From boy to MAN

It was the afternoon of the 3rd of February 1998 when I first set my foot inside the gates of the once prestigious Nairobi School. What followed thereafter was an incredible journey of pain, faith, tears, joy, sweat, fun, blood, learning, and greatest of all –transformation. I went in a shy, timid, scrawny, naïve, village boy and left four years later a wise, confident, witty, sharp, charming, intelligent, and street-smart young man ready to take-on the world.

I spent the better part of my childhood growing up in the cool, green, undulating hills of Kericho. I attended a private day-primary school and lived a somewhat charmed life with my parents. Nothing prepared me for the harsh life that boarding school would present and when I received the letter inviting me to join Nairobi School, I was excited thinking that life as I knew it would continue. That was never to be.

I was accompanied by my mother and an aunt when I reported. As I walked up the long winding drive way that led from the gates into the school I was captivated by the well manicured lawns, the rugby pitches, the cricket crease (which I had only seen on TV) and I imagined a smooth enjoyable life away from nosy parents (who would not let me enjoy my adolescent life in peace). I was received by the house master for Serengeti House (which became my home for four years) and he checked the items in my suitcase. I did not wait for long to have my first encounter with reality. The house master advised my mother to return home with my fancy suitcase and to replace it with a reinforced metallic box. She was also asked to return home with my expensive sports shoes because they would not last a single day in the school. The same were to be replaced by ordinary canvas shoes. I immediately started wondering what exactly I had gotten myself into.

I did not wonder for too long because exactly two weeks later our ‘honeymoon’ ended and it all began. We were punished for the slightest of infractions. The punishments would vary depending on who was dispensing it and for what reason. The higher the authority, the harsher the punishment would be. For example the Head of School’s (other schools refer to them as school captains) punishment would be harsher than that of the Heads of House (House captains). We had to memorise all the names and dockets for the forty plus prefects lest they asked and we did not have a clue. That usually earned us heavy punishment. We were therefore given a list to that effect and it would be common to find classmates with a copy of a weathered list busy memorising the names while queuing for lunch. We had to pave way (literally) for prefects and all our seniors and if we did not, we would be kicked out of the way. We were therefore always alert for any footsteps behind us and would jump out of the way as soon as we sensed that a senior was behind us. It was grander for the head of school. We would do the same thing drivers do when the president is using a particular road- get off the way until he passes. It was illegal to share the same path as the head of school. It was demanded of us to put our hands behind our backs while we spoke to our seniors (just as they do in the military) and in fact they preferred that we either squatted or knelt so that we would not be on the same eye level. The physical exercises were intense if not impossible. I remember being told to swim on grass (Special Olympics as they called it). While doing press-ups the ‘instructor’ would count in decimals. We all had to learn and play rugby and we would be tackled by the senior boys as a rite of passage. The beatings from prefects and seniors alike were so common that we got used to it. We also had to endure a lot of hunger and theft. It was quite common to hang our clothes out to dry and never see them again or come back from night ‘preps’ and find all our boxes broken into and looking like they had grown wings- ‘butterfly’.

It was not pain alone that we experienced. We sang a lot in the chapel and I enjoyed listening to the sermons by the chaplain in his heavily accented tongue. The sermons by visiting clerics were enlightening and interesting. Though some classes were boring, as I could not understand why we had to torture ourselves learning about bunsen burners, mole concepts, vectors, matrices and anodes, the majority of them were interesting especially history and geography. Beating Lenana school, St. Marys school, Rift Valley Academy, and Strathmore School in rugby brought some of the greatest joys and gave us a lot of pride. Losing to them, as well, as we did a number of times over the course of the four years had us grieving for weeks and blaming the likes of Mr. Sang; a referee who always seemed to favour our opponents. A number of times we wanted to rough him up a bit but we would quickly forget as soon as we scored another ‘try’ and would be cheering ‘patch machine’ (name of the team) like there was no tomorrow. Singing the school anthem ‘patchi kipenzi’ before matches filled us with pride. The other times we sung the anthem was the one or two occasions we rioted. The first time we did so we went out of school and marched down ‘waiyaki way’ intending to get to ‘nation centre’ where we would address the press before dispersing for home. That was never to be because along the way we were confronted by Administration Policemen who forcefully made us run for our lives in the direction of the school.
Whenever there were school functions, or we went out to other schools’ functions, our only aim was to have a chance to chat up the girls. We had learnt early how to always leave a function with an address after a lot of punishment in form-one for not doing so. Scouting was yet another activity in school that I enjoyed immensely. The weekends we spent camping at the Rowallan camp and in Nyeri for Lord Badden Powell’s memorials were really exciting. We built tents; cracked jokes, sang, and played games around the camp fire; marched for the president during national celebrations; mounted parades and colour parties as we ‘broke’ the flag every Friday.

All the above experiences moulded me into the man I am today. I was transformed gradually over the course of the four years. I tasted victory and defeat; experienced success and failure; found friends and enemies; formed and dropped habits; and won and lost love. Discipline, integrity, and character were deeply ingrained in me such that I cannot depart from them even in my sleep. I saw firsthand the effects of faithlessness, lack of discipline, lack of resolve, and the effects of drugs on some of my peers, and decided that I would never fall into the same trap. I understood the power of friendship, unity, group psychology, and even bad company. I was toughened, hardened and in the process discarded my garments of diffidence and wore those of confidence. All said, I have never been the same again and gladly so.

This is not to say that I would have chosen the same path had I known what lay ahead of me. I am glad that I was oblivious of what awaited me the day I first walked through the gates of Nairobi school. Change in my case was not an event but a painful process which I had to go through to be refined into who and what I am today. My advice to anyone in a similar situation or about to embark on a similar journey is that they should not only go through school or the experience but they should also allow the positive aspects of school or the experience to go through them.

By,

Laitoriat.