Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School,
Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 18 July 2015 No. 715
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Dear Friends,
Have a look at:
This Circular has a very long an interesting
account by Jan Koendraat, from Suriname.
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Jun 19
I feel obliged to
make my contribution too.
- I did indeed go
with Atilla on the Lambretta motor scooter in the evening down the hill all the
way to the main road in Tunapuna. I
learned it from an older boy as I showed Atilla.
I am still
astonished none of the Monks noticed the scooter going down the hill at night. The scooters went up and down so often, nobody
noticed probably. That was the advantage
we used. I did it about five times,
never got caught. Would have been bad
for me if Atilla got expelled, he got lucky!
- Building dens and
trying to hide them. One day Nigel
Moffat caught us. We have to break it
down, or old boys would come and get us, he would be back in an hour to check. In that hour we broke down the whole thing,
took the materials over the hill, put the dirt back and covered it with some
leaves. When he came back there was
nothing left, no trace at all, and we were gone. He couldn’t figure it out. Spoke him later, he was just teasing, never
meant that.
- When you go down
the hill past the sportsfields, there were some trees with what they called Tonka
bean. I ate a lot.
- About form III,
went to the first shop down the hill past the swimming pool. That was out of bounds. Bought two cigarettes there and smoked them
happily. When pocket money came, there
was no pocket money for me. Couldn’t
understand. A monk had seen me with the
telescope from the seminary. Didn’t get
any pocket money the whole rest of the term. That was hard. Some boys gave me some money then.
- Every season some
new toy was hot. One whole term it was
the spin top. Man, I looked and looked,
older boys spinning them around everywhere. My eyes popped out, never figured out to do it
once myself!
- Blow the horn with
your hands. I think it was Arthur
Cumberbatch who taught me. Hold your
hands together, make a hollow space, blow between your thumbs. He could play a music tune that way, never got
that far. I can still do it, teasing my
grandkids.
- To whistle with
your fingers. Some older boys could do
it and they whistled very loud. It took
me a whole three weeks practicing how to do it. Suddenly I made the sound and since then I
could do it. I still can with any two
fingers and play lots of music tunes.
- During lunch break
some team would play a volleyball match near the toilet building. On the first floor was the game master who
would use a metal whistle like father Cuthbert had to call all of us, one with
a rolling bean in it. Any game mistake
he would whistle. With my two fingers I
could copy that whistle exactly that it really sounds for real. So during the game I whistled a few times for
joke and the game would stop while there was nothing wrong. Never got caught!
- Some other season
playing with a piece of rope was hot. Try to make all sorts of figures with your
fingers. I did it so often, fifty years
later I can still make two or four diamonds with my eyes closed.
- From scouting I
learned a lot about tying knots with ropes. I still remember them by heart. When needed I still use them. Showing them to my grandson.
- Smoking was
forbidden. Maybe when I was 14 I started
to smoke at Mount. I think I smoked
every day a (Snow Flake) cigarette for three years. One day two Spanish boys had a large bin of
cigarettes from home. We dug a hole in
the mountain where we hid them, and smoked there every afternoon. The toilet building was the regular place
where older boys smoked. One day a big
control came, everybody was searched. That
was when smoke came visibly out of the window. (I quit smoking in 1982 when I had kids. Never smoked again.)
- Making a clicking
sound with your pointing finger (how do you call them in English??). Put your thumb and middle finger tight
together. Let your pointing finger hang
loose. Lift up your arm and wave it down
with force so that your loose pointing finger smacks hard in the clove between
your thumb and middle finger. I can
still do it.
- In the prep
dormitory when lights were out, somebody made a noise. A novice monk (then brother Hildebrand??) was
in the cubicle to supervise us. He came
out very angry. Who did it? As nobody confessed he started whipping every
one of us with a cane on our behinds. We
had to stand at the end of our bed. When
he was about halfway and some fifty innocent boys got a good licking, somebody
convinced him it was elsewhere round the corner. He went there starting to hit everybody. He was really going nuts, all boys were
innocent except one. Next day a paper
was on the outside door of the dormitory with the Ten Commandments of Behaviour
in the dormitory. That evening he was
taken away and never returned. We were
freed of him. (At this moment the Catholic
church in the Netherlands announced that anybody who filed a complaint to the
church when the 2012 investigation commission asked them to, will get
compensation including all those people who cannot show sufficient proof. The only thing, the act must have happened
inside the country. Cases from abroad
are not treated. I think otherwise I
would have had a case here!)
- One night father
Augustine was the supervisor in the prep dormitory. Some boys went too often to the toilets in the
night. So he ordered nobody to be
allowed to go to the toilet. Early in
the morning I had to go and pee very badly but was afraid to go. I waited until we got out and ran for the
toilet. I wish we had the bill of rights
then.
- Some boys played
guitar. One day an older boy organised a
group of boys who wanted to learn to play the guitar. We started with the song Bend down your head
Tom Dooley with the accords E and A, very simple. We had to practice that, so I borrowed a
guitar and started practicing in the staircase at the end of the corridor. It was Sunday afternoon. I played the tune over and over again. Suddenly father Bernard came down the stairs,
he was mad at me. I had been disturbing
his Sunday afternoon nap with the same tune over and over again. I was so sorry, I didn’t have the faintest
idea. He was looking for a way to punish
me. I explained I was just practicing
for the lesson. He wanted to know it
all, who gave the lessons, etc. The day
after he announced all guitar playing was forbidden, no more guitar lessons. I still wish we had a bill of rights then. All he had to ask was go and play somewhere
else instead of an overall forbidden.
- I think it was
Lindsay Moffat. Some boys had a new
hobby. Carving figures out of a piece of
leather to make your own stamp with ink. Whole afternoons we were carving with a piece
of razorblade.
- What I learned at
cardplaying was how to shuffle the cards with two hands, making a rhythmic
sound and let them drop back into place.
- Never met any girls at Mount. Yeah, a few penpalls. When families came to visit the school, we
would go for the girls. It was not
successful. One day Larry Thomas took me
to his home. There were some girls there
and one wanted to be my penpall. Some of
her friends joined in. I think I was
writing to about five girls during my time at Mount. When I was student at the university somewhere
1972, I tried to find the first one back. She had moved to Canada and was very glad I
looked her up. We kept on writing a few
years. Then she became a mother, I
wasn’t in for that thing yet, so it died out.
- I left Mount in
summer 1967. I missed the part where
girls came to Mount to socialize under supervision. I had one big problem with the life we had at
Mount, and that is, when I got my first job later in life, my colleagues were
women, protestants, non-religious, homosexuals, social-democrat people (anti
rich). I scarcely had any practice to
socialize with these people while they had it from their youth on. We were brought up in a way how the Monks had
their youth where everything was forbidden. People viciously attacking religion, how to
defend that in public in the field? People trying to con you and you are
unprepared.
- After Mount I went
to a mixed boy and girl school. Those
students were in a mixed boy and girl school mostly their whole life. I was rather an exception with my Mount
experience. Totally unprepared for what
was to come. It’s like if you don’t
learn to talk when you are 1-2 years of age, you will never learn it properly
again. If you don’t learn to ride a
bicycle when you are four, you never learn it good again. It’s the same with girls, if you only start
learning to engage with them when you are 16, you are way back. I read about penetration, ha ha, my time was
getting dumped by one after the other. I
am happily married now for 37 years, but I wish I had skipped some experiences.
Only after thirty years on a reunion you
get to meet one of those girls again to hear the why. Only stupid silly reasons. The society we came in was so much different,
the lack of preparation was big.
- I stormed the
library too. In the beginning I
discovered the books of Biggles. I think
I read them all. One book I tried to
finish in one day, reading every spare second. I succeeded.
- My parents allowed
me to take piano lessons. A Polish man
came once a week. I had to practice the
rest of the week. After lunch I could
ask father Cuthbert for the key and play piano in the Benet’s Hall. I did it a whole year I think. Learning Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake, the Blue
Danube etc. Lindsay Moffat was an
experienced piano player. He taught me
to play the accords with two hands and some Calypso songs to go along. I quit piano lessons and started playing as
Lindsay taught me. When the Sound of Music
came, Lindsay taught me to play all the songs his way with the accords. I can still play them 50 years later.
- One side of the
basketball field was a high wall with regular holes in it up to the refectory. The holes Attila mentions where the tennis
ball would go in. Below there was a long
bench. One day I tried to climb the
wall, holding on to the holes. It went
easy so I went up a bit. When I looked
down, I got scared. It was too high to
jump, but I couldn’t see the holes anymore where to put my foot. I couldn’t get back down. Sweat started to break out, my fingers started
to ache, I took a big chance and continued to climb up. Happily the holes went up right to the top,
and I got out at the back of the refectory where the kitchen was. I don’t think anybody saw me doing it in the
evening.
- A weekend we went
with a scout group on a hike in the night in the mountains behind Mount. But we got lost, the patrol leader made a
mistake in the dark. He didn’t allow
that had a say in it which way to choose. We walked the whole night and slept under some
orange trees. Next morning we ate some
half rotten oranges and continued walking. Only late in the afternoon we were found, the
Monks were searching for us with the VW bus. We were so tired, we slept round the clock.
- During long
weekends when local boys went home, I got permission from father Cuthbert to go
hiking with a few boys. I think we did
it twice a year and stayed two or three nights in a self-made camp. He gave us the necessary scout stuff. One brother came along with us to supervise.
- Sometimes Father Cuthbert
would lend me the walky-talky. Oh boy,
it was like magic then. Going in the
hills and keep talking to each other. Some
radio amateur would hear us and join in. Every time you would say “Over”.
- One of the
happiest days was at the end of every term when a list was on the notice board
of all the boys who would leave for home with the airplane. You would go and adore the announcement, watch
your name and date and what Airway. It
used to be Panam or KLM, maybe sometimes Air France.
- Counting the days
until the end of the term. I think we
all did that. Every morning when you
woke up, hey, another day less.
- Dark room. There was a dark room at Mount all the way up
where the scout building was. Later on I
learned how easy it was to develop pictures. I wish we had done it more at Mount, making a
lot more pictures.
- The chemistry lab
was very sophisticated. Never realised
it was the best in the country thanks to Miss Markus.
- In a class with
father Augustine, he threw a book to a boy. The boy reached out to catch the book. But he did it a little hastily, so his
fingertip hit the edge of the desk and a tiny piece of wood went straight
underneath his nail all the way to the back. They boy screamed of pain. Father Augustine didn’t understand what happened
so he sent the boy out of class for punishment of making noise. In fact first aid was needed there, but the
boy was left alone. I tried to tell
father Augustine but he ordered us to shut up. Only after class he looked at the boy and then
he realised what was the case and let the boy go to the clinic.
- The highest floor
in the centre part of the main building of the Abbey School, there was a little
door you could sneak into the attic above the Form V dormitories. I went there
once, finding a lot of old school material. I sat there a while reading and it was hot
under the roof. Somehow I fell asleep
from the heat probably. When I woke up,
I must have slept a few hours. I had no
idea what time it was. I ran out of the
attic, thinking I would get heavy punishment being late. But it wasn’t shower time yet, everybody was
playing around, nothing happened yet. Oh
boy, I was relieved.
- I passed for the
exams from Form IV to Form V. Father
Theo asked me to become a prefect the new year. All your private stuff from your locker was
put in your laundry bag and stored in the attic. I felt really great and went home for summer
holidays. One evening I asked my dad how
to apply for A-level or B-level for the GCE-exams. Which one would be fit for university? My elder brother intervened. He said there is a new high school in Surinam
which qualified for the Dutch university.
So there in a wink of an eyelash
was decided I should stay home and go to the new school. A year later some monk from Trinidad came to
bring my laundry bag but it was half empty, mostly the books. All my other memorabilia stuff from Mount was
lost. Never saw it again.
Enjoy!
Greetings, Jan
Koenraadt MSB ‘63-‘67
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Now for the photos
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Photos:
Bandit
p34 The Early Times
98AV0002ABBOTVD,
Abbot Van Duin
14WK1703WKEGRP,
Winston Kerry
10JK0080JKO,
Jan Koenraadt project.
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