The Double D’s.

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In my next life, I want to be one of those who post pictures like this accompanied with captions like, ‘catch flights not feelings’ and its variations. I beg! I’ve already got the feelings part down so maybe its time we upgrade? Jesus? Santa? Ancestors? Hello?

Its about that time of year where fake friends get cut off only to be reinstated back to their positions by January, those new year- new me resolutions start flying around and those who saved enough or are just stupidly wealthy catch flights and not feelings to whichever part of the globe they want.

Join me in prayer as we manifest catching flights!

Anyway me, myself and I will always choose the sweet embrace of denial and delusion any day. I call them the double D’s. You should try it sometime. At least dissociating from everyday life doesn’t make you feel like an interloper. See me, I be(lie)ve that I am a rich person in a poor persons body! Denial and delusion people!

I am rich in spirit or whatever Jesus said!

A while back when I was still a poor, struggling, student I got a summer job. Side note; I’m no longer a student but I’ve got the poor and struggling part down to a T. That’s not important though. I used to teach English at a certain primary school. It was one of those private schools that always crop up near shopping centres, with a population of about 50 students -and that’s me being generous- teachers that never get paid and usually close down within two years.

The problem Wasn’t that we never got paid…okay, that was a big problem. I was the youngest there and the other teachers had family’s already. I used to wonder how they managed with no salary. It most definitely couldn’t be that nonexistent paycheck that they survived on. The other problem was that there were only three classes. Most of the students had to share a classroom.

I used to have a group of students from class 4 and 5, all in the same class. It was a very messy situation but we made do. The classes were clustered together, the desks weren’t enough for all of them, and they didn’t have textbooks. Still, they were always eager to learn. The students in that school came from poor families so they really had no choice but to persevere through the struggle. Everybody from the teachers, to the students, to the woman that used to cook ngumu’s next door, was struggling.

I loved those kids, man. They reminded me of my time in primary school. To some extend, my primary school was the same as theirs. I attended a school were every opening day, we would cut thorny branches from trees and drag them to school, to use them for the fence. See, during holidays animals would somehow use our fence as a chew toy, or thieves would break in to steal the only wall clock in the entire school. Hence the additional security of thorny branches!

Aaah! I have seen things oooh!

Are you among those who used to get dropped and picked from school? Did your school have a bus? Lucky bitches. Do you know how many kilometres we had to walk to and fro every single day? And the teachers weren’t any less merciful. Arriving to school late used to get us beaten like a dog with no owner.

A bad day went like this; You over sleep and wake up late, somehow the kerosene for the lamp got depleted the previous night so now you have to learn how to see in the dark like an owl, you stab your toe, knock down sufurias to the chagrin of your mother, realize that your cloths are inside out and then eventually make it to school only to find the teacher on duty at the gate taking out his anger issues on other students.

Those were the moments I wished I could drop kick education goodbye.

There used to be school feeding programs, especially during the dry season. Those were the times when school attendance would be at its highest. That was the only meal most of the students would get to have that day you see. The problem was that these programs were never sustainable and so after a month or so the free food would get finished. Sometimes the school would try to get the parents to contribute but it wasn’t exactly a school for ballers.

They used to serve us isyo. That’s what we call a mixture of boiled maize and beans. It might not seem like much but to us it was better than pizza. FYI, I have no idea what pizza tastes like so I might be biased.

So yeah, food was a problem… And water. The school had a lot of tanks from donations but with no rain, they were perpetually almost always empty. They couldn’t afford to buy water for the kids so we had to learn how to hydrate through prayer and osmosis, or carry water from home.

Still, Look at me now! A freaking graduate. I might be jobless at the moment but lord, have I made that little girl proud. I think about those kids I taught and my former classmates a lot. At the end of it all, I pray that even though our journeys might be difficult, we all make it.

PS: Americans, what is homecoming?

Climate change: chronicles from my village.

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Ugh! Is this what they call baby girl treatment? Whatever prayer she prayed, I copy and paste lord. Alexa, play broke bitch by Yours truly. I’m not saying I want to ‘.. Shake my ass in Dubai…’ But yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Hear me out, developed countries have succeeded in destroying the planet and now we’re all doomed. Seriously, if there was a drop off point to get off of earth, I’d be the first girl to buy a ticket.

I ask, does Elon musk accept stowaways?

Climate change has become a global pandemic. I’m no scientist or environmental activist, but me thinks that these countries built on industrialization and slavery need to answer to someone for fucking up the planet for the rest of us.

Some of us barely have functioning governments and now we have to deal with climate change too?

My village is in a really dry place. Most of the people here are small scale farmers. That’s how we survive. Over the years, we’ve learned how to make do with the occasional rainfall that we get.

However,climate change has ruined all that. The seasonal rains that most of them relied on to grow crops has stopped coming. They can’t predict weather patterns like they – and my ancestors – used to. Access to food and even clean drinking water is becoming a problem.

Do you realize how hard it is to walk kilometers, with a jerrican on your back, the sun blazing like it has a grudge on tour forehead, only to get to the well and find a line of other people, so now you have to wait for hours then start the journey back, only to repeat the entire process because one jerrican is not enough for the entire household?

You can’t relate, can you?

The sun is scorching the life out of my village. And its not just because its making us sweat in places we really shouldn’t. The planting season is here and people have planted but where is the rain? If it doesn’t rain in the oncoming weeks, then these already marginalized people are going to be counting losses. The funny thing is, we are still better off than most communities here.

I know Winston Churchill once said, if you’re going through hell, keep going. But wuehh!! Must you really? Its too hot. I’m already black, I don’t need a tan lord! And neither do my people!

The old people here say that we must have offended God or something. That the potential drought staring at us on the face is a punishment for something.

Its a religion vs science situation. But mother nature has a way of balancing things out. For years, humans have plundered and taken from her –and I’m not just talking about white people- and now we’re facing the consequences.

In a way, the planet is punishing us.

Drought, floods, famine, hunger. Reminds me of the ten plaques of Egypt. In this case were all going to be dead and the planet turned Into ash in the next few years if things don’t change. I honestly don’t want to be around when lack of food drives people into becoming blood thirsty maniacs. Unlike brad Pitt, I’m neither handsome enough, or have the leg strength to run from someone looking to eat my brain.

I’ve said this before, my legs are only conditioned to run from my problems.

The worst part is, third world countries are facing the brunt of it all. We don’t have the necessary resources to deal with the consequences of climate change.

Still, to stop climate change we all need to do our part. Maybe I can start by telling the oldies in my village that God isn’t punishing us with drought. We brought this all upon ourselves. God is saving his strength to deal with colonialists and slave owners.

PS: how has climate change affected you?

Punishments and mass beatings…

My primary and high school experience had one thing in common. The beatings. I am sure there is a ‘legally acceptable’ term for them but meh-… I used to think that teachers took the beatings more seriously than they did in ensuring we got good education. It used to be a running joke that they would take out their family frustrations on us. Some did not hold back.

I know we were not innocent and maybe we deserved it. Maybe we deserved to be punished. And by punish, I don’t mean a gentle knock on the head or a slight tap with a ruler. That was not public school style. See, some Kenyan public schools are worse than correctional centers when it comes to ensuring discipline.

Teachers loved to punish us especially when we failed their subjects. I constantly found myself drawing the short end of the straw when it came to mathematics. I hated math with a Passion. How the hell was it my fault if I couldn’t calculate the probability of a train traveling from Mombasa to Nairobi, after criss crossing the Indian ocean using the force of gravity?!….how. We would cry, bleed and bruise, all in the name of punishment. Do you realize how painful it is for a full grown man to take a cane to your ass because you arrived to school late…at 7 am in the cold, frosty as fuck morning?.

Sometimes, teachers took punishments too far, in my –not so innocent- opinion. We washed toilets, cleaned dormitories, swept entire compounds, knelt on pebbled ground until our knees were indented (I still have the scars) or got beaten. I can’t decide what was worse. They would use their hands,rulers, canes or my personal favorite, the Bunsen burner. That one hurt like a mothefucker.

‘Mass beatings’ were quite a common form of punishment. If you don’t know what it is, then God bless you. You have led a soft life. If you know what it is then, you are a survivor. Where are your battle scars, if I may ask? We would be herded off like cattle, to the proverbial slaughter.

I had a love-hate relationship with mass beatings. I hated them because teachers would descend on us like we were responsible for global warming. I hated them because when the teachers were done, we wouldn’t be able to sit for a week without flinching in pain. Our bodies would be on fire.

I also loved it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like pain –I think- . I loved mass beatings Simply because they were en masse. we went through them as a unit. That, in itself was way better than facing the wrath of a teacher on your own. If you were lucky, you would be amongst the last ones and the teacher would have used up most of their strength, so it wouldn’t hurt as much.

That was a total lie by the way. I swear they regenerated energy faster than you can shout Avengers assemble.

Anyway, the ‘fun‘ part about mass beatings was after you and gotten your share, cried and nursed your wounds, then sat back to watch the others getting handled. Before you accuse me of being a sadist, hear me out. Some people definitely made the beatings enjoyable. Slightly, at least. See, their were four types of people during a mass beating;

1: Those who would scream and call on to their parents, ancestors and anybody who would listen,

2: Those who would be stoic, not make a single noise and take the beating like a champ,

3: Those who would cry even before the beating had started,

4: Lastly, those who were courageous enough to try and wrestle the cane from the teacher.

PS: sadly, I was a certified resident of number 3.