‘Exam demons’ strike again

MORE than 30 schoolgirls at Ondukuta Combined School in the Omusati Region have been sent home after they started screaming and fainting in class, claiming to have seen demons.

Pupils at the school are due to write their semester examinations shortly. School principal Elizabeth Haitembu says the hysteria started last Tuesday.She says 32 of the school’s 460 pupils, all of them girls from Grade Eight to 10, were sent home.At home they are fine, she says.The screaming fits only happen when they are at school.Doctors and social workers from Outapi and Tsandi examined the girls but found nothing physically wrong with them.According to the principal, the school board decided to cancel the examinations, but the regional Director of Education, Lameck Kafidi, would have none of it.Kafidi told The Namibian that mass hysteria at schools has become commonplace in the North.”I think we just have to be calm and see how the situation will develop,” Kafidi said.He said the school would not be closed, as some parents have suggested, and the exams would not be cancelled.Those who did not return to school to write their exams would be regarded as having failed to write the tests, he said.The phenomenon was first reported at Mweshipandeka Senior Secondary School in the Oshana Region shortly after Independence.That was followed by similar happenings at the Ondeka Combined School in the Omusati Region and the Mumbwenge Combined School in the Ohangwena Region in 2005 and 2006.School principal Elizabeth Haitembu says the hysteria started last Tuesday.She says 32 of the school’s 460 pupils, all of them girls from Grade Eight to 10, were sent home.At home they are fine, she says.The screaming fits only happen when they are at school.Doctors and social workers from Outapi and Tsandi examined the girls but found nothing physically wrong with them.According to the principal, the school board decided to cancel the examinations, but the regional Director of Education, Lameck Kafidi, would have none of it.Kafidi told The Namibian that mass hysteria at schools has become commonplace in the North.”I think we just have to be calm and see how the situation will develop,” Kafidi said.He said the school would not be closed, as some parents have suggested, and the exams would not be cancelled.Those who did not return to school to write their exams would be regarded as having failed to write the tests, he said.The phenomenon was first reported at Mweshipandeka Senior Secondary School in the Oshana Region shortly after Independence.That was followed by similar happenings at the Ondeka Combined School in the Omusati Region and the Mumbwenge Combined School in the Ohangwena Region in 2005 and 2006.