Growing up 1

I am seated in the office as I write this post, doing what you are doing right now; stealing your boss’ time. The only slight difference being I’m stealing time to write while you are stealing time to read it. You won’t regret though. That, I assure you.



I felt I should write and share with you how my growing up was like. This means I should walk you through the stages of my life from childhood to date. Although I can’t remember every bit of my life in detail, I’m dead sure that the little I can remember is not less than five volumes of a novel put down in a simple uncomplicated queen’s language. My very early childhood is so scattered that’s why, at the very onset, I must admit it’s hard for me to put all the pieces together, lest I be put on the cross for the sins of omission. All I know, to begin with, and as an indisputable fact, is that I was born in Tigania Mission Hospital, the so called “Kwa Baatiri”, somewhere in Tigania, Meru.

My small mind developed that part that records events (Natural memory card) when I turned five. This is the age when I was enrolled in nursery school in Muthara Primary School. Sorry, did I  forget to mention that Muthara was not just a Primary School but a Full Primary School? It is at Muthara Primary School where I can comfortably start telling you about my childhood. Don’t ask me whether I was not in existence before I turned five. That I don’t know. I have been looking for the answer for the last two decades too. How google happens not to have the answer as yet, I’m yet to know. Back to the story. Where were we? Oh! Here! How excited I was as mum held my hand as we walked to school for the first time is beyond words this keyboard can print. The broad smile I wore on my face told just a fraction of what I felt inside my already throbbing heart.



 Photo courtesy of Google images 

It had not hit me for a second that Mum was going to leave me in that ugly place called school not long after ‘depositing’ me there. Cried I did, I must tell you, upon realizing that Mum had left me. There I was, helpless in this big room full of boys and girls, some so tiny and others so big (Bigger than my elder sister who was in class four then).  Two minutes ago, I walked in that class smiling and now here I was, crying so loud, louder than I used to after getting an injection at Mutirithia’s dispensary. If this is not what they call mood swing, then I don’t know what it is. I was happy and smiley for five minutes, but the next five minutes, after remembering my family members, I was weeping and sobbing uncontrollably

Were it not for the tender care and timely intervention of one teacher Nkatha (May she R.I.P) who soothed me to stop crying by inviting me to sit on her chair as she went about her teaching business; I guess I would not have stopped wishing I never joined school. 

Did I tell you I had several neighbours in class? Oh! Sorry! I almost forgot. There were a bunch of them. But of all those neighbors, Simon, aka “Saimo” stands out. Saimo became my friend the very first day. Frankly, he is the one who took me home that day. Needless to say, he is the reason I loved school. As a brother, he always protected me from the naughty classroom bullies. I remember him carrying me on his back severally as we crossed the river on our way to and from school using the wooden bridge. I had this unending phobia of crossing the river using that wooden thing they called a bridge. I thought I could fall and get swept away by the waters of Kwathumara (Ewasomara) River. Even when my friend carried me on his back, I shut my eyes and only opened them when he told me we were already on the other side. Saimo made my life in school so smooth by helping me in virtually everything. In the mornings he passed by our home and called me so we could go to school together. I wish I recorded my whole nursery school life in some tape somewhere. It would have been a very thrilling movie to watch; especially in 3D, or Blue Ray!

Eventually, and unwillingly, I should add, I got used to school and loved everything about it although I had one problem: waking up in the morning. I still have that problem to date. I still find it difficult to cut short the sweet warmth of the blanket when the cock crows and face the cold wind and the dew on the grass all in the name of ‘not being lazy, but hard working’. I have fond memories of how we made alphabetical letters using grass outside the classroom, molding different things like pots, toys and radios using clay that we collected from the banks of River Kwathumara, and building houses using stones. Back then, we had lovely singing voices too. We sang after every fifteen minutes or so, maybe to cut on the monotony of class work or to keep us awake. Here is a treat to one of the songs I loved. Don’t mind the language. When we coincidentally meet next time kindly wet my ever-dry throat with some good whisky and I swear I’m gonna teach you how it goes:

Twana twa nursery

Ni tuwirakua, tukiaria gichunku

turi cukuru

Teacher ni mwarimu,

Chair ni giti,

Window ni ndiricha,

Door i murango

There is nothing much to celebrate about my life in class one to three. I so much hated school during this time in life, why lie? You see! I have a sleeping problem, as I have already revealed to you. How on earth they expected me to make it to school by 7:30 AM I couldn’t understand, neither have I understood to this date. Many are the days when I faked illnesses so I could not go to school. Some other days I could just hide in a thicket somewhere along the way and after an hour or so go back home and report to my mum that I had been sent back home by the teacher on duty for tardiness.

Mum would not take my excuses for not going to school on all occasions. On occasions, she would beat me up and call me all sorts of names whenever she learnt that I had lied to her. My mom is the kind of a person who would beat you up using anything she laid her hands on. Sometimes she would pinch your ears and your thighs so hard that you got wounds. On other occasions, she would turn ‘carnivorous’, as my elder brother always joked about her later, and bite your arms unreservedly, all in the name of fighting the stupidity and the stubbornness in us. I was used anyway; pity me not much for were it not for that beating though, you could not be reading this piece today. 

After mum beat me I would disappear and hide somewhere in a dark corner within the compound sobbing. At night, mum would always grab a torch and start looking for me threatening that if I did not turn myself in to sleep in time I would be attacked by ‘Muka-o-kiundu.’ The mere mention of Muka-o-Kiundu would send cold spells down my spine. The name itself sounded so scary, doesn’t it? This used to scare me to hell, and I would run towards her and we would reconcile before retiring to bed. Mum always made sure she punished us after having eaten super. I have never known why; I must ask her one of these fine days, at least to confirm my wild guess.

I loved the games we played. It was so much fun playing ‘thari’ ‘tapoh’ and making cars using match-boxes and bottle-tops as wheels. Are you asking me about computer games? Excuse me! I was born long before generation X came into being. So, are you now asking what generation X is? I know not much about them, but I’m told that it is the generation that hosts those who replace an S with an X in every word they write: The xaxa xema xwirie generation. Garrit?

At the School, our games changed with seasons. During the rainy season we used to swim in dirty rain water and slide in mud with all our clothes on. I wish the guys who did that Omo advert came to our home for the ‘Dirt is good’ advert shoot. Dirt to us was indeed so good. I was so smart, not as smart as mum though, or at least as she expected her favorite son to be. I would change my clothes after they got dirty and hide them under the mattress on my bed.  Nevertheless,  my ‘all-knowing’- mum would soon discover them after a few days during her routine checks of whether I had done what I was so good at; wetting the bed! Can’t believe I just said that! Shhhh! 

I so hated myself for it. This is one problem I always tried so hard to fight. Don’t laugh at me if I tell you that I did it till the end of first term in class six! You can imagine the trauma I was going through, a whole class six boy wetting the bed while his kid brother who was in class three then was not.  

It was a common rule in the entire family that I should never be given any form of liquid at night. This disturbed me for I could not sit down staring at my siblings enjoy ‘Kirario’ (Fermented gruel), coffee, tea or juice. “Don’t give him, ‘akeeya kwonoria nkibutu’.” Mum severally warned my siblings. It is all these collective efforts from every family member that saw me stop that bad habit. I am glad that I finally did. 

Back in school, my performance deteriorated. I was never serious in class, not even at one moment. What the teacher taught got in through one ear and went out through the other. I remember being number 28 out of 32 in second term in class two!

Our school was three streamed, if you know what I mean; we had Tiger, Elephant and Lion. I was in class One, and Two Lion. Our class teacher was tough. And here, I mean tough, as nails, because he made us fear him. He used to beat us ruthlessly and mercilessly. Methinks he is the reason I performed so poorly. Mr. Mwika (Kabitotooh), for that is the nickname students had assigned him; made sure we toed the line no matter what. And towing the line we did.

It was a sigh of relief when we reported back to school in January ready to proceed to class 3 and it was announced that there would be no more ‘Lion’ stream. This meant I would either join class 3 Elephant or Tiger. I joined Elephant. And there, in Elephant, I remained up to class eight. It is while in class three that I met Madam Arachi, the class teacher. Madam Arachi, in more ways than one, changed the way I perceived school. My grades improved tremendously and in third term I booked my prestigious place in the top ten list. I was number 8! I never looked back ever since. And from that time on till I completed my primary education I never at one time went below number 8. All credit, unreservedly, goes to Madam Arachi who made me change. 

Anyone who went to Muthara Primary School during my time knew Ms. Kaloki. She was elderly and had only one leg. We used to carry firewood for her. The entire school did. I remember how the Headteacher, Mr. Muthaa, would make the announcement during the assembly that all pupils should carry a piece of firewood for Ms. Kaloki the following morning, failure to which one would be severely punished. This he made sure sunk and got stuck in our little heads like glue. He finished his announcement with his usual Kimeru phrase, ‘Buwikua luui chiana.’ Once firewood was brought, we would sometimes be tasked with the responsibility of taking them to Kalokis’ home during break time. There would be no better way of doing a CSR than what we did to Ms. Kaloki, may she R.I.P. I know she is happy for all of us for what we did for her while she was alive. 

Most pupils did this act of charity in the morning and during lunch hour they were doing totally the opposite, walking through another old woman’s garden all in the name of a short cut. Her name was ‘Nkingo chobo.’ Pupils called her so because of her swollen neck, I assume. This woman would utter the worst insults you can think of, throw stones at the trespassing pupils and worst of all throw the panga she used for weeding. She was so fierce; I can’t count the number of times she came to the school to report to the headmaster that pupils were trespassing through her shamba calling her all sorts of names. You see, this woman was half blind. If only pupils would pass without calling her names, she couldn’t notice them. Mannerless little brats with rotten behavior.

‘Tomorrow come with a kiili (A thorn branch), buwikua luui chiana? (Have you heard you children?) The head teacher would tell us. The thorn branches were to seal the openings on the fence where pupils used to make their way through the old woman’s garden. Whoever used to remove them after sometime must have been one heartless person. 

The schools lower primary classrooms were not cemented on the floors. The three walls were made of iron sheets, while the remaining side was made of half iron sheets and half tree branches. The half that was made of tree branches acted as windows. On Fridays we used to carry jerry cans for fetching water to pour on the floor of our classrooms to calm the dust and chase the fleas that were a nuisance in the rooms.

Every last Friday of the month we would carry cow dung and ashes. The two would be mixed with water to make a paste-like mixture that would be used to ‘cement’ our classrooms. Girls would perform this magic as the boys fetched water down the river to make the magic work. I loved Fridays, I still do.

I loved Kimeru lessons like no other; they were the best lessons ever. I’m a person who loves his mother tongue to the core and speaks it every opportunity I get. I pity today’s children, especially those that are born, raised and educated in urban settings. Which mother tongue do they identify with? You see, that’s the reason I’m 100% behind Prof Kaimenyi and his entire team that is advocating for mother tongue to be taught in every public school in the entire country from class one to three. This would help in a way.                                          

Books like; “Wui wiiji atea”, “Jukia iuku tukathome” and “TKK”. I remember the stories and the songs between the covers of these three books like yesterday. If you happen to be reading this right now, which I’m sure you are, and you have these three books, or even one of them, plus the other that had “Kaaria, Meeme and Kaburu akimunta muntaa ruuji na kamuti”, please halla at your boy, Kaburu a.k.a. “Doctor”. I need them more than ever before. My copies must have been consumed by ants somewhere in a dark corner inside my rectangular shaped hut back in Linkurungu village.

It is while in class three that I acquired the nickname I have retained to date, ‘Doctor.’ This name was given to me by a class mate, Kabengi. We were just playing normal games during break time and he got injured. I picked chalk dust that had fallen below the black board and smeared it on his fresh wound. Miraculously, he came to class the following morning with his wound having dried up and he just called me Doctor. For healing his wound he gave me the nicest nickname one could ask for. Almost all my friends call me by the name to date.

Now you are in the know, so don’t ask me when I went to med school or did my PhD. I did mine while in class three.

Did I tell you that we could tell the time of the day using the busses that plied the Meru – Maua road? Yes, we did. Our home is a stone throw-away from the road and so we could clearly tell the vehicles on the road without much ado. Kamawe bus would make it to Linkurungu some fifteen minutes to or past 1 Pm. That cardinal rule announced time for us to have lunch especially during holidays when it was hard for us to tell what time of the day it was (There used to be a huge clock on the wall in our house but it was next to impossible to tell what time it was by merely staring at those three thin sticks in it like our seniors used to).  

Overland bus would pass around four o’clock in the evening closely followed by Gathanga bus at around five. The rest of the busses and mini-busses, such as Nyayo bus, Stagecoach, Mwakilishi (Junior and Immaculate), Kibwango (Witness and Generation) rung no bells to us for they made endless unpredictable trips that to us were meaningless. 

It’s with so much nostalgia that I remember how we used to sit on those stones outside our gate overlooking Kuani hills in the evenings as dad listened to rhumba music on his radio and we (Myself & kid bro) counted cars that passed on the road while mum and grandma would be peeling beans or peas for supper. Wui tene!!

If there is any dirty person that I have ever set my eyes on in my entire life, then it should be Muribi. He was tall and black (Not dark, but charcoal black). During CRE lessons in school when the teacher told us to imagine and draw a picture of what we thought satan looked like, Muribi always came into my mind, I don’t know the connection, but it used to happen. God forgive me. Methink it’s because the teacher always told us that cleanliness is second to Godliness. 

Whenever I met that man on the way I would just turn back and run as fast as I could. The only time he might have come into contact with water since his birth would probably be a day or two when rain caught him unawares. I assume!

Mehn! You could have seen his coat. It was a linen suit coat that would be mistaken to a black leather jacket because of that dirty layer that glittered from a distance. Muribi had put on that coat for as long as I had known him. He even died in it. Yes! I know because Muribi died peacefully as he took a nap under a tree in Muriri shopping centre holding a half loaf of bread (Kadogo) R.I.P Muribi.

I feared this one man to bits, I feared him more than I did these three men; Mwana-o-mulukia (The padlock engineer), Kauwiria -Ntothiring’a (The man who had a PHD in insults) and Thomas-Toma (The mad man in my village who spoke the best English I had ever heard in that part of the universe).