Boyhood

Loliondo (Lamuria) Fruits

Rules are made to be broken. I am breaking one today. In the words of Stephen Grellet, “Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now, in his name, and for his sake! Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. I shall pass through this world but once.”  


This is the very reason I am writing this, breaking the rules because I believe it is a good thing.

 

I woke up quite early that Sunday morning anxiety written all over my face. I usually attended morning mass but that Sunday was different. I convinced mum that I would attend the second mass which normally started at ten in the morning. Permission granted! Little did she know that I had a very important occasion to attend! I went to my friends’ home and met him waiting for me, ready to take me for the days’ adventure. We walked to the nearby shopping centre (Kabaune) where we met 6 other boys and off we went. Destination, Kuani hills.

I was one of the few boys in class who had not undergone the highest level of the Meru tradition boy’s initiation – Nchiibi (educational rite in which boys were instructed in basic social values, their meaning punched home by a string of maledictions and curses should they ever misbehave). It was my turn to undergo the rites and save myself the humiliation I was going through. I gave in to pressure and consulted a friend - Mwiti who organized and mobilized a few boys to accompany me to the mysterious mountain.

We arrived at the venue where the ritual was to be performed. All the 7 boys accompanying me agreed that since there was no stranger amongst us, (They were all my friends) they would take me through a shortcut to the procedure. This ritual should be strictly performed when one is in his birth suit. However, my friends agreed to break this rule and take me through without necessarily subjecting me to the ordeal.

The event of the day finally kicked off. I was taken through the process from the first stage to the last – mostly theory. They explained to me bit by bit what happens practically. It feels good to have true friends who care for you and understand you. I would tell from their explanations and the terrain that practically it would be a very difficult and torturing process. It was a sunny day, very dusty, I was hungry and thirsty. That would have made it even more difficult for me. It is not a walk in the park to be a man, a real man for that matter.

Shetani naye ni nani! No sooner had I finished the process than a dozen boys appeared. They were from Lailûba and Ngeyu. I knew three of them who had completed class 8 in my school the previous year - Muthee, his brother Kinoti and their neighbour Kadogo.

Muthee was a ruthless brat. The previous year when he finished his KCPE together with other bunch of boys, they mercilessly beat girls they accused of being snitches. They beat them so badly that one got hospitalized. Maybe there was more to it than just the beating. Just saying! I remember the thrashing that he et alia received from the head teacher and the deputy in January when they came for their results in presence of their parents. 

Oh! And I regularly meet Muthee by the way. He is now a man of the cloth ministering in Laare and running his empire.  He is always clad in shiny, bright and coloured suits, with coats long enough to sweep sins from here to Timbuktu. His bed-sheet of a suit is complemented with ‘sharp-shooter’ shoes that can easily be used to slaughter a goat. It’s like this dress code brings pastors closer to God. How people change? Ama kwa kweli Mui huwa mwema!

I digress! You would have seen how I was trembling when those boys arrived.

“Kobia, nûû bûkûrutaa nchibi?” (Kobia, who were you taking through the process?) Muthee asked one of my friends.

“I Kaburu” (It’s Kaburu) He answered.

“Yaani Kaburu ataumîte nchibi?” (So Kaburu had not yet undergone the ritual?) He retorted.

Things were now thickening. Muthee instructed that I would repeat the whole process together with other 3 boys they had brought from Lailûba.

“Ichiûchie kaîyî na waarûke aa!” (Strip to your birth suit and get down here) He yelled.

It was around noon, hot like hell. My blood sugar had literally gone down. I felt starved. If only I had the slightest energy left in me, I would have ran away. I did as instructed without questions. All my friends went mum. The king of the jungle had arrived. No one talks when the king is talking.

The whole process that my friends had earlier taken me through theoretically in less than 30 minutes now took more than 2 hours practically. It is not an event for the faint hearted. It is an event you start as a boy and finish as a BOY – If you know what I mean. We got thrashed like beans. We actually took turns in thrashing one another – The four of us. Muthee handed us a nyahunyo (Kiboko kea mpuria) that we took turns in thrashing each other with. I was lenient to my colleagues but when I realized they were not reciprocating my gentleness I became more lethal than they were. I unleashed all the energy that was left in my bones to thrash them whenever it was my turn.

The process came to a halt. I thanked God for seeing me through alive. I thought I would die in the process. It was tougher than the clips you watch on YouTube of soldiers training in a desert (Of course I have exaggerated). This process was not free of charge for your information. I had negotiated and the fee was agreed to be 400 shillings. I had 200 bob with me that Muthee demanded I should give him which I did and my friends went drying. On our way home my friends demanded that I should give them the other 200 shillings once I got it. Which I obliged and paid in instalments till I settled the whole debt – Mwîyî atîtanawa na îrandû ria iyîyî (No footnote). 

Before I forget I must mention that I was assigned one of the boys as my ‘dad’ (Baaba o nchiibi). Key among his duties was to teach me nchiibi ballads and monitor my behaviour should I be breaking the rules (îchwa) so he would fine me. This boy never disappointed, he sung so melodiously. I spent all my break times with him behind the classes so he would teach me the songs. Beautiful songs they are and the tune is so captivating. 

As we walked downhill, we plucked some Loliondo fruits – Lamûria (Carissa_carandas_fruits) that we ate to at least get some energy to reach home. I was so dusty, I looked like someone who had just come from Chalbi desert. I couldn’t go home that way, mum would have swallowed me alive. You would have seen my walking style, you would think I was bazokizoing as I walked. My sitting apparatus were so swollen I wouldn’t dare sit. That nyahunyo had temporarily done to my ‘hey-day’ what plastic surgery permanently did to Vera Sidika’s. 

We decided to pass by River Kwathumara, (I hear those who went to school refer to it as River Ewasomara) take a swim and at least wash away the dust. Wait a minute! I invited the mother of all troubles when I immersed my body into that water. What I felt it’s only God who knows. I first thought the water had pepper in it only to realize that I had thorn pricks all over my body. Every part of me was itching.   

After the swim we made our way to Muthara Primary School compound where there was a football match between St. Cyprian Boys High School (My alma mater) and some Italian odieros who had come as volunteers in the nearby Tigania Hospital in the fall of that summer. That match saved my day. It was so publicized that everyone in the village knew about it. You would think it was Arsenal playing Harambee Stars. Of course what do you expect when Italians are playing Kenyans?

I arrived home about seven in the evening after the match and cheated mum how that game was so important that I couldn’t afford to go home for lunch after church and risk missing a space in the pitch that was expected to be so full. And just like that Rosallia bought my story.

I changed immediately so she would not notice how dirty my Sunday best was – An oversize Tokyo trouser I had inherited from my elder brother and a white t-shirt (Now turned brown) with the words ‘Minnesota’ on the breast that my lovely mum had bought me in Kianjai Market (Kathama ka aindi). After eating, I went straight to bed and slept like a small child. I woke up the following morning with pain everywhere. I had to pretend all was well though. That’s how men are made from small boys; through pain, sacrifice and endurance.

Yes, I broke a rule. We got a stern warning that day not to document the events. Life is too short though not to, besides I have got zero chills to give. Kîrumi kia iyîyî kîtîwataa nthaka.

Over and out!!

Stepping Out

It was about fifteen minutes to eleven o’clock. The classroom was full and the air was filled with the smell of sweat and of different jelly we had applied on ourselves. A smell of Kimbo in one corner, that of Arimi's in another and a random Rune and Rays from a few girls. The noise was going out of control, and the class prefect gave her usual threat, ‘Nyamazeni ama nitaanza kuandika noise makers.’ Meanwhile, Mr Mugambi John (Jitu) the English teacher entered and the loud noises turned into a pin drop silence.

‘Good morning class’ He saluted.

‘Good morning sir’ we answered while standing.

After requesting us to take our seats, he turned to the blackboard and what he saw did not excite him.

‘Who drew this caricature?’ (It was my first time ever to hear that word) He asked.

His question went unanswered.

‘I am asking for the second time, who drew this caricature?’

No one opened their mouth.

‘Kneel down all of you’ He commanded.

Before anyone could kneel down, I raised up my hand. I did what Ezra Chiloba has refused to do amid all the demonstrations rocking our major towns across the country.

‘Kaburu! Kaburu! Kaburu! So it’s you? Get out. Go home and come with a box of chalk!’ He shouted.

I shed tears as I walked home. I knew mum would swallow me alive. How on earth could we afford a whole box of chalk? I knew it would not cost anything less than a few thousand shillings. A thousand in the early years of 21^st Century was quite some big money. Nevertheless, I went home and broke the bad news to mum. I told mum how I had collected a small piece of chalk below the blackboard and the teacher caught me doing a sum using the same on the blackboard and sent me home to buy a whole box.

Mum was in high spirits that day. She asked less questions and told me how it’s bad to lose lessons as a candidate. She said a few unkind words about the teacher, handed me a two hundred note and ordered me to go to the bookshop and inquire how much a box of chalk cost.

‘If it costs more than two hundred shillings, tell whoever is in the shop I will cover the balance later.’ She instructed. The bookshop belonged to a family friend.

Believe it or not I bought a box of Someni school chalk at fifty shillings only. I laughed all the way to Makena’s Ngumu shop the rest of the week. I cheated mum that the box was retailing at two hundred and fifty and the bookshop owner agreed to sell it to me at two hundred shillings after a heated negotiation.

You would see how I bounced back to school that afternoon, my ego literally went out of the roof. Having gone home earlier than everybody else that morning, I was the first to arrive in school after lunch. And for that no student saw me with the box of chalk, I dashed into Mr Mugambi’s office, handed over the box and went to class.

The look that my classmates gave when they found me in class was that Oh my God! Look. They couldn’t fathom how I would be sent to buy a box of chalk some minutes to eleven and there I was some minutes past one o’clock having bought a whole box of chalk.

‘’How much was it?”  One classmate inquired.

“Two thousand” I cheated him without blinking (Mimi ni nani!) They thought it was a whole big carton when in real sense it was a small box the size of a serviette pack. And just like that my name got admitted to the list of pupils who came from very rich families (Saa ngapi!).

This is one of the many incidences I so vividly remember about Mr Mugambi. He was a teacher and half. It is because of him I can construct an English sentence that makes sense. He is the kind of a teacher I would wish my kids to be taught by.  He so loved what he did, he was born to do it. I remember how we would go to school very early in the morning and he would teach us for a whole one hour before normal lessons would commence. In the evenings after normal lessons he would again be in class all this time without an extra pay.

Far from class, Mr Mugambi was a disciplinarian, he was a no nonsense teacher. He caned us and pinched our ears for various indiscipline cases among them using your mother tongue, having not tucked your shirt/blouse, noise making among others. It is while in class 8 that lateness became a capital offence. Mr Mugambi would send you back home to collect a Jembe that you would use to dig a 1ft wide and 1ft deep hole and plant a banana tree. Oh! And those banana plants plus the flowers outside our classrooms made the school look so green and beautiful.

Before I forget, I must add that Mr Mugambi taught all my siblings, all the six of us from the first to the last born. Several other teachers in the school did among them Mr Muthaa, Mr Mwika (Kabitutu), Mr Mugambi (Thirungu) and Mr Rukunga.

Far from being the discipline master Mr Mugambi doubled as the deputy head teacher, he deputised one of the best head teacher of our lifetime, Mr Muthaa. A true son of the soil. Mr Muthaa was to Muthara Primary School what Bob Collymore is to Safaricom.

Muthaa is a true visionary, he carries with him an ability to formulate and shape the future. Always with the willpower and patience to see things through. He inculcated into us the doctrines of honesty, hard work and obedience. He never tires to remind us of these virtues to date.

I remember his CRE lessons in class 8 and the good stories that he shared with us. The fun we made in class minutes to his lessons. We would take turns to write the words ‘What we have learnt’ and ‘what I am supposed to do’ on the blackboard before his arrival. These are the words he would always write after reading us a story from his book.

His wise counsel was out of this world. He always ended his address with his usual Kimeru phrase, ‘Buwikua luui chiana!’ This was maybe to ensure whatever he said sunk into our heads. I can’t forget how he called our names syllable by syllable while stressing the first one. The parents’ names would leave one floored.

NTO-A-ta-ya A-ta-ya

MA-ri-mba NTO-i-the-wa

Andrew MU-thi-mu

I celebrate these two teachers plus many others for their immense contribution to who we are today. May God grant them a long healthy life.

Disclaimer: Mr Mugambi if you happen to read this forgive my typos and the many ungrammatical sentences. They don’t at all represent what you taught me back in the day. The mistakes are my own and I entirely take responsibility.