Memories of an African Childhood: School Days

Waking up was not an easy task. My mom would drag me out of bed and toss me out of the house to a waiting basin of water to wash my face. Washing one’s face before eating breakfast was such a cardinal rule in that household nobody ever skipped it. I have never known why.  That done, we would herd around the hearth sipping tea.

My mom maintained such a serious countenance in the morning. You could easily earn a slap or a cooking stick on your tiny head at that particular time over a slight mistake.  We took our breakfast with such quiet all you could hear was long swigging sounds, chewing food and an occasional fart. Since school was near, the first bell would ring and the next would mean we were late.

When we woke early enough, we would wash our legs and arms ( having washed our faces before breakfast) , oil ourselves, slung our tiny bags and go running the short distance to school. My school bag was populated by only two exercise books: feint ruled for ‘writing’ and square ruled for ‘math’. It is not that they were whole exercise books; you were bought one regular exercise book and split in half. The other half for the next helping or for your sibling. The other occupant of that school bag was a small piece of pencil.  It was split into three pieces too and the rest kept at home. My pencils were made shorter by my gnawing habits when writing. Once you had all these three, you were good to go. If one was amiss, you were given an egg to barter at the local corner shop.

Sometimes when I got too late to wash my legs and arms, I simply clutched my bag, run across the dewy long grass of the cattle enclosure, emerge at the other end next to the road, rub myself with a small bar of soap and repair for school.

If you happen to get late, you were stopped at the gate by the teacher on duty, made to kneel holding your ears and crawl the hundred meters to the assembly place thus. At the assembly, you were caned four strokes or five or even ten depending on the cruelty of that particular teacher.

Occasionally, we would carry a bottle of water to water the dusty classrooms to keep jiggers at bay. They caught up with us anyway and we utilized break time to extract them. Remember shoes was not part of the school uniform. Not that we had any anyway (the way I admired shoes in some books we read!). I didn’t know how it felt to be inside shoes.

My legs to date have rugged toe nails. I lost all my toe nails to the numerous stones on the road to school. When you stumbled upon a stone and it harvested your toe nail, you simply plucked it out and cover the fresh wound with dust to stem the flow of blood. After a week or so it will form a hard crust. Ripe with pus, it was sure to rouse you up at night throbbing with pain. My mom will warm some water, wash it and squeeze out the pus. After a week, it would heal to await another date with another stone, which always came.

At the assembly, we would sing the National Anthem and the Loyalty Pledge, pray, sing a hymn and be addressed by teachers. After that, they will check whether we had long nails. In case you had long ones, you were given a good beating and send home. Then the hair check, if long with lice, (the headmaster Mr. Arumba inspected us carrying a big pair of scissors) would cut an ‘X’ sign at the top of your head. Finally, he would order us to unbutton our shirts and scratch our chests and back with a stick checking for dirt. If dirty, you would be forced to take a bath in front of all the kids.

Done with the assembly and lucky to survive all the screenings, we would run to class. There was an obsession with us kids to always run whenever we were going anywhere and be the first to get there and shout ‘one’, ‘one’. The second one would shout ‘two’, ‘two’ and so forth. Whether going to the latrines, going out for breaks or coming back from lunch (we went home for lunch and back) we never walked. We always ran.

Unfortunately, I was fat and clumsy. I never ran at all (I have never completed a 400 meter lap to this day).

Another obsession of us kids was saying everything at the top of our voices. When asked your name, you will shout it out at the top of your voice, for my case then ‘my name is Alfred Kiprotich Barusei Kenduiywo Kilachei…’  Learning was by rote so we would shout everything after the teacher. ‘Oneeee, twoooo, threeeee… Aaaa, Bbbb Cccc, Dddd…aaaa, eee,iiii,ooo,uuu ad infinitum. The only pupil who was disadvantaged in this game was a friend of mine called Peter. Such a stammerer I never got to know his second name till he dropped out of school. He could faint trying to get a single syllable out.

In one of this shouting lessons, one of our classmates called Cherono vomited a red hookworm. We ran out thinking it was a snake. We avoided that girl for the balance of that term.

The first lesson of the day was always Math which I loathed no end. We would go to the dusty road behind our school, clear a space each and write down our math. 1, 2, 3, 4...etc. Very big ones. The teacher would come and mark with his finger too. A long tick or a big cross. If not solving Math on the dirt road( there were no vehicles) we would count the sticks or bottle tops in class. That was math. It used to bore me to dead. I always scored a big zero, written and drawn ears, mouth and nose dripping with snot. To show that you are a very stupid boy. We would also count our fingers and toes.

I had a cousin, Stephen, who went by a moniker ‘Tractor’, maybe because he was huge. He was so good in Math but he hardly came to school but that is not the reason why he is stuck in my mind now. It is because of his handwritings. When he was writing say a figure ‘1’, he would draw a big one it would occupy the whole page. Ditto to everything else. He finished his exercise books in a day but thank God he never came to school often. He dropped much sooner. (He is now called ‘54’, a very interesting fellow indeed)

When answering anything in our exercise books in that class, we had the habit of protecting it with a spare hand and our heads it was almost impossible to write. This was to bar others from stealing answers from you. If anybody would dare as beep or you even imagined that he/she was doing so, you will draw the attention of the teacher to that particular culprit and was warned severely. We would also alert the teacher to any pupil who dared ‘paint the air’( to break wind in our classroom parlance.)

The second lesson was English. We would sing A,B,C,D…the whole time. At times we would be given text books titled ‘Tom and Mary’. This was my favorite subject. Tom and Mary was an illustrated book about a family of Mr. and Mrs. Kamau. Mr. Kamau was a school- bus driver. Mrs. Kamau was a housewife. Tom and Mary were pupils (Jeez! they had shoes, I admired them endlessly). They had a little brother called Peter, a dog and a cat. I remember everything like yesterday because English was my favorite subject. We would sing about these stories after our teacher. See, we could not read so everything in our class was sung after the teacher.

‘the man is Mr. Kamau’

‘the woman is Mrs.Kamau’

‘the boy is Tom’

‘the girl is Mary’

‘the baby is peter’

‘the cat is drinking milk’

And so forth and so forth.

Tom and Mary were dropped in school by bus. Us we ran to and fro school every day. They had good clothes and proper school bags. Mary played a ‘bean-bag’ with other gals and so our gals did the same too. Tom played football in that book so we played football too. Only that our balls were made of rags and polythene. But we played and enjoyed it anyway. These Tom and Mary characters became our role models. Only that some things like a bus and shoes were beyond our reach. Nonetheless, we identified with these kids.

English tests involved ‘filling in the missing words’. The ‘a’ in ‘cat’, the ‘o’ in boy and etc. It was very cheap for me and would score a 100%.

Did I tell you that we were categorized in rows according to brilliance? No. My row (I was brilliant except in Math) was called Lion, the next was Elephant and the dullest of us were called Giraffe. We sat on benches that were fixed on the ground.

Hey, it was shameful to sit with girls and boys resisted it vehemently to the extent of missing school to avoid sitting with girls. My desk-mates were my cousins Stephen ‘tractor’ and his brother Kibet who was nicknamed ‘Chepchilat’ meaning ‘squeezed’. H e was short and walked with springy steps. (we were friends up to his demise in April 2008, RIP Paul Kibet Sugut).

The third lesson was Science. We just planted beans and maize in tins at the corner of our class. Our classes did not have doors nor windows, our plants would bend towards light and that was science for us! Maybe we did other stuff but that subject was neither interesting enough nor repugnant enough to warrant a sound remembrance.

There was Home Science too. We were taught to wash our hands after and before meals and after visiting the toilet. Anything else seems to have eluded my memory (another word for I did not like the subject that much).

Other subjects: Mother-tongue, Swahili, Civics, History, Geography, Art and Craft, Music and Physical Education deserve a whole page each to recount, so I better do it early tomorrow, I promise.

Memories of an African Childhood: Herds-boy goes to School!

After the first attempt to enroll in school ended in mishap and mortification, I don’t remember how many years elapsed before I could join school again. It must have been awhile. Even though I passed ‘the-arm-across-the-top-of -the- head’ test and was admitted to school, the population of teeth in my mouth was the same as the first time. Two teeth, one on the upper jaw, and one on the lower jaw!

I therefore earned an instant nickname: rat. I remained ‘rat’ for sometime before I could beat every other boy to renounce the name, one by one.

It was not very difficult to subdue all the bullies in that school. It happened that half the population of our school was either a cousin or any other relative imaginable. I come from a large family, my grandpa was married to six wives and my great grandfather had married twelve. We out-ganged everybody else. Besides, I carried a machete that was broken in half in my school bag (if it could qualify as a school bag that is, it was a trouser leg cut and sewed on one end with straps made from the same, copyright belonged to my mom Polina). I remember an incident I tried hacking a teacher (a Mr. Chebole, dunno his whereabouts now) who wanted to discipline me.  I became a celebrity for some time for attempting to commit a hitherto unheard-of sin after that.

He didn’t come close, so I didn’t hack him. The senior classes were summoned to catch me but none could dare get close. I was brandishing that weapon like a crazed up villain. After the incident, I simply dashed across the fence to our farm. I quit school for sometime till the whole issue was overtaken by events, namely; football games.

Sorry, I was supposed to be relating my first day in school.

After the assembly had clapped for me( four times for boys and three for gals as per our culture) for passing the admission test, (touching one’s ear with your right hand across the center of your head) we didn’t head directly to class for that day there was a magician coming to our school for a show.

There was a classroom that was larger than the rest and therefore was chosen for the purpose of hosting the event. My mom had given me five bob to be paid as school fees for that year. I was holding that coin, with five corners, firmly in my palm it hurt. The magician, coincidentally, was charging the same. I could not have afforded to miss the magician’s show. So I gave out my 5 bob and entered the hall. I was short, so I climbed to the trusses and perched myself there. (Those classes didn’t have the luxury of a ceiling.)

The dress code of the magician was so outlandish I thought he was a devil or something. He was also too tall in spite of the fact that he was hunched. His hair was made into one long mast atop his head. His tight red and yellow striped pajamas without any opening got me wondering how he put it on and undress himself for bed and if he ever went for a long or short call during the day. He carried a long red bag that was stuffed full to bursting point I could not help images of a python racing in my mind. Maybe he carried one inside there. I was worried what his mom thought about him and whether he actually had one.

Such was the train of thought in my brain that nothing prepared me for his voice. He boomed like a drum-beat. I was so startled I missed a bit of his introduction, all I can recall was a part of his name: professor lugu lugu digi digi dugu dugu, kazuza ,mamae, kalela, uuu- oooooo -guuwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! He uttered the last word/name with eyes popping out and I thought he was in pain. I have never seen a name introduced with such drama again in my life.  I was scared but not quite yet.

He said he had lived in the sea with 7 demons and seven minions for 700 years and he was going to show us 7 shows in 70 minutes!

He grabbed a ruler from one of the pupils and said gururunyaaaaaaaaa as he broke it into pieces with such violence I imagined he hated schooling or rulers in particular. He tapped his balls and repeated the gurururunyaaaaaaaaa seven times and the ruler pieces turned into a hissing green long snake with big yellow eyes. Jesus, that snake was scary.

He picked the snake, cuddled it and sang to it in Swahili. The song was telling the snake, which he addressed as Sea Papa, to bless the show and to please tell the other Sea Papas in the sea of Mombasa to give him strength. The assembled kids were either crying or screaming by then.  Suddenly, he fell down in a swoon and the snake slithered into his mouth. He lay still for a moment before his legs jerked and the ruler came out of his ass. The owner of the ruler ran out of the room.

We were all astir by then. I was clutching the truss so tight my hands were sweating. I thought I could faint and fall down but it didn’t happen. Next, the hunchback started foaming from his mouth. He fell down again and from his mouth, he pulled out endless black strings. Putting down the strings, he pulled out a small snake from his python-shaped bag and covered the snake with the strings. He talked in a strange language and the strings changed into a bicycle wheel. He lowered the wheel to his waist and started whirling it round and round on his tiny waist. After a short while, he bent down and picked a boy with his teeth by the bum and held him up as he danced round and round in a circle. I heard the boy called out to his mom; Mary! Mary! Mary! (That boy is now a married man and a good friend of mine). When the boy was released, he jumped out of the window and made a bee line home. His shorts was wet!

Next, he pulled two gals to where he was standing and told them to kneel down. He tore his tight overall in the position of his dick and pulled out two hair strands. He told the two gals to lick each a hair strand and swallow the saliva. They did it. He asked how it tasted and they said it was sweet. After that, he patted the gals’ behinds, took out a straw hat out of his bag and placed it on the behinds of the gals. The hat was full of small biscuits in no time. He told them they have laid biscuits. One gal screamed and they both bolted out of the room. He invited us to eat the biscuits but not a single pupil stepped forward. I was tempted to go for one but I was jittery.

From his bag, he pulled a soda bottle, balanced it on his head and jumped up and down seven times. His mast of hair almost hit me perched on the trusses. After the seventh count, for he had ordered us to count with him, the bottle was full of my favorite soda, Fanta. He drank it in one gulp. In a flash, he disappeared into the bottle and it rolled on the floor. In that instant, I fell /jumped down from the trusses and made for the window. Not a single pupil was left in the hall after that incident and I never got to hear what transpired after that. I simply went home to recover my sanity.  

When mom came home that day, I told her the story and she reminded me I had abandoned my schoolbag. I didn’t go for it and had to sell some more eggs to buy new exercise books and my mom got into the business of cutting another old trouser and sewing me another bag.

Such was my first day in school. What a scary affair!

Memories of an African Childhood: a Typical Sunday in the Village

After a quick cup of tea and left-over maize meal cake, when it was not too cold, we would wash our face, hands and legs in readiness for Sunday School. Applying locally made oil to our bodies (made using cow-milk cream that was heated, decanted and kept in a bottle. It was added onions to smell nice) we would then dress ourselves for church. Putting my short trousers on was such a feat. Getting my legs inside the trouser presented such a challenge I could fall down several times trying it.

If there was maize in the store, we would each take two cobs to serve as church offerings.  At times, our mom would give us some coins to serve the same.

Dressed and oiled (too oily if you ask me), I would pick and roll my wheel (an old tractor wheel) across the road and up the hill to our Sunday School.  That church was nothing more than a big rock atop the hill. Struggling with the steel wheel up the hill was such a task but it was worth. It served as a bell to summon other village kids to the church and a favorite toy of mine too.

Me and my young brother Leonard was always the first to get to church. With a stone, I beat the wheel and before long a dozen or so kids will be seen running towards ‘the church’ from all directions. After that I would raise our church’s flag. The flag was just but my mom’s head-kerchief that I borrowed every Sunday for the purpose.  It had a drawing of a peacock.

When our Sunday School teacher Tina arrived and a motley quorum of badly dressed snot-nosed village kids was achieved, it was time to go ahead with the business of the day. I was not a keen student; I don’t actually remember much of what was taught. Even with a gift of small biscuits that Tina would reward anyone who could recall the previous week’s verses, I could not bring myself to remembering anything. My interests lied elsewhere.

My role in that church was to beat the wheel to gather kids, raise ‘the flag’ and nothing more than pinch other kids and make faces at the teacher as she led us in prayer.  What I could not forget though was to join in saying ‘AMEN’ at the top of my voice.

There was a particular song I loved to join in too. It was about trampling the devil. The soloist would sing and we would stamp on the devil all over with all the might we could surmount in our tiny feet. The soloist will call on us to step on his feet, nose, mouth, ears, eyes, intestines… and we would stamp our feet vowing to trample him to dust. The dust we raised in that hill! (My mom had a rough time washing the red dust off her head-kerchief afterwards). That was not all to that song. After ‘trampling’ the devil, the soloist would pronounce triumph over the devil and we would clap, ululate and jump in praise of God. That song was my favorite.

The other bit I could contribute in that church was acting. On Christmas mornings, (our parents would join us then), we staged the Birth of Jesus, and I played Joseph, the father of Jesus. I did it so well because I mistakenly believed I was Jesus’ father for real. This belief was born out of the fact that the gal I admired the most played Mary, the mother of Jesus. After the play we all headed to Tina’s home for a feast of tea and buns. Tina did not miss to remind us to always take offerings to church lest Jesus refuse to be born on Christmas and hence there won’t be any bash. And we believed it!

After every Sunday School session, I lowered my flag, lift my wheel and threw it on the direction of home. That wheel would roll and jump towards home very fast and other kids cheered. It always hit a tree and stopped to be collected by me later. No kid will dare touch it because our menacing dog John Boss was presumed to be always on patrol.

Depending on the season, we would then go looking for wild fruits in the hill or we went to the shopping centre to scavenge in a certain trash pit that I kept it a secret between me and my little brother.

There was a senior education officer (Mr. Sambai, he died a few years ago in a fatal road accident) who lived in a magnificent house near our shopping centre, a kilometer or so from home. He was not home most Sundays. So we would go foraging for edibles in his trash pit. Sometimes we will get a spent tin of jam, chocolate, toothpaste or even stale bread. We would collect and eat it later (even toothpaste) as we sang lewd songs atop a certain tree overlooking our home on the side of the road. (When other kids were returning from a different church, we would bully them and rob them their sweets.)

In his compound again, there was an old dysfunctional trailer that was raised on stones such that its wheels could move. We would insert a stick to one of its wheels and rotate the wheels with speed as we mimicked the sound of a moving truck. It fascinated us immensely.

That done, we would pass by the shopping centre and buy sweets (I never gave out my coins in the church whenever my mom gave me and we would give out my young brother’s coins).

There was a diesel-powered maize mill in that shopping centre that belched out black thick smoke whenever it was ignited. (When I became literate in later years, I could read it was called Lister Diesel.) On Sundays, it was opened exactly at 2 pm. Not that we had any maize to grind but at the first sound of its engine, we would ran into the thick smoke it emitted and stand breathless engulfed by it. We would come out teary and coughing only to repeat it again the following Sunday. I can’t figure out now what the fun was in that.

Hungry but happy we will run home for lunch.

 In the evenings we would go out swimming in the dam and catch mudfish ( let this be a story for another day)

Memories of an African Childhood

Introduction to Sex: and do it like a dog!

As the sun turned a big orange ball in the distant hills of Gele Gele and swallows starting circling in the sky catching hapless flies; as termites filed out from anthills only to end up in the beaks of excited singing birds; as baboons in the nearby hill separating the tribes of Kipsigis and Kissis competed in shouting the loudest, it was then the time to round up our cattle for a short journey home.

We were always joyous to have finished the day. The sun will descend the short distance between it and the hill faster that it had done during the day. Before long, darkness will engulf the land. All you could hear was village boys singing and screaming or some mothers calling their mischievous sons at the top of their voices. Drunkards too will be heard singing and shouting as if to light their paths home. Dogs too (the ratio of dogs in our village must have been 5 dogs to one village boy) could be heard roaring all over. Cows who have misplaced their calves would moo endlessly. The village was noisy and bustling with last minute activities at this time of the evening.

The maize grinding mill too, could be heard gradually coming to a stop with its tuk tuk tuk sound. Some mother who had missed to take her maize to the mill in time could be heard asking her neighbor whether she had enough to share. In the distance came a faint sound of a generator that pumped water to the market.  As all these ensued, we got our cows home.

Our cattle enclosure, where they spend the night, was large and fenced all round. At the far right corner, was a separate pen for the calves. Our first business was to separate the cows from the calves. It involved a lot running around as we rounded the calves. The youngest of them would engage us in a marathon run all over the enclosure. I tell you, young calves can give a run but luckily we were equally nimble.

When that was done, the next task was to tether some cows that were notorious for breaking out to the maize farm. It was a hard task for the same cows were good at employing a number of skills to evade the tether.  It took a lot of skills and a lot risks. If you escaped getting kicked, you would not escape getting lifted with the horns and tossed some distance. One way or the other, we managed the feat every single night.

When that was done and there was a bright moon lighting the world, we would start paying attention to the toads that were hidden on the mole-holes making noise. These toads used to shout ‘ing’o’ after every short interval all over the enclosure. ‘Ing’o’ in our native language means ‘who are you?’ We imagined they were asking us our names. I would shout my names every time they said ‘ng’o’ and to my surprise and ire, they will not listen and kept on saying ‘ng’o’.  After exhausting all our names, including ancestral ones and even nicknames, we would insult them and go stamping hard on the surface where they were shouting from. They would then keep quiet and we would go to the next only for the first to start asking our names again. We would go round and round stamping and shutting them up till when we were tired.

There grew toadstools and white wild inedible mushrooms in the enclosure. As we went round silencing toads all over the place, we would kick the mushrooms. When occasionally we spotted a toad leaping by, we kicked it hard to punish it for asking our names and not caring to listen when we volunteered to tell it. Such was the fun.

When we were tired kicking toads and toadstools, the next round was to go tethering the goats in the pen. This was a task we looked forward to for all the wrong reasons. It happened that one of our aunty was working very far away and had therefore employed a housegirl to take care of her house in the village. That housegirl was older than us, maybe a teenager or even older.  She would sneak into the pen and tell us to play sex with her. She would teach us how to do it and all of us would take turns ‘making love’ to her. I remember she would tell us to do it like our dog used to do it and we would really struggle to do it like our dog John Boss. When you got tired (for to do it like a dog was not such a mean feat) your turn was over and you go running round the pen as another boy take over. Your turn would come again and again several times before she decided it was enough.

After she has had enough, she will swear us to secrecy by way of a ritual. She would take a goat’s dropping and tell us to lick it and swear never to reveal the secret to anybody whatsoever, else we will die( we kept this secret and this is the first time I am revealing it, hope I won’t die!). This went on for a long time till when she was married off. I can remember her face contorting and her heavy breathing as she lied on top of me in that goats’ pen. Even her smell, which could beat the stench of goats’ droppings, is still fresh in my memory.  It was a sweet adventure though but I regret having to lose my virginity against my will. (I used to pray God in our Sunday School in the hill -where again she was our teacher-to forgive me the sin in the goats’ pen)

Having finished with the sex orgies, we would either go home to stories and dinner or go on playing in the moonlight.

I almost forgot to relate how we used to welcome a new moon in the village. When we spotted a new moon in the sky, we would sing, ‘kakolong arawet kakolong, kolongyi Rotik gaa kakolong’ to mean, ‘ the moon has just rose, it has risen to our village Rotik’. When other kids heard us singing mentioning that the new moon belonged to our village, they will also sing the same song welcoming the new moon to their villages. We would go on and on.

God, lemme not die for the music

God, lemme not die for the music

God, if ya planning to take me yonder

 Anytime soon

Please don’t

For the music

For chicks to shake to the hits

When ma eyes won’t share

Then please don’t

For the music

If tantalizing panties will show

As they loosely shove to da show

Then please don’t              

For the music

If some rhythm will call

For rhyming clown

And am nowhere

Then don’t

For the music

If some ample shaped babe

Will want to share a stage

And am ages agone

Then please don’t

For the music

How that voluptuous blonde

Move that voluminous bottom

Oh God, I am dead

For the music

Hey babe

Way you heave those tits!

Nimble nipples leaping-

Wish I could lay my teeth

But for the music

Oh gals on the floor

Your sweat flow

It smells of fresh holes

Wish I could get hold

But the music

Thought seen the last

Past had not alike though

Wonna last to lust

How anew they gonn move

For the music

Loosen it

Up, down, left, right…

Leave it

I am dead!

Oh the music!

Memories of an African Childhood

Pre-school, but not the way you know it!

I don’t remember much how I ended up trying to enroll in school but most likely I was just following my elder brother. What I remember clearly was being paraded in the assembly to undergo a very simple admission ritual. The ritual was easy but could seal your schooling fate for a year or two: the headmaster dragged you in front of other pupils, raise your right hand and tell you to touch your left ear across the top-centre part of your head. If you touch it, you are admitted and the assembly claps for you. If you fail, you are send home without any other ceremony. I didn’t touch it and I was sent home crying. Can’t quite remember how old I was. There were no birthdays to remind us our age.

That was not all that made me cry that day. By a stroke of some mystery, I had only two front teeth. Like a rat. So the headmaster noted it and announced to the assembly that I had only two teeth. The other pupils laughed at me (the year I finally qualified to be enrolled, I still had not added more teeth, and they laughed at me again).

The next course of action after the admission debacle was to be a herds-boy.

Our farm neighbored the school (the school was hived off our farm) so I didn’t miss much of the school action and we made sure that we attracted their attention too.

When the lower primary school sang songs, we also sang. They were less than 200 meters away from us. Their favorite was ‘head and shoulders, knees and toes’. It was accompanied by touching your head, shoulders, knee and toes. Atop a tree, keeping an eye on the cows, we would sing and do likewise.

The buildings in the school did not have windows or doors. We would follow the goings-on without having to be there. What eluded us were the writings on the chalk board and the textbooks. Kids then used to sing on top of their voices and we used to enjoy it a lot. When they got silent, dunno what they were doing then, we would climb on top of a tree and dazzle them with a mirror. We were mischievous and they could do nothing about it. They feared our dog John Boss.

We had a big dog called John Boss (he was inherited from a white settler). He was the biggest and the fiercest dog in the whole village. But this dog hated school kids because they used to pelt it with stones and tease him when in school. He noted their white shirt and blue trousers/skirts and since then could not stand anybody crossing our farm dressed like that. So we could tease and insult school kids all we like and they could never imagine crossing to our side of the farm (John Boss once bit off the ass of one daring school boy called David and that served as a lasting warning to them).

Our farm was forested and sometimes when we got tired singing alongside school kids, we would hunt for hares and dik-diks.  These hares could run into the school field and we would follow with John Boss and another dog called Jim. It was a spectacle of sorts and school kids will come out of their classes to watch. They would not dare join the fun for fear of John Boss. So we would chase our quarry as the whole school cheer. They would clap when John Boss got hold of the prey and we would run and get our game and go back to our farm.

When lower primary school kids were on breaks or games, we would leave our dog and join them in the fun. They would allow us to join them even though we were not pupils. Those kids admired us for our dog and the fun we were having when herding. We admired their school uniforms.

There was some free packet-milk in schools then. We had timed, by way of noting the position of the shadow of a certain tree, to be the first on the queue before school pupils could leave class. The headmaster had become a friend of mine from the toothless incident and he would give us three packets each, me and my lirl brother.

My mom didn’t like the school milk. She said it was camel milk (owing to the tinge of preservatives) so she could not touch it and neither would she allow any of her kids to do so. We used to collect the milk and sell it to lumberjacks who were logging in our farm. The proceeds would end up in buying sweets in the shopping centre in the evening when we went hawking milk.

There was something else the school kids loved us for.  Airplanes were rare then. When we kids spotted any, we would sing to it till it got lost in the horizon. We would tell it to bring us shoes, soda and good clothes. Any other plane going on opposite direction would be assumed to be the same one and we would ask it for our gifts. They never dropped any. When school pupils heard us singing the ‘plane songs’, they would run out of class to sing the same. So we served to remind them of an approaching plane.

When we were not playing with school kids, we were either digging up moles, snaring birds and dik diks or killing lice in our hair. In those days, there was a lice epidemic. Think we were dirty as we used to bathe once in a very long long time. Our heads, and all other kids of those times, were white with nits; you would think we were little old people, what with white hair. We would scratch our heads endlessly. We used to remove them and put them in a bottle and bury them as a punishment. Those things would take a long time to die as we would check on them after every week till we just gave up and forget them.

My cousin’s panty was infested with so many body lice that one day; he decided to bury it in the mud at the bottom of a flowing river. After a week, those lice were still alive! He decided to put up with them rather than lose his panty. What pestilence those creatures were! The only good thing with them was it could earn you a massage as your mom shave your hair and kill the lice. Dunno where lice when to. They are sort of extinct nowadays.

In the evenings, there were some games we used to play as kids but one particular event deserves a special mention, some house-girl of my auntie, older than us, did something to us that was fun to us then but now I think it was child abuse (will write about it next, before i recount my joining school, officially this time round)

Memories of an African Childhood

Our House in the Middle of a Maize Farm

Left, right and everywhere else was covered with maize. In the centre, occupying a small clearing stood a square mud-wood-and-grass house. It had no name but on a small door that was the only entry and exit my sister had tried to write the word ‘welcome’ with a white chalk but she misspelled it ‘WELLCOME’. So, for the purpose of this story, I will call our house ‘WELLCOME’.

My dad was also nicknamed ‘kabande’ meaning ‘maize field’ by his friends as a result of the position of our house in the middle of the maize field.

Linking our house to the outside world was two small paths that we inadvertently made by stepping on young maize plants as we go fetching water in the well a kilometer away and another linking my grandma’s house. They were small paths, when the maize were high, it was dark and scary. Worse when it rained, water retained by maize leaves used to drip on us. It was slippery too. How we wish we could avoid those paths when it rained. But then, it was the only way you could get to our only home.

There were no flowers in our little compound. But there were some thorny shrubs surrounding it where our chicken used to perch during the day. We used to crawl inside these shrubs searching for eggs. Our playthings used to get lost here too (footballs were contraband when dad was around so we used to hide them there too when he occasionally happened to be home).

‘WELLCOME’ was built on a hillock, so the foundation was dug deep such that our house was not visible anywhere when the maize plants were high. Again, when it rained, and it used to rain often those days, a pool of water used to form on the patio and drain slowly through some trenches my mom had dug. It used to make a big pool around our house such that when my mom, Polina, was not around, we used to strip naked and swim in the shallow pool. (You could not afford to swim with your clothes on because we had each a single pair of clothes those days- the white shirt and blue shorts Rotik Primary School uniform!)

When it rained when Polina was home, we used to crouch on our doorstep and cheer the bubbles made by raindrops in the pool as they flowed from the pool to the trenches and get lost in the shrubs. Some could make the journey while others were burst by raindrops. So we used to identify one and cheer it to make it to the shrubs, some did, some went burst on the way. The song went like, “nenyun nendoe kotabala ne letu” as in, Kipsigis language for “mine is the one in front and even the one which is straggling’’.

In the rainy season, the high steps from the patio leading to the doorstep used to get very slippery. I fell in those steps enough times. But we were hardy, though I lost my tooth once.

Inside the ‘WELLCOME’ house was divided into two and there was an ‘up-stairs’. One room used to serve as a sitting room and there was a string across the room for hanging our clothes. Our chickens used to spend the night in one corner of the sitting room and also incubate their chicks. Those chickens were too many. We had to sweep a lot of chicken droppings every morning.( they used to flap their wings and crow loudly we would all wake up and go to the dairy to milk cows). At times, they could get infested with some tiny white mites. They used to make a cluster around their eyes rendering them blind and we would spend the nights putting paraffin on their eyes to kill them and forcing their eyes open.

These mites used to stealthily get into us and crawl all over our body even enter our ears. You will be left rubbing them off but they were millions and millions.

We had goats but they used to have a pen near the cattle kraal but when they gave birth we used to give them a treat by bringing them to spend some few nights in our house. They would bleat endlessly at night when they misplaced their young ones. In the morning we used to milk them to make tea.

There was a tiny window in our ‘sitting room’. The walls were plastered with mud and decorated with white, red, and yellow terracotta that my sis used to collect with her age mates very far away. Words like ‘feel at home’, ‘merry x-mass’ were written on the wall. I used to complain to my sis that the word ‘merry’ in ‘merry x-mas’ was misspelled and was supposed to read ‘Mary’, as in mother of Jesus. I would also entreat her to write ‘Joseph X-Mas’ too in recognition of Joseph the father of Jesus. She never acceded to my demands. Now I know why.

On the walls were also drawn flowers and people seated around a table and a drawing of me serving them tea in a kettle. This was my favorite picture for a long time. Occasionally, there was a calendar of ‘Bai Bai Kericho Wholesalers’ or ‘Haraka V.P Building Group’ where my dad used to work. Dunno what years those calendars used to read but the smoke from our kitchen used to make them look older.

To serve as seats, there was a mound of raised earth along the walls. We used to seat here and in the process get our shorts soiled white.

In the other room that served as kitchen and bedroom, to your left was the fireplace. The hearth consisted of an oven made of mud and sand. It was a wonderful work of art. It was even written the name of my mom ‘Paulina’. Above the hearth, there was a deck that my mom kept her special firewood. These were firewood from some trees that give the most heat and some tree that produces charcoal used for coloring and flavoring sour milk otherwise called ‘mursik’ in Kipsigis dialect. She could stand and reach for them whenever a need arose. She is a tall woman.

To your right was our bedroom. Here there was made two raised mounds of earth that resembled a bed. One was for my mom and another was for us kids. My mom’s beddings consisted of rags and a blanket. The rags (an assortment of old dresses, trousers, shirts, t-shirts- I remember one written Ohio State University-etc) served as a mattress. We used to take them out to air every morning.

Us kids didn’t enjoy the luxury of a ‘mattress’ like my mom. My mom would buy a blanket and split it into two (to reduce fights amongst us at nights). Our ‘mattress’ was just but a cow skin, it was hard and cold, (the middle that coincided with a cow’s back was particularly rugged but again it was warmer sleeping between my siblings). Don’t forget we used to sleep naked to spare our school uniform (they were washed once a week on Sunday after Sunday school as we while away the time naked in the dam, catching frogs and playing with them). The first few minutes of contact between a cold, bare cow’s skin and my bare human skin were dreadful. I would get used to it after a while, what with stories and songs from Polina my mom.

It was not too cold at night though. Instead it could get hot and smoky. There was always a log or two burning in the fireplace and there was only a tiny window the size of my head then. It could only fit our cat as it made its rounds coming in and out of the house at night. (I miss that cat, we had nicknamed it Josophina, dunno why).

My dad was the only one who had a bed. It was made of wood and rubber strings from old tires. It was bouncy and my dad could sink in there. I don’t know whether there was a mattress. Just can’t remember. Beside my dad’s bed was a cupboard. It was full of my dad’s books- exercise books and some textbooks that had pictures of animals and people. Used to love his geography exercise books, they were painted with crayons. We used to keep our exercise books there when we close school for holidays. When schools open, we used to search for our books and never to find them in this black cupboard. I used to cry every school opening day because of this. Dunno which goblin used to steal my exercise books in there.

In one corner, there hanged my mom’s special bag. It was colored brown with age and smoke. She told me she knitted it in one of her missionary lessons she attended when she was a teenager. We used to keep eggs in that bag and my mom’s ID card and Party Life Member Card (Kenya was a one party state then so it was mandatory to have one. The party was KANU). Whatever was important was kept in that bag- our clinic vaccination cards were there and other stuff. I don’t know where that bag went. Will ask her.

She didn’t keep her money there though. She used to keep them in one corner that was made a pouch-like hole that chickens used to lay their eggs. There were no thieves as we were disciplined. An outsider would not think her money was kept in such a simple place. That I think was her logic.

There was no radio and of course no TV in our house. We used to entertain ourselves with stories. And my mom used to love singing. That momma can sing! No latrines or toilets too. We just ran to the forest to relive ourselves with big leaves as tissue paper. No bathrooms either. We bathed on Sundays in the big dam and jump and bask in the sun as we waited for our clothes (read school uniform) to dry.

Almost forgotten to tell you about our ‘upstairs’ room. The kitchen place was open to the thatched roof (there was a lot of soot hanging loose that occasionally could fall on my mom’s cookings. One day I brought home a bird and hid it in the cupboard, when it became hot, it flew to the roof and unleashed a lot of soot my mom’s tea became black with soot.)

The ‘upstairs’ room was a deck above the sitting room that served as a store for millet, maize cobs for planting and firewood. There was no ladder to this deck and it was a feat accessing this place. You had to climb the wall that separated the kitchen and the sitting room to get there. There was no aid and it demanded some gymnastics. In spite of my age and size, I tried very hard to reach it because my mom used to keep bananas to ripen there. There were pots there too. We used to bring avocado fruits in our school and leave them to ripen in these pots. We used to bring so many because nobody in our village could eat them. My mom’s dad was a colonial agricultural officer so my mom knew the value of avocados. Those avocado trees were so tall that one day I fell and disjointed my leg and fainted. Before my mom could take me to hospital she gave me a thorough beating I just came to.

Our school was fun but we used not to carry any exercise books, there was a dusty road nearby so we used to do our math in the dust. Our teacher was one Chelang’at, we used to pay 5 shillings a year! (I didn’t pay because I gave it to a magician who had visited our school, I owe Chelang’at 5 shillings to date and she reminds me whenever I go home!)

Tomorrow I will tell you about our school with lotsa avocado and jacaranda trees and how we used to pee on our teachers’ water whenever they send us to fetch from the dam for them.

Meantime, you are ‘WELLCOME’ to our house!