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.
