PART ONE:
Thanks and ululations fill the village. The sun has yet another
responsibility to accomplish. You have passed the first transformation
headed to the next. The well kept palace with a 24 hour CCTV
surveillance has been destroyed! First few months and many days in the
new world prove difficult to adapt to. Thickly woven materials around
your body replace the comfortable warm placenta. The lactic liquid
suckled and soft food supplements day-to-day meals in a while. Toothless
and weak jaws cannot manage tender foods.To your mum you are the raw
clay that can undergo pottery to produce the most envied product on
earth. She will do exactly that.
PART TWO:
There you grow strong. Feet fidgeting as you gallop porridge from
the green plastic cup. A fully engaging battle between the molar teeth
and that bone an indication of strong jaws. In the oversize 'marbolo'
T-shirt off to the stream carrying a 5-litre 'elianto' container. The
best swimmer in the river across your shamba after an entourage of
collecting firewood.
PART THREE:
Soon you will be headed to nursery school because your right hand
can go through the head to touch your left ear. In bare foot, you walk
for km to school and back. On your back the white school bag, a product
of an abandoned DAP fertilizer sack. The chilly mornings and rain
seasons a great enemy to your lice infested feet. Your next colleague
gives a consolation that your feet are at least better. His perfectly
produce a broccoli picture! Somebody accidentally steps on his fingers
and the bell ringer has free time around- the painful cry sets the
whole school into attention.
Sometimes a cup of water sees you through the night because the hard
working woman's food basket is empty. She missed menial work today.
This compels you to have numerous stops on your way to school picking
sugar cane twigs to please the roaring stomach. Depending on the season,
half-eaten guavas and loquats fallen along the way serve the purpose.
Your neighbor's slasher misses you by an inch on trying to sneak into
his passion fruit shamba. It is not your fault to get into the mess. The
hungry stomach needs to feed. That is so daring!
The peaceful hen's hatchery journey cut short after three days as
the eggs must be sold to pay your activity fee balance. Your fully
decorated uniform alienates you from the smart colleagues. The patches
represent almost all favourite colours of Kenyan tribes. Very active in
extracurricular activities and of course the best in the curricular
world.
Over the December holidays you to pretend the best geographer in map
reading. Up the highlands, down the valleys and across the streams you
will visit almost all relatives aiming to get textbooks, story books and
topmarks.'Remember your cousin was promoted to class eight, so tomorrow
you have to go for his class seven books,' your mum speaks in full
composure. There you go across the hills to accomplish the task. You get
lost in some instances but thank God you manage. I guess you would have
used GPS to ease your work if it were today.
PART FOUR:
The so difficult and trying moments help you build the bridge to
higher heights with hopes that tomorrow will be a brighter day. All
through secondary with life reluctant to improve financially, socially. .
.still traumatizing moments. Sharp sun rays penetrating the thatched
roof gaps create a sigh of relief every morning.Your cherished matress
is that skin from the family cow that was poisoned by the jealous-for-notning neighbour. Since then no few coins from milk. It was
the only cow left after a series of dead of calfs and their lovely
mothers. You very well know who did it! He has no apparent reason for
this cow genocide. In fact he started with the dogs and chicken. The
chicken your grandma gave to you when you visited her last christmas!
God forbid!
The prayers, songs, homilies from clergymen, bible sharing with
friends keep you going.The persistent guy as always you achieve
academically. Your are headed into great heights; to conquer the
unconquerable, achieve the unachievable and accomplish the dream in
great honour of the Almighty!
PART FIVE:
There you find yourself in campus. That 'life is up there' phrase a
very great driving force and inspirational day in day out. Social,
religious and political shocks too hard to absorb. Financial life
another hell on earth! Back from the mess/mabatini, your roommate is
feasting on chicken/chipo, hamburger. . .anything delicious, expensive
and hard to get. Colleagues outings the order of the day. I guess your
best outing is that visit to your long lost distant relative of yours at
Kibera. What a reunion! Once in a while you will get friends. Others
genuine and others with ill intentions. Your wit manages to filter them
out.
Running and panting across the street to repair your friends laptop.
It crashed in your hands when you were typing that 'must type'
assigment. The lecturer is a no nonsence person. He will take ages to
get back the assignment marks. Worse of all, he will make sure your transcript has achieved the equality rule of accommodating the disabled; and for that reason, he will give you an undeserved 'D'! You are the chief consultant on the class
timetable, assignment deadlines and postponed classes.You have been
very humble through campus life excelling in all helpful fields.
You have proved your critiques wrong. Those who always had you in
the news for all wrong reasons. They said you cheated in your final
exams to book a place in that institution. You wonder why your
transcript can't prove them right. You are on long holiday for a few
months, they say the in disciplined guy has been expelled from campus.
You greet the old men in a salute because you are in a hurry, they
confirm their fears on how spoilt campus people look down upon them. As
one philosopher once put it that that you may not be able to stop people
from having a bad perception about you but you can keep them from being
right about it, you endeavor to apply that.Trying to suggest an
improved way of looking into things, the child is getting beyond
boundaries. Culture and traditions do not allow such practices. They
insist that what they found there forefathers practicing will always be
right. Surely, even quaint traditions? Out of date farming methods?
Unsustainability? It is very ironical that the very people are feeling
on the upgrade that their clan has learned children.
* * *
Some think education is just but an accolade to make you famous.
Education is beyond that! It empowers people. Education is a poison to
poverty, laziness, social evils, foolishness. It opens golden gates to
development, prosperity, sustainability, fair and equitable sharing of
resources. Thanks to the Almighty that most people are getting these
facts in their fingertips.
* * *
Powers to read empower the young guy. You are back to the village to
transform acquired knowledge into someting useful. Those project
proposals go through as expected. Some development enemies are still
against your project implementation. With cooperation from most people,
you succeed in setting the community water project that has helped in
irrigation and domestic uses. The community is producing surplus
agricultural products for sale regionally. The underway village
electrification will ensure that no family will be suffering to get paraffin in their lanterns. Your schooling siblings, cousins and
neighbours will be studying to saturation because lighting is no
longer a problem. Your grandfather will be listening to his favourite
local radio station all through. Dry cells era will be a history.
You decide to partly fund that neighbor's child through high
school. Don't forget he is the very person who was a nuisance during
your childhood and schooling days. Those chicken and cows he poisoned!
You never held a grudge. This brings a great reconciliation between the
two families. Surely, what can't you do? You are really confirming the
power of education to those development enemies. With that spirit,
everything will be a dream come true. The SUFFERING child and CONQUERING
intellect will indeed die VICTOR!
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