School Run

My nephews cannot go to school alone. Nowadays, most children are taken to schools by their parents or drivers hired to chauffeur them around. My nephews were born when their parents were driving. What I find startling is the fact that my four-year-old nephew is fascinated by buses. Maybe he doesn’t understand why so many people can be cramped up together in such a big vehicle while he had the whole back seat to himself before his brother was born. Now, he has to share his seat with his brother and his car sit. When he is picked from school and the mother is not there, he rides shotgun. A grown little man.

So, a few days ago my sister asked me if I could take her to pick the son from school. I like doing it. I love boys. Silly. Not in the way you are thinking. Boys have unmatched energy. My friend thinks I will get three girls. He is a three-year-old who cries when he is left in school. I think he doesn’t like school. hehe. When were young, if you cried after being taken to school, it was seen as an act of aggression. Like you were daring your mother. In other words, testing her demons. You would be whopped a good one and whopped again for crying. I still don’t why our parents would beat us, and when we cried, they beat us again to stop crying.

When we picked him, yes, picked him. Their school has this policy that a child must be picked from the teacher by an accredited person. A stranger to the school- whether a relative, driver or the house help- cannot go a pick the child. So there is this kasmall roundabout where people go a pick the students from the teachers. So when the young man got into the car. He asked the mum for her phone. At 3, he knows how to operate the phone. He wants to play games. Times have really change. During our time. I like saying that, goes well with my balding head. After school, we had dishes to wash, cows to feed and food to cook. When in class three, I could make ugali. But I am sure my friend Mudamba started doing it when he was an infant. But now all they want to do is play games and watch nickelodeon.

This took me way back when I was in preschool. Ok, I am lying, I was never in preschool. We had ‘small class’ and ‘big class.’ I swear that’s what we used to call it. After finishing ‘big class’ you went to class one. That was after passing some exam. Everyone normally passed. I don’t know what happened when people joined primary school, or as we would call it preemary school.

Our school was about two kilometers from home. My sister went to school one year earlier. I cried, well, my mum says I did, but I don’t believe her, because I was being left home alone. I wanted to go to school. And when I went, I loved school. I still do, it is the whole learning that I don’t like. So when we started school, we’d trek together every morning. On good days, we’d walk the whole way chatting. Mostly recalling the stories our grandpa had shared with us the previous night.

On bad day, which were many, I’d either run ahead or walk so fast that my sister couldn’t keep up. Our fights would normally stem from silly things like she didn’t wake me up when she woke up, or she finished the water my mum had warmed for us to wash our face and feet. In shagz, you wash your face and feet, the body was meant to be washed once a week. The stupidest of them all was when she had eaten the crust. See, when we were young, bread was a luxury, and the crust was the real deal. Largely because it was bigger. So I insisted on eating the crust. You know how us lastborn are. So entitled. My argument was that she had a whole year of eating the crust before I was born. Now, it was my turn to eat.

So, one of these bad days, we were going home. I was still sulking. I left her in school and dashed home. Now, our school was located in a place that you had to cross the ‘highway.’ This was a known blackspot because a donkey was once hit in 1952, after emergency was declared. Ok, I am exaggerating. But I mean, like ten cars would pass there in a day. Ok, not ten, but you get what I mean. Why it was considered a blackspot because there was this relatively steep descent with a relatively sharp corner. You needed to look left, wait for ten minutes, then look right, kick a football, then look left and then cross the road.

On this day, I went all ninja crossing the road. There was this guy who in a current setting would be considered a trustee of the school. He saw what I did. He called me, got a whip and whipped me a thoroughly. Back in the day, children were public property. Anyone would beat you for mundane reasons like giving you neighbor a side eye. And if you dared not tell your mother. You’d be beaten again.

Yaani, to date, 25 years later, I remember how it all happened. I went home crying and bitter. I have never forgiven that guy. Now an old man, when I meet him, I still cannot shake his hand. Lesson, never beat up a ‘kihii,’ he will never forget. I still don’t understand why he beat me. He kept asking, ‘you want to die and live your mother without a child?’ I almost laughed because of the number of times my mum had told me she will kill me and be left without a child; every time I misbehaved.

When going home, I wondered if some stranger did the same to my nephews.Like beat them up. I am sure they would get a restraint order and an active arrest warrant should such a thing ever happen again. Nowadays, children have become too soft.

While in the school, I lost count of the number of kids who are being picked up in big cars. When the driver stops, the teacher opens the back door, the child hopes in, and hoists himself back left, buckles up, then the small don taps the driver on the shoulder and says, “14 riverside drive, I have two meetings there before heading home.”

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