. Staring at her he curled his forefinger inviting her to follow him into his office. Not a word, he said. He went past his desk and removed the dreaded cane from the brackets which mounted it on the wall.
Knowing the inevitable she held out her hands, palms upwards. He continued staring at her while he held the cane between the thumb and forefinger of both hands, rolling it for a while. Then, with two quick flicks of his wrist the cane whipped through the air and slapped the palms. For a moment she felt nothing. Her hands were numb. Then the nerves sent the signal of pain to her brain and tears flooded her face. She cried and cried. Part pain, part shame.
The principal stood, still silent, and watched her flashing her hands. The pain finally stopped and he crying was replaced with heaving sobs which became less and less.
He went behind his desk and sat on his chair. She stood before the desk while he dressed her down with a lecture on thoughtfulness and kindness and the evil of conceit which comes from thinking of others as being inferior.
Lesson learned
Today, she is a senior executive in one of the major companies of our country. She has never forgotten that day. She bears no hate for the principal. Indeed, she remembers him with respect and affection.
What if, as it is today, she had not received the corporal cane? Would she have remembered the lesson he taught her and sealed in her memory with the two slaps of his whip?
What if he had said to her: "Please Miss G. It is not the right thing to sneer at things you believe are below your standard. I sincerely hope you will never call the lunches some of the children have to eat by that name again. Will you be kind enough to promise me that you won't?"
And if that had been so, she would have smiled shyly and nodded her head.
"That's a good girl," he would have said as she left his office.
Outside she would have placed her left hand akimbo and said to herself: "What him a gwan with, eh? A bet you a make me friend dem call him 'bullo fool' him think him cool, nuh?"
