My high school memoir continues as I finish the second part of the first chapter; ENTER ALCATRAZ: Abandon all hope ye who enter here which basically touches on my culture shock on my introduction to our prison complex of a school. I am now working on the second chapter: GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY HERBS: For health and strength and daily food which will introduce you all to our miserable diet in the school. Because of several suggestions from fans; I have removed the profanity and curse words. Enjoy! Continues.... I was led by the prefect on duty to the dome that would be my new abode. It was called, Brandsma, named after the founding missionary priest of the school; Father Brandsma. To get to the dorm, we had to go around what I would later understand was the hockey pitch. I wondered why we had not simply cut across the hockey pitch and shortened our distance to the dorm; but as I would come to know it was an abomination to ever cross the pitch. You had to go all the way around it at all times. Clearly these guys here like doing things the hard way I thought to myself, without realizing I had spoken out aloud. The prefect on duty had heard me and he suddenly turned and shouted; Stupid form one! What did you say? My heart skipped a beat as I stared into his menacing eyes. Eeemh...nothing, all I managed was a shaky husky voice. Form one; listen to me and listen to me good. As a mono you are here to be seen and not to be heard. Do you hear me? Your opinion means nothing around here! You only speak when spoken to! When you are told to jump, you ask how high. When you are told to run you ran as fast as those tiny sticks can carry you! Are we clear? I nodded in agreement. Form one; talk! He bellowed. B-but sir you told me not to talk, I stammered! Form one; he sighed, form ones like you usually get into so much trouble here. Look at you, he muttered as he continued to walk, you look like you have been fed on cerelac all your life! A cold chill ran down my spine and his words echoed in my ears. form ones like you usually get into so much trouble here. Suddenly, I wanted my mummy! It was around 5:00 as we walked along the hockey pitch. The grass was green and the place was full of trees. The soil was very rich and fertile volcanic soil which turned to mud whenever it rained. There were no pavements and so one had to wade through the mad. I remember seeing a few students wearing very worn out dirty muddy shoes while carrying a clean a pair of shoes in a polythene bag. These shoes I was meant to understand were called; Mad beaters. Every student had an old pair of worn out shoes which he converted to mad beaters so as to save his clean ones for the assembly or while heading to the dining hall. For the students from humble backgrounds their shoes doubled up as their mad beaters. What a pity. As we passed by the pitch, the hockey players kept jeering at me. Form one, welcome to hell! Jabao! Your sentence begins today! Jabao, as I came to learn was the name used for form ones alongside other derogatory names like, mono and cockroach. I finally arrived at Brandsma which would be my home for the next four years. We were met at the entrance by the dorm captain. He was a short fellow with thick glasses and a face devastated by acne. Obviously adolescence must have been a traumatizing period for him. His name was Oyamo. Something told me this guy was going to cause me a lot of pain in the not so distant future. He had a brief exchange with the prefect on duty who then left. Oyamo turned to me. Form one, what is your name He asked. Thomas! Stupid form one! Uko na jina moja Kwani wewe ni shetani? (How can you have only one name like the devil?) Thomas Ikol Adungo, sir! Dont call me sir! I am Oyamo. Your dorm captain! Y-yes...sir! Sichupid! He muttered. I would come to learn that that is how they said stupid here. Where do you come from? Kisumu. Ok, you guys from towns! People from Nairobi and Kisumu cause a lot of problems here. Munajiona mumechanuka sana. Si ndio?(You guys from towns think you are so cool, right?) I stared at him blankly. Come this way he ushered me into the dorm. I immediately walked in with my shoes that were now very muddy. The dormitory looked like those prisons I had seen in Hollywood movies. The beds were metallic double deckers. The dorm was divided into cubicles and each cubicle had four beds. I would later learn that form ones and twos slept on the top decks. This was called flying, in the local lingo and so the person sleeping on top or flying was called the pilot while the form threes and fours slept on the bottom decks and were called passengers. I would be allocated a passenger. Form one! Look at your feet! Oyamo thundered! I looked at my feet immediately and realized that my shoes were muddy and had made the floor very dirty. I bent over and hurriedly peeled them off. You will mop that place. But let me show you you around first He said as he led me to what would be my new cube. He introduced me to my passenger, a humongous stocky guy with a prominent brow ridge and hair that was always bushy and unkempt. His name was Achura. Achura rarely spoke, apart from when he was asking or demanding for something. And even so he used as few syllables as possible to ask for what he needed. For instance. Form one; sugar! When asking for sugar. Form one; BB! When asking for Blue Band Margarine. Form one; socks safi! when asking for clean socks I was shown where to put my metallic box by Oyamo, who then led me to show me the ablution block. Not that I needed help anyway, because the stench of cheap soap and human waste could guide you there like a homing missile. The water from the ablution block usually flooded into the cubicles near the ablution block and the stench made those who slept there very uncomfortable. I was later informed that living in those cubicles was called; Kuishi AB literally translating to, sleeping in the ablution block. I was told that these AB cubicles were reserved for misfits, those who did not tow the line, those with bad habits like thievery or absconding showers(Sodium: people who absconded showers were given this name based on the chemical Sodium that reacts violently with water) and of course those that the dorm captain hated. The AB was open and I went in to check it out. It was filthy. The urinal had a thick stench of urine and the floor was always flooded. People showered out in the open because the compartments in the bathroom had no doors. I would later come to realize that the second worst jobs to be given in the school was cleaning the AB. The worst and the most dreaded job was actually cleaning the pit latrines as I would later come to find out. Those who cleaned the pit latrines were called; Engineers, and surely you needed a lot of engineering skills to do that job. The pit latrines were usually situated a distance from the classes and dorms to spare the population the repugnant smell that emanated. Whenever one visited the latrines, they had to remove their pullover and their shirts and hang them on a nearby tree. This was to prevent the stench from the pits from adhering to ones clothes. If you entered the latrines fully clad, you would smell like the latrine all day. Before entering the latrines, you also had to make sure your laces were tightly fastened, because God forbid they dragged on the disgusting latrine floor. Then you had to fold up you pair of trousers. Once inside the latrines, you had to be careful not to step on peoples miscalculations on the floor. You would then squat in the latrine and prepare for the task of relieving yourself. It was no simple task because when it rained, and it rained all the time, the rainy water would percolate into the pit and cause the waste to rise. Therefore one had to anticipate the rebound once the released a missile and this was a delicate task that required timing and precision. When you released the missile, you quickly jerked forward to avoid the imminent rebound the broth. This was a skill one perfected over the years, and it was therefore not unusual to find the less toilet trained form ones with spots of rebound on their trousers. About the engineers: This job was usually given to those people considered rude or un collaborative. It was the epitome of all punishment. When the work rosters were out; everyone rushed to the list to ensure that the sum of all their fears had not come true; that they had not been made engineers. An engineers reputation would quickly spread to the girl schools. No girl who came to for a funkie (school function) would want to be associated with an engineer. But engineering was with its own benefits. For those who knew it well, engineering was one of the best jobs. First, if you were and engineer you had the privilege of being exempt from any other work around the school. Secondly water was a big problem in the school. It was such a big problem that we had to walk to River Yala a kilometer away to have a bath. however as an engineer, you were provided water. You only used a little of it to clean up the miscalculations and kept the rest for yourself saving yourself trips to River Yala. Engineers were equipped with heavy engineering equipment. This included, a broom and a metallic bucket. They were also given a cheep industrial disinfectant that had a worse stench than the waste itself. The engineer would mix up the disinfectant in the water, pour it on the floor, push the miscalculations with his broom into the pit and his work was done. We had many engineers in our year; but one engineer who stood out and came to be both feared and respected in equal measure was my friend who would also be my deskmate; John Ahenda. The tour of the AB was done. I was led back to my cubicle. As I proceeded, a new form one was coming in. He was a really big guy. He was allocated the cubicle opposite mine. His name was John Ahenda, who would come to be known as Meso for reasons that will become clear in the next chapters. He would also change the perception of the entire school about the role of the engineer. Chapter 2: GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY HERBS: For health and strength and daily food
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 10:25:18 +0000