THE INFLUENCER

THE INFLUENCER

There are people you meet for the first time and instantly know that they were created to be thugs and only the spirits of the ancestors keep them sane. These are the people my mother would call ‘’placenta’’ because the baby was buried in place of it. But all the same, these characters later become kids and grow though there are very few traits of chills running in their blood. He was a new boy in our school. I met him two hours after admission in the dining hall queuing for something that looked like food-Sukuma wiki which tasted like tobacco and overcooked ugali. It was Wednesday hence we were assured of one piece of meat and a jug of water in the name of soup which Khisa the cook splashed on top of the ‘‘tobacco.’’ I was behind him in the line. When it was his turn to be served, he did not move after one piece of meat was placed on top of his vegetables. He looked at the cook and told him to add him some more pieces.

‘’kijana songa, hakuna nyama,’’ Khisa said harshly as if the boy had asked for his spleen. Loosely translated, Khisa was asking the young man to move because there was no meat.

The young man looked at him for a moment then asked him, ‘’Unaongea aje mbaya ni kama wewe ndio ulichinjwa hii nyama ikapatikana?’’ a huge blast of laughter emanated from the students as Kossy (as we later came to know his name) walked to sit with his food. He had asked the cook if he was the one who had been slaughtered for the meat to be found. Those who know our cook those days will tell you that he was such a mean guy. If he gave you poison, you would not die because he would give you too little to cause any harm. He would taste the poison even to ensure it works!

He was tall. Very dark. The only way he could be noticed in darkness was if he smiled. He was the true definition of ‘’MADE OF BLACK’’. Guys used to joke that the water he used to bathe from turned to a gelatinous black precipitate. He would laugh it off. He became a legend because of his escapades. I was always a good boy. All the way from form one, I was getting accolade after accolade because of my academic and discipline prowess. This came to an end immediately the boy became my friend.

One night he came to my bed and told me to follow him outside. He had two white plastic tins of either Kimbo or Kasuku cooking oil- I don’t remember. He gave me one and pulled me towards the school cow shed. He taught me how to milk the cows without attracting the security’s attention. We took the milk to the assistant cook with a warning that if he reported us, we would boil him. We would do this every Tuesday and Thursday. One of those days we were almost caught. We ran away while putting the white tins on our heads. The security guards did not see us but in the morning they reported that two Wakorinos were milking the cows. There were actually two turbaned fellows in the school. One was a form one and the other one was our classmate. The beating the two innocent fools got from the deputy principal was enough for ten grown-ups! We survived but never got caught.

We got in the wrong books of almost all the teachers. One morning the prefect on duty called the students who were making noise during the previous night’s preps. We were there. He had another list of the students who had missed the morning preps. We were there. The school captain came with another list of the boys who had not spread their beds. I do not need to repeat that we were there. We moved from one list to another. What saved us was the fact that we were so good in class than almost everyone else-including the prefects calling our names! We formed a cartel that was so powerful and went scot free any time. There were other cartels too but ours was feared because it was double edged. Only the deputy principal could deal with it. There was a time sneaked out of the school and on coming back, we decided to use the gate because we knew that the gate-man was illiterate. He told us to write our names on a sheet of paper and we did. Kossy wrote his name as Dichloromethane Alcanoic Acid and I wrote mine as Drosophyla Domestica- whatever they meant. He took them to the deputy and up to date he is looking for the two musketeers though we were top suspects.

We were the best letter writers. Other boys usually came to us so that we would write letters for them to send to their lasses in different schools. This was done at a fee. Due to this, we rarely ‘’whistled’’, taking tea without the bread. Sometimes we would write the same letters but baggers would not understand. We only changed the names.

Shaving became a thing of the past. I cannot remember how many time the principal had bundled us in his car to take us to the barber. Sometimes he gave us money to go and shave and we would come back to school looking worse after spending the money on Chapati madondo at Shimenga eatery near the school. He became tired of caning us. Any time we were caught in a heinous crime, he would give us an assignment to do in Geography and submit it the same day. It is not like we loved school, we just wanted to be together. I could not stand school food and morning preps!

When we did our final exams, it was very difficult to let go but it wasn’t long before we received our university admission letters. We had been admitted in the same campus! He had been admitted to study Business while I went to do Literature. Our escapades in the university is a story for another day. Today the fool is a very senior police officer. I think he was given the job because of his skin colour. He can pretend to be a burnt log in the war front. The enemies will not notice him. I am not trying to tell my readers that they should not joke around with the son of a tiger. No. you can go ahead and do it but remember that he is just a call away. You do not want to sleep on cold cement, do you?