HOMESTRETCH

Highschool can mess you up real bad. Four or so years prior today, the tales I heard about highschool had been romanticized to make it look like a second paradise. I have now lucidly made out that the stories were all but true in regards to the contemporary situation.
I never wanted to come to highschool. I was not the typical yappy kid who found fun in everything in life or who wanted to know more and more and become great in future;if ever there was any. I never wanted to become an Einstein or a Ben Carson or Collymore or anything close to that. Ijust wanted to become a simple man, probably the calibre of Mwalimu Andrew of the Sunday Nation, then buy a farm and make a life out of it. I just wanted to stay locked in the land of bananas and die there if I had to.
But you see, life as it is, never gives you anything you want. You ask for oranges, you end up getting damn lemons. But even then, we the wise ones never go down with that. We make lemonade and boom! We get even with life.
Post primary, I scored good marks. I knew I was going to one of the ‘big’ and ‘fancy’ schools; Bush,Patch or something like it. I had no idea Camp Laz ever existed then.
Whenever you hear someone talk of vifaranga ya kompyuta, get not lethargic in thinking about kina Uhunye and Rutoor their damn cronies, (even if they’re the ones). We are the real culprits. We are the pioneers. By ‘we’ I mean the KCPE class of 2015. Kaimenyi spoiled it all for some of us. Exam leakages led to the proliferation of top grade students and consequently the highschool selection process was tightened. So on January 20th when the results came, it was not a shock that I had been axed.
“ OIRA CALEB NYANGENA...SCHOOL SELECTED: KISII HIGH SCHOOL.”
‘ Nitaambia nini watu?’
I didn ’t like that school. No way i was going there. My dad didn’t like it either. But because my old man knows how to rub shoulders well with the who and who in society, an admission letter from Kapsabet High School landed on our table in no time. But even then, I didn’t like it. I did not like the idea of Nandi. The name itself was archaic;at least then. I didn’t want anything to do with Nandi; the tea, the Mursik...everything. In essence, I had a million reasons to avoid Camp Laz.
Too bad my dad knew what I was up to, and so when he began calling me ‘Kipyegon’ in jeer, I knew Camp Laz it was, and there was no other way around it.
10th February 2016: Homeboy was admitted to Camp Laz. Right from day one, I didnt like it here. To begin with, I was admitted and handed over to some wildly-bearded guy who looked old enoug to be my father’s older brother. (Mind you my dad was around fifty then.) Then the accent factor came in. Waaa! My Kale brothers you got to up your game, Seriously. I knew nobody. Everything was new to me; the accent especially. My class teacher’s name was Mr Siryo but whenever he was teaching us Math, he used to pronounce ‘zero’ such that it seemed like he was calling himself. Honestly, no way I could have known I would make it this far. Kwanza there was this school captain in the olden days; big black dude, huge body and an almost bald head. His name was the hardest to pronounce in that part of the region. ‘Kuony Yien Nyuon’.He was Sudanese. Guy gave us a hell of a year. Form ones had no peace in school. Endless lectures and summons to his office; of course the summons were for beatings, not presents. Im just glad we’re past it now.
First exam gave me another shock. Results came and i was position 104/380. I was terrified. That position was 104 times my accustomed one. Back at my village school, I was among the academic doyens. Now that I was here at Camp Laz, it became apparent that other villages also had doyens- better than me even. No way I was going to sleep on the job. The next exam saw me to position 14 overall. Im not saying anything but miracles do happen.
Form One and Two came and passed. Then Form Three happened. It caught me unawares. I had become a prefect upon realising that I would have been roasted in white. After all, when you cant beat them...
Then the grades began coming. Weird grades that had never been on my transcript.(You know what I mean.) My goose was cooked. I felt like quitting school. I wanted to go back to my roots in the heart of Kisii and plant bananas and sell them and get cash. School sucked.
Lacuna Kasoo says, “Why educate even the confirmed idiots when mother earth must have her share of fools?”
Form Three made me feel like one of them. It was no easy fete.
Lkini Mimi nani? Form Three passed and Form Four came. Well, here I am, proud of my self, proud of my effort. Mwanume ni effort kumbe, I made a promise to somebody; someone close to me, someone not my friend, that an A in the umpteenth exam was inevitable. From my stance, the prospects of staying true to my promise are high; very high actually.
When the sun shall set, I ’ll have a tale to tell; for a wonderful thing is bound to happen.

@oiraqaleb esq  

∆The future favours the bold∆