Down,down the memory lane

There are those people you meet at a crucial stage of your life that you’ll probably never get to meet again. People who imparted majorly on a certain stage of your life that in pursuit of higher education or ‘greener pastures’ you didn’t hesitate to shake off. Others though you just had to let go to create room for other more exciting or necessary individuals.

Is Mzee Varaq suddenly turning philosophical? Maybe. Yesterday I met my long lost friend Dan Robert. We happened to have gone through St Josephs Combined Academy together just a year past the new millennium. We happened to be among the first students when the school was started in 2001. We broke into pearls of laughter when we remembered our lunch for the first week was mkate and soda madiaba madiaba. That was not just ‘food has passed here’. It was a big deal then.

Back then it dint have a postmodern hall like I hear it has today, Friday entertainment wasn’t digital but consisted of senior girls singing beautiful praise songs with amazing voices and the library want the huge structure it is today but just a tiny shelf in the principal’s, sorry head teacher’s office.

I hear now it is a national outfit that receives students, sorry pupils, from even abroad. Don’t get ahead of yourself. By abroad here I don’t mean Yunaired states or Cambodia, that’s not totally impossible though, I mean our local USA, Ugenya Siaya, and Alego. Which is still abroad after all it meets the bare requirements of the oxford definition of abroad-

v  the presence of an international airport

v  Presence of an international lake

v  Presence of a parallel national government headed by a de facto supreme leader, baba

v  Parallel constitution ,flag and national anthem

v  A national army- K’Ogalo Defense Forces

Sorry I got a little off track. He reminded me of my favorite cooks Kokal and Fuony. Even back then the supreme position of arega in life was undisputed. Kokal was my favorite because he knew who the ‘wazito’ were. Oh yea, David Bradley was mzito even then .In case I lost you back then he wasn’t mzee Varaq .That’s a long story I might blog about it next time, maybe. Now about Kokal, he could serve his people in larger plates. Sometimes he could ask us to remain behind after the others had served for refilling. In exchange for this measure of generosity, we gave him bars of soap etc that remained after a hard semester, sorry again, a hard term’s work. Being that cleanliness was not my forte then; they used to be quite a stack and in certain cases homemade mandas or chapat to show appreciation.

Too bad the administration got wind of this unholy alliance and Kokal had to pay the ultimate price. In his place they brought Fuony, an excellent chef who had interesting stories to narrate to an attentive audience. He said he used to cook for Jimmy-that senator from Siaya county of Nyanza republic. Our brain not fully developed then we couldn’t ask him why he stooped to our level then. Instead with gusto, listened to how he had been to Israel and Canada among other nations of the world. He looked the part, he was immaculately dressed for a cook and his huge size further lent his story some credibility. With a man like Fuony it was difficult to buy his friendship with a bar of soap. So we bid our time until we had something to trade. Everybody it seems has a price, it’s just important to figure out what it is.

Well now Fuony is the mayor of my town and every time I look at him am reminded that this nation is a nation of endless possibilities. You just need hunger, drive and with a little bit of luck you’ll get there.

I’m highly nostalgic when I remember the special days that were Friday for omena and Sunday evening for rice. I can’t really remember the rest of the meal but I’m sure my friends Dan, Eddy, Oduori, Isaac not Hassan Njoroge, might remember.

However, the school wasn’t of people getting their way all the time as might have erroneously been implied. There were hard moments, moments that you just look back to and wonder, “did I really pass through that?” I remember the head teacher then, I hear he’s still the guy at the hem waking us up at four am to go and learn the reasons for the failure of the Samori Toure’s resistance or the path that was followed by the long distance traders across the Sahara from Gao, Timbuktu, Jen, Wallata before the normal classes begun at five. For that we called him Timbuktu and later it was shenglized to Ambuko. It’s strange that I remember my class seven GHC up to now though I can’t recall much of the Immunology I did last semester. Chinua Achebe might have responded by saying how the standard seven of those days was better than the Cambridge of today.

The memory that is likely to be etched in my mind the longest is that of ‘kupanda pikipiki’. Now kupanda pikipiki doesn’t mean what your Swahili teachers have taught you all along. It means to climb into a locker to receive the best of the best (viboko).Back then any reason was sufficient, be it getting to class late, getting 96% instead of clearing everything in mathematics, not paying attention, walking aimlessly to another class, not spreading bed etc. You won’t even think about looking at a girl twice or writing those funny funny letters, even imagining it was capital offence. The school always knew, never mind that you just held hands briefly in the comfort of the dark behind the school canteen. Back then the phrase even walls have ears was truest. They might have even had eyes. Woe unto you if your letter of immorality and gross decency was discovered like it happened to someone I know.

I remember there was this time my name was called in the assembly in connection to gross indiscipline. You can’t believe what I did, I said am a jatieko. Now jatieko simply means finisher. To the administration that was a crude, insensitive remark and it got me a date with the motorcycle. For that I will always remember a young lady by the name of Cyprian. I think I spent the rest of my life there resenting her but hey, it wasn’t her fault .She was just being a good girl reporting a bad guy.

But it wasn’t all gloom and routine. There were moments when we had to beat steel cans and metallic chairs to chase away Nyawawa that were believed to transverse the skies at night sometimes calling people by names. For this reason nobody answered when they were called at night lest you be Nyawawa’s forced visitor forever. Looking back I think those little boys and girls were just scared to be out of the safety their home probably for the first time.

alumni in a reunion party

Back then I wasn’t the hockey maestro you see in your sports newspapers now, I was more like David the drama king. I remember being the lead character in the play, The New Era and also narrating the oral narrative, the painter alongside Bob Bobilaz whom I have not seen or talked to since 2004 …..Too bad I had to sacrifice that ambition for other important use of my time. Who knows I could have been the one asking the president to tweet me yawa…..

All in all, that childhood innocence, the innocent friendships that we built, is all I look back to most and thank this school for.

N oh if you were wondering why my kiswahili is that good,u just have to ask John Juma,yea the one you know,he taught us misemo ya kutumua katika maandishi mufti ya insha faridi