PAY DAY

For anybody in gainful employment there’s no time to look forward to than the end month. Forget about this contracts that pay in a fortnight or weekly. The only way you know you are in lucrative employment when you get excited around end month time. This is the time all your sacrifices of waking up in the morning when all you want to do is sleep is rewarded. This is the time those who don’t enjoy their works for once shed off their phony smiles meant to score points with the men whom depending on their moods dictate how much you take home every month. 

You’ll know it is payday when suddenly there’s an influx of people in all the places that shout new money. These include the supermarkets and shopping malls of the city. And I’m not talking about people just passing by to window-shop, haggle about prices of electronics in a supermarket and pick PK worth twenty bob on their way out. I’m not talking about people who think Nevada is charging them too much for a 500ml bottle of soda and decide to dash in and buy a pet bottle of soda at 55 shillings. 

On pay day it is evident-a minimum of a fully packed trolleys laden with all the good things za kuambia mwili ahsante. On pay day those who partake of the bitter stuff in the pubs on the dingy alleys of Nairobi rise to the occasion and migrate uptown, indulge in the excesses of the night, leave behind ‘hefty’ tips of 200 shillings for waiters with Vera Sidika’s back and momentarily forget that they are otherwise responsible members of the society.

Pay Day is most celebrated by teachers. I know because I was a teacher in my other life. Forget all that crap about teaching being a calling. It aint. Unless by calling here you mean it’s a calling from JAB. Let’s face it; those good teachers that moulded us into who we are are long gone. The ones singing bado mapambano in the streets every three months are not motivated by an inner calling in them, a passion to serve humanity or things like that. They are motivated by the huge grin on pay day. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with loving money, I’m helplessly in love with cash too.

Queue at ATM on pay day

I remember my first salary. There’s an exhilarated feeling about the money you sweat for. It’s sweet. It’s adorable. Never mind how meager it is. I used to be a teacher at St Isabel Mixed Secondary school those days that the good University Joint Admissions Board insisted you had to rest home for two years before entering the hallowed gates of an institution of higher learning to do a course that they thought was best for you. The school manager/owner/head teacher/master on duty/head boy was a hairy old man who was himself a senior educational official in the village before retiring and starting his own school. The school had a teaching staff of four when I got in to a student population of about 200.

I was to teach English and History from form one to four. I was just glad to be out of the house and in productive employment. You know how it is after you clear form four and you have absolutely no reason to ask for pocket money. Wenger, the manager was a busy man. He was called Wenger due to same uncanny similar characteristics with one Arsene Wenger. He was rarely in school. He had a flourishing transport company of about twenty pikipikis, a chemist shop that was the envy of the town, a kindergarten for the town’s elite, a dairy farm that supplied milk to many establishments in town among very many other profitable ventures. In this hierarchy it was the school that brought in least profits. 

I guess that’s why he was rarely in the school. I think he just kept it a float in the loving memory of Isabel his deceased mother.

The work of running the school fell to a certain E B Siwo, a trained teacher himself too. He taught Kiswahili though it was obvious it was not his natural tongue. This was a guy who loved his bottle. The school was situated at the very foot of Wire Mountains in Oyugis Town. The close proximity to the woods gave the man the necessary camouflage to go and take a little at break time and lunch time and come back quiet into the staffroom like a sick man. With that it was obvious he couldn’t take his afternoon Kiswahili classes.

Being new and enthusiastic, I offered to teach Kiswahili Fasihi and even later Insha in addition to my other subjects. The good Siwo thus taught just Kiswahili Grammar whenever he was not sick or inebriated or absent. The feeling of authority, of students looking up to you, of asking a big bearded boy to stand up and sit down as instructed was euphoric. See I was never a prefect in my other life. From form one I was a mopper on duty. That was synonymous with slavery in Maseno School. You had no power, absolutely no power. You were not to talk unless talked to and of course the inspectors, who were themselves students (mere form twos for that matter), owned your ass. Not literally I must add.

I loved my job. Being a teacher felt like a calling. I woke up earliest from home and was usually the first member of staff to arrive. I would, just like my teachers did in high school squeeze every time for my three subjects. I rarely used my chair in the staffroom coz I preferred standing, using my well kept high school notes to impart knowledge upon willing heads. I read and reread the new English and Swahili set books, I analyzed them just like my teachers taught me to and on a silver platter fed it to them. I don’t remember a time when my hands were not covered in chalk dust……………. Until pay day!

No member of staff was ever excited to see Wenger because it meant more work. But on pay day it was just about the cash, deserved reward on a loyal laborer. Wenger the busy man was of course itching to get away to his more profitable ventures.

“Mwalimu Robert, come in here” he called me.

I was bubbling with excitement. I wasn’t sure what to do with my first pay. My mother had reminded me that my first salary was to give out to close relatives to bless my future earnings. Of course 10% was God’s and that was non negotiable. You never say no to that woman. So in my head I had already committed half my salary to such ventures. The other fifty percent I wasn’t sure. It was increasingly getting difficult picking up ladies with the Vodafone 125 my father had gotten me from his 4500 Bonga points. It had no memory card slot and of course I couldn’t listen to music loudly for girls to notice or put ‘I’m bawling’ song as my ringing tone.

On the other hand, teachers are respectable people in the society and a suit was trademark for men of such stature in the society.

The phone or the suit….

The phone or the suit……….. The phone or the suit………..

He begun by appreciating my enthusiasm and the fresh energy I was stirring in the students. He went ahead by saying it would be a shame if such dedication and enthusiasm were not to be rewarded. At this moment I was accepting the accolades with a cool demeanor just like a Don receiving compliments from a loyal subject. Of course one cannot eat compliments.

“However, you’ve noticed that this term most of these students have not been paying fees……..”

Here is when I really begun paying attention.

To cut a long story short he paid me two thousand shillings. Yes, two thousand shillings!

I owed the school mama mandazi three hundred shillings from a month of taking mandazis and uji at break time. You should know fuel is compulsory bwana. And of course I still had to get those blessings by giving my grandmother two hundred shillings and buying my aunt Nyasembo fulu. For those who don’t understand French, Fulu are bigger omenas. Too bad we buried Nyasembo over the weekend. Such a great woman.

So the next day, gutted, disappointed and seething in anger I decided teaching was not my calling after all. My mother of course couldn’t understand why I was quitting. In her usual stinging sarcasm she asked me to go out in the streets and show her where one could just walk and pick two thousand shillings.

My fate was sealed. 

The next day I reported to school at ten, in a matching trouser and coat that could easily pass as a suit and sat in my staffroom chair, drunk the sugarless office tea, reading the sports news on the paper and of course the classifieds. 

Waiting for Pay Day; for the big grin; for things to get better

It did …....Eventually, when I was promoted to the school principal and could finally buy a Nokia E series to depict my new status. It was a Chinese model of course; with two SIM cards, volume louder than an woofer, EDGE internet, memory card slot to play all my songs and with a calendar to mark the next Pay Day!

Too bad JAB had other ideas and summoned me to do Public Health when the big bucks had just started rolling….

Any Principal Job opening out there?