Then I went to school

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.