THE HIGH SCHOOL KIBOKO

High school high school high school! Who would we be without high school? And where would we be. Well, you probably want me to stop writing now. High school wasn’t the best for all of us. The memories of high school are traumatizing to some or the best to others. The funniest, just add that. Some people are better than they would have ever been because of high school. The vice versa has been proven true. It is also quite sad to say that not everyone who went through high school come out flying like they came in from class eight. It is said of teachers that a student who can attain at least 300 marks out of the possible 500 in K.C.P.E. is bright enough to achieve something compassing around a B plain. Unless the times have changed you know. Some of us last saw the gates of our high schools ages ago. (Hehe.) Though whether it was hell or paradise for you, you can’t deny that high school was just the place that when you are not sober, you’d think about and miss it.
I have these friends you’d catch them during the day speaking ill of their high school lives. That changes on some nights after you have blessed them with one for the team and another one for the road. These people will give you the best of stories. Other people think and talk like they had the best high school life, more than who, Kibanja? Behaving like they were in a school that had models for teachers, Zuckerberg for a principal and Martha Stewart for a cateress. Only for us to find out that our school in the interiors of Ukambani had a better bus than theirs with a loaf like buse. Oh yah, also called ‘face me.’
Okay speaking of buses, let us first pray. Yellow! I fell on the floor in stitches when I saw a picture of our high school bus recently just painted yellow! Just what do you think they have done to the schools in Ukambani like ours? The yellow is making Kambas go bananas. (See what I did there?) They have just given our brothers and sisters who bring us mangos (Bless you) gods to worship. Maybe it’s worse in Kisii. Those buses perhaps look like big bananas to them, call them bananas on wheels. In fact take one of our yellow buses to Museveni’s land and you will never see it back here ever again.
Anyway, if you got PTSD because of your life in high school, it is high time for the rest of us who, well, may have not enjoyed the four (or more) years but love to commemorate them – to dismiss you and thank you for reading. I heard of one who was hospitalised for a week or two after New Year after clearing form four. She woke up at 3am while at home, the same time she used to wake up for morning preps for the last four years, put on her uniform as if going to class. Don’t laugh this is a true story and it’s taking a lot from me to say this. Her father woke up and found her looking for her school shoes. I won’t say he laughed because a good father wouldn’t laugh. But I would. Sorry I meant I wouldn’t laugh. Oh Christ! It became serious since she had a psychological difficulty in adjusting that she was no longer in high school and I’m not surprised that it was a school in Ukambani. I’m starting to believe that real life is in Ukambani by the way. Who agrees? Ask those people who are somewhere in Makueni and they will tell you they don’t know whether it’s raining everywhere else in the country. Ah anyway, high school PTSD is that serious. So for the victims, I don’t know why you’re still reading by the way; see you next Monday. No next Monday but one. This one won’t end that fast.
For the rest of the mjangos, story story? Don’t mind. We won’t talk about your results here. By the way for those who carried the crosses of patriarchs for us, we honour you at this moment. Maybe nobody has ever told you of how important you are to the society. They call you a cow, who had another cow sold in order for you to go to school. Don’t worry. Here we don’t say such things. Though we still love cows mjangos, don’t we? Yah.
Form one was probably the toughest of the four years for some. I didn’t go through shit as I hear some did. However I began to take some corners that had the deputy know my third name that nobody has ever used. Not even me. I don’t call myself by my third name in my head. You’d call that name and I’d be like, “Who’s that?” Before I knew it, he caught me in his hunt for nut-heads and rascals one Sunday after break time.
Mjango I can tell you I was not fooling around. Though I didn’t have the chance to explain that before him when he summoned for me outside our class. So this is a secret between you and me. Please don’t go around telling everyone, deal? It ends here. Just after break time, having drowned the lover of our hearts by then; ngumus – with a cup full of strong tea, I needed to use the loo, like a serious need. Hey it was a number one. Sorry if you don’t know what that means. The bell rung before I could relieve myself and outside, had all of a sudden become a war zone. A black long thin pipe in the hands of a stone faced, red eyed and box haired ol’man was the weapon of mass distraction. Be found and you’d be wasted! I saw my chance and sneaked out of class through the back door. It was simple, run, watch my own six, get into the loo, a minute is enough, watch my six again and then run back to class. Oh but the adolescent boy got distracted on the way. I met a form three, a guy I had recently befriended through rugby (we will talk about why I am not the Humphrey Khayange of 2025 another day.) The mjango was a games captain. He was just leaving his office smartly dressed and walking majestically unlike others like me who were behaving like rats running from a flying cat.
“Wanyonyi, unaenda hio funkie iko DH?” I asked him. Oh yes, there was a function in school that day and the sight of skirts drove us nuts in our nut stores. The devil is a liar! Had I just stopped to ask him about a funkie? What happened to the loo business yet the loo was just two seconds away by then. Time was of the essence here mjango.
He was a stammerer, so that explains how I lost some time to the fate going around carrying a pipe! He managed to say, “Eeeh naenda.”
A bright idea just came immediately. No, I would later know it would be the stupidest of the choices I’d make in high school. “Si unifanyie favour. Unaeza niingiza hio funkie aki?” It wasn’t easy for form ones to get into functions.
The boy in me wanted to start experiencing life. A skirt had never been of so much importance in my life until then. Fast forward, I’d later become an expert in the hunt for skirts. But first, I had to go through a baptism by fire perhaps the Lord saw it necessary to tame the wild tail that seemed to be growing bigger and longer.
“Sawa basi, enda utafute shati na viatu.” Wanyonyi said.
“Nimeumia mguu siwezi vaa viatu. Ni shati tu sasa.”
“Sawa harakisha.”
Mjango wherever the need for the loo went, I do not know. I took a flight through the same way I came, probably faster, all the way to class. I sat down and turned to my neighbours borrowing a shirt. Just before a good form one soul perhaps better than mine could unbutton his shirt, I heard from outside, “Wanyonyi!… Wapi ule kijana ulikuwa na yeye amekimbia sahi? Amevaa T-shirt ya white.”
Perhaps I should end this blog here now. Ah what the hell.
That was the sound of death calling out for me.
I heard Wanyonyi say something in response to the mkubwa. The whole class was paralysed and grave silent. Hearts beating so vigorously we could hardly breathe. All eyes were on me like saying, “Kijana umeisha!”
“Enda ita yeye alafu ulete yeye hapa!”  
The door slowly opened. It was Wanyonyi. He stood by the door, hovered his eyes over the entire class of innocent faces and stopped at mine, the odd one out. I had the guilty face. He didn’t say anything but just signalled. He needed not use words. I could read the signs. I saw the look on his face. He was pitiful. He told me through the look on his face that he had no choice. Within me I said, “No biggie bro. It is well.” Wanyonyi, wherever you are, I salute you mjango. I hope to meet you soon and we’ll have double on the rocks together with the bill on you; to console me aye. That’s some serious shit I went through.
I stood up. I was strong enough to walk on my feet, otherwise I would have crawled. The energy from the four ngumus was probably going to my bam at the time. It was the part that was at stake!
But why the bam? God didn’t give us a bam to use it to torture one another. You mean teachers look at students and see their bams and they are like, “That one looks good for that wire of mine in my drawer. Nikapate siku moja.”
May you be found with a crime and you are summoned to the staffroom when them mwalimus are all there. Perhaps seated taking kahawa, watching news of Dj Afro in some schools. Ahem! I have spoken to surviving victims of such an ordeal and they told me it was not pretty. You were summoned by one teacher but after he or especially she is almost done with you, the rest salivate for a piece of your behind. It becomes like a gang thing. From one mwalimu to another. Make a mistake and click or look at any of them in an insulting manner. If it was in our school at the time, the band would start practicing songs to play at your funeral the following week.
I looked at my desk-mate and thought of telling him, “In case I don’t come back alive, tell my mama I love her. Then go to a fortune teller ask to be shown my future wife. Find her and tell her I had big plans for her and our kids. In fact she can come to the mortuary before everything in my body expires and she can walk out with something that will ensure she gives birth to my children. I didn’t mean for things to turn out…”
“Kijana hebu harakisha!”
I stepped out and there and then, he saw me and recognized me! “Kumbe ni wewe! Si nilikuambia nitakushika siku moja?!”
“Hapana mwalimu. Nilikuwa nimeenda ku…”
“Funga mdomo shika hapa!” Pointing at the pavement. “Nitakufunza adabu leo!”
“Lakini mwalimu…”
“Kijana nimesema ushike hapo. Nitakunyorosha wewe!”
If there is one thing I had learned from my experience with teachers is to never argue with them or try to bargain when things get rough. It only gets worse. Their patience is limited and at the same time, they can take all the time in the world to waste you if you fail to cooperate when they give you a chance to. So with that token of wisdom in mind, I obeyed and there I was, bending over.
“Nitakuweka ngapi?” He asked.
The whole school new the optimum number of canes any teacher was to administer. In fact six was the number for everything. Get caught stealing and you’d pay back six times what you stole. Get caught sneaking and you’d go home and bring six rolls of barbed wire.
“Sita mwalimu.” I said in humility. I couldn’t believe that was happening. I suspected my classmates were peeping through the window, watching the death of one monkey. I also later realised that the form threes could see the same from their block. I later met some of them during lunch time and they sympathised with me unlike my classmates. It was fair though because down the years I became a good boy and I was now the one to watch hell break loose on them.
“Eh Kumbe unajua! Na ukiwachilia hapo nitaanza tena.” That was a warning I never dared test whether it was real.
Smack! Whip! Smack! Whip! Smawhip!
I had started counting when he began but lost track somewhere in between two and three. I had shut my eyes and after two or three, maybe I had died already.
“Hizo ni ngapi?” he asked. I tried to remember where I lost count. It felt like fifteen already. So I just said, “Six!” nearly getting up.
“Hapana. Tano. One more. Usiamke!”
Hektiach!!!
I went thinking he had done seven on me instead of the promised six. In form three the story came up and my buddy told me that it was actually six. Everyone in class was counting.
“Enda darasani!”
Everything was hot all over my wasted form one body. Was I glad to still be alive? No! But today, maybe I am.
To be continued…
 
Share your ordeal of the high school kiboko or any punishment with us on the comment section mjango. No judging. I promise. Everyone has something related, so the floor is yours ya’ll.