I arrived in Bungoma late in the
evening, wet and hungry. Inside my green paper bag I had a few belongings that
I had managed to grab as I made what I called ‘the great escape’ or worse,
‘prison break’. My cold legs carried me to my eldest sister’s house, about a
kilometer from Bungoma town.
I gathered my courage and knocked
on the door. My sister opened the door and was shocked to see me standing there
shaking like a leaf. With tears in her
eyes, she asked me, “Wwwwhat’s this? A joke?” She realized it was not a joke
when tears started flowing freely down my innocent cheeks. She quickly ushered
me in and brought a towel to dry me up and a blanket to wrap me in. We were
both sobbing uncontrollably without uttering a word. This went on for long with
my sister thinking someone had died at home. Amidst the sobs she kept shouting
“who? Please tell me who?” To make things harder for her, amidst my sobs I kept
shouting “ I’m not going back! Not going back there!”
After the confusion and calm restored,
I eventually told my sister that I had made a great escape from what I termed
my father’s torment. She understood what I meant because she had been through
the same kind of treatment in her youth. I did not understand why she started
smiling and telling me, “That’s why I’m a successful teacher”. I wondered if I had made the right decision
or I was simply jumping from the frying pan to the fire. I was only relieved when she declared that I
was welcome to stay in her place and that in fact she would try to get me a
place to continue with my education in a school she was heading then. Though I
believed she knew the kind of punishment my father was known for, I had a
feeling mine was very different and severe. That is why I decided to narrate to
her my torments.
***
One day I woke up with a start to
see a towering silhouette over me. “Still dreaming huh?” My father’s deep voice
echoed. “Wake up silly boy, time to go to school.” I didn’t want to start my
day badly because a slight delay after the command would have resulted in a
different kind of breakfast. I hurriedly gathered myself and jumped out of
bed. This had been the routine ever
since I joined standard one in a school where my father was a headmaster. This
day was just one of the many hard days. I had endured the beatings of waking up
late, not doing homework and all. I was now of age and in standard four in the
same school. I realized things had become tougher ever since I stepped in
standard four. My father told me I must stop joking henceforth because standard
four is a senior class. The punishments had become tougher as well as the
assignments. My father always had his own assignments apart from the official
school assignment. There were many days like this.
I would get up and go to the borehole
to fetch water as it was routine. The mornings were chilly. I used to take my
bucket and soap and try and bathe behind the house. It was always hard. The
water was cold, very cold. I would quickly survey the main entrance to the
house to see if my father was there shaving. As usual, he always came to the
verandah holding a tiny mirror to shave his beard. On the days I would not see
him, I would take advantage. Was it French bath? Whatever you may call it, I
would wash my face, my hands and feet and sprinkle some water on my chest to
look wet. I would then stay in the cold longer to start shivering from the cold
and also to buy time lest I’m accused of not bathing. On a few occasions while
my mother prepared breakfast for us I had experienced the pain of being taken
back to bathe again either with my father’s supervision or bathing me
personally.
My mother would be busy pressing
and preparing my school uniform. Some days my uniform had to be washed and
aired at night if it was too dirty to ‘rewind’. Otherwise rewinding was the
order of the day. The trick was to avoid playing too much. Making it dirty
within the week would attract the wrath of my mother and that meant serious
flogging.
I always had the privilege of
sharing breakfast with my father. Of course his was ‘special’ with more to eat
than mine. The good thing about sharing was he would almost always ‘sambaza’ or
pass me a specially prepared egg, bread, mandazi or sconce on the rare
occasions that such were available. I always took my breakfast standing because
whether I was through or not, the moment dad cleared his, it was time to go.
This went on day after day.
I remember some days and these
were many, with my feet wet from the morning dew, we would set off amidst the
singing birds as the sun gently rose. This would be after I have done a quick
checkup of my father’s bicycle to make sure it was clean, the tyre pressure
right, the brakes working and it is well oiled. A few metres from our house as
was always, dad mounted the bicycle as I ran along. He always left me way
behind because of the downhill momentum. Ever since I had joined standard four,
I always did this. Previously I had the privilege of being given a ride. He
would go as far as the momentum will take him and leave the bicycle by the roadside
knowing that I was right behind to push it uphill for the better part of the
remaining journey to school. About one kilometer to school I would hand over
the bicycle back to my father because it was downhill momentum again. I would
then try to race against him because it was a ‘rule’ that the moment he gets to
school he closes the school gate and everyone who comes after him is a late
comer. He was the school’s headmaster. No one admired being a late comer and at
the same time no one wanted to be absent from school unless with very good
explanations. The repercussions were telling and I was not exempted from the
punishment. He would simply lock the gate in my face as I raced to beat the
punishment. He did not care that I was late after pushing his bicycle uphill.
With other latecomers, we would line up and go on our knees and ‘walk’ on our
knees on the 300 metre rough gravel surface to the parade. One day each of us
was made to ‘dig our own graves’. This was a hole as deep as your height and as
wide as your length when lying down. I remember my father coming to inspect and
casually telling us to fill them up. He came to inspect again. “alright, make
the ground level and plant the grass. I want it as smooth as it was. You’ve
messed up my ground!” This was just one of the many punishments.
***
School life was exciting, full of
anxiety as well as scaring. There were some things that only happened in school
and we used to look forward to them. Other things were so scaring, we would do
anything to keep away from school.
In the school compound, there
were several hawkers mainly selling foodstuffs. There were two famous ones,
Mama Sconce and another one who used to sell sugarcane called Namunguba. When I
think of Mama Sconce’s sconces, I salivate. The nicely baked sconces with
particles of flour were everyone’s favourite at break time and since they were
not so many, we had to dash for them as soon as the bell rang. Now, here is the
catch; you could buy the sconces by paying cash or some kind of barter trade. The
latter was the easiest. For two eggs you would get one sconce. Since money was
hard to come by, eggs became the order of the day. Thinking about it later,
Mama Sconce was making a kill- two eggs for a sconce! She would of course use
the very eggs to make more sconces. No wonder they were tasty because she had
plenty of eggs. Not many of us could get those eggs through the right channel,
that is, asking our parents because they wouldn’t give us. So we resorted to
pinching the eggs-easy!
There was this day when I had
successfully executed my pinching mission when suddenly the mission aborted.
With my two eggs safe in my pants, I hurried to go and ‘shower’. What I didn’t
know is that my pants were not pressed. As usual, my mother always inspected
them before I wore them. On this particular day she was to get a shock of her
life. When she found wrinkled pants, she decided to press them not knowing
there were eggs inside! She only found out when something exploded after
colliding with the iron box. I don’t have to tell you what followed.
In a nutshell, to start with, the
highest grade of my mother’s punishment was administered to me. It had two
stages. In stage one, standing there shaking like a leaf and naked, I had to
kneel on finger millet and walk on the knees. Those of you who know finger
millet know what one goes through when you try to ‘walk’ on it on your knees.
In summary, I suffered. In the second and final part of the punishment, my
mother brought a needle and as if she was joking, pushed it in my middle finger
as if I was giving a blood sample for malaria diagnosis. My screaming didn’t
help. It only drew the attention of my father, who casually inquired what I had
done and instructed my mother to send me to school when she was through.
When I got to school, more was
awaiting me. In the presence of a ‘special parade’, I was paraded and flogged
by two teachers with my father as the headmaster ‘crowning’ it with his now
famous ‘two pronged’ caning, as he held two sticks as he struck the swollen
buttocks. As was his habit, before he struck he would ask, “What is your name
and whose child are you?” I attracted more beating when I retorted “You are my
father!” amidst sobs.
Mama Sconce was expelled from the
school compound. As you can imagine, this was not all. I had to cope with
constant bullying from all those whose stolen eggs had nowhere to go and all
those who missed Mama Sconce thereafter. For several days after the incident I
found broken eggs on my desk.
... More to come
-Namulekhwa story
-Namunguba
- Thigh burning
-combing dad’s hair, cutting
nails
-Posho mill, maize buying, how
many cows? Their names
-Bicycle training
-End of term, no appreciation
-Kitchen intrusion
-maize eating
- Busaa, knee accident
-Sept 28th
