WASTED YEARS by M. Karagu

WASTED YEARS 

by MWAURA KARAGU

It is good news that the government through the TSC has come to its senses and decided to evacuate and transfer teachers from North Eastern of Kenya. I know that some of you will come here on this wall to castigate me about my support for the move but you won’t understand. This post is not made for you. It has taken me a lot of courage to write this so keep your feelings to yourself. Most of you do not know that I was a teacher in the north. During my short stay there, I almost hated being a teacher.

Let me tell you a story. In 2014, I was taken to supervise KCSE exam in another school near where I was teaching. I obliged. The next day after the first exam, three strangers (I can’t tell how they knew where I was staying) knocked on my door. They had with them 50k for me to allow the class I was supervising to cheat in the exam. I blatantly refused. They told me the other invigilators had accepted their share and I should take mine and look the other side as the boys cheated/copied. They told me that children in ‘’down Kenya’’ also cheat and that I should not dare refuse their children a chance to excel in the exams. I called my supervisor and he sounded disinterested. I decided to play it cool and send the guys away with a promise that I would look into it. The following day I discovered that everyone had taken his share. (We were all gentlemen). During the invigilation in the class, some students openly cheated in the exam. I tried to stop it in vain. I told the supervisor but nothing happened. It was the longest day of my supervision.

The following morning as I rode my bike to my station, I met the three guys who had come to visit me two days earlier. They stopped me and gave me a thorough warning that if I continue to interfere with what their ‘boys’ were doing ‘’tutakupiga risasi ya matako wewe nywele ngumu.’’ I was shaking as I rode my bike to school. I had heard stories of teachers being killed and life moving on as if nothing had happened. I had heard a story of a drama teacher who had been killed at the gate of the institution I was working at. I will withhold his name and the school. A teacher had been killed near where I stayed at around 6pm when he was coming from buying vegetables for supper. Rumour had it that he had been killed by the Al Shabaab but I didn’t believe it because from a reliable source, he had been killed for having a relationship with a local girl. These cases had not been resolved and I doubt they were. That afternoon after the exam, I reported to the TSC office and the police station about the threats I had received. I was told that they would investigate. That evening my house was pelted with stones by unknown people and I was scared. I called a friend of mine who works as KDF and was at the time working in a nearby base. He came with his, took me away and I slept with them at the base. The following day they took me to a certain small town near Ukambani where I boarded  a truck to Thika. That was the last day I was seen in the North.  That was long before the Garissa massacre and the Mandera bus massacre where 147 students and teachers were killed respectively.

The truth is, you don’t enjoy your work as a teacher there. Sometimes you even imagine that you are a slave. Nywele ngumu as we were referred to, were treated a bit different from the locals. Even punishment for errant teachers was administered differently. If a nywele ngumu teacher missed school for a day, his casualty was written the same day and sent to the TSC which effected salary deduction for that day. This was common during opening of schools since nywele ngumus traveled from far flung areas of the country. The tone of that female MP about the teachers from down Kenya was the song everywhere. She called them inhuman, conmen and other unmentionables. Life in the North was difficult for some of us. I remember my landlord closing our toilet until we stop ‘’kukojoa kama tumesimama kama ng’ombe.

I have not talked about Al Shabaab anywhere in this story. The Al Shabaab targets were directed by SOME locals. They fed them, prayed with them, gave them shelter and showed them easy targets. After the Garissa massacre, the NSIS released a list of areas that had been targeted. It was roaming in the media. My working station was a target. I shivered. Sometimes I used to wonder, why would someone shoot people in broad daylight and disappear in thin air? This is because the crimes were either committed by Al Shabaab aided by locals or locals themselves. Almost a hundred percent of those crimes were never resolved. I refused to live with fear. I died every day in the North. My Mama Mboga was hit with a grenade by ‘’Al Shabaab.’’ My local joint ‘’Club Locust’’ was also hit by the (in)famous ‘’Al Shabaab.’’

Somali Based Al Shabaab

I will never forget that night. Any time I think about it, I get traumatized. It was shortly after Mpeketoni massacre. Actually, it was the next night. We had left work and passed by one of our friend’s joint. i am a teetotaler but my two friends took one for the road as I waited for them. We bought meat to go and cook in the house as we watched news. Our meat was boiling when we had the first gun shot.  It was at our gate. Our estate had all Nywele ngumus who were teachers, one doctor, some accountant and other government workers. I knew we were done. We closed our door with everything including sufuria. I took a kitchen knife and jumped under the bed. My two friends were already there. I heard JK praying and Maish crying. JK was praying for his baby in Meru. He was asking God not to let him die and leave his daughter fatherless. They were already sober. I think I had peed a little on myself. The gunshots continued for about an hour then silence. We stayed under the bed until the following morning. It was the night I made up my mind that my stay in the North was not tenable! I left in third term when my life was threatened. My two wasted years in the North!!