Daniel returned to the staff quarters that evening with the blue file tucked under his arm. He had planned to sit down, take the medicine the hospital had given him, and go to bed early. Instead, he found a white notice pasted to his door, the glue peeling at the edges.
“NOTICE TO VACATE,” it read.
Sarah was in the kitchen making tea. When she heard the door open, she came out holding a spoon.
“You are back early.”
Daniel did not answer. He removed the notice slowly and read it. The date of issue was today. The deadline was seventy-two hours after the transfer was confirmed.
“When did they put this here?” he asked.
“Around four. Someone from housing came and asked whether you had received a notice. I told him you were still at work. He said this was the notice.”
Daniel went inside and placed the file on the table. The house was small: one main bedroom, Sarah’s room, a sitting room joined to the kitchen, and a veranda facing the school’s back field. It was not a beautiful permanent home, but its rent was part of his salary and the walk to his classroom was only a few hundred steps. Sarah, a widow whose two children stayed with their grandmother during term, depended on the house as a place of safety.
“Has your transfer already begun?” Sarah asked.
“It has not. There is a letter saying I requested it. I denied it.”
“But they have already started preparing the house.”
Daniel sat down. A small pulling pain had begun in his head. He opened a bottle of water and drank.
Sarah picked up the notice. “Seventy-two hours is not time.”
“That is why I cannot leave without challenging it.”
“Where will you stay if they say you must go?”
“I do not know yet.”
Sarah read the paper again. “Could you accept the transfer for now and fight it later?”
Daniel looked at her. “If my job goes, the class is given to someone else, and the house is taken, what will I be fighting to get back later?”
“Your health.”
“My health is the reason they used the hospital date.”
Sarah fell silent. Daniel regretted the sharpness of his words immediately, but he did not take them back. He knew what she feared. His salary helped pay her children’s school fees, their mother’s medicine, and the food at the end of the month. If Daniel were transferred to a distant school, transport costs would come directly out of money that was already insufficient.
Two hours later, the housing officer returned with a small notebook. His name was Mr Okello. He remained at the doorway and did not ask to come in.
“I have come to follow up on the notice,” he said.
“Do you know why it was issued?” Daniel asked.
“It was sent by administration. If your post changes, the house is allocated to someone else.”
“My post has not changed.”
“I was told the transfer had been confirmed.”
“By whom?”
Okello looked down at his notebook. “I am not responsible for deciding that.”
“But you are responsible for following dates. When was this notice prepared?”
Okello opened the page. “Yesterday morning.”
Daniel felt his back tighten. Peter had arrived that morning. The transfer letter said it had been entered yesterday at 2:12 p.m. The housing notice had been prepared before Peter set foot in the school.
“Can you show me the order that made you write it?” Daniel asked.
“I was given a list of posts being changed.”
“So the list was ready yesterday?”
Okello closed the notebook. “Mr Kato, when administration gives me a paper, I have to act on it.”
“Do not destroy it. Put it in your file and give me a copy.”
Okello hesitated, then wrote a reference number on a small piece of paper. “For an official copy, you must apply at the office.”
“I will apply tomorrow.”
“The deadline is written here.”
“And I am standing here.”
Okello left without answering.
Sarah sat in the chair near the window. “You look as if you have decided to fight everyone.”
“I will not fight everyone. I will find out who wrote what.”
“People with houses, salaries, and offices have more time than a teacher who needs to teach.”
Daniel looked at the file. “That is why everything must be in writing.”
He called Moses, a fellow teacher who had worked with him since Daniel joined Mwangaza. Moses answered on the third attempt.
“Are you safe?” he asked. “I heard Peter has arrived.”
“And the housing notice arrived before him.”
“Is that possible?”
“That is why I am calling. Do you know the staff-quarters procedure?”
“The usual practice is that housing receives a list from the headteacher after a transfer order. I have never seen a notice before the person was brought in.”
“Can you send me the policy?”
“I will look for it. But Daniel, do not make noise in the staffroom. People are already watching you.”
“I do not want noise. I want the policy and the timing.”
“Will you go to the union?”
“Tomorrow, if they are open.”
Moses drew a breath. “Do not put Peter’s name in the complaint if you have no evidence. He may have been deceived too.”
The advice sounded like something Daniel was not yet ready to accept. Peter was a direct threat to his job. But if every document had been prepared before Peter appeared, Peter might not be the source.
After the call, Daniel opened his calendar. The next day he had three Form Four lessons, a teachers’ meeting at three, and a hospital follow-up appointment. On the corner of the housing notice, he wrote four items: a copy of the order, the quarters policy, the dispute memo, and the name of whoever started the list.
Sarah read what he was writing. “Will you go to the hospital?”
“I will. I do not want them saying I invented an illness to create this date.”
“And if they evict you?”
Daniel looked at the veranda, then at the mathematics books in his bag. “I will keep teaching until it is written that I cannot.”
That night he slept badly. At around one in the morning, he heard a car stop outside. He did not open the curtain. Someone walked to the door and pushed a paper underneath it.
In the morning, when he picked it up, it was a short memo from the school office: “If your transfer is completed, the residence will be issued to the incoming teacher.”
At the bottom of the memo was its date of preparation.
It was dated one day before Peter arrived, before Daniel knew Peter’s name, and before anyone had asked whether he was ready to leave.
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