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Weirdos masquerading as headmasters

Counties

In every man, there is a boy lurking in the shadows looking for a chance to commit some mischief.

Many Kenyan men, including our leaders, are unable to completely tame the mischievous boy within. This accounts for the drama the nation is treated to on television, both locally and internationally.

For instance, only a boy would hurl insults in sheng at a mzungu who doesn’t even understand the language. The boy in the man will be even more insulting when the mzungu smiles at him innocently, thinking that he has been invited for nyama choma in Kenya.

I mean, who else other than a boy, riding on mischief, can block a highway in a foreign land and having created a clear stretch of tarmac, go ahead to perform somersaults some monkeys would break their limbs performing.

It is indeed the boy in the man who lashes out, when waheshimiwa’s old enough to wear the ‘grandpa’ tag, engage in street ‘mchongoano’ of the ‘pesa sio ya mama yako’ variety at a public rally.

Loose skirts

Politics a side. Teachers are not any better. Early in the profession, I taught in a mixed school where the headmaster coached the girl’s netball team.

He was so passionate about the game that he was almost always on the netball court. I later learnt that his keenness had nothing to do with the love of the game.

The ‘coach’ was in his element when urging the girls to ‘jump higher’ for the ball. ‘Jump higher’ became his nickname.

You know, girls when playing netball wear rather short and loose skirts. His sole intention was to savour the sight of the netballers’ lower limbs.

Panicked rascal

To achieve his goal, the school tailor was under instructions to make skirts as brief as the ones worn by tennis champion Serena Williams.

What is the difference between such a principal and a school boy who places a mirror on the ground so as to peep up a girl’s skirt?

Much later in my teaching profession, there was a headmaster who would sneak out of school every Friday immediately after break time. Not wanting us to know he had left, he would leave his coat hanging on his chair and sneak out through a hole in the fence.

One day, he collided head on with a student who had sneaked out for a puff and was rushing back to class. The startled principal dropped his suitcase as the panicked rascal literally flew over him and dashed for dear life.

Elsewhere, I knew a very senior principal who had been unable to conquer his love for cigarettes. Many people however, didn’t know that he smoked. He had even ordered the school artisan to put up a poster declaring the school a ‘smoking-free zone’.

He only smoked in the privacy of his office after which he would kill the smell with air freshener. The secretary was under strict instructions not to allow anybody into the office during ‘smoking hours’.

Man of God

One day, his pastor— a senior clergy man — came to see him over a church project. For some reason, the secretary that day just waved him in.

The pastor literally walked into a cloud of smoke; the principal, head laid back on his seat, had luxuriantly released smoke through his mouth and then both nostrils, as many smokers are wont to do.

When the smoke cleared, he was shocked to see the servant of God stifling a cough in front of him. He automatically did what any wayward school boy caught red handed would have done. The evidence disappeared down his throat. The man of God who had obviously seen worse acts committed by sons of men apparently took no notice.

 

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