Dream Weaver: Feeling of importance

A feeling of importance in life sometimes would get people to the state of insanity. Not the crazy term but the cool one. Guess what miracles you can haul out by giving young people honest appreciation that they so deeply desire. This side of importance is one of the chief conspicuous grafts between mankind and animals craving to be appreciated. A gnawing and unflattering human-hunger is the one that honestly satisfies this heart hunger by holding people in the palm of reality in every event and even the ‘Also-runs’ will be sorry when the opportunity dies.

 Going the whole hog simply means the manner of effort one will take despite the early dew of the morning; perhaps that cold morning which cuts with a sharp thin pain in the skin; numbness in the cells deactivating the enzymes and essential hormones in the systems-probably sending a sigh on the needy. That cold morning that wakes up with some mighty rows in the face-grimed stupor or that one  of wrecking dream-ships under the rock of reality.

 What incantation could this be? Is this then what we can all expect to be treated with that mood of contempt? Certainly not, but just to pull or jog your memory a bit first is that, no one would or will like to incur what he or she is not fault of but will like (with more love) to be treated with an importance in life.

 In my case I still have difficulties to put up with terms in order to slot everything back the right track. Although one could be quite foxy or a Solomon in comprehending matters connecting peoples’ ability, still the clear tone is how to nurture the importance of young and growing people. Thanks to the Deity that the quest whittled down on this remnant story after several abortive attempts---a theme I always drag swiftly during Sundays to uplift my low spirit with the word (a place where I always find peace!).

 Definitely that meant the spiritual Pisces as one of my student had put it. The fish; Yes, she was right.

 I was apparently holding a discussion with my students in the science congress club room before they were to sit for their second term exam in a fortnight. Although I taught them those expected spurs in English and Physics and would have expected questions such as in Ngugi Wa Thiong”o: The River Between; “why did the author kill Muthoni? Why did the two ridges, Makuyu and Kameno seemed to be two sleeping lions antagonistic ready to come into a fierce fight over ‘who is who’. The other dole of questions I had eagerly hurled and pinned all my expectation was on the two theories that explain the formation of mirages (total internal reflection). These were the questions I had imposed to form three students to find out more after school hours and during their weekends or normal errands. Both questions were precisely met with credited answers in their respective lessons. In two days time they had summed up an essay with their findings, thoughts and what their effort had allowed them to grip the little knowledge.

 “She wanted to see Jesus,” Mary was the first to shoot her comment, breaking the silent air.

“Who, ?“ I mumbled.

 “Muthoni,” She was at the end, finishing, and waiting for the rest who were still anaerobically respirated by the ‘lactic acid.’

“And how about the theory?,” I asked. I meant the other dole. She was one kind of a student that any teacher would like to teach if only you had groomed up the skills and schemes properly or else she would put you into that trouble you don’t desire to be in; a jar on you to say that openly.

 As the rest will be trying to discharge their views in difficulties, she will be a mile(s) a head. In contrary I don’t have underdogs (I had no black sheep in my class) would have taken the back seat. The rest could have been the kind of students who have their memories skipping a couple of days.

 Is this altruistically right? May be; might; perhaps, or certainly not. This takes me a back (a few doors behind) to my primary teacher, Mr. John Adeya (not Gilbert). Mr. Deya was my teacher of English, who had drawn clearly an illustration to point out the imaging science in character of students. He was candid, eloquent and gallantry poised. I have no doubt that he is very happy when he remembers me. I was his first lot in a second stream to ladle him with an A in the subject. He said (as he did to us) that you have to give them preliminary or apt questions for reasoning and to test the limit of their abilities and also think before they can pile of worries on you! These introductory ad-hoc teasers will create different environments for them to explore their own laws of thoughts and also help them listen to their different drum beats. They will have to form their own questions if necessary, make their own opinions and conclusions regarding the same matter in quest.

 “A bright student has the ability to ‘cook’ questions that are viable and at the same time be able to answer them accordingly before intricating them to their teachers for further clarifications.” He added.

 I threw in the towel. To the best scrutiny possible, this is the technique I had grown up with; an aid that drives the real momentum in my nerves.

Back to the discussion was this burning desire within the hearts of my hungry students that had hurled their eyes wide, sitting and waiting to be played with smiles across their mouth on the aquatic creature. They were yearning for this feeling of importance and to make it sound better, Wednesday was a day that always hinted for clubs and society in the school as per the time table. But this was a different one after I encountered a sea of faces glued in position, inside a tucked classroom heaving with bated breath.

“Leo, lazima tujuwe huyu samaki ana nini?,” I could hear the buzzing words as I armed myself in the staffroom on what to say on the new project.

I obliviously stooped into the tucked room with a slight unusual stumble from the spacious floor and immediately the only thing I could remember was if I had thrown an arrow to their side. I was only dreaming to have done it before wadding through my notes and a few sketches on what to give them (I thought).

I was brought to reality when Shaka, a conspicuous and contagious student startled me with a bunch of chalks in his hands.

“Sir, here, yours,” It was like I was going to explain things on the board for them to eternity.

“Sir, who is a model student?” the question echoed along the parallel walls. It sounded like a broach that wrapped me in a series of thoughts. I raised my benched forearm and lifted up my head to see the infinity heads in the room.

“Do teachers have their off-days to? “. I grinned.

“What does that want,” my mouth wobbled.”How can I tie up what I want to what they need?”

“Sir, there is a dish on the board!” A voice from one of the students heckled my thoughts as the words went thundering in the ear drum.

“Sir, tell us why you always inset a fish on the board while illustrating learning aids?” Another one added to the lot.

“Hilarious.” I mused.

What followed was uncontrollable laughter. I suddenly realized that I was in a fix and of-course I had prepared a particular project on how to make a local detergent but this was another one that needed my little biology to sweep the crab alone.

What did they want? Not many things that they craved, with an insistent that could not be denied; longing almost as deep, almost imperious as the desire for food or sleep which is in-fact seldom gratified. It is this same spark or perhaps madness that compel the few elite horses in our towns to erect go downs or build houses too large for their requirements. It’s also this same prod which is the basic framework on these inquisitive waters that prompt the knights or nobles in the palaces to infuse their portraits for later generations. Yet, one, significance on the different generations is how history sparkles with famous people: Christ who I knew when I was still a toddler on Sunday schools; Pythagoras on the formula; Socrates and John Locke the great psychologists and philosophers in their days; De Morgan on the logic networks; George Boole with the:  and ,or and not expressions; Sigmund Feud  the father of modern psychology: psycho-analytic; Abraham Lincoln on the speech; Newton Sir Isaac on the law of  gravity; Edgar Allan Poe with his gothic works: The Fall of the House of Usher; Stephen Cranes on the: Red Badge of Courage and the Mystery of Heroism, and not forgetting our own literal heroes in the country :Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Micre Mugo, Marjoe Oludhe  Macgoye, Jonathan Kiarara, Kyalo Mativo and Leonard Kibera . For more fly, I had also come across stintly at the works of Robert Frost on the: birches; Elie Weisle’s German holocaust account:  Night ; Benjamin Franklin, the jack of all sides in the: Poor Richard Almanac and Project of Arriving at Moral perfection; Henry David Thoroeu on what he lived for and why: Walden; Emily Dickinson, the original American poet; William Farr and John Snow on their medical statistical quest for cholera in London , John Smith the sea captain, Jonathan Edwards on his: freedom of the will, Ohms, Stokes, and Faraday on their laws, etc. The former if there have been so then I only know (read) of this one man in the old book, who told his disciples to pick a coin from the mouth of a fish. Naturally you will run screaming to the answer “JESUS.”

Yes, but why then did he choose a fish and what did the disciples what? There was a cognitive correlation between the precepts of my students in their deductive and inductive reasoning.

To apply some statistical reasoning and perhaps a bit of cliometrics on the authenticity of my boyish sojourns , It didn’t take me long to run through the rapt edges when I was young (about seven to thirteen years old), going down to fish up on the salty Indian Ocean waters every weekend. Personally at the age of twelve (six years back), I was very fond of CNN (Chapatti Na Ndengu) and may be ice cream; a complementing desert for this hot continent. Although, for some safety measures I was no longer pre-occupied with them when I got my stomach bloated every time after ducking for a bite. For strange reasons I also found out that fish prefer worms or grasshoppers than anything else. It was perhaps for this faceted fact that they had learned probable that it was in the necessity to bait the hook to suit the fish!

“Sir, what if you have never eaten a fish since you were born?” Shaka was the first to rattle out the inquisition.

It didn’t cost me anything except my two hundred muscles to strain my eyes on the board to see a drawn caricature of me and a sketched figure of a well labeled fish.

“My mother uses the usual method to tell my little brother to eat Pisces of this and that kind…,” Jenny added.

“Why?” They all fell in a chorus?’

All the strongest emotions in the make-up goaded me to take revenge to smash the ‘menace’ in the face and nose. If our ancestors hadn’t had this flaming urge to know much, then civilization would have been impossible even if it was to be preached to hitherto. Without it, we should have been mowing about just like canals or groping around and chanting like monkeys. The desire that makes people: young and old; rich and poor want to be vibrated in the immediate effect of fashions and styles, drive latest or model cars not vapor ware or even mold their own way of spiritual belief and practice rather than to gibber slavery ideology and talk about brilliant children and not brats. This spank which lures almost every male figures in the world into becoming conspicuous hard-cores to haul around a fleet of babes and pretty ladies or any beautiful model on earth, all under their belt.

Well, the ability to deal (cop) with people, in owned words of my high school Physics teacher, Mr. Azura Brown had set them down secretly: Our brain has unconscious logic box that can me modded and mofffed into realms of systems. These are words that ought to be cast into eternal bronze and hanged in home, schools, fields, playgrounds and every shopping malls and offices in the land. Words that kids ought to memorize and recite than waste time to be conjugated with verbs or take whole day trying to cram a single page in order to ‘pitch’ what is on the blank verse. Impossible! I had once been a victim of these pills of conjugation at the elementary and mono classes. Had it not been that I took several acrobatic u-turns, I should be still swimming in the dark waters even after currently completing my forth form.  All the vowels were at my beck and call and in a short span a habitual habit delved into the nerves, comprehended by my optical wires that had the power of a clicking camera. What followed was that I had to wait on the eleventh hours to leaf through the final pages before downloading the answers on the exam papers with a perfect handful of grades. Lucky, I was adroit to reap its ripple effect but that gibberish system could not last for long. I would forego the entire process about the topics learned in class. I could not apply its subjective response out -side the academic realm. It was about to wrench me into a world of copy and paste rather than mastering the under-seated concepts of every subject and the relevance echoed to life in our day-to-day endeavors. Thanks that this stroke hacked me and swerved my mind before stepping out.

I knew I was on a pavilion to show them my new advancing skill on how to swim and take the vault to cross the bridge.

At first, I almost shunned the idea to hide my overt presence in the little private school that I was only one term old and perhaps a nerd teacher. I didn’t want to obtrude my private ‘un-baked cake’ because I was still a novice in the enterprise, yet I had made myself solid and splendid to try swimming the deep waters.

Previously, I was full of determination and bloated with courage when I went to meet the director of the school and asked him if I could secure a chance to hammer my nail in his private business and also span my days with an ends meet. He quickly grabbed my papers to see if I fitted his charm. I heaved with a hard nostalgic sign after handing over copies of certificates. Lucky enough, I always trotted with the vital documents wherever I went. He was very impressed and greeted me with his heavy palms, telling me that I was a lucky chap and safe to slot in the vacant positions of English and Physics teacher with immediate effect. I did not wait to be prodded that the private entrepreneur was searching for ‘O Level ‘or high school graduates and he had met his target! We did not discuss the wages because I had heard about it that I will only be floating away with a monthly sum of ten thousand shilling. That was great news for me that day. For a start, the cash was a big start to get my antennas up for more waves to at-least abandon my dependency,  and at-most save something to help me advance my schooling and the following day I was in my faded attires standing lankily in front of a bulging class with dusty chalks in my hands.

“My mother told me that she fed me a lot of salmon oil when I was young,” Mary planted the bomb. The rest flanged their mouth wide.

Had it not that I had broomed off the cobwebs to understand the intensity and vibration of every importance, then, I would have retracted completely away from this in-born pulpit forever.

“The fish…” A number of voices from the middle row heckled.

“Brilliant brains” I hissed. It was then followed with applause, ‘YES’.

A number of students were still coiling in as others buzzed out-side in other classes. Some teachers in other society groups had been tempted to feast their eyes on the scene through the window pane terraces.

I felt pushed to the wall of facts. Although, I never ran to the lake to mine or fish them what they wanted, it was a laconic fling. I had to manipulate the concepts very well to the reality that I was not a young chap from the lake region but one neighboring those sides with the cue pride of a luhya lad.

“You know what?” I cleared my throat. “It’s not a yardstick that having much of salmon or any sea creatures in our diet will provide a better ability but each one of us is composed of programmable tissues in the brain. Regardless of all factors it depends on the effort made to utilize a greater proportion of the brain and sadly many people can only attain and use at-most ten percent of the brain capacity, although, it is possible that some lucky ‘devils’ can clock up to twenty percent, or surprisingly even more.”

“My father told us that fish can increase our intelligence. Was he right?” Alfonso added.

Now this question seemed beyond my reach and perhaps needed a higher learned chap probably in molecular biology or any other structural and chemical science studies. I was challenged to take the hard extraneous variable and test its non-experimental hypothesis. With a yearning for books flowing in my blood I had been a lucky devil by then when the rest of my classmates were asleep, when I came across a ruck of materials and articles about such stuffs. I would ravenously read anything and bulk of them except immoral books: From heath mathematics to integral calculus; from statistics to trigonometry, functions to radio-activity, endocrine to nervous system, support to muscular-skeleton, from evolution to genetics and from relational models to linear programming.

My students here had now evoked my high school superficial reading and wanted me to be their model researcher who was then supposed to study the impact of a fish-diet on intelligence or whether intelligence affected reading ability or academic performance. For this purpose when I came to understand later that the researcher would select his study-subjects and ascertain them into two groups, say A and B: the study group exposed to special lessons or programs as A and a control group exposed to the usual lessons as B. To test their intelligence and reading ability he will have to calculate the coeffient of correlation between the two sets of scores of the two groups. But suppose the researcher wanted to test the hypothesis that there is a relationship between students’ gain in study achievement and their exposed self-concepts. In this case, the self-concept will be the independent variable and study achievement a dependent variable. In the same scenario intelligence may as well affect students’ study achievement, but since it is not related to the purpose of the study it will be termed as ‘extraneous variable’. I did not know nor have the right treatments to put my experimental units here.

Coincidentally, the ransacking ability for conceptual models and their entity-relational model revered me for the project.

“You know what?” I proceeded.”I would rather carry my morning, early nip in the air with only water than too much junked plate of ugali.”

“Wow!” The all class almost shuffled, stamping their feet with a terrible jolt.

“Yes,” I continued.”Also the multi-fibred blend composed of soluble fiber and brown ice than miss ‘ka-fried fish and tea. Although the fibers form a gel along the digestive tract, trapping cholesterol from the food we eat and the one secreted by the bile juice that need not to be missed with a Must piece of a fish. Brilliant brains, scientists have indeed proved with construed details of Omega 3-salmon oil plus composed of Eicosapentanoic Acid (EPA) and Docosahexanoic Acid (DHA), which provides the fatty acids needed to improve brain function and lower the risk of mental impairment.” They sat bundled, shaking their heads on such powerful speech.

“Both EPA and DHA can improve our brains, all found in sea foods,” I continued.

Silence caught them unaware and they were hanging on every word, features, adaptations and the importance of a fish in our daily diet. If you were to ask how they were like. They were wondering how and where I sourced this information. They were in that node and knots of nodding, suggesting that they can also run their morning for just a fish and probably tea in that line, although I preferred water than anything else.

“But remember, that is not a yard stick. Be ravenous for books,” I warned them sliding my way out as I left them yearning for more but others were startled.

Friday morning, a week later got me late and I found students aligned respectively in a parade. Some of the teachers were zagging their way to the front when I zigged into the school compound but I had to stop for a while because one of the students was leading a prayer.

I pranced slowly with my swift legs after the prayer and cued behind the teacher on duty who was now summoning the students. This time I looked best in my frocks. I was well grounded, groomed, tucked, pretty shaved head and nice trimmed goat-like beards, and for the first time I was alive-- breathing confidence.

The week was nearing exams and so there was no much to be said. Mr. Dan, a young chap like me was our teacher on duty. He asked if there were any comments or remarks from teachers before the school principal could speak. Madam Eliza was the first to pull her guts to the podium. The next two teachers that followed were slightly older but both spoke insisting on co-operation, seriousness and hard-work from the students. I didn’t need or wait to be picked. I was the next to seal the list.

I snaked my way up to the podium and stood warty with elegance and because I was to be the next duty master, I didn’t want to lengthen stories before I bleated accidentally:

“I think all has been said. Please just follow what brought you here,” I said coyly and returned to my standing position.

As usual the principal gambled forward to vent his spleen on the lazy learners before warning the crooked truants that this time he will not spare the rod on any unscrupulous head.

“Your respective class teachers will take roll call and if you are found less than ninety per cent, you will not sit for that exam.” He spoke in his wide horse voice.

A few giggles and some faint boos were heard in the middle crowd. At the back boys chanted with their bases.

“Yes, and another thing to add,” he continued. “Make sure that you have cleared your fee arrears. I don’t see the reason why some of you still have big gaps cumulating from previous terms. The fee is too small and manageable after we came to a rapport between the director and your parents that you should be considered a thirty per cent discount. All these teachers need to be paid. This time the sword is sharp than a saber and we will have to slash some of you off if need may be the compliance.”

Perhaps I liked that phrase of being paid but his last clause pervaded the spirit in me with melancholy. Had I also not been struggling as some of these creatures standing colorfully in lines? A while later the mass of students poured their erratic ways to engulf classes. For the moment, all of them appeared serious as they took their lockers and sat silently to read and write, to take note and make notes. Teachers wrapped their paths to the staffroom. Every teacher was expected to prepare and submit exam questions for printing.

On my side I was still fighting between two comprehensive paragraphs on which to pick for the exam. Luckily I had already packed up other questions, while Physics paper was in print form, so I had time to joggle around the room flipping through the newspaper.

Soon each teacher was busy drafting their stuffs. I conjected blindly, picked up one of the comprehension, summed it with other questions and heeled to the school’s secretary office and handed her the workload. She immediately sighed with a crude smile floundering herself to wink her lusty eyes on me but I had already closed the door behind and gone.

At break time, we were supposed to have tea as I had thought it should be but here teachers had sort themselves including all meals. That didn’t not stern me much. I precisely knew what brought me there, what I was waiting for and where I had come from to where I was determining to arrive. I was deaf when the long break tea-bell rang and zipped myself into the newspaper to save the little transport that hovered in the pocket to get me back home.

It was not long when a noisy commotion of students was heard from a distant.

“That one must be Skiza and his gang,” Madam Eliza said assertively.

“I wonder with the Kids of these days!” Mr. Musyoka, our eldest teacher said wondering.

Mesmerized with the teachers’ comments on the erratic students in the school, it was when I was brought to terms and senses that Skiza was a form two student. With the reasons that I didn’t teach those lower classes, I was not aware that this naughty lout had stagnated in the same class for two consecutive years and there were many reasons: truantism, time robbers, unconcerned guardians, frequent hard cash that baffled teachers which then it was true he had been stealing, and his own life lures and more of this unfathomed trait on earth. I shook my head almost feeling dreadlocks on it. Did I not just shave? I was aware of Shaka, the form three contagious lad but he was a bit decent and more focused than Skiza although they both appeared perverted and older than what I had taken to think of myself to be. I seemed young and innocent if they were to be juxtaposed next with me in a lot.

Suddenly, before we could settle the staff room gossip, the principal stormed in with a handful of six students merged with his hands who were confiscated a allegedly said to have been sported smoking a joint of weed behind the stores.

“Mwalimu, look at these six imbeciles. What can I do as they have just been caught and found in the pan?” The principal barreled out.

To put matters at rest, Mr. Musyoka ordered them to go on their knees and that assured him that the teachers will see and decide on what to do before the cause of the day. The principal released his clenched fist before slamming the staff room door behind him heaving with threats.

“Skiza, you have not changed?” Madam Eliza asked the notorious chap sandwiched between his gang.

I was still wondering in misbelieve with hands on the mouth when Mr. Dan pulled out a hunch of canes from the cupboard and placed them on the table.

“Yes, let’s us just whip them and release them before this matter reaches to the directors. I don’t the need to complicate things here or else we shall also be brought in to answer questions of this long narrative. Will we not be giving the facades of things?” Mr. Musyoka said.

“Yes, you might be right Mwalimu.” Mr. Kativu backed up building his strength for boxing ring.

I was dumb-founded when everyone rose grappling to pick a cane and immediately began to whip the students.

“Do you think this is a smoking zone?” Mr. Kativu said. The lanky teacher was defensively shouting as he made his last whip.

It was not long before principal came back with brown envelopes for each of the students and dropped them at their feet.

“This is a private school, we don’t entertain smokers. Go home! You are suspended” He said sternly.

The principal left leaving the terrified students gazing in confusion around the room. They loafed around there as if pleading for an advocate or advocacy from any of the teachers.

“Skiza Mwalimu, we were only burning litter.”Skiza tried to explain to extricate himself and the perhaps the friends with his eyes almost hacking for me. I was the only teacher who had not raised hand to whip them at such harsh hours of the mid-day sun rise. This encounter didn’t solace me at all cost and palming into it was something that caused a whirlwind at my feet because I had known its ripple effects one time when this trap of mice was to trap unintended guest. To avoid more trouble arguing with the students, I soiled my face in the newspaper.

“Stop chewing curd!” Mr. Dan rattled commanding one of the students who was busy trying to mend his jaws with a tongue probably to make them stay in their proper socket or to see if there was any of the canine missing in the formula.

“Salim and your friends please go home if you need to make things easy,” Madam Eliza pleaded.

I nodded my head side-ways in misbelieve that Skiza’s other name was also Salim. How he got this celebrity name is that he always dropped in the word Skiza as a prelude to between all conversations so that his audience may listen to him well. Now, in calamity our Skiza-tune was not been listened to by anybody.

We didn’t know how long they were suspended but it was clear that they were to resume school or classes in another term, of-course after their case was sated or the matter confirmed the not guilty.

When my duty arrived, a week that was full of different immersions: issuing of exams, supervision, marking and probably preparing reports; I didn’t want to be late.

I woke up that Monday morning at 4.45am and as it had been my composition, I would read two scriptures before cementing with a quick silent prayer. Although that didn’t mean that I was a staunch puritan as Cotton Mather or an obsessed Quake, I do believe to some power of Divine Providence. After taking a slight shower, I felt like eating nothing but forced down a cup of black tea and a banana before storming my way later to school at 5.15 am.

Amazingly when I arrived to my now new office grounds, there were some students who had also arrived earlier than I thought. The watchman at the gate was packing his rags to leave when he saw me elevating my steps to the staffroom. I was startled by him but he was just telling that he was going home. He had his hands prodded on my shoulders whishing me a good day of stay.

‘Kwaheri Mwalimu.” He said calmly.

I nodded with a heave and roughed my legs to the staffroom and picked the Daily Occurrence Book to note my arrival time before pulling it back safely  to the drawer where I was to note daily events during the course of my duty.

Madam Eliza was the first teacher to find me in room. I had some forty five minutes to draft a few paragraphs on my article before exams were to kick off.

“Mister, how are you,” she greeted.

In hesitation, I was still jetting down my last point before replying, “Mzuri sana Madam and you?”

“I’m fine.” She said surging herself next to me.

“That’s good. Yah, let us hope that the week will end well and perhaps finish marking exams smoothly so that we can have some ample time to with other side of life, friends and family,” I told her.

She nodded. I was pelting another line on my small note book.

“You are writing compositions?”She asked puzzled with me.

“No. This is just a rough sketch. I don’t know if it will be accepted.”

“Accepted by whom?” She jolted in disbelieve.

“You wonder? I’m writing a draft essay to see if it will find its way to the publication,” I told her my last words and closed the small note book. I felt displaced and hard to focus. I had lost my world of virtual reality from which I draw the literature and other pieces of data.

“Mwalimu, stop making me dream on this broad day-light,” she sighed with a heave.

“Don’t worry I’m weaving words for my leisure and the strangers. I’m sorry that I can’t help to stop this sickness.”

I guess she was left stammering. How could she have understood that this started at twelve with the errand to the town? Or how could she have comprehended that I had squiggled several stuffs of this kind while still in high school?

Few students were staggering to occupy their lockers when the entire lot of teachers swimmed into the staffroom. Amazed with my gallantry mood, they all stormed their faces on me.

“Good morning Sir! Today you look gorgeous.” Mr. Dan was the first to snap his mouth open.

”Good morning” I replied a bit feeble

A moment later, I excused myself out with a disguised cane in my right hand and heeled to check the classes to instill silence in the noisy classrooms and at-least enforce some school rules that exams were just near and about to kick off.

After the morning parade, we met to discuss briefly on how to run the examinations. By prelude we were first supposed to check the daily attendance register before they were to sit for any exam. When, Mr. Musyoka our deputy teacher had left to collect the exams papers from the secretary’s office, Mr. Dan went to his form one class, Madam Eliza to her rascal class, Mr. Kativu to his form four while I nosed my way to form three, heavily loaded with the class daily roster and a rim of answer sheet papers.

“Alfonso Palama, Ali Ngoma, Buno Odei,” I started reading out the names from the roster. Sounds of ‘yes sir’ rented the air. But that didn’t go for long when I reached to read a student named Kesisi. I stopped suddenly. Kesisi had not attended for almost two months. I did not want to waste time since it was a chronic disease probably which I was trying to probe its unknown etiology. I read the name hastily—who bleated hoarsely ‘present, sir.’ But not surprisingly in the alphabetical list there were other three more truants. Since I didn’t not want to ask or live listening to their lies; I read them vivaciously after correcting the entries in the register. I didn’t want to start snow balling any the friends that might have known this truantism. So I stated a thought that Shaka was indeed focused because Kesisi and his three fellows were new faces to me.

“Clean your lockers and books out,” I roared.

 A couple of minutes later the entire room was breathing exams after Mr. Musyoka handed me the bundled papers. They were starting with English paper one. Some could be seen with ease and happy, and others were gloomy while a few could not be fathomed.

I sat there watching them in pride as I browsed through a newspaper. Later I went out for some fresh air before returning back to collect the papers. I knew I had given away a little time to save those who might have found nothing to answer in question and could be relieved with their tall eyes.

In the second week of exams, teachers were now busy marking. Almost all the classes had finished except the senior classes who had their practical going on.