Junior

Abdi walked across the school compound and past the staff room and the assembly area with its lines demarcated by chalk-painted stones. He was filled with that familiar sense of unease and dread that he always felt in school. He hurried past the big Ali Garoob tree where the bell sat astride the branches and past a few classroom blocks and the line of neem trees and into Class Six Yellow. The other two streams, Six Blue and Six Green, were on either side of his class, and on the next block was class seven and eight, the senior-most classes.

Abdi also felt a sense of inferiority walking past Class Seven and Eight. He wanted to be in the senior classes. Being in Class Six made him feel like a kid. Being senior was a source of pride. Older kids always seemed to know things and did things that made them look mysterious and therefore cool. During parade on Mondays and Fridays, the older classes occupied the lines at the back, and they seemed untouchable and unfathomable. He wanted to a Big Boy. Perhaps because at home people expected a child to be a grown up. The adults said, ‘You are an old man, stop behaving like a child.’ He was simultaneously amused and offended when someone said, ‘Your pubes can tie five camels,’ which signified the person was a grown person.  He could not tell whether it was a joke or an exaggeration or an earnest reproach. He used to respond, ‘But I’m a child,’ and then he stopped because he figured being a grown person was the right way to be and being a child was a kind of disease. Perhaps he wanted to be a big boy because he was always so small in size, always the youngest in everything. Even now, at eleven, he was youngest in his class and some of the students were as old as eighteen. He had started school very young. The older classmates had begun school late, some of them coming to town from the country way past the age of starting school. Some had repeated classes for failing to pass their exams, thus extending their primary school career. Yet, Abdi felt relief, glancing at the lower classes, that at least he was not still in those ones. He felt pity for them, and a sense of superiority over these lower masses, the poor things still learning things he already knew.

It was a quarter to eight now and class was a bevy of activity. He looked for his friends and desk mates Khalif and Ahmed. Khalif was there. Ahmed was not. Ahmed was a professional late comer and perennial class skipper. He skipped classes the way the two of them skipped obstacles when they played together in the school field.

Ahmed had begun to skip school right from nursery school. He came to class in the morning and stopped returning after the 10 o’clock tea break. Madam Athar, the nursery teacher, was not amused. Then Ahmed graduated from being a break-time-only skipper. He would disappear for days. Everyone wondered if he had dropped out of school. He still visited Abdi’s home, and they played together. He said he was ‘taking a break. But don’t tell anyone.’ Then one morning, a woman who Abdi knew was his mother, brought Ahmed to school and started to confront the teacher why her son was not getting taught. She said that Ahmed told her that Madam Athar was not teaching anything, that all she did was apply perfume on the children, hence he saw no point in coming to school. It was a waste of his time. The teacher’s name meant ‘Madam Perfume.’ Madam Athar turned her head from side to side, trying to gather her bearings. Then she laughed. The children looked at each in disbelief. Then they all laughed and giggled until their eyes were wet and red. Madam Athar assured Ahmed’s mother that ‘I have not been applying perfume on anyone.’ That, as the woman could see, she was busy teaching the class. She promised to keep an eye on Ahmed and wagged a finger at him. ‘You are a naughty boy, Ahmed.’ Despite her efforts, though—pinching him in the ears, placing a pen between his fingers and pressing hard—Ahmed was not completely deterred.

Ahmed walked in, finally. His shirt buttons open at the chest. He had his characteristic miswak brush in his mouth. Abdi sat sandwiched between Ahmed and Khalif. Khalif was painfully long, a needle of a boy. His legs pricked Abdi. He fanned himself with a book. Ahmed said, ‘Did you watch the game last weekend?’ He stood up and started reenacting Thierry Henry’s free kick against Manchester United, the big game everyone was excited about. Ahmed was a die-hard Arsenal fan. He could barely contain his excitement.

‘Wait, you,’ Ahmed said, waving off Khalif. He raised his arm over his head and paused. ‘Did you see the chipping of the ball, its movement in the air, how it hit the crossbar before going in, the cheer of the crowd in the stadium, the way the commentator went wild? Wallahi it was so beautiful!’

More people joined in the conversation. Even Yusuf the prefect, who had forgotten about his prefect duties. ‘Did you see the celebration?’ Yusuf was holding his head with disbelief. He too was an Arsenal fan. ‘Sliding to the corner flag? Best striker!’ He kissed his hands and threw them into the air. 

Khalif said, ‘Shut up,’ he said in his husky voice. He chewed the mabuyu—baobab seeds—he had smuggled into class. ‘You don’t know anything. Ruud Boy’s goal was better. Best striker. No question. We deserved more than a draw.’

Yusuf said, ‘That’s nonsense, my friend.’  He liked to call people ‘my friend’ ironically, especially when he was pissed off at them. ‘Accept facts.’ 

The Man United fans won the argument, but Ahmed and Yusuf and their faction were sore.

‘Can you sweep, my friend!’ Yusuf said to Khalif. He resorted to authority. He waved his roster around like a preacher. ‘You too,’ he said to the others. He fished a green fountain pen clipped to his pocket and then put it back every few second with a flourish and purpose meant to communicate authority, writing brief remarks on his roster. ‘Can you hurry up, it’s almost parade time,’ he said.

The class monitor, the assistant to the prefect, kept himself extremely busy, but he did not seem to accomplish much despite this. He darted from the front of the class to the back with the rigidity of a soldier, making sure everything was orderly. He repeated the same orders the prefect had made. ‘Can you move please?’ making the V sounds like an F. Abdi found it hard to take the class monitor seriously and he was sure he could not trust him. For instance, when a teacher walked in randomly and asked for a noise makers list, the monitor who sometimes forgot to compile the list (because he too was busy making noise) miraculously fished an old list and sometimes Abdi was on it even though he rarely made noise. 

Yusuf the Prefect was an enigma. He was as sober and serious as a teacher most of the time. But he switched from having a good time, from being a comrade, and without warning, put on his prefect hat. All of a sudden, his smile disappeared and his face contorted itself into an alien demeanour. This vexed Abdi, who did not know which side of Yusuf to expect when. He preferred to walk on egg shells around him.

Yusuf had a permanent pucker on his forehead, which only disappeared when he was joking around. This made Abdi weary of the prefect. And it made him instinctively pucker up his own face. Perhaps this was because Abdi too wanted to look serious and to be taken seriously. Perhaps being serious meant having a puckered face and being older like Yusuf and to have responsibilities over other people, to carry a fountain pen in your pocket and to fish it out expertly and purposefully often. He wanted to be all these, and he tried to be this way, but his voice was not strong and he didn’t know how to say the kinds of things you had to say.

After all the cleaning was done, everyone sat in their desks to wait for the periods to begin.

Abdi drew on his exercise book, usually houses, animals, people. He was the shy and quiet class artist, especially famous for block typographies, the one where the letters have shadows. This made him feel important and special. He had a talent, something no one else in the entire class had. His desk mates asked him to write their names on their books and he did it with relish. They exclaimed with wonder. ‘It’s easy actually,’ he said to them, biting the back end of his pen. ‘You just do it like this and this and keep the lines straight and hands steady.’

Mr. Kamau walked in. He was tall and had a boxy frame. He was middle aged with a rectangular frame and a short afro, a penetrating gaze and a whiskery moustache. He sniffed the air of the class a lot as though trying to detect something sinister as he set his books on the teacher’s desk.

On the board, Mr. Kamau divided the board into three sections with long straight lines. He wrote the date at the top and then GHC. Geography, History and Civics. Abdi’s loved this class. It talked about interesting places and people and things that were unfamiliar to him. Which cash crop was found in which province, which mineral was found where. Mr. Kamau wrote the topic of the day. Climate. He talked about the climate features of the highlands and arid places and deserts and lowlands and savannahs. When he wrote the degree symbol in degree Celsius, it was perfectly tiny and perfectly circular on the board. Mr. Kamau’s handwriting was typographical, and it was clinical, like his mannerisms. His lines, when he underlined things, were unsettlingly straight. Abdi looked for any wavering and got distracted by this. He could not find any. When Mr. Kamau drew the map of Kenya, he drew it exactly the same way every time, in one unbroken line and he did it with flourish. He swung acrobatically around, hit the board with the stick with a ping to emphasize his point, while pocketing his other hand. As a teacher, Abdi liked Mr. Kamau. But as a person, he seemed ethereal, like a spirit one could not comprehend or touch. On the map, North-eastern Province was close to the top eastern corner. Mr. Kamau did not talk much about it except that it was semi-arid. The other provinces had mountains and lakes and oceans and lots of rain. He wondered why their region didn’t have highlands or plantations. Or limestone. Or pyrethrum.

Outside the window of the classroom, the land was flat except for the thin dried-up streams that were full of soft bright sand where water passed through when it rained. A herd of goats young yawned and rubbed his skin against the walls of the round concrete water tank. Abdi could picture the green dirty rain water at the bottom of the tank, and the empty plastic bottles and sticks lying on its floor, and the greenish brown molasses on its inside walls.

At the end of the class Mr. Kamau called out the register. He called out each person’s name and the person responded ‘Present, sir!’ He marked absent those who did not respond. He gave homework. Before he left, he called a list of absentees from the previous day. They walked to the front of the class. When he disciplined students, he did not swing like other teachers but launched it from close range, like a player taking a penalty kick without moving further back but still kicking the ball powerfully enough into the net. For maximum efficiency of his energy, he cinched their trousers tight like ball in his hand beforehand. Ahmed was on the list. Surprise.

Mr. Kamau noticed Ahmed had multiple layers of trousers inside, a trick students used to cushion the effect of the punishment. Mr. Kamau shook his head from side to side, appraising the boy.

Ahmed explained, ‘I feel cold so I put on some for warmth.’

‘Heh heh heh. The weather is 40 degree Celsius.’

Mr. Kamau shook his head again and smiled. Mr. Kamau, said, ‘Go behind that door and remove all the extra layers.’

Ahmed did as he was told. Then he came out from behind the door when Mr. Kamau was rubbing the chalk off the board and tiptoed out of the class. Everyone looked with wide eyes. No one said anything.

‘Come on out,’ Mr. Kamau said when he turned back.

When no one came out, Mr. Kamau peeked behind the door and peeked again and again, not believing his eyes. He scanned the class for any sign of Ahmed. After a moment, he followed the craning necks of the students as they looked out of the window. Ahmed was seen disappearing out of the school.

‘Heh heh. Hmmm.’

The bell for break time rang. Mr. Kamau left.

Abdi and Ahmed and Khalif bought snacks from the women at the gate. Mandanzis. Samosas. Bhajias. Mangoes with powdered pepper. Icicles. They stood by the large cream wooden sign that read: ‘Built  with the support of the People’s Republic of Japan. 1980,’ and under that sign it said ‘Handed over to the Kenyan Government of Kenya. 1992.’ Abdi thought the ‘People’s Republic’ part was interesting. He thought that the government of Japan was run by ordinary citizens who built schools in other parts of the world. After break, the air inside the class smelled of food. Discarded seeds and plastic wrapping littered the floor. Shoes grated against the sandy cement floor with the shuffling of feet. Abdi’s clenched his teeth from sensitivity. Two more classes after the break. Kiswahili.

After returning from lunch, class resumed. People walked with a book shielding their head against the sun and their bodies smelled of heat. Mr. Isaack bounced in, swinging his files and books and swinging by his side. Mr. Issack was tall and lean. He had a handsome face and was around thirty years old. His hair was smooth and slicked back, and he had a silver tooth that flashed when he spoke. He wore print shirts that they were short sleeved and breezy and he tucked his shirt in at high waist and his mercilessly ironed trousers had perfect creases and his buttocks were flat as an iron board. He asked rhetorical questions about the heat and fanned himself with a book.

He taught Art and Craft. He gave out manilla papers for drawing. Abdi and his desk mates drew a traditional hut and used glued sand for its walls and l white paper for roofing. When it dried, they ran their hands over it and felt the rough texture on the paper. Mr. Isaack went round the class. At their table he nodded his head and grabbed his chin and smiled. ‘Good work,’ he said. He passed on to the others. When he saw something unimpressive, he shook his head and laughed. ‘What is this? In fact, a blind chicken can do a better job by scratching.’ He walked to the next desk with a look of worry in his face.

Back at the front of the class, Mr. Isaack said, ‘Can you clap for yourselves?’ He wrote on the board the topic of the day ad drew a drum. His voice rose and fell, like his gestures, like a choir conductor, his arms flailing in the air, sweat dripping from his face.

He sang, ‘Percussion instruments. Percussion?’

Everyone responded, ‘Instruments!’

“Percussion?’ ‘Instruments!’

‘Percussion instruments consists of membranophones and idiophones. Membranophones and?

‘Idiophones!’

On the board, Mr Isaack’s handwriting was big and he wrote with force that made it whistle on the board and made your teeth sensitive and it was hard to dust it off afterwards and the chalk dust rained down to the floor and his hands were white with chalk.

‘His handwriting is terrible,’ Khalif whispered to Abdi.

Mr. Isaack looked in the direction of their desk. Abdi knew they were in trouble. He stiffened.

‘Maraade’, can you name one membranophone instrument?’ Mr. Isaack called out. He took a particular relish in calling Khalif by his father’s name, perhaps because it was funny as it meant ‘the one with the white cloth.’ Mr. Isaack enjoyed asking difficult questions to someone who was not listening, to embarrass them. Khalif could not answer.

‘I will deal with you perpendicularly,’ Mr. Isaack said, flinging a piece of chalk in his direction. To Abdi, the use of this big word made the threat seem even more severe.

Mr. Isaack loved mnemonics. During Science, he sang the names ‘Samatar Mohamed Elmi’ to make the students remember the Sun-Moon-Earth order of the lunar eclipse, and he sang ‘Secondary Education Management!’ for the order during the solar eclipse. It was so effective that no one ever forgot this, even in their dreams. Abdi didn’t know what ‘management’ meant. And because Mr. Isaack used words like ‘actually’ and ‘in perpendicularly,’ to Abdi, Mr. Isaack seemed like someone highly educated and therefore worthy of respect.

The last bell rang at four o’clock. Abdi and his friends hang around the school chatting. At the window of their class, Abdi watched as his brother and a few other students arranged themselves to start their debate. On the blackboard, the topic was written at the top by the prefect and their names written under the categories ‘Proposers’ and ‘Opposers.’ He did not know what these words meant too. The name of his brother sat at the top of one of the sections.

Abdi and his friends walked to the field. The sun was still biting and the light was still blinding. The soil glimmered as though it was wet. But there was a soft breeze that hugged and engulfed them in an embrace. Abdi inhaled. The field was expansive. There was excitement on their faces. At the field, there was a lot of activity. Some jogged. Some sat around and chatted. There was a volleyball net with some people playing. They found a group of boys they knew who were playing football and joined in. The iron-sheet roofs of the classrooms squeaked in the distance and the acacia trees whistled.

On the field, Abdi did not need to use too many words or think too much. He could see and move and create. He forgot himself. There was possibility and simplicity. Abdi’s team scored a goal, but the opposing team denied its legitimacy. The game resumed. Abdi forgot about time and space. It was dust rising and feet thumping. There was noise and cheer and triumph and sweat and sighs and groans. And when the sun was all but a red thing beneath the dark silhouettes of the houses beyond the school, he walked home, sand baked onto his skin.