This Saturday was a school day, making it the second six-day week of this first month of school. Also this Saturday, word spread that a 4th grade student at a school just several hundred meters from our campus had died of the swine flu over the weekend. Five weeks ago, when I verbally consented to my teaching position, the possibility of both these events seemed quite remote. The students were still enjoying their prolonged holiday, and the teachers were being bussed in every day to twiddle their thumbs, exchange grumbles and rumors, and flesh out enough lesson plans to last them through the swine flu epidemic, the swine-bird panfluenza, and the melting of the polar ice caps. But then a child died; one that could have been in any of our classes. On a weekday, maybe we could have forgiven one casualty. After all, the chances of a student dying on the treacherous stretch of smoggy highway are probably greater. A 4th grader could just as easily choke on a hot dog or slip on the slick playground concrete. Indeed, the vast majority of swine flu – affected students will recover just like they would from any other flu that comes with the change from summer to winter. But if you were a parent, trying to nurse an ailing child back to health, would you rush your kid back for Saturday class, fearing the consequences of falling further behind? Or would you give them some much needed rest, keep them away from other potentially infected kids, and let them fall behind in their schoolwork? There is a clear catch-22 at work here for the parent. If the swine flu crisis in Egypt has yet to live up to its billing in terms of lives lost, it is certainly starting to force us into difficult decisions. Already, my day-to-day class attendance only yields about two thirds of my class roster. It’s not always the same kids either. It seems that parents are attacking the problem with a sort of rotation system; their child skips once or twice a week in order to improve their odds. With the recent spate of absenteeism, it’s difficult for me as a foreigner to distinguish between an embedded culture of hookyism – one that I can’t doubt – and a practical approach to an increasingly dangerous outbreak. And this is just the beginning. It seems like this last year has turned the art of the gloomy or tepid prognosis into something of a big industry, leaving Detroit and Fannie and Freddie in its wake. As much as I’d like these over-informed and under-helpful prognosticators to fall flat on their faces, I have to say that when it comes to swine flu in Egypt, there’s not much reason for short-term hope. The virus is still relatively new here and must run its course. Meanwhile, I’m starting to hear from fellow teachers horror stories about hospitals refusing patients because they can’t cope with its high level of contagiousness. This seems astoundingly cruel and backwards, but if indeed we risk contaminating 10 hospital patients with each flu patient admitted (a patient who will most likely recover), then judgments are all of a sudden not so easy to make. The pattern that’s emerging is that institutions whose reputation, physical health, and financial bottom line stand to lose from the crisis are being left to go it alone in their reactions. My school’s Saturday classes are a case in point. In fact, I can’t even say for sure that our Saturday class policy is a direct compensation for the government decree to suspend school for two weeks in September; the German, French and Egyptian branches of my school do not follow the same policy. While we all wait on pins and needles for the Ministry of Education to shut things down for the year, it seems that some high-level school administrator has taken the matter into their own hands with a policy that only increases absenteeism, keeps children tired and vulnerable, and makes teachers downright pissed. They have effectively taken the government’s inaction and not only made it every one else’s nuisance, but also compounded the health risks. Ultimately, this catch-22 should not be faced squarely by the parent or administrator, but by the institutions responsible for making difficult decisions in the realm of education and health. I would think this responsibility falls to the Ministry of Education, but so far, as a new teacher on the very ground level, I only hear conjecture about what, if anything, this government organ will do. A system whereby each student attends longer classes 3 days a week, rotating with their classmates who attend on the other days, was rumored at the beginning of the school year but never acted on. Instead, parents work out their own equation and create massive gaps in their childrens’ curriculums and logistical headaches for teachers. When the rumor of death is in the air, I can hardly blame them. BM
