During this period, we played football all we wanted. At times, our class teacher would be generous enough to give us a real leather football to play with. Usually we played with our own improvised football, made of polythene. To kick the real thing was such a delight. We would play till we stripped off our shirts, drenched with sweat. (Can’t imagine how we survived with the same pair of uniforms for a whole week without changing or washing).
Girls too were busy skipping with ropes or playing netball. Imagine school without classes, day in day out for a whole two weeks! Wish you were there to witness the gambols and frolics of excited kids, excited with their newfound freedom from books and especially the much resented mathematics. Those were the days you never missed school for whatever reason. What an opportunity to escape the chores at home and still have fun in school! No classes, no punishments, no registers marked, nothing. It was total freedom. I only wished schools were always like that.
Fatigued from football, we would walk a mile to Kabeti spring to drink water and cool our bodies. After that, we went to the hill nearby to collect fruits and play with girls. We would go for lunch in different homes the entire period.
The mill nearby was busy grinding maize flour to be used for brewing local beer. The echoes in the nearby hill were the sound of axes, felling trees and hewing firewood, to be used for cooking in the festivities.
School boys who were to undergo circumcision had since left school to build some makeshift houses (called ‘menjo’) deep in the bushes. They were to be sequestered there for a whole month after circumcision. They too had their fun felling logs for their firewood and hunting. In the evenings, they practiced songs for the initiation night and after. By that time, they would have isolated themselves from us younger boys.
Their female counterparts would have quit school along time. To hew firewood, smear their homes and decorate them in readiness for the festivities. In any case, they were never to return to school. After initiation, girls became women and were married off immediately. In the evenings, as early as August, you would hear girls practicing songs and dance moves for the circumcision night.
The festive mood was setting in gradually with every new dawn.
A week to school closing, you would see smoke rising from the homes that had candidates for circumcision. All over, the aroma of roasting maize flour floated freely in the evening air. This was the main ingredient for brewing local beer. You know, after grinding, the maize flour was added water and covered with polythene to ferment. After three days, it was roasted to make small round balls, called ‘kelanik’. Kelanik is poured into large pots half filled with water and mixed with fermented millet flour ‘mermeruk’, and left for three days. After three days of occasional stirring and addition of more fermented ground millet that acted as yeast, you could sip the brew and feel your head heat up: alcohol! Real great potent alcohol that has kept December holidays special and memorable since time immemorial.
The village was a beehive of activities then. The preparations would have exhausted one but fortunately, most of the work was shared.
Before this, you would have witnessed the initiates-to-be visiting your homes. Some were known relatives, some were neighbors, and others were clans mate from as far as the neighboring district of Trans-Mara. It was easy to spot them, boys would walk with a club tied to the waist or a staff and his hair was shaved and tied with a scarf. Girls wore nice clothes, with new head-kerchiefs, a whistle hanging from their necks, a myriad of bangles on wrists and spotting some free-flowing robes.
The initiates-to- be would enter our home and the conversation would be:
Initiate-to-be: “kokile tun obwan tumin” (“it’s been said you attend a circumcision ceremony”)
Mom: “komwoe ng’o? (“Who says so?”)
Iinitiate-to-be: “komwoe baba/mama” (“dad/mom says so”)
Mom: “wendi ng’o tumto?” ( “Who is to be circumcised?”)
Initiate-to-be: “ane!” (“me!”)
Year in year out, the conversation took the same pattern. My mom would ask them where they belong if she didn’t know and request them to join us for tea or supper as the circumstances may be. Many declined, some accepted. By this time, the initiates-to-be have adopted some quiet demeanor to reflect their impending status as men and women. Mom would finish off the conversation by telling them she will attend and thanking them for the invitation.
Depending on the number of relations and friends who were to initiate their children in a particular year, one received as many invites as there were relations and friends. When the time came, dad decided which to attend and which not. The priority was relatives, then friends and neighbors.
Thursday night of the week of closing day, it was the night of ‘kipsirgoot’ translated loosely to mean ‘the house writers’. It was simply a night for decorating the interior of the homes that were to host the festivities. The exterior would have been smeared and painted with terracotta and drawn pictures of flowers and caricatures of people. Our job was simply to hang old newspapers and leaves of exercise books on the ceiling and cover the walls with wall papers. (There was some wall paper that was common in the village then, procured from a milk factory 18 kilometers away. It had drawings of children drinking milk and the words KCC KCC KCC… all over)
The gramophone would be playing loud; there was tea for us kids and beer for the older people. There was nothing much to be done, I think it was a day simply for sampling beer and to make sure that everything, most importantly, the gramophone was working. Apart from the wall paper, we also hang cypress branches on the ceiling. Whatever aesthetic qualities cypress branches had, I have no idea but all the same, it was a very common practice then.
We spent the night dancing and making merry. At 4 am, it was time to wake up for some of us would have dozed off on the seats. (No sofas, just some armchairs called ‘jumatatu’ -Monday in Swahili and some foldable seats made of leather).
4 am found us in the bitter cold, yawning and plodding to our next task. If the initiate-to-be was a boy, we went shouting to the bushes by Kap Elibut dam to collect some sacred plants, ‘Korosek’ ,that was to be used by the initiates. They are thin perennial plants that grow on the side of forests and in swamps. Surrounded by a bevy of young village boys and girls the initiate-to-be led the way to where he had initially found the plants. We uprooted as many as possible and carried them to his home.
Still bellowing and singing like mad kids, we would arrive and place the korosek by the wall on the right side of the house. We would be treated to tea and loaves of bread. Bread is actually the sole attraction to participate in the exercise of pulling plants in the forest in a very chilly morning.
(If the initiate-to-be was a girl, the job of collecting korosek fell on a Saturday morning. There was more fanfare when it was a girl than for a boy. The crowd was bigger and the singing was more intense, accompanied with whistles and flutes. )
After tea and bread, the party of sleepy but cheerful boys and girls broke up and each left to his/her own home, to prepare to go to school for the closing ceremony. As we left for school, men and women would flock to the home of the initiate-to-be to drink ‘the beer of korosek ‘. It is not a lot of beer and would normally end by ten am. Those parents who were passionate about school would join us in the school closing ceremony while those who were more enthusiastic about beer would go round drinking beer in the various houses.
After singing the national anthem, we went to the jacaranda trees nearby and sat. By then I would be dozing. A handful of parents would have arrived. It would be 11 am. Teachers and parents would be seated on the desks, us on the grass. Caroline Cheptoo or her sister Anna Chepkorir would lead us in some Christian songs, Christopher Siele would pray for us. That was the only day I closed my eyes, ostensibly in prayer but in reality, I was catching a catnap.
Some boy will nudge me and I will wake up to the headmaster‘s address. Then Mr. Towett arap Chepkwony, the chairman of the school followed next. More pep talks would follow. The message, year in year out was: discipline, diligence and respect. You could skip a closing ceremony and miss nothing. I didn’t like it; not least because I was anxious about the evening bacchanalia but more because I was exhausted from the previous night’s partying.
Priscilla Baliach and the late Rusi Maritim never missed the closing ceremony. So too my mom. She never addressed us, for she is reserved but always sat anonymously in the crowd, awaiting her time of glory. It always came.
The only time I looked forward to; that of calling out the names of the best pupils. It was dreaded by many and loved by a few. The top three of each class were called in front and given gifts. Pencils, pens, books, exercise books, and so forth. The fourth up to tenth were told to stand up and were clapped for
Four claps for boys and three for girls. Sometimes the last two were also called and told to stand up. Most of the tailing pupils were absent during school closing days so no one stood.
When it got to my class, our teacher, Mr Joseph Kosgey, would stand and make a few remarks on the general performance, the number of pupils who sat exams, those who have dropped out and etc. he was so thorough and serious, though I am sure his mind also strayed to the pots of beer awaiting him in some house immediately he finished with the job at hand.
“Alfred Kiprotich Barusei, come in front, this is the boy who managed to top his class with …” that was me and I would walk in front of the gathering and stand with my hands folded across my chest. I would steal a glance at my mom, a smile played in her lips. Mr.Kosgey would shower me with some plaudits and a pencil or pen or an exercise would be proffered to me. He would go on to call the other two top pupils. We would be clapped for and told to sit.
When all the top performances have been recognized and rewarded, it was time to go to class for report forms, bearing our results, to take to our parents. Some who performed dismally would tear or munch the results and swallow them.
We would break for home as our parents remained behind for a meeting.
On the way home, the boys who had vowed to fight each other would do so. If they looked jittery, we would make sure they did so via a combination of chiding and scorning. We would tell a boy, “You mean this thin and scraggy fellow would beat you?” And another, “you don’t mean you are a coward boy!” If that did not work, we would place some grass on the wrist of one of the combatant, and tell the other boy to dare touch ‘his cow’. If he touched it, the other boy would hit him and a delectable fight would ensue. We would cheer on and on till the victor emerged. Another pair will step in. It was fun seeing boys fight.
The best part was to see girls fight. They would tear each other’s clothes, curse, call each other names, strip each other (thereby affording us a chance to see the elusive sweet panties) and scratch each other’s faces. More girls will be sucked in and soon there was a free-for-all. The scuffle would go on till our parents finished up their school meeting, caught up with us on the road and chased us home. The fights were curiously named ‘closing-the-school-with-someone’.
On our way home, you would hear music floating in the air. Some early drunkard would be screaming on his way home, another would be sound asleep on the side of the road. Celebration was already underway. It was palpable to your ears, nose and eyes; everywhere you turned.
At home, we had a late lunch cum early supper then we left to the grazing fields to herd as well as make some clubs. We also repaired our tire sandals, popularly known as ‘kinyira’ or if you were lucky to have shoes (plastic shoes called ‘chombelea’ a corruption of Swahili that meant ‘burn and go’. It actually arose from the fact that when torn, you just seal the torn area with a burning object) you repaired them in readiness for the long night full of thorns and sharp objects.
This was one of the few days we had the license to shut our cattle up in the barn at 5 pm. The atmosphere was full of a cacophony of noise from dogs, drunkards, boys, music, songs and even drunken brawls. The December festivities have started in earnest. Woe unto you if you were a Christian! Many renounced their faith and joined in the carousal.
(to be continued)
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