Picture
this scenario. It's somewhat around 5 am in the morning. A bell rings
in your mind and that confirms the dreaded fact. It is yet another of
those days. A school day. Allow me at this juncture to warn you that
this is a long piece. The 'x' generation had better quit now before it
gets interesting. I digress! Anyway, you finally manage to jump off the
bed after a couple of 'snoozes'. You wake up albeit reluctantly for you dread the many cane strokes that accompany lateness. Children rights is you and your nyanye, as Shoba Harrison
would put it. You rush to the kitchen and pull your not-so-clean
uniform from 'itara' where they'd been left to dry the previous night.
(Well, assuming you didn't decide to sleep in your uniform and that
'rain' in baby Emily Wanjiru's poem irrigated your bed and by extension
your uniform.) Now, 'itara' is that place where firewood is kept to dry
just above the fireplace. You dress up then run to the tap where you
subject your face to running water and apply soap on your legs. Soap
because lotion and/or vaseline are unheard of. Your feet are not to be
thoroughly washed as they'll tarmac and get dirty anyway. By now it is
some minutes to six. You then dash back into the kitchen where mama has
packed your lunch in a kasuku, those that pack cooking fat. Talk of
reusing, recycling and reducing wastage. You gulp your cup of tea with
the ugali that remained yester night as the accompaniment (that's if you
had ugali say na uji ama na maji ya chumvi the previous night). Once in
a while, you'll have chapatis if you're lucky. Lucky to have been
cooked chapatis and also lucky to have not eaten all of them the
previous night. You then say bye to mama, who has now gone to milk, and
start a 3-5 kilometers jog, depending on your proximity to the school.
That unimaginable life is what thousands of children brace themselves up
for, day in day out. I came across them on my way to Nairobi. They were
dressed in pink shirts and green shorts and some have green sweaters.
Children as young as six years (well, assuming the height doesn't
underestimate their age) 'walk the talk', each carrying water in a
5-litre jerrican and a bag that makes them look like astronauts. It
pains me because nothing much has changed, except perhaps the
introduction of shoes into the equation. That life you're trying so hard
to imagine is what I went through for five years. The only reward to
calm you down was the famous maziwa ya nyayo gift hamper. Our mamas were
caring enough to buy us those woven 'kofias' that covered all your face
except the eyes and mouth. We call them 'boshoris.' Despite the 'care',
they only found their way up to a few meters from our home. We'd hide
them in a bushy area and wear them on our way back home so mama wouldn't
know about it. Tragedy would befall us if say you forgot the exact
location where you hid it or say you forgot to pick it on your way back
home. I see them being worn by watchmen nowadays, or is it boda boda
operators. We would carry water for cleaning the classrooms before
lessons started. That meant we had to get to school earlier than normal.
The banana stem was our innovative duster. That curved part known as
'ngoto' was cut and used in the same way as a squizzer, if you've used
one before. This was done as we fought for space with bats. Eventually
we'd win the fight over the bats and use the classrooms.
After
getting to the level of second to godliness we'd then go for our
lessons. Some would start eating their packed lunch as early as the
first lesson and be done by break time. Over lunch hour, they'd be
begging food from us who saved ours. My primary school best friend John Çhegeh
always reminds me of the day I carried a new packet of cooking fat
which I had confused for my lunch box. I was lucky to have a cousin as a
best friend who also doubled up as my partner in crime. I remember we
were to have chapatis that day and I was super excited. Come lunch time,
my friends and I gathered at our usual eating spot where I was to
unveil my special lunch. Shock on me! On opening the kasuku, I shed
tears. I had unconsciously carried cooking fat for lunch. I couldn't
even eat the food my friends had offered me. I had lost appetite. Or
maybe my appetite was only for chapatis that day. To cut that story
short, I spent the entire afternoon depressed and waiting for the time
to go home. I was in a school where pupils from lower classes were
allowed to go home for lunch. That extra freedom was at a price however,
as they were required to bring 'doro' or matope to school. This, they
were to use for moulding different objects. Our mamas would make the
matope for us as we were having lunch. I know a boy, Peter who'd call
his mum mama peter. We'd here him say to his mum, 'nyina wa peter,
twerwo tushoke na doro' (mama peter, we've been told to go back with
doro.)
Life was beautiful as we knew it though. We looked forward to
sitting our kcpe so that we could be so near to a policeman. The
teachers lied to us that kcpe would be watched over by policemen to
avoid cheating, something that we obediently believed. Well, poor me I
was transferred at class four and didn't get to see the policemen. Back
home, the teacher was an administrative post going by the powers endowed
upon them. He/she would solve disputes both in school and at home. He
was called to beat pupils that had dropped out of school back to their
senses. The teacher had powers over what time one was supposed to be at
the shopping centre. He would chuck you from the video centre, and
punish you for that. Stanley Mbiri, John Chege, Steve Mbiri and one Evans Mbiri
will tell you the teachers would beat pupils bare buttocks. Yes! you'd
be forced to lower your viraka prone shorts to the knees before the
'medicine' was administered. And it surely hurt, with the same magnitude
as that of an injection. Now, you can imagine having to bear the pain
inflicted by multiple strokes. Their word was an indisputable law, and
we feared them. Actually, if a teacher were to visit your home, you
verily knew trouble was bound to unfold. In a nutshell, that was the
life we enjoyed then, but one that I detest now.
