The building we go to church in here is actually just an old house and so we make the best of the spaces available. Three weeks ago when I ended my class I came out of the room to find two men trying to open the door to the Primary (children 11 and under) classroom. One of the men was holding the door handle in his hand; it had broken off when they tried to open the door. This particular door is a security door and as you can see from the picture, it is about three inches thick.
It is also important to note that there is not another exit from this particular room. It is on the second floor so you can’t just crawl out a window either. After seeing the situation I realized that there were about 20-25 young children and several adult women trapped in this room. I quickly joined in the efforts to open the door. The door was not locked, but the handle would not turn, and since this is a security door the mechanism is all enclosed. After working on the outside of the door for a while I decided to see if there was any way to get into the room from the outside. I went downstairs and walked around the building looking for a way to get up to the second floor.
This was my only option:
The ladder you see in the picture was not there at the time, and even if it was it would only get me about halfway to the balcony. Instead I climbed up the fence! From there I was just able to grab the bottom ledge of the balcony; from there I swung a leg up and was able to climb onto the balcony.
I went into the Primary Room to find Chinedu (one of the councilors in the Bishopric) working on the door while the Primary teachers were keeping the children occupied. I have to give the Nigerian children a great deal of credit, they were not crying or panicking, in fact they all seemed to be having a pretty good time. We worked on the door for a while from the inside, we unscrewed the handle and tried to get into the mechanism, but as I said before this is all enclosed. We found out that the latch would not retract into the door, and you could not get to it to force it to move; it was completely seized. I started to look for other options; I thought about taking out the hinge pins.
Nope that won’t work!
You may not be able to tell this from the picture, but the hinges are like the ones on my gun-safe, they are not coming off! After a while of working on the door more men started coming in from the balcony; I went outside to discover that they had found a ladder (also not the one in the earlier picture) that would reach high enough for an adult to get to the balcony. After seeing that we were having no success with the door; we decided to start sending the children down the ladder. We formed a sort of “bucket brigade” and passed the children from one adult to another off the balcony and down the ladder. The kids loved this part! Once all the kids were down that left us with a new problem, we had several adult women stuck up there, and one of them was 8 months pregnant!
At this point one of the men working on the inside of the door suggested that we should just break the door down. Knowing how big this door was this seemed to be a formidable task, but the kid in me decided it sounded like fun!!! (Sound about right Mom?) I climbed down the ladder and went back into the building and up the stairs (Josie had been standing outside the door the whole time, she missed all the fun while we evacuated the children down the ladder) I think Josie was pretty worried when she realized I was going to try to kick the door in. After about 4 or 5 kicks I started to be a little concerned as well, the door had not moved a millimeter! I backed up and gave it one more good kick and it flew open, it was hilarious (and I must admit I was a bit relieved) everyone around started cheering and laughing. I think I made quite an impression on the people that Sunday!
Anyway, that is my funny Sunday story, hope you enjoyed it!
1 comment:
Not only did they start cheering and laughing, but they picked you up on their shoulders and carried you around for a minute!! LOL You were officially a "national hero" LOL!! It was quite funny.
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