Memories of Joan Cox of Gayaza High School

 

SHE had reached that rare age of 100 years, so it should have come as no shock that she had passed on. But when we heard that Joan Cox had died, many of us who had known her at Gayaza High School felt a deep sense of sadness.

 

Some time back, when she stopped writing her regular newsletter, we knew she must be very frail. But to us, she was still there, our beloved Miss Cox.

 

At Gayaza, you felt her presence everywhere. She simply towered over the school, not so much by her physical stature (she was tall and large) but due to her formidable personality and her total commitment to our all-round education: academic, social and religious.

 

If you were foolish enough to chatter after lights out, she was by your window before you knew it, reprimanding you by your name (we used to wonder if she ever slept). And she knew not only all our names but, uncannily, she also seemed to know our voices. 

 

Awesome as she appeared though, there was an underlying coat of kindness that inevitably seeped through her sometimes forbidding demeanor. I remember spending a night on her verandah, with a classmate, as punishment for setting my mattress on fire from a candle we were using to revise after lights out.

 

Miss Cox spent the entire night checking on us every half hour or so to make sure we were alright. We giggled that she had actually punished herself since she obviously couldn’t sleep. 

 

She had a great memory. Even in her twilight years, long after she was old and retired, she used to write to us a regular newsletter where she would mention us by name, often asking about a mother here and there. It was heartbreaking to learn that in her last few years, she couldn’t remember much about her Gayaza. 

 

Joan Cox inculcated in us a strong work ethic that many of us still carry to this day, training us never to shun manual work: we cultivated crops in the school garden, cleaned our classrooms, kept our dormitories and bathrooms clean to a fault, smoked our latrines daily, peeled the matoke and potatoes we ate and kept the compound meticulously neat.

 

And she shaped many of our social habits through a strict code: walk straight, do NOT walk on the grass or litter it. Always neatly make your bed. Do not crouch over the table when eating. Your uniform must be neat, no hanging threads, no undone hem, your belt starched, your buttons fasted; keep your shoes shined, your hair clean and neatly combed, fingernails short and clean. Small things, at times irritating. But, inadvertently, we adopted the code.

 

And in our academic work, an even stricter menu. Strict class attendance and attention, total respect for teachers, with serious punishment for misbehaviour. The teachers were always on time.

 

Through her selfless commitment to the life of the girls at Gayaza, Cox set the pace for all the teachers. She would thunder at you if you misbehaved, but she never insulted us. In my four years at Gayaza, I never heard her utter a rude word.

 

We were taught to always aim for excellence in everything we did: good marks, neat presentation - that comma, the full stop, the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, the question mark - all seemingly tedious, but a great tradition. Aim high and, “Never Give Up” (the Gayaza motto). We sometimes resented the strict discipline, but it shaped us. 

 

Once in a while, Cox would take a break to go to her family in England. Otherwise, Gayaza was her whole life, literally. And she entrenched in us the Christian values on which the school was founded. She raised funds to erect a new chapel that still stands today, which we anxiously watched go up brick by brick, fearing we wouldn’t be there to see it completed.

 

And the day it was opened, how proud we were as we lined up to enter, breaking into hymns of praise to God for the great moment. That day, the school choir outdid themselves, their beautiful voices rising high from the gallery. You could easily have mistaken them for singing angels.

 

I believe Joan Cox’ deep impact on us was because not only did she preach the Christian values that drove her life, but more importantly, because she strictly lived by them. Hers was a simple life, dedicated to service to God through her commitment to educating Uganda’s girls.

 

She dressed plainly and simply, wore the same hair style, owned no personal vehicle, and remains a stone monument of what a human being can accomplish through vision, determination and commitment. Seen in the context of today’s age increasingly dominated by the race to acquire possessions at any cost, she stands high above, as gold compared to bronze.

 

But words, I’m afraid, are just words. They rarely capture what we feel when someone who has left such a footprint on us passes on. So, if I may presume to speak on behalf of my Gayaza friends, I borrow words from that ageless speech delivered more than a century ago at Gettysburg, to urge us: “….to be dedicated here to the great task remaining before us – that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ... that we here  highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain …”

 

Because Joan Cox gave her last full measure of devotion to us, thousands of us, who were lucky enough to come under her wings at Gayaza. Farewell, our beloved friend.