Close your books; let’s have some staffroom gossip

Want some bit of staffroom gossip? WERE WA’SHITSESWA has lots of it.

Last Monday, Joyce Makongolo called the principal. She called the principal to lament that her son was being savaged and denied constitutional rights and freedoms. Said her son should never be canned, nor slapped, nor kicked, nor be frowned at. That her son, second born, was no donkey for the school. And so the principal is very cross.

The principal is very cross — with you.

Joyce, wife to the late councillor, said that next time she heard any such complaint from her son, she is sure gonna take matters into her hands. You don't want Joyce to do that, do you?

Well, some introductions.

Joyce is the area nominated county rep (she got 16 votes compared to the winner’s 1,632). Joyce has been donating goodies to the school since her nomination and has already vowed to bring condoms if the Bill goes through. Very economical with reason and last time I checked, she wanted to upgrade a school into a college while still retaining the entire staff.

Allan, on the other hand, is a bright student who sits at the back bench of Form Two South. His brightness starts and stops in the dining hall. In class, Allan is a genius in failure, and last term you had to spare eight teaching weeks just encouraging him to accept that his name must always start with a capital letter. In the process, before your giving up, you used some non-diplomacy, and he did not get it funny. Allan is Joyce's second born.

Now you see why this thing is a tough thing?

The principal — who is in charge of your hire, tire, and fire — is cross. The principal, who wants the school a beneficiary of well-wishing, is mad. How can you, the small person, mess up the fortunes of the institution?

“But you gave him punishment when you knew whose son he was! You have destroyed us, and this we cannot accept.” That’s what you were told in that court where the judge is the plaintiff too.

Boss, they cannot accept this! What? What then?

You have been here for the last seven months and life’s been somehow better. You now have a handkerchief and you bought a new ex-UK phone. You have come to know the price of an egg and you now know that Sidika is a person while sticker is a leaflet.

These days you brush your shoes at the shoe-shiner’s and there are already some lipstick eyes looking at you suggestively whenever you pass by the salon downtown.  

You think of where you’ve come from. Hard days of unsuccessful tarmac-ing and bitter eyes from matatu touts who think money is plucked from some avocado tree at home. Dragging nights on empty stomach. Hide-and-seek games with the landlord who does not speak your language. No, sir; you don’t wanna go back there.

Number One should not get mad this way. It was only a little slap on the cheek, and little slaps on the cheek are known to do miracles these sides. Shh, it happens.

Getting a job is anything but Pampers’ business. You also want to be in the same position as others. You want to look Safaricom in the eye and smile. There are bills to pay and bribes to give and someone’s daughter to spoil. There are those young ones who have introduced your name in some nursery school registries and you don’t want to meet the children’s rights officers a second time. There is an aunt who wants a lesso and an uncle who says you should complete the dowry your father failed to finalise.  

For a second, you look at the bunch of books on your desk and you get angrier. Inside those books are sentences written breaking the very rules you've been parroting about. Inside those books are names of cities, teachers, village elders, rapists . . . all starting with small letters while the writers are somewhere near a canteen or dozing in another lesson.

But you should not slap. The mother of Allan says that even a bad eye at her child is not allowed! This joke must go to the World Cup . . .

Just then, the phone rings and you startle up. It is mid-month and so the nursery school teacher of your last kid should not be the one calling. You fish the phone out and fortunately, it is not the madam. But it is Yours Employerly, and he wants to see you in his office immediately. In other news, you are back to home.

And Karma is a pagan.

Mornings of waking up on an empty stomach again? Just one pair of shoes for the road. Chilly rainy mornings escaping taxi drivers and anti-loitering police all in one stride. Days of counting cockroaches on the ceiling. No phone. No friends. No contact with the world. No eggs. No one even saying the fat kid she is expecting is yours.

Allan! Allan is the next client at the morgue.

What you should know about Stend Kisa and its many cases (Part II)

Then you don't know Stend Kisa and its stage for vehicles!

The manambas of Stend Kisa tussle. I mean, even before the vehicle fills to capacity, which happens just after every solar eclipse, there they are! One is in a faded UDF T-shirt and miraa suffocating his teeth somewhere. Fighting over a woman's luggage. 

The woman eventually enters, followed by her four children of equal height. Their heads resemble tortoises, and so with no ill intent you baptise them Likhutu-wan, Likhutu-tuu, Likhutu-tsiri and Likhutu-foo. She sits next to you, and places Likhutu-tsiri on Likhutu-wan, Likhutu-wan on Likhutu-foo, and Likhutu-foo on her laps. You have no otherwise but to find space for Likhutu-tuu on your laps, plus a noisy hen, the sugarcane they've bought from commercial fear, a burst baloon and seven nosefuls of pungent urine fumes. 

Oh her God, who has taken her purse?

But you cannot claim to have been at Stend Kisa stage if you didn't see Amigo. Amigo is a legend around here, and all who hear of him always know him first sight. You see, even Amigo himself believes he is crazy! But we all know what he does, because you can never fail to get the strong Luanda (holy) weed if he is around stage. Ever present. 

The only time he ever avoided the place was some April day in 2002, when the marketters (villagers?) decided without dialogue to force body hygiene onto everyone. But in those rags, Amigo is an asset to the transport guys. He scares children and pregnant women into vehicles to Kisumu or Lubao or to their safety. 

Young college girls and frightened city dwellers also hasten into vehicles whenever amicus Amigo approaches. And manambas regularly tip him for services. Thank the skies, no sane woman can dress the Nairobi way when they travel through Stend Kisa, otherwise they might see what the woman of Murang'a saw one fateful day, long time ago, courtesy of Amigo.

And our Stend Kisa has an average of three beggars a day. No, not those scared faces who claim having lost money after the manamba scuffles around them. Stend Kisa has regular proffessional beggars who call you Al-Shabaab or Olelengo when you don't drop something into their bowls. One is called Salimu. Salimu tells us he was born blind. But he always knows when to remind you that you should not return that one-thousand-shilling note into your pocket. 

Whatever he smokes, it is not kitchen smoke. But I am not through with Salimu: he crosses the busy Stend Kisa road all by himself, appears at vehicle 'windows' all by himself, always removes and hides the big note from the bowl all by himself, avoids hitting the sales woman's maize cobs all by himself, yet he asks you to walk him to the food kiosk, and asks you whether you have paid for his meal so God could bless you. 

Last time a person at Stend Kisa told me that my new leather (!) belt was smart, and you wouldn't want to know who that was.

This Stend Kisa bus stage, brethren, will kill someone some day!

What you should know about Stend Kisa and its many cases (part I)

We have Westernised cultures and westernised bus stops. WERE WA'SHISTESWA tells you more about what to expect in a bus stop full of people from the western part of Kenya.

They call it Stend Kisa bus stage, although bicycles, camels and beggars stop there too. In fact, majority of vehicles here are vans, pick-ups, cars and lorries before you even think of Msamaria or Mbukinya. The stage is known from Lwanda to Mulwanda; Khwisero to Khayega to Malakisi to Funyula, and Msamaria Mwema touts of Nairobi know it also. 

Stend Kisa bus stage is not your everyday bus (and camel) stop: it is peculiar; distinct. When you go to Stend Kisa bus stage, unless you didn't go there, there are things that can never escape your eye.

There is this woman selling onions, sugarcane and boiled groundnuts. She always has on her leso and rubber shoes that reveal more toes than hide. She is fat, tough looking and with a muscle you would never wish to meet. 

In fact, she must be doing more of her selling through infliction of this commercial fear than business attraction. The way she sits on that her wooden stool will make you define your qualities of a mother in law, but the way she frowns at a non-buyer makes you hate poverty. 

Stend Kisa bus station has the manambas. For those who need definition, a manamba is that samaritan who knows of your journey more than you do, and that you need his accurate and unparallelled advice while you are at it. They are always there. Chofrii, Kition, Mrefu, Mandeke, Chonii, among others. 

You must see them because those unchoreographed calls will not allow it otherwise. To call passangers to their ship, they whistle, they whine, they bray, they howl, they hoot, they shout, they purr; but still remain manambas looking for the day's flour. 

The vehicles at Stend Kisa have boards showing the destinations for each, but still Chofrii will insist on wanting to help you know where to go. And this is help, until you play contrary to their script. Then you start to know how you have an ugly eye or how you are proud without education or even the secret of why your spouse abandoned you.

Next time schools open, I will never attend to sons of some professionals in my class, unless someone apologises.

But they are not alone. There is always this or that conductor asking where boss you are going. You play sharp and ask him where his metal junk (pronounced as 'chopper') is headed. He tells you. You say you are not going there. He asks again where it is you are going therefore. His vehicle seems to be going everywhere now. You say Khumusalaba to buy a dog. He says come he in fact has one space for Khumusalaba before the van leaves for Butere. You say you are not going to the Khumusalaba of Butere but that of Soi. He says no problem, come with him he has space for that too. He even has a hand on your sisal sack that should carry your pet back. You are cornered. You tell him to leave you alone. He calls the manambas, and they give you collective insults. Boss, you never mess with those of Stend Kisa.

But even that's not all. When you eventually enter the matatu comes the sales boy. Weak, mulnourished and disillussioned, he looks like he shall collapse in his next blink. His shirt has three rat holes near the left shoulder-line, but he is yet to start knowing inconfidence. 

Like his other compatriots, he sells everything too. Sells Nacet, a jembe, Eveready, tealeaves, shirt buttons, needles, bar soap, bamba ten, cutex, Dasani and rat poison. In the other hand are sachets of groundnuts, two cobs of roasted maize, a roll of polythene rope, toothpaste, ginger biscuits, mukombera, a roast chicken leg, and a woman's panties. The only things I don't see are the Femiplan female condom and Aromat. He also has fishing lines for sale. Don't ask me how he carries all. I also don't know. He insists you should buy.

Ignore him? 

(Part 2 coming soon)