Letter to my Sister

Dear Verah,

How are you? I miss you. I know I promised to visit you at school, I have not done that in the past two years. I do not know the best excuse I can give to cover for that failed promise, and many others that I have not kept. Me, at your age, I would not understand why a brother will not pay me a visit, especially at school, so, I will absolutely understand whatever you feel. Let it be known to you that I want nothing more than to see you and get to know how you are doing, how you have grown, see you smile and get to know your adventures in your high school life.

It was such a landmark achievement you made to have joined a national school. Myself, as you know, I only made it to a provincial school, probably the best school to me. What I mean is, I can only imagine how enjoyable it must be in a national school. Be happy, have fun and keep focus as well. I know that life at your age as fun as it may be, it has its misfortunes as well, and those are to make you better. Out here, you need the ability to solve the unstructured problems same as some of those you may encounter at school. I do not know what those are at your school but in our school we had some, heavy at that time but thinking about them now, I cannot help breaking my ribs.

The notorious problems we had included:

1. Getting attention of girls a mid the "big boys"

My friend Alex told me in their school they named them, "the bigwigs." I like their version of naming. There were some hostile unwritten rules like; when in form one or two, you do not look at a girl if a "bigwig" is around, unless you want to face the disciplinary council (made up of students) for disrespecting "elders." What that meant then, for my friends like "Masenge," who we called "hungry tigers", was that, they have to make the best of any time with a girl when the "bigwigs" are out of sight - and note that this could mean that only holiday time could be that time.

Technically, that was a good thing because then, we got to dive into the sea of books in the library and stay under that sea, only to show up our heads when in form three. At form three as well, we were all scared stiff of "Mr. Shoka" -the great misfortune of not making it to the fourth form, the worst that could befall even your worst enemy. We all remained busy because of the "bigwigs" problem ensuring we had minimal distraction from skirts -may be this is the reason our school was always ranked among the best, and no lie, it produced the best e.g. me (I hope you agree on this one, except for any failed promises).

They were allergic to books, as long as you are there, it was a no-go zone for them.

There were many other problems with "bigwigs," the list is endless; you do not fetch water before they do, you do not buy bread from the canteen before they do . . . . damn! The bastards controlled practically everything. I thank God, oxygen was not in their control, most of us could have been suffocated to death on the second day at school.

"Bigwigs" were actually a bunch of overgrown boys who had over stayed in school for several reasons, the major being repeating forms every now and then. Anyone could tell some were older than the teachers and confusions were often. In your time, plenty of very young people are making it to fourth form, I guess average age of a form four could be 16-18 years, contrary to our time, the bigwigs could be estimated to have been between 26-31 years!

I do not know if there's such a problem in girl schools, but should there be such a problem, hide in books, they are the best defense. Believe me, it works.

2. "Pocket money" (never enough)

This was a universal problem both to those who were from "well of" families and those that were from "close to average" families like ours. Although one of our teachers made it clear that by the virtue that we were all studying in Africa, we were all "below average families!" That never worried me at that time. I never even understood what he meant (I only understood that above average or average families had their kids study in international schools abroad). Studying secondary education abroad for the rest of us, was a far fetched dream. Even for higher education is for the lucky few through scholarships which only God knows how they come about.

I had a policy of sticking to the school menu, unless necessary-of course it was known to be the best in the province (not in quality but quantity), and for teenagers like us that time, quantity was valued more than quality. I was used to it. Past the school entrance, as we lined up for checking -which was necessary since some "bigwigs" were said to have smuggled alcoholic drinks past the school gate, and worse, into the hostels. The story went that, they ended up oversleeping in the morning and ended up in the deputy principal hands. That was the last person you would have wished to meet in your whole high school life, even on a friendly invitation.

The administration made it a policy to inspect everyone on entry - do not ask me if it worked (only smugglers can know). As we lined, I could see litres of juice, packets of sugar and other luxuries for those especially from cities like Kisumu and Nairobi (these ones still had teary eyes due to less pocket money and having been sent to school with promises of sending more money as the term progresses -this was always a lie, such never materialized, especially for me.

The funny and confusing part was, even those thought to be from "well of" families got broke in the first three weeks. They actually used to broke earlier and funny as it may sound, they go borrowing from the likes of me and my friend "Onywoki" A.K.A "Boy wa Cosmo." Not without interest. No specific rates but in terms of double or triple repayments - call it usury or whatever you want, it's how I could end up going home at end of the term with more than I had.

Others like Masenge, would take advantage of "love letter writing pads" trade. This was one of the most booming items of trade, especially in the first month of each term. It was a clear testimony of how "love" was a necessity to man (that was all fake the, some just derived fun in confusing as many hearts as possible). The romantic-holics (led by Masenge of course) could pay anything to have a proper schedule pad and if they had an ugly handwriting, they hire it at a fee from the likes of me. Those that had confused English, they hire services as well, minimum of half a loaf of bread! That's how life went in our time.

One funny character was said to have deceived his parents to get more pocket money by using a confusing scientific term. It was said, he had claimed that they were to construct a dichotomous key in his class and it required Shs 8,000. For some parents, I guess even his, that was a suspicious huge amount. It had not even been included in the letters issued to parents at the end of each term. His folly caught up with him of course, and had to sing what we termed as "the song of Lawino" - everyone assumed it was not a good song.

I know, this may not have changed, even in your time. Someday you get to know that money is always scarce. It's a scarce resource. it is never enough. Convert the scarcity of it into your motivation - the desire to have more, starts with you.

Only you can change that.

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