Local school with global appeal!

IN 1959 seven-year-old Awali School pupil Raymond Stolz wrote: “In our classroom we have seven English and two Irish and three Scotch and one Welsh, three American, four Australian and three Duch, and we have twentytwo children all two gether. We all play very well and I like being in a glass of all nashens.”

Despite the spelling mistakes, Raymond’s essay ‘Children from Other Countries,’ goes to the heart of Awali School: a small local school that is truly global in character.
Over the years pupils from all over the world have passed through Awali’s classrooms.
Today its alumni can be found on every continent and in every profession from safari guides and vets to broadcasters and bankers.
Each year scores of ex-pupils return to the school to visit the airy classrooms, green courtyard and play areas that have generated countless fond memories.
Since the school was established for the children of Bapco employees in 1936, it has become an integral part of the kingdom’s history.
When the Awali Infants School relocates this winter, it not only marks the end of 71 years of education on the premises, but also a history which has shaped hundreds of lives.
As Bahrain climbs skyward and its land mass creeps into the sea, Awali School has remained virtually untouched.
Its buildings still run on 110 voltage and the distinctive smell of chalk and air-conditioning that old pupils remember pervades its classrooms.    
Ian Fellows, who has followed in a long line of Awali head teachers, said: “It’s not just the longest running expat school in Bahrain but in the whole Gulf.”
As parents dropped off children on the first day of the final term, Gerry McKinney a reception teacher who has taught at Awali since St Christopher’s School took over the premises in 1998, said: “It’s so sad in many ways because it’s such a lovely school. I’ve got to know all the children and their parents. There are such wonderful memories. But on the other hand it’s quite exciting to be moving and it will be lovely when all the year groups can play together.”
The needs of the school and its pupils have evolved and for Awali’s 171 current pupils there is an exciting future ahead. St Christopher’s infants are currently split between Awali and a site in Budaiya. At the end of term both sites will close and pupils will join the junior school in Saar.
“It was always the plan to move,” said Mr Fellows, “but it has happened quicker than we expected.”
The much-loved single-storey buildings of Awali School will return to Bapco’s supervision.
“The buildings will be used for company purposes,” said Bapco’s acting public relations manager, Mohammed Falah.
For many, Awali School symbolises the story of a tight-knit oil town built in the desert.
The school has a rich history which started on September 8, 1936, when 12 Bapco employees met with the general manager to discuss the possibility of establishing a school. By the end of 1937 two classrooms were built, and the following year the first teacher in charge of the school, Miss Phyliss Knowles was recruited from London.
Under her watch, Awali housewives helped to teach the 20 children who attended the school.
In 1942, an Italian bombing raid on the oil refinery saw the closure of the school and the evacuation of expatriate families. Pupils either returned to their homelands or attended boarding schools in Kenya or Rhodesia as part of Bapco’s evacuee programme.
In 1945, the oil refinery was expanded and new families arrived in Continued from Pg23
Awali. Housewives once again began to teach the 30 pupils at Awali School until 1946 when two men and two women teachers were recruited.
By 1948, the school’s population rose to 80. Two new classrooms were built that were used until 1950 when the school’s buildings were extended.
Bahrain’s longest serving veterinary surgeon, Dr Nonie Coutts, 56, was a former head-girl who attended the school from 1955 to 1963.
She said: “I had the most idyllic childhood in Awali. It was such a fun place to be as a child and there were such fantastic things to do. We had amazing Christmas parties where Santa would arrive by donkey or helicopter, and we held pantomimes at the Awali cinema. Because there was nothing else people made a real effort. It really was a social existence and the kids had the best time of all.
“Awali was the most amazing school. There were so many fabulous teachers. I just loved school. Everyone knew you and cared about you and it was so stimulating educationally.  It was the worst time of my life having to leave Awali and go to boarding school in the UK.
“My children also went to Awali and St Christopher’s and they had an excellent education. I had the happiest childhood and so did my children.”  
In 1963, Nonie and other Awali pupils helped put together a ‘guided tour of their unusual home town in Bahrain’ for Oil – Lifestream of Progress magazine.
Her brother Anthony Coutts, 60, who now lives in Australia and works for Global Unix also attended Awali in the 1950s.
He said: “I remember one year there was a huge plague of locusts, positively biblical in scope, which swept across the island one afternoon during a shamal. I can remember the school bus labouring to climb ‘The Hill’ to upper camp because its radiator was so clogged with dieing locusts, and the screams from the little girls (and a few of the boys), when one or two got in through the cracks in the old company bus.
“I also remember the playground, where years later I returned as an adult to find the same holes dug in the tarmac outside my last classroom for games of marbles. And I still remember with great fondness one of my class teachers, ‘Miss King’ who broke my seven-year-old heart the day she married and became Mrs Peter Mathias.”   
Sarah Henderson, 56, a safari guide in East Africa who attended Awali from 1956, said: “I remember being ‘in love’ with Anthony Coutts when I was six. I used to chase him around the telegraph pole in the playground.
“Father Christmas visited school each year on a fire engine. I had no idea at the time, but it was my father, Bob Ford, all dressed up.”
It was an idyllic time for Awali School, but former headmaster Mr W F Thompson lamented the quick turnover of teachers: “There were some initial problems and headaches, the biggest of which was the continual turnover of staff leaving to get married to the bachelors of Awali.
“Resignations averaged one per term and there were times when I wondered if I were running a school or a marriage bureau!”   
In the 1960s, school numbers reached their peak when more than 300 pupils attended Awali and extra classrooms were built. Ian Fisher, 47, a broadcaster with Bahrain Radio who attended Awali in the 1960s, said: “When I was there it was a melting pot of people from all over the world and Awali had about 400 families. We built very good friendships. It’s an iconic piece of real estate with its own style and it will be a shame for it to go. It was the end of an era when St Chris took over and Bapco stopped running a school. Not to have a school at all is very sad, but change is inevitable. Awali will be sorely missed.”
Martin van Es, 56, a lawyer from Holland arrived at Awali School in January 1962.
“I was just a Dutch boy, 10 years old, when I arrived at Muharraq airport that early morning in 1962,” he said. “I came with little knowledge of English and Miss Stella V Veitch took me in her class ‘Junior 3B’. Miss Vietch, rest her soul, and Awali School have formed me very much and every day I am grateful I had the privilege of being at Awali. I thank all the people of Bahrain who have made my childhood in Awali the best I could ever have had.”
Mike Guant, deputy head of St Christopher’s senior school also attended Awali until 1966. “It was very much then as it is now,” he said. “It was a lovely school. When I returned to Bahrain 21 years after leaving it felt wonderful to come back and see it.”      
For many old Awali pupils returning to the school is an important pilgrimage where poignant memories can be relived.
Lynn Collins, who attended Awali from 1951 to 1955 has organised visits for old students from all over the world. Since 1994 she has organised visits for more than 600 people, including the late Eileen Annesley (Miss Gilmore) who taught at the school in the mid-1950s.
Charles Peter, a dentist from Florida, who attended the school in the late 1960s, has set up a website called ‘Awali Teenagers’ for old pupils to re-acquaint with lost friends.  
“Over the last few years I have made a tremendous effort to contact anyone who spent their teenage years in Bahrain realising that most of them shared some very fond memories of Awali School,” he explained.
Mr Peter has now contacted more than 350 pupils who vary in age from 30 to 60.
“To attend Awali School formed bonds that have lasted many of us into our midlife years,” he said. “So much so that last year there was a reunion of the ‘Awali Teenagers’ in Oxford, UK, that was attended by 180 people from over 20 countries from around the world.”
Although for much of its history Awali School was open only to the children of Bapco’s employees, by the 1970s the school began to open its doors to other children.
In 1971 when Bahrain gained independence, many Western expatriates were replaced by Bahrainis and the school’s numbers fell, allowing room for fee-paying Continued from Pgs24-25
pupils. In 1973, places were offered to St Christopher’s School management on a fee-paying basis.
By 1979, Awali had reached such iconic status that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited the school during a tour of Bahrain.
The school continued to flourish in the 80s, reaching its golden anniversary in 1986.
Yacoub Salman Al Slaise, 23, a computer programmes training specialist with the Ministry of Education and a former head-boy who attended Awali School from 1989 to 1995, credits the school with his successful career.
“My time at Awali helped me so much in my adult life. I am now training teachers how to use technology in the classroom after winning a scholarship from the Ministry of Education to study Multimedia Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University. I believe that without Awali School I wouldn’t have reached the level of English I needed to win that scholarship.”
Mr Al Slaise, who once played The Big Bad Wolf in a Three Little Pigs adaptation at Awali School (and due to his “chubbiness got stuck in the playhouse”), also recently won a scholarship from the Japanese Embassy in Bahrain to undertake a Masters degree in Multimedia Environments in Japan next year.        
While Bapco’s decision to close the school a few years later in July 1998 marked the end of an iconic era, the establishment of Awali Infants School, as part of St Christopher’s, meant that old Awali pupils were able to send their children to the same school they attended.
Latifa Rasheed, 36, a senior-management team secretary at St Christopher’s Senior School went to Awali School in the 1970s.
Last week, her three-year old son Khalid was one of Awali Infant School’s final intake of pupils in the nursery section. Her other son Mohammed, five, also attends the school and her daughter, Aysha, 10, is now a pupil at St Christopher’s Junior School.
“When I walk into the school to drop off the kids I remember when I was little,” she said. “The classrooms haven’t changed. I’ll forever cherish the memories of growing up here, and as a result of the memories I have of Awali School, I always knew I wanted my children to attend the same school as I did.
“I’m delighted to have been part of this wonderful school for so long and it goes without saying that my children were destined to also attend Awali.”
For many pupils past and present the closure of Awali marks more than just the closing of a school.
It marks the passing of an era and the final chapter in a story which is sure to be retold for a very long time by its former pupils.
As Martin van Es said: “I have never returned to Bahrain, but maybe there will come a day. Inshallah!”  
l Editor’s note: Until the final closure date in early December we will be running a series of articles each week entitled “My Awali school memories”.
If YOU would like to contribute email editor@gulfweekly.com with your nostalgic stories and old photographs.

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editor@gulfweekly.com