Old School: Catholic Parochial - Where Tony Mochama recited ‘Angel’s Loos’

Catholic Parochial School (CPS) inside the Holy Family Basilica in Nairobi has a tarmacked compound where students learnt to play football without falling as it meant bloody, scraped knees. For that reason, CPS let in a lot of goals during inter-school soccer, because their goalkeepers never learnt to dive (that bloody tarmac)!

Besides that lami compound, CPS has a city clock that was, and is still, stuck at 8.20! Check it. Being in the middle of tao meant Catholic Parochial had zero rivalries with fellow schools and without a brother or sister school since CPS was mixed, meant the Holy Family Basilica was its ‘strict stepmother’.

Students often climbed the Holy Family Basilica tower at dusk, it’s a miracle no one ever fell and died doing this insanely dangerous climb. God, indeed lived inside Holy Family Basilica! CPS had no anthem. But when the church bell went at noon, students stood up and said a prayer called ‘The Angel’s Loos.’

CPS had memorable teachers like English-obsessed Miss Amelia Mascarenhas, also the CPS headmistress, who made everyone pass English. And the school’s ‘First Body,’ Geoffrey Zimbo, who got pubic hair like in Standard Three, and infamous bullies, James Wanjohi and Theopisty Amimo, aka Asterix and Obelisk!

Then there was famous ‘chop,’ Eugene Wandera, who was number one from Standard One till eight, but finished eighth in KCSE!

Notable alumni include Mike Macharia, the multi-millionaire owner of ‘Seven Seas’ Technologies and writer Tony Mochama - whose “creative writing talent started in CPS during boring lessons like ‘Home Science’ when he would switch off the odijo, and switch on his imagination – and scribbled stories in a trance – at the back of his exercise books!”