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!!
It is heartbreaking to read these awful experiences. It is even disheartening that these experiences happen on teachers who, fundamentally are so selfless, as seen from their concerted effort that involves shaping the entire lives of generations. It creates an anticlimax, unfortunately, that a reward for that emulable effort by the teacher is the demonic requirement by misguided miscreants that the teacher pays with his life. These actions are condemnable, babaric and heinous. The earlier the society unites against these morons and their sympathizers, the better.
ReplyDeleteThis will come to an end some day. Just one day.
DeleteHeartbreaking
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