SCHOOL MEMORIES: Thankful to be alive

In case you’re wondering, I made it out of boarding school alive. I refused to discriminate against weevils and cockroaches when they suddenly showed up in my meal. I treated them fairly by chewing and swallowing them like any other food. I munched on raw grasshoppers just to prove that I’m not a wimp. Maybe that will come to haunt me later in life but for now I am as healthy as a horse, if you disregard the influenza that I’m currently battling. But yes, I’m still alive; I’m not communicating to you from beyond the grave. So it’s only right that I give a vote of thanks. First, I would like to thank my mother, who in her infinite wisdom, knew that a little tickle on the buttocks with a tree branch goes a long way in making feelings disappear. Special thanks also go to her spy network (her friends). I am in admiration of their active imagination; if I so much as smiled at a boy, they would call my mother panicking because I might as well have married him in secret. It really does take a village to raise a child. Thank you, Linda Bereta, wherever you are, for beating me up so very thoroughly when your boyfriend wrote to me a love letter. I pleaded with you. I told you that I didn’t know that he was yours. But of course, ignorance is no defence. It took a while for your bite mark to disappear from my right hand. Since that day, I developed detective skills that FBI would find enviable. For every boy that comes into my life, I find out who they are, who they know, who they intend to know. I go as far as finding out what their ex girlfriend’s cousin’s neighbour does for a living. Mr Muhereza, you were an excellent teacher. You knew I was pretending whenever you said, “I’m giving you homework,” and like everybody else, I shouted, “No, teacher! No!” You knew that in truth, I enjoyed creative writing because it was my only chance to communicate to the world all the things that the people in my head used to say to me. Okay maybe you didn’t know that I had people in my head. Still, thank you for pushing me to write and to write well. I did eventually become a writer, just like you wanted me to, and I hope you’re proud of me. It’s like that verse in the Bible, “Though it meanders, it will surely come to pass.” Speaking of the Bible, I am grateful to God for not sending me to hell...yet. I know, I know. I did some very bad things in school. Nicknaming student leaders, making student teachers cry, putting rodents in teachers’ coats, assisting a pig to escape from school...the list is endless. I know that I need to repent. And I might do it today. But I think God’s messengers should repent first. They lied to us that the feelings we were feeling were from the devil. If I liked a boy, I was being lustful. If I felt rebellious, I had a spirit of stubbornness. If I had a healthy appetite, it was the spirit of gluttony. And they laid hands on us and prayed to rid us of these demons. But now I have a bone to pick with them because I know that those were hormones, not demons.

Education

SCHOOL MEMORIES: Thankful to be alive