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Monday 28 November 2011

The Misery and the Cemetery


I'm weak
Haven't spoken to anyone a week.
Of suicide I contemplate
My body, energy won't generate.
Instead of living this misery
I'm thinking it's quieter in the cemetery.
No hard work to earn a living,
Matter of fact – no living or breathing!
No parents to disappoint
Or girlfriends to miss their appointments;
No thoughts about the future;
No guilt of the past and worry of the future;
No religions to misguide me,
Or neighbour to watch how I prevail
Or how I fail!
No wives to marry then constantly watch
Or kids to look after.
I'm thinking it's about time –
It's about my prime
To meet my creator
If in the cemetery he too has found solace.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Change Your Skype Name (Display Name) on Ubuntu


First, you cannot change your username, just like you cannot change your Yahoo! ID; you'd have to create a new account by first signing out and then signing in and clicking on the “don't have skype username” or something of the sort.

Open your skype account and click on your name, that is the display name (this is the same name others see). When you do that, a small box, as the one you update statuses on FB appears and just below that there is “Edit Profile”. Click on that and edit anthing, including your name, birthday, etc.

Saturday 5 November 2011

When Kenya Teachers Were Licensed to Kill


When I was almost done with my primary school Mama decided I had to change schools, what we used to call transfer, and what was I to do? Those were the days when I was supposed to be seen and not heard. I had a bad feeling about it. I was moving to a public school from a semi-prestigious private one, where we used to be ferried to school using a school bus. In this one, a school bus was a thing they used to watch private school kids board in the mornings and alight in the evenings. Well, she had her reasons. I was nervous. I was going to start making friends all over again, and it was not that easy for me, being the smart alec that I was. Back then I did not know why it was so hard for me to make friends but now I do. I did not realise that when you were smart and showed it it offended people. I guess I knew one thing: if you've got it, flaunt it.

When I entered class the first day I did not have trouble making friends but of course I lost some sooner rather than later when they discovered I was smart. The first two lessons before the short break were fine. I immediately fell in love with the teachers for English and the one taking us for Swahili. After break one of those boys who had managed to remain friends with me told me that the teacher for geography, who was coming next, was one to watch out for. He confided in me how mad he thought he was because according to him, all he did was flog. So when break was over we rushed back to class and waited. The man, for he was male, had the class sound like a tomb, you know, so silent. He was huge and should have been headteacher for not a soul that roamed in that school was not afraid of him, including the headteacher. People swore he used to smoke pot, or kanya, like they called it.

When he entered class everybody stood up and said “good morning, sir”, a thing that they had not done during the previous lessons that morning. I did not do so, not out of my ill-manners but I had not seen it done before and I only stood up as the others were sitting. In that way, I was the only one left standing. I was so embarrassed and as I prepared to sit he told me not to. In fact he said “keep standing”, and stood I did. He explored me form the north pole to the south pole and made gestures as he did. No one dared smile. It was a tomb in there. He must have guessed that I was from a better school and that he was ready to test. He asked me, “Where do you find River Zambezi?”

I begged his pardon. He became impatient. To me I heard something between Zambia and Zimbabwe. He repeated the question impatiently: Where is the River Zambezi?

I had loved geography since I had first heard of it. There were times at home when I would just sit and study my atlas, prompting my dad to give me hours of lectures about the use of a brain, for he claimed that I never used mine because how could I sit and look at the atlas for more than one hour? I used to fantasise about those places drawn there surrounded by deep blue seas and wish that I could close my eyes and fly there. The very tiny islands and archipelago usually caught my attention the more. I would wonder what people there looked like, whether there were rivers, or mountains; then wonder if there was someone in one of them who was also staring at hiser atlas at Africa and wonder the same. I used to wish I had friends that I could visit in every one of those islands. Sometimes I used to tell myself that there were islands that were not discovered and it was my job to do so one day and live in one of my own.

It was too bad I had fallen to reminiscing those days when I was a little kid and the teacher was becoming as mad as a bull. He repeated the question, saying each syllable as if it was a rock dropping into a still pool and making that unique sound that sounded like an Arab practising to say the letter w. Even as I remembered those days, I could not figure out where such a river was. I knew the River Mississippi because when I first saw the name it took my interest wondering if anyone could ever spell it; which took me three days to get it right, and still on the fourth I was not so sure I could spell it the following day. I also knew a river called Amazon because as an African, I thought I knew enough of Africa so I used to watch foreign lands, and the tiny islands that seemed just nowhere. I say watch because that is what I used to do. What do you call it when a person stares at a thing for more than an hour? We had no TV and this might have accelerated my habit with the atlas.

After what must have seemed like a century to the geography teacher I opened my mouth and what I said was not my idea of being a smart alec but clearly he was not pleased with it:

I told him that I had never gone beyond my hometown and that the only river I had seen was a little spring that ran from the Ngong Hills towards the coast, and that was what my father had told me about it; and that it was not known by the name he had just mentioned, and that if it was, then I had not heard anyone referring to it by that name.

All that time the class had been quiet and just waiting for the man to rain blows on anyone at the moment. They burst out laughing, a thing unheard of in his classes to which if he was a bull in a rodeo, was a man wearing red. The class was right for the moment after the laughing I saw more stars than might exist in the sky, and islands I used to imagine were appearing and disappearing before my very eyes. Then after he left me, everybody in that class was told to go outside the class and lie on the veranda and thereafter they were flogged in a way a beast of burden would protest to. I was left in class wondering what would happen to me when we got out of class. I was smelling vengeance on everybody as they entered the class. The teacher did not even enter the class after flogging the last student literally to death. He said that the next time he entered class we had better have figured out where that river was, and exactly where.

When he was safely out of hearing distance everyone burst again into laughter, only this time they still had sorrow in their eyes. But they said they were not mad at me and they just questioned my guts. They told me that no one had ever cracked a joke in his class, a thing that surprised me for mine was as sincere an answer as anyone would give. I had never seen, except on the atlas, (and it was so unfortunate I had never given Africa my attention) any other river except that stream that was now turning into an antagonist.
***
Those were the days when teachers, the police, among a few others were licensed to kill. They enjoyed their job so much, and had every reason to for those days teachers were the most respected people in whichever village they emerged. One of their tools of trade was anything that could inflict the most pain on students. They could be seen walking with their sticks or gas pipes on their shoulders. Teachers in the staffroom envied each other's sticks and pipes. They could be heard literally begging those with the best to lend them just for a single lesson, and the one being begged giving instructions on how to handle it so as to cause the most pain, and not to break it. Those were the days when teachers walked with their heads high, though they were not paid as much as they are now. Teaching was every students dream profession, especially the naughty ones who could not wait to inflict as much pain as was inflicted on their hind quarters.