A villager in the city: verbal calisthenics

The year is 1999, this was my first year since joining a national secondary school(boys only) in Nairobi. I was among the top students from Nyeri, the creme de la creme from an unknown village in the ancient Tetu kraal, Nyeri. My first term in high school was typical for all teenage boys. You meet boys your age(well a few are much older and definitely bigger) and they come from all walks of life and drawn from all parts of Kenya. Young teenage boys starting to find their path in life to adulthood. It's a dynamic group and this allows one to meet and mingle with agemates from all the tribes of Kenya or for some to regroup into your own tribe. This grandson of house Mumbi was not your ordinary tribal creature but a budding statesman. The village did not send me to the top school to advance tribal cultures and to act small.

At this age, the prime social desire is to fit into that crowd or segments of it, pretend to have style if you are from the village-like yours truly. There is always someone who is the head of the group, either the strongest, most handsome, one from the richest family or simply the loudest or most charismatic one. I was among the tiniest monkeys in my class, my mother had fed me on a strictly vegeterian diet of githeri(maize with traces of beans), kales and all those root tubers (ndumas, ngwachis, ikwas, miangas) with the occasional chapatis with rosemary spiced meat stew in December. My mother was not stingy  Tetuian but a woman who has fought this world to place a meal for her ever-hungry four children. I shuffled from clique to clique seeking one to fit in, that's how I ended up like Cain wondering about and barely fitting in.

Did I fit in?

There were options well removed from my reach; I couldn't cluster with the rich boys for richness like pregnancy is oft difficult to hide or claim to have; let's just say my social-climbing skills were dwarfed by my village attributes. I was one of the sponsored 'poor' students. I was also tiny in stature and statistically(just made this one up) no tiny person has aspirations to remain ever so tiny. The option of hanging with the vertically challenged(the tiny clique aka atoms) was out of the question, I wanted to hang with the alpha dogs or at least the big dogs.

I have always been a renegade, my mother simply thought I was naughty and stubborn to her discipline. Deep down I knew that I couldn't be bottled up to a few traits of any group and initially I desired to mesh with just anyone clique I choose to. This meant camouflaging to fit into the group dynamics: oftentimes staying quiet about one's experiences but agreeing to stories and pretending to relate to them, at times this required acting a strange character to fit in. This proved to drain too much effort and was contrary to my natural instinct to take the path of least effort to achieve useful outcomes.

A tiny stumbling block, oops!

There was also a small problem: my pronunciation of English words. I was taught English in my mother tongue; sometimes directly or just English in a vernacular accent. Nyeri Kikuyu's are proud of their language and will corrupt all others to expedite pronunciation. Syllables with letters 'R' and 'L' are often indistinguishable when pronounced by a native Nyeri Kikuyu. There is also the sounds 'ch' and 'sh' which my Nyeri colleagues don't waste time distinguishing one from the other. One could argue that they don't care that such differences exist, but reality is, life for them has never revolved about the proper pronunciation of the syllables of the English language.

Any time I opened my mouth to speak(I have never been known to be a truly quiet person) I was prone to revealing the inadequacies of Mrs. Waciuri's English lessons. The clique boys would burst out in laughter even when serious matters were under discussion and I was pulling my end of the discussion. I would know immediately that my fitting into these cliques would be no mean feat. 

Some second former and housemate called Mayavi(from Kileleshwa or Lavington) while pointing out my problem one day once told me, "you guy you are shrubbing". I asked in response, "what do you mean I am 'shlubbing'?". Mayavi would then quip, "you guy, I mean shrrrubingggg!". In my mind, the only "shlub"[shrub] I knew was a form of vegetation that semi-arid areas like the Nyika plateau are famous for. You can imagine the five minutes we spent(wasted for Mayavi's case) in this discussion with the hapless Mayavi pointing out the pronunciation problem that I was suffering from.
When Mayavi finally gave up helping me pronounce those 'R's, I never ceased to reflect on this strange diagnosis. This was a strange pronunciation disease that was conspicuous to all around me but hidden from me.  The word 'shlubbing'[shrubbing] was the strangest word I had heard that day. How do you turn a noun into a 'present participle'? Up until then, I had only encountered verbs to which you could add the 'ing' ending to refer to actions that are still happening e.g. I am reading. Wameshiire, my primary school headmaster had taught us all those English things with a swinging cane in his muscled hand to drive them well into our heads. I knew all those crazy latin stuff: gerunds, past participle, present participle, diphthongs but I was still 'shlubbing' and was not well cut for the elite cliques.

I took a talking recess to reflect on this strange disease. I reduced my talking to a necessary minimum and instead took the time to listen to how other people were pronouncing words especially those I know are laced with 'R's. I wanted to badly fit in and my heavy Nyeri tongue was becoming a stumbling block.

During one of those hot afternoons when you want to take things easy, take a nap, lay under some shade and do absolutely 'nada'.  This phenomenon had been explained by the teacher of Biology as follows: that after lunch, the blood departs from the head(no one knows whether the head was left empty or not) to the stomach to absorb nutrients and this was the reason why one felt dizzy after lunch. A thoroughly superstitious man just like my grandfather if you ask me but I digress.  I sat by virtue of my first name, second row from the front. I was balancing my eyelids to stay awake, in front was Arnold the boy from Meru who was ever asleep in class. Nobody in my class had observed Arnold awake whenever a teacher was in class. He was the chief sloth that afternoon snoring like nobody's business. Miraculously; Arnold was sharp like a Somali sword. Teachers would ask a question while he was snoring and shout him awake to answer. The son of the Njuri Ncheke; first of his name would answer them better than all the woke students: with precision and accuracy like Ben Carson the great Neurosurgeon. On this sunny afternoon somewhere around March, the gods conspired to lighten up their boring afternoon with my verbal shortcomings. An old Scottish lady called Sister Francis; our teacher of literature picked on me to read a passage from Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe. She could and should have picked someone from the front row, even Arnold or from the sleeping backbenchers but her finger pointed squarely at the boy from Nyeri. The one who was first in his village to wear shoes. Suddenly, all the half-asleep students were as attentive as you can imagine, they knew a good laugh was in the offing. I looked around pretending that the teacher had pointed at some other student behind me, feigning that it was one of the Chris duos. I could see the other students faces lit up but tense with anticipation of a good laugh, I knew that I was done. The good Sister confirmed my worst fears, "I mean you, Benson", she said rather calmly. My eyes must have popped out and I was gripped in the kind of fear that you can touch, see, smell and hear. I saw my little remaining dignity pass away before my own eyes as the prospect of swords of words with points of  'R's, 'L's, 'Ch's and 'Sh's carving away at the iotas of a little speaking confidence remaining in me.

It couldn't get worse, or could it?

I cleared my throat a dozen times as the ever-patient Sister Francis motioned me to read the first paragraph of the first chapter. There I was scared beyond imagination, my mouth ran dry, my tongue contracted like a slug in salt. I froze and looked like a petrified cat and the sister kept encouraging me to read.  My classmates were at the precipice of tension and I was denying them their moment. I summoned the last ebbs of my courage and decided in mind let 'these morons have their laugh, after all, they had waited long enough and I have reached the tipping point of my fear of embarrassment'. I felt the villager who was hitherto well camouflaged would now be revealed stark naked for all to see and judgment and a sentence to be made. I knew that without a doubt I would have to cluster with the villagers' cliques henceforth.

First chapter of Things Fall apart by Chinua Achebe

I finally found my tongue and started reading "Things fall apat by Shinua Ashembe".  The imps in that class burst out laughing in a thunder, some(the dramatic ones) fell down to the floor in fits of laughter with legs up in the air. I felt the lighting of embarrassment strike me viciously but soon afterward a sigh of relief. I had paid my dues, I could now be me, a villager from some unknown village in Tetu, Nyeri. I felt like 'wakagukuu' who had broken off his cocoon to be a truly magnificent butterfly.

The laughter would have gone on for much longer, the teacher; Sister Francis brought the imps back to sanity and admonished them towards good behavior. She had a hard time since she was the gentlest of souls you can ever meet. I thought she would then move the reading to the next person, oh boy! was I wrong! I had to read the entire paragraph as the imps continued in their rituals of fitful laughter, they even joined the chorus as I clobbered and slaughtered the English language. They helped along as I rolled the 'R's into 'L's and vice versa, the orchestra 'sh'aad the 'ch'aas and 'ch'aad the 'sh'aas. The village hero was laying naked in embarassment. I was Amalinze the cat, the hitherto great wrestler who Okonkwo(the imps) had finally thrown to the ground. The cat(yours truly) had slipped and landed on its back.  I painfully related with this paragraph, not with the victorious Okonkwos but with the vanquished Amalinzes.

"wild for seven days and seven nights" that's how long I felt that ritual lasted, the climax when the voices in the opera reach the pitch that shatters glass. My dreams of fitting into all cliques of my choice shattered.

Did this Cloud have a silver lining?

Sister Francis, visibly pink with rage banged the chalk duster on the table and...




ndumas - arrow roots, ngwachis - sweet potatoes, ikwas-yams, miangas-cassavas
Wakagukuu - its the pupa stage of a butterfly's metamorphosis, this stage succeeds the destructive caterpillar stage. The caterpillar encloses itself in some cocoon and stays inert as the development continues to develop a butterfly which has to break out of the cocoon to complete the cycle.