![]() The immediate family, bred on the soft nests of wealth, live in towns. The only sign of life in such homes is a caretaker. You will be told this was the home of Peter Oloo Aringo wang’e dongo, a famous court jester in the Moi regime. Bedfords with ugly noses, and Datsuns in their fading splendour, nestle beside sturdy Mercedes and Volvo frames. You could see evidence of big money in their homes – big concrete buildings, red-tiled roofs, and endless tracks of unfarmed land. Like many small towns in Nyanza province, it nursed big scars of government neglect, and tall tales of budgetary allocations eaten by the thieving elite. Aneno nyako moro kae nyinge ng’a, Atoti, and look around for young girls we could pull close, To bendo nyalo miel koda nyinge ng’a, and we’d all shout, Atoti:ĭespite the conviviality, even in those days, Siaya held the aura of a wasting town. ![]() We went to Siaya and spent the whole night refining moves we’d learnt in disco matanga, dancing to Gidi Gidi Maji Maji and Wiki Mosh’s Atoti exploding from Omega One speakers. ASK shows were the perfect legal opportunity to be away from school. I first recited a poem at the Zonal level, in Uranga, and failed miserably, but later on in high school, our drama dance got to the national level in Tumutumu. Sporting events, drama and music festivals, and the annual Agricultural Society of Kenya shows rescued pupils from the drudgery of school life. Since the most notorious noisemakers were uncultured in the language, it was the quietest day in Mahola primary school. We tailored an additional layer of fabric on the backside of our shorts to cushion our buttocks from the insistent bite of the cane. In the evening, the prefect called the first culprit, who’d call the next in the chain, until the last person with the disk walked to the growing line of sinners in front of the assembly and handed the disk back to the prefect, then walk to the teacher for six firm strokes of odar on the thighs, just for momentarily deserting the Queen’s language. You’d pass this to the next mother tongue speaker until the disk chained tens of students whose only sin was to speak Dholuo. An accidental slip to mother tongue earned one a disk – a symbol of linguistic shame. Every move broke some unwritten law, every demur a sin. Not that it was possible to escape thrashing. A full basket of maize meant sprinting to the central collection point to empty the basket, or risk being tagged a malingerer and booked for thrashing. ![]() During planting seasons, we tarred large school farms with compost manure, and when harvesting came, each of us stood with a basket in hand and a long row of maize in front, and harvested until little round pockets of lymph collected beneath our thumbs. That was before the Constituency Development Fund gave classrooms a facelift and saved kids from the displeasure of crouching in flea-infested cowsheds at dawn, before corporal punishment was banned, before after-school fistfights became dishonoured, before the slavery of carrying jerrycans of water to irrigate stunted hedges ended. We sprinkled water every morning after sweeping, to pacify dust, and lugged tins of cow dung, on Fridays, for bi-weekly cementing of floors. Our classrooms had earthen floors and windows the size of full moons – a truant’s blessing, but I wasn’t one. ![]()
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